Paul Seaburn September 26, 2021

You know it’s a bad sign when you’re remodeling your old house and you find something unexpected behind a wall. You know it’s going to be a worse day when it’s a creepy-looking doll. You know you shouldn’t but you read the note the doll is holding. This is not an episode of “The Twilight Zone” but things are about to get really bad for the owner of a house in the Walton area of Liverpool.

Dear reader/ new home owner,

Thank you for freeing me!

My name is Emily. My original owners lived in this house in 1961. I didn’t like them so they had to go.

All they did was sing and be merry. It was sickening. Stabbing was my choice of death for them so I hope you have knives.

Hope you sleep well.

Never trust dolls that can write.

Jonathan Lewis told the Liverpool Echo he had recently purchased a home in Walton and found an ugly patched-over wall underneath the stairs. Not wanting his new (to him, at least) house spoiled, Lewis decided to remove the patch and fix the wall properly. Unfortunately, that’s when his life too a turn towards the Twilight Zone. Behind the wall was an orange-yarn-haired rag doll dressed in a pinstripe dress and bonnet (photo here). There was enough room that the doll was seated in a little doll chair … like she was waiting for him. That was creepy enough for most people a) put the patch back up and forget about it; b) run screaming out of the house and call an exterminator or a ghostbuster or both; or c) read the note the doll was holding. We know Jonathon chose c) and found out he just moved in with a killer doll.

“I wonder where the bodies are? I wouldn’t venture up into the loft on your own…”

Commenters on the Liverpool Echo article ran the gamut from believers to skeptics calling it a prank. Lewis was smart enough to take a deep breath and think for a moment – the patch seemed fairly recent but the note said the ‘murder’ took place in 1961. Neighbors confirmed that the immediate previous owners remodeled the kitchen with the stairs about five years ago, so that may be when a prankster planted the doll. Lewis plans to go with that comforting theory and keep the doll … at least until his Halloween party in October.

Never trust rag dolls either.

That may be a mistake. What if the doll had been found behind the wall during the remodeling and really was from 1961? Did he bother to check for murders or disappearances at the address? Even if there’s no record, the doll is sufficiently creepy to treat it as a haunted doll. Besides that, it’s a rag doll – just like Annabelle, the real inspiration for “The Conjuring” and “Annabelle” film series.

What do you think? What would Rod Serling think?

MU*