What Fresh Hell is This? Creepy AF Dolls are Washing Up on a Beach and No One Knows Where They Come From
Dolls, as a general rule, are creepy things.
Of course, there are exceptions. I'm sure anyone with a young child who's attached to a baby doll thinks it's adorable, and understandably so. Sheriff Woody is cool. I have no issues with that one who is inexplicably on the Island of Misfit Toys in Rudolph despite having nothing obviously wrong with her. And of course, we've all enjoyed the Pussycat variety at one point or another.
But by and large, dolls are hideous, monstrous things who exist just to maintain a vigil until we fall asleep so they can drag us off to the demon dimension where they will torture us for eternity. I'm talking about Annabelle. Every ventriloquist dummy ever made. Chucky, of course. And Talky Tina, that hell beast who drove a young Telly Savalas into an insanity from which he would never recover:
And now, these wretched little Spawn of Satan are no longer content to haunt us in our homes or through our screens. They are showing up en masse in the one place where we would feel most safe from their insidious threat. The beach.
Source - Researchers regularly survey coasts for creatures like sea turtles, marine mammals and endangered bird species. And while they often come across debris while combing the Texas shoreline, lately, creepy dolls seem to be their most popular find.
Mission-Aransas Reserve researchers say that for years now, they've been mysteriously encountering dolls washing ashore on Texas beaches. … The creepy castaways are usually in horrific condition, covered in barnacles or missing their limbs, hair and eyes.
One of the group's most recently shared dolls, which had barnacles growing out of its eyes, was on Monday. "Oh boy, a creepy doll. I know a bunch of you weirdos out there like this," says Jace Tunnell, director of the Mission-Aransas Reserve at the University of Texas Marine Institute, in a beachcombing video. "This is some stuff that comes up all the time." …
The first doll they found was the head of a sex doll. …
But how did the dolls even get there, one might ask? The UT Marine Science Institute found the Texas Coastal Bend region is a "junk magnet."
Personally, I'm a big beach guy. I love the beach. I've honestly never not been happy spending a day at one. But I would rather swim in shark-infested waters carrying a pot roast than set foot on a place that's a "magnet" for these murderous, haunted toys. Let a kraken drag me under to my doom. Just kill me quickly and easily. Make me part of the great oceanic food chain. But spare me the terror of dolls that swam up from the depths of the abyss just to feed off human fear.
There's actually a scientific concept behind the phenomenon of dolls creeping us out the way they do. It's referred to as "The Uncanny Valley." It's instinctual in humans. And it is very real.
In aesthetics, the uncanny valley is a hypothesized relation between an object's degree of resemblance to a human being and the emotional response to the object. The concept suggests that humanoid objects that imperfectly resemble actual human beings provoke uncanny or strangely familiar feelings of uneasiness and revulsion in observers.
The truly terrifying question is why it's ingrained in our psyches? What caused it? What humanlike threat existed deep in our evolutionary past to create such a thing? We don't know any more than we know for sure why dolls by the dozens are washing up on the shores of Texas. Just that we are hardwired to be afraid of them. And no doubt for very good reason.
But if I have to hazard a guess as to the origin point of the great doll invasion, I'll suggest they look no further than Mexico's Isle de las Munecas. The most haunted and spookiest place on the planet. Warning: Not Safe for Life: