A Crate, a Door, and a Doll

Full transcript of the My True Ghost Stories episode “A Crate, a Door, and a Doll.” Listen to this episode.

a door that wouldn't open, and spooky dolls that wouldn't leave me alone. Did one have something to do with the other? Welcome to episode 34 of My True Ghost Stories. There's a song called, I always feel like somebody's watching me by Rockwell. That was popular when I was a teen.

It was a big hit and it was on the radio like every five minutes. There was a spooky music video that went with it, with what mostly seemed like ghosts in this guy's apartment. And it was supposed to, I think, make him look paranoid. But to me, I identified. I had spent my whole life like this, feeling like someone was watching me.

There's a book by Carrie Irwin, the link is in the show notes. The book's called Spirit Rescue and she is a medium who helps trap spirits to cross over. Like I do. And in the introduction, she describes a childhood full of needy spirits hanging around her all the time, following her, trying to get her attention. That was me.

It was so wonderful to read this. Finally, in 2023, and see that I was not the only one. I also always felt like someone was following me. I would thundered down the steps of my house to avoid the ghost with the long arms that I just knew was trying to snatch the back of my shirt. I didn't see it, but I felt it every time I got to the top of my steps.

And I, like this one, says, always felt like somebody was watching me. And not in a protective, loving way that some lucky kids get. Like a protective guardian angel was with them all the time. No, the sense I was getting from this watching presence was that they wanted something for me. And I just wanted to play with blocks and barbies.

When I was a kid, I had no interest in baby dolls, like none whatsoever. Zero. When I was in kindergarten, there was a corner of the room that had all the baby dolls and a little play kitchen. And I kid you not. I never once set foot in that corner.

I remember once playing in the block corner on the opposite side of the room and seeing this girl named Lisette. And she was holding a baby doll, petting its back and chatting enthusiastically with another girl who was setting the play table with plastic dishes. I will never forget the thought I had. I thought, what are they doing? How is that fun?

It could be that I had real babies in my house, my younger siblings, to play with. And I saw no reason to re-enact that as play. I preferred to build a giant tower of blocks that may or may not topple over at any moment. That was fun. But then I met Barbie.

My neighbor gave me a few of her daughters, old Barbies, after her daughter left for college. And I was in love. This glamorous, gorgeous doll with all the outfits. I could play with those dolls for hours. And I did.

My friends started to complain that all I wanted to do was play with Barbie. But I didn't care. I mean, I still wanted to play with blocks, but only to build a big house for Barbie. But despite the distraction of Barbie, the ghosts remained. Barbie was always watching me.

I know now, as a spiritual medium, that this was not my imagination, there were indeed ghosts around me all the time, trying to get my attention. And as open-minded and spiritual as my family was, there was nobody with this particular quality, this being surrounded by spirits. There was nobody there to explain this to me. Or to shoe the ghosts away, like, you know, leave her alone. She's only nine.

She's playing with her Barbies. So here's what happened. I was obsessed with Barbies, and ghosts were watching me. And what happened with this combination, a Barbie obsession, and ghosts all around me, was that I started to believe that my Barbie dolls were alive. It was a way to deal with this feeling of being watched.

It was safer to think that these gorgeous doll ladies were communicating with me, rather than consider that it might be ghosts. I could not go there. At least I knew how to help my Barbies. I would make sure they were in comfortable positions, never upside down for any extended period of time, never in the splits overnight, like weird Barbie in the movie. And I would turn my head while playing with them every so often, so they could breathe.

That is one thing that happened. I, as a child, decided that the presence I was feeling all the time was from my dolls. And in a way, how cool is that? These Barbies are real, and I communicate with them. How fun!

And the other thing, not pink, not fun, that I now know was happening there. With me thinking that my dolls were alive, what was happening was that the spirits, the needy ghosts who were following me were taking up residents in the dolls. The spirits saw that I was engaging and talking to the dolls, so they jumped into them to interact with me. Not very nice. It's tough to be a little kid who was connected to the other side, and nobody can explain it to you or protect you.

Now I know it's normal for kids to love and care about their dolls and stuffed animals, to put them to bed and fuss over them, but even back then, I knew that my relationship with my dolls was different than my friends had with theirs. Even when I was out of the house, away from them, I was aware of my dolls presence, where they were in my room, what position I had left them in, was it comfortable? Should I go back and fix them? As far as I could tell, my friends were not focusing on their dolls like this while we were playing hopscotch. And this was horror movie stuff.

This was like that episode of the Twilight Zone about the Ventriloquist dummy. Although I was not as scared as that poor Ventriloquist, I was fixated on my dolls. My dolls would not leave me alone, because they were haunted. Imagine a scene in a movie where a little girl is playing, but the expressionless face of a doll keeps flashing in, possibly with some scary movie music blasts, while the little girl is trying to focus on her game. This was some scary stuff.

I kept it a secret. I had no idea what was going on, just that I was different. When I began my work as a spiritual medium, that's when my relationship with dolls finally made sense. I finally understood as an adult that they were spirits asking for help. After figuring this out as an adult, I found out some more.

There's this book called Norman by Stephen Lancaster about a haunted doll, Lincoln Show Notes. I personally would never read this book because in a way it's too close to home, although the things that happened with this Norman doll were much worse than what happened with my barbies. But it sounds really scary and I don't enjoy being scared, so I won't read that book. However I did read the introduction to this book, and in the introduction, the author, Stephen Lancaster, explains why dolls can become haunted. He says that one of the reasons spirits can be attracted to dolls and take up residence in them is that they may be attracted by the doll's owner.

And that's what happened with me. The spirits took up residence in my dolls because they were attracted to my ability to help them cross over, even though it would be decades before I knew about this ability. But they knew. So there was this spooky connection between me and Barbie, and also I just loved playing with my dolls, and I played with them for years after my friends did. Like I was still setting up little Barbie tea parties in freshman year of high school, and I don't think my friends were doing that, at least as far as I know, maybe they were playing with them in secret like I was.

And my mother completely supported this extended childhood habit. When she saw two Barbies hidden at the bottom of my suitcase before a trip to visit my grandparents when I was 16, she smiled and winked. So both things were going on. I loved my Barbies, and my Barbies were haunted. What I did eventually move on to other things, dancing, and boys, mostly those two things.

And the dolls wound up all comfortably lying down in a crate, and I eventually put that crate at the end of my bed. I wasn't going to play with them, but I wanted to still say goodnight to them every night. In my house growing up there was a finished attic that became my bedroom. It was a beautiful, sunny, center room, the bedroom, and two unfinished storage rooms on either side of that room. It was a good in-between space for a teenager, about to graduate high school, still in the family home, but not in the middle of everyone.

I had, after moving into the new room, eventually brought my crate of Barbies upstairs to this bedroom, and they were at the end of my bed right in front of the door to the smaller storage room. I still said goodnight to them, but I was not playing with them anymore. And they seemed less haunted. Spooky stuff was still going on all around me. I did not get a break from that, but I was not fixated on my dolls anymore.

So now my dolls were only a little haunted, and I only said goodnight to them. I felt like I had to, but I did not play with them. So, as I said, the dolls were in a crate at the foot of my bed in front of the door to the small storage room. The small storage room had nothing in it. The larger storage room on the other side of the room was where my family stored things.

And something very strange happened after I put my crate of dolls at the end of my bed. That door, the one to the small empty storage room at the end of my bed, became stuck. It would no longer open. Nothing I changed. My crate of dolls was not blocking it.

There was a new paint job. The door knob had not fallen off. It just wouldn't open. And as far as I knew, this had never happened before to this door. Now there was no real reason to go in there, but there was a window out to the street in that small storage room, and it used to be cool to sit in there sometimes and look out the window, which me and my brothers did from time to time.

But now, after I put my dolls near it, it would not open. I tried for a while to open it, but no amount of pulling and wrestling with it would open it, and I eventually gave up. It wasn't that important to get in there. There were other windows to look out of, and as I said, there was nothing stored in that room. And nobody in my family ever needed to go in there.

I neared my high school graduation. My plans for after high school were forming. I had a job lined up at Macy's Harold Square and a scholarship to a dance studio in the theater district. I had big plans as I neared my 18th birthday, and I had completely stopped saying goodnight to my Barbies, who were still in their crate at the end of my bed. And that door stayed stuck.

It hadn't been open for over a year. And one night, just days before my high school graduation, I got up at three o'clock in the morning to go downstairs to use the bathroom. All was quiet. Everyone was asleep. The house was lit only by the street lights outside of the windows.

I finished in the bathroom and tipped toad quietly back through the hallway and up the stairs to my dark, attic room. Also lit only by the street lights outside. As I reached the top of the stairs, I turned the little corner to face my bed, and the room somehow looked different. I walked slowly toward my bed, trying to figure out what had changed, and when I got closer I saw that the door to the storage room, the one at the end of my bed, the one that had been stuck shut for over a year. The door was open, wide open.

There had been no noise, no movement at all. I had left the room and that door was closed, and when I came back it was open. Nobody had been there. It was just open. I stood there and contemplated how terrifying this could be if I decided to think about it.

But I decided not to think about it. I shut the storage room door, turned on my light and looked around my room, all the same here, and I turned the light back off and went back to sleep. And the best way to deal with something is to not deal with it, and that's the choice I made that night. So I think, supernaturally speaking, that the door became stuck after I put the crate of dolls there, because the spirits that inhabited my dolls were trying to somehow get me back to them, to force this connection between us while I slept by sealing off the exits around us, the exits around me and those spirits. And then I think they gave up.

They saw that I was no longer engaging with the dolls, not even to say goodnight. I was moving on. So they left the dolls, unsealed that door and left. Now, this is not to say that spirits gave up on trying to get my attention. That has never stopped.

That continues to this day. Although I have finally learned to set boundaries, spirits who need help are always, I mean, always there waiting for me to notice them. This period of my life, this spooky doll period, began when I was a young child with spirits jumping into my barbies and communicating with me that way. Then when I was a teenager, they sealed up the door near my bed to try to maintain this connection. And then they unsealed that door and left through it when I became an adult.

I guess their plan was to try and get my attention in other ways. And my choice, not to deal with that 3am open door at the end of my bed was a long term one. I really tried not to ever think about it again. But even began to hope that it was just a dream. As I sat down to prepare this story for this episode, I thought about that door knowing in my heart of hearts that it had not been a dream, that it had really happened.

The stuck door had opened in the middle of the night all on its own. And as I sat there coming to the full reality of that open storage room door, my daughter texted me, it was a photo. She was at my mother's house. The house where I grew up and she and my mother, that day, were upstairs in that finished attic room. Which I want to say here is more of a storage room now and guests never go up there.

No one has ever sent a picture to me from that room. But she and my mom were up there that day and my daughter was trying on some old dresses. In the picture she sent me, which literally came in as I was thinking about the door. In the picture, she had her back to where my bed used to be in that room. And there behind her was that storage room door.

And it was open. Okay universe, I got it. It was real. Thank you for sending me that picture of the open storage room door as a sign that the story I'm telling is true. If you have enjoyed this episode of My Djugo Stories, please take a second to subscribe, review and share it with a friend to help the show grow.

And that's all for today. Thank you for listening to today's episode. And if you think your house is haunted, want energy cleared from your space or need a custom spiritual ritual, I'm here to help. Visit jpclearing.com or email me at jpclearing60 at gmail.com. And don't forget to join me here every Tuesday for a new episode. Until next time.