Dolls Aren't Supposed to Move

Ana Maria was woken up by the sound of something falling, so she got up, turned on her light, and looked around. But everything looked normal except the ugly doll her grandmother gave her for her tenth birthday. Although it wasn't meant to be ugly. It was pretty porcelain with long brown hair, rosy cheeks in a long, pink, fluffy dress. It's just that Anna Maria felt like she was too old for dolls now, Plus there was something wrong with this one. It just gave her a weird feeling when she looked at it. And still she kept it in her room so her grandma wouldn't think that she hated it. But here's the thing. There was no reason for it to have fallen. It was just sitting on her dresser, so she looked at it for a second before putting it back. She yawned, turned the lights off, and got back in bed, and so she was falling asleep again when suddenly there was another thud and a Maria didn't get up this time, she was too tired, so the next morning, eing, she looked around to see what caused the noise. She needed to know what she had heard in the middle of the night because it wasn't part of her dream anyway, and just like before, everything seemed fine. She was just about to. Walk out of her room when she glanced at the floor next to her dresser and there it was on the floor again, her. Creepy but beautiful doll. She picked it up to put it back, for it belonged, and just as she was walking out of her room, she said, stop falling. She said it to herself. Then she heard a very soft whisper and it said no. It was then followed by another thought. She ran back inside and her doll was on the floor again. This time she picked it up and it was smiling and I Mdia dropped the doll and bran to her parents' room. They didn't believe her at first, but then when her dad went into her room, the doll was sitting on the bed and it was smiling. He ran out of the room and slammed the door, and namania I was telling the truth. The doll was alive. He called his brother for help, and when he arrived, they grabbed the bag and went into the room together. He walked out of the house without saying a word to Anna Maria or her mom and got in the car. A couple of hours later, they returned, this time without the doll. There's just something about dolls that make them more vulnerable to becoming haunted. And you probably know about my experiences with dolls, especially with my other podcast that we had with Michelle Scary Mystery Surprise, where she actually got me a haunted doll and I had to keep it here in the room strange. I don't think I'll share that sometime, but for now I'm going to be exploring two of the most disturbing dolls in history. Get ready for this one. My name is Edwin, and here's a horror story. A man was looking through an old antique small in Myrtle Beach when he came across something strange. He was a collector of World War II memorabilia, and he was used to coming across all sorts of things, fake items people claimed were from the war, terrible things associated with Nazis. But what he looked at was probably. The most bizarre item he had run into and all of his ears in collecting. It was the head of a doll mounted on a wooden stick. It was peeling and the face appeared to be warped. The eyebrows were thick and black, its eyes were no longer symmetrical, Its cheeks were red, with a sharp nose and what looked like an attempt at a smile, but the big lips were shaped incorrectly. The longer the man stared, he felt still, he felt drawn to it. So he got closer to the glass case and he noticed that there was a note in front of the doll. It said this belonged to an American soldier during World War Two. And suddenly he felt like he needed to take this doll home, and so he did. He took it back to his house in Liverpool and displayed it right in the middle of his showroom where he kept other military antiques, and it didn't take long for strange things to start happening. Now, if this story is starting to sound familiar to you, it's because it's a story of mister Fritz the doll. So back to this man, right, So that same night he went to his showroom, he locked everything up like he did every single night. The next morning he found the display case door where mister Fritz stayed wide open. The day after this one, when he went to unlock everything, and get the showroom ready. Mister Fritz's case was open again. He thought that he must have been forgetting to close it. It just wasn't like him, though, and that night he made sure to bring one of his kids with him to have someone there that could see him lock everything up. The next morning came and the man walked into his showroom and mister Fritz's case was open again. The man thought that this was odd, but not odd enough to get rid of his newest piece of this collection. So he went about his day, but every time he looked at mister Fritz, he swore its mouth was in a different position. He left the showroom and when he came back, he thought that the doll's eyes were moving. Eventually, he decided to take a look at the dolls inside. Maybe a tiny mouse had gotten in there and maybe that's what made it move. So he carefully got it opened it up, but nothing was there. It turns out it wasn't the breeze, humidity, or mice making mister Friz's eyes or mouth move. But this was just getting ridiculous. So this night, before leaving his precious antiques room, he grabbed some tape and ripped off a long piece. He put it on the case right after locking it. He walked out of the showroom, thinking, okay, let's see mister Fritz try and get out now. And so the following morning came and the tape on the case was peeled back, the door was wide open. He felt a sense of dread and grabbed mister Fritz. He took it out of the showroom and put the doll in the garden shed, and then he locked it shut. He told his kids not to go anywhere near the shed. Mister Fritz stayed in that shed for about six months. During that time, his life continued. The man didn't feel scared to enter his showroom anymore, but now his kids were feeling that fear. As they played outside in the backyard, they started to hear a faint life, followed by crying. He didn't know where it was coming from. It was so faint it was hard to tell, but one of them said, it's coming from the shed. They ran closer, putting their ears against it, and there it was again, a laughter. The kids dropped their toys and ran to their dad's office, and that was it. The man understood now he needed to get rid of the doll. So he went to his friend who was another collector, and eventually he learned all about the doll. You see, the doll's first owner and creator was Private Billy Booth. Private Booth and his squad were captured in Germany in nineteen forty three. They were taken to Stalig to be a German prisoner of war camp in Poland. It was one of the first Nazi concentration camps until the year nineteen thirty nine, when it became a prisoner camp for Polish soldiers. Four years later, arians were also being held there. There were over six hundred US troops in prison at Stalig two be and among them was Billy Booth. Before the war, he was a children's entertainer and a puppeteer, and as you can imagine, the camp was a terrible place and he wanted to bring some light and positivity to their horrible situation. He gathered German newspapers and soaked them in potato starch. He would shape that into a head and then gave it color with some paint that was smuggled into the camp and mister Fritz was born, and he made sure that it was a happy doll that it would always be smiling, and for eighteen months, Private Booth and his doll entertained the prisoners. They told jokes and sang songs. They were so good together even the German guards would laugh. On the twenty eighth of January nineteen forty five, the prison camp was liberated and out of the pair, only mister Fritz made it out. You see, two weeks before they were freed, Private Booth and nine other prisoners were taken into a field. They were told to dig a large pit. Guards started yelling at them, telling them that they were not working hard enough. For that reason, the guards shot and killed all ten of the American soldiers. After the camp was freed, a close friend of Booth took mister Fritz from Poland to the United States. He gave the doll to Booth's family so they could see how their son did not break in the prison. He was still as funny, good natured itself, who just wanted to make everyone else happy. Booth family didn't have a doll for very long. They gave it away and after that it was passed from house to house. It just didn't last in any home. It was described as too restless and Yet no one knows how mister Fritz ended up in that antique mald in Myrtle Beach, but we do know that the collector gave it to a colleague for free, another collector named the Michael Diamond. Michael is a different kind of collector here. He doesn't do World War Two items like the doll's last owner. He looks for weird objects, which he displays in his freak room. That's what he calls it. There's all sorts of things in there. Execution swords, axes, shrunken heads, an elephant headed boy, Houdini's handcuffs, and now mister Fritz. Michael Diamond put the doll in a display case in the middle of the freak room, and for some reason he decorated the bottom of the case with Nazi swatzkas. Within days, Michael was finding the door of the glass wide open, just like the previous owner. One morning, he found the whole display case half a foot away from its normal spot. Now this was growing old, but Michael took a different approach. He didn't try taping the case shut. No, he tied chains to mister Fritz to keep him from moving. He knew no one would. Believe him, so he set up his go pro right in front of the case. Now the video is gray and black, timestamped at three twenty nine in the morning on the nineteenth of September twenty nineteen. You can see visible orbs floating across they're right in front of the camera, and one minute later, at minute three thirty, the door to the case flies open, but it stops halfway. The next video is from the following night. It's timestamped at three thirty six in the morning, and like the night before, there's orbs flying through, one after the other, and then within milliseconds the door flies open all the way and it's hard to see, but just before and after the door opens, mister Fritz moves his eyes. Now it's subtle, but you can see them just. Get a little bit bigger. The mouth moves up and down too, never fully closing, and this lasts minute, and then at three point thirty seven the door swings back and forth ever so slightly. And in other similar videos, people claim to hear the words help me, help me. It's a little unnerving to watch, but if you want to, I'll make sure to leave a link for you to see it. It's in the description. The doll remains with Michael Diamond, and you can even go see it if you want. Mister Fritz is pretty eerie to look at, and although his story is pretty bizarre, it's more unsettling. It's what I would call it. But there's this other doll that I want to tell you about, and it's just as dark, if not darker, than mister Fritz. Carrie walked in was back in his hometown for the holidays. Growing up, there was a house everyone said was haunted, and all the kids were telling the same story. The man that lived there murdered his family and then put all of them in the big bag and drag the bag outside. The man with the bag could still be seen walking behind the house at night. Somehow everyone had an older brother or a cousin who had seen the man. We know the typical story, and no one lived in the house back then, and by the looks of it, it was still abandoned. Carrie decided that for some reason, tonight was going to be the night that he was going to conquer his childhood fears, and so he grabbed a flashlight and broke into the house to explore. Now, this wasn't just about being brave, you see, he started a business collecting and selling antiques. Maybe there was something in there that he could sell. He didn't know how old it was, but he knew the house had been there for a very long time, and so he made it in. He looked through it, walking around and not really coming across much, so he went into the cellar. He moved a flashlight around, and he saw what looked like the remains of a child. When he got closer, he realized that it was a doll. He didn't examine the doll at that moment, he just threw it in the bag he had been carrying. Now this had to be worth something, he thought to himself, and then he left the old house, got in the car where his brother was waiting. He threw the bag in the back seat, and they drove away. On the drive back, it started raining and it was getting harder to see. Carry then started hearing quiet thumping sounds and looked behind him. The bag with a doll was moving. He didn't say anything. His brother was nervous enough with all this rain, so he turned back around and decided to ignore everything by turning the radio up. But the thumping started up again, and this time it was louder. He turned around, the bag was moving even more. If he didn't know that there was a doll in there, he would have thought that it was some kind of small animal. So he tried ignoring it again, but then it was too hard to ignore. They both heard. It, let em out, let em out, and the voice of a young child, and they were almost home. Carrie's brother sped up until he parked in front of their house. He grabbed the doll and ran inside. He got a closer look at it now, and it didn't have batteries or a voice box, and it appeared to be very old. Had brown hair that was split in the middle and pulled back in a ponytail. Its eyebrows were black and dark, pointing down, giving it a menacing look. Had huge piercing brown eyes, a big nose, and a big smile with a very pronounced chin. It was wearing a green suit that looked a little too loose and some kind of white shirt underneath. Had long beige socks and brown shoes, and the brown shoes had nails on the bottom. As soon as they stepped inside the house with a doll, the family dogs looked like they wanted to attack it. They were normally very calm, but they did not stop barking or growling at it. And now that they got a good look at it, he wondered if it had really said, let me out in the car. Still, he decided to name it that Letta Me Out. Carrie kept the doll inside the house at first, just sitting in the living room. There were times when he passed by and Letta looked sad instead of wearing the grin that was painted on. One time, he thought he saw an arm move as well. Then the pictures hanging up above Letta started falling, and Carrie would just hang them back up, only for it to happen again. Carrie's wife told him that he needed to get the doll out of the house, but he couldn't. He felt the deep sadness anytime anyone thought about getting rid of it, so instead he put it out in the shed with the rest of his collectible items, and he told his friends and family about the doll everyone who wanted to see it. Somehow, his shed became like a small museum of sorts. People would just. Come to look at Letta, but when they did, some would end up screaming, throwing up, or even fainting. So Carrie decided to look into the history of the doll. He learned that Letta was over two hundred years old and was probably from an Eastern European community. They also determined that the hair on Letta was real, also that underneath the hair there was a human brain. Well not real, but like a replica. The doll was clearly made with a lot of care. Well, this wasn't enough information for him, and he found a medium that would hopefully tell him more about the doll. The medium spent a lot of time with Letta and shared the doll's past. Here's what they ended up with. Letta was made by a man who was used to working with his hands. That man was mourning the death of a young child. The child was most likely a boy who drowned at six years old, Leeda. The doll was made with deep sadness. The medium believed that letter was not evil, just very sad. Another strange fact was that it may had even possessed the soul of the child in sight of it. That's why it made people so uncomfortable when they looked at it. Most people feel a deep sense of dread when they're in the same room. So after learning about this doll, Carrie decided to stop showing letter to the public. He felt like it didn't like being there as a display for the world. He has tried to get rid of Letta over the years. I mean, there's been a lot of interested buyers, and there was one rough year when they needed money and he finally agreed to sell it. He drove to the buyer's house with Letta in the car, but when he got there, he just could not get out of the car and he could not understand why. But after this moment, things took a turn. Carrie started finding expensive items to sell. His business suddenly boomed. He and his wife no longer felt scared of Letta. They even felt affectionate toward the old doll, like one thing they would do would be to buy lottery tickets and only scratching them if Leta was sitting on their laps. They seemed to bring them luck. Even their kids got used to it being inside the home. Letta is still with him to this day. And I don't know when all this changed, but you can still go and take a picture with the doll now even set it on your lap. But just know that wherever Letta is in the shed or inside the house, weird things still continue to happen to this day. Okay, to not leave you hanging about my experience with the doll, I'll tell you a little bit about it, and whether you believe it or not is up to you. But here it is for a podcast we made back in twenty t twenty two. I think we thought it would be fun to buy a haunted doll from eBay. Now, this was for a podcast called Scary Mystery Surprise. For reasons I can't honestly explain, the doll stayed in the box for months, like literally months, and so I finally opened it. It seemed like I opened up something else though right when I did, I wasn't a believer in bad luck, but suddenly things started changing, and I'm saying serious things, health scares, kidnapping, It's tough to talk about, you know. But there were also less intense things like misted flights, lost luggage, and it all happened within a very short span of time, like a couple of weeks. I'll have to revisit the timeline to explain everything, since I try to keep those times behind me. And also I don't want to turn it into, like, you know, a thing for entertainment, because it was very creepy and just odd, you know. Also, this is why I'm very conscious of the stories that we share here on horror Story, because these are real things that happen to people, you know, so we have to think about that. Sometimes the idea of haunted dolls bring interesting stories to us. Though when we're young, they work as tools to our imagination, making them whatever we want them to be, putting all of our energy to them. And part of playing is to believe that what you're imagining is real. Right, What if it isn't all for good fun and play? What if it's. Evil or tragic and it lingers stuck forever? Tell me what you would like me to talk about up next by sending me a message. And you can also find the show on scary Pod, on Instagram and Facebook links to everything, including how you can support our show or in the description of this episode. For example, if you join Scary Plus, you get ad free episodes and you help us at the same time. Five dollars a month might not seem like a lot but when a few of us do it, we can do a lot with it. But anyway, if you liked the episode, make sure you send it to someone. Thank you very much for listening. Keep it scary everyone, See you soon.