Mandy: Canada’s Most Mischievous Haunted Doll
If Annabelle and Chucky have taught us anything, it’s that horror fans love a creepy doll story. While anyone with pediophobia (the fear of dolls) might shield themselves from unnecessary exposure, countless others will go to great lengths to visit their favourite haunted doll in person. And many of these haunted dolls, like Robert in Key West, have become centerpieces of their respective museums. My previous article on Okiku, the haunted Japanese doll said to grow real human hair, has received a large amount of views and shares across the internet. In response to this, I’ve done some more digging to find another popular but lesser known haunted doll for us to talk about. So without further ado, (as today is Canada Day!) let’s travel to Quesnel Museum in British Columbia, Canada to meet our new favourite haunted doll – Mandy.
A Terrified Donor
Quesnel Museum opened in 1963 and among it’s collection of local history is the star of our show, a rather unsettling doll named Mandy. Like Annabelle, Mandy has a permanent space within a locked cabinet with a sign asking visitors not to use flash photography for the sake of Mandy’s preservation. Mandy arrived at Quesnel Museum in 1991 when her previous owner found the doll among her grandmother’s belongings. The grandmother gifted the woman Mandy so that she could give it to her newborn daughter. The doll had been locked inside of a chest for an unknown amount of years, and after accepting the gift she decided it was too creepy and she didn’t want it around her child. Local legend also claims the woman could hear the doll crying in the attic before deciding to give it away. And since she’s arrived at Quesnel Museum, Mandy’s activity has ramped up exponentially, garnering a flock of visitors every year in the hopes of catching the mischievous doll in action.
A Troublesome Doll
According to Quesnel Museum’s website, there have been numerous incidents with Mandy since she arrived at the museum. When she was first acquired in 1991, a member of staff took her into the museum’s lab to be photographed. After Mandy was left alone in the room overnight, staff arrived the next morning to find the lab “in disarray as though a small child had had a temper tantrum”. Another incident involved a local reporter who was alone in the museum one night while developing photographs of Mandy in the basement. After he heard strange footsteps on the floor above him, his equipment malfunctioned, which he claimed had never happened before. There are other incidents where Mandy has somehow disarmed recording equipment when visitors have tried filming her or taking her photo. One such visitor from Calgary reported issues recording Mandy with the same equipment that worked fine in the rest of the museum.
Mandy has been blamed for a couple pretty serious incidents. A woman from Surrey claimed her home had been broken into after she returned from seeing Mandy at the museum. According to the visitor, the only thing stolen from her home was a porcelain doll. I guess Mandy is trying to form her own haunted doll army. Another incident occured when a family came into the museum very excited to see Mandy. When they stood in front of her case, the family’s young daughter passed out. Her blood pressure was so low she had to be taken to the hospital for overnight observations. In an interview with the current Museum and Heritage manager, Elizbeth Hunter says this likely happened due to the little girl being so excited that she ended up scaring herself into passing out. But it’s still certainly creepy to have a medical incident occur directly in front of the allegedly haunted doll.
A third more serious incident involved three siblings who visited Mandy while they were children. Two of the three were thrilled to see Mandy in person, while the third sibling was terrified. Many years later, the two siblings visited the museum and bought a magnet of Mandy for the third sibling as a joke. The third sibling threw the magnet into her junk drawer instead of on her fridge, refusing to have the haunted doll that scared her as a child displayed front and center in her kitchen. Allegedly the third sibling’s house burnt to the ground that night, which she feared was the result of disrespecting Mandy. In reality, the fire occurred because the apartment above hers neglected to clean lint out of their dryer.
A more light hearted incident occurred when Mandy was given a stuffed lamb to keep her company in her locked case. The next morning the lamb had somehow made its way out of the locked cabinet and onto the floor. The photo at the top of this article shows the lamb once it had been placed back in the cabinet. And while some guests have issues with electronics around Mandy, many visitors simply report that the her eye’s follow them as they walk around her room.
An Uncertain Explanation
During the reign of TV host Montel Williams, Mandy was flown to New York City to be featured on his show with regular guest psychic Sylvia Brown in the hopes of giving her both exposure and perhaps more backstory to her spotty history. Mandy providence is unknown, but she is believed to have originated from either England or Germany sometime in the late 1920s or early 1930s. It is likely that the grandmother had received the doll secondhand as a child, so any information about her first owners remains a mystery. However, according to Brown the doll was possessed by a mother who had lost her twins to polio. The doll, which had belonged to her babies, absorbed the mother’s grief and manifested it through a disturbed and restless haunted object. Sylvia Brown, who passed away in 2013, was a known fraud, so I would take any historical information she claims to have about the doll with a massive grain of salt. But Mandy’s appearance on The Montel Williams Show shows just how popular this little doll from a small town museum in British Columbia, Canada has become over the years.
Sources and Additional Reading
Quesnel Cariboo Observer – Quesnel’s most popular haunted doll (2024)
Quesnel Museum & Archives – Mandy
