The Clown Doll: An Urban Legend

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The Clown Doll: An Urban Legend

When my friends and I were younger, we loved to tell each other scary stories late at night at sleepovers. This memory resurfaced this past February as three friends and I exchanged tales late one night while on a trip in New Jersey. All of the stories were entertaining, but this purportedly “true” urban legend remained in my mind long after the other accounts. “The Clown Doll” was told by a twenty-year old, Christian female University biology major. She was born and raised in Pittsburg, PA, which is where she heard the story and where the story itself is set. As soon as she had all of our complete attention, she began the legend as follows:

Well, back in high school, one of my best friends told me this story. It’s true because it happened to one of her close friends that went to a different high school in my hometown. This actually happened. This girl always babysat for this certain family in a nice, medium sized suburban neighborhood. The family had two kids; the little girl was six and the boy was eight. They lived in a nice, two story house. But there was something weird about the family. They loved dolls. They had a huge collection of dolls. Kind of weird, but you know. And so they had dolls displayed in cases and dolls sitting out.

One night, the parents go out to a dinner party, and this girl comes to baby-sit the children. She takes care of the kids, feeds them dinner, plays with them, and then puts them to bed upstairs. After that, she comes back downstairs and sits on the couch in the living room to start watching TV. But the whole doll thing is really creeping her out. She just doesn’t like the way they are sitting there and seem to be looking at her. But th...

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...y proposition. People want to be able to feel safe in the comfort of their own homes, and be able to protect their own families. Tellers of the Clown Doll tale seeks to instill chills in their audiences by interrupting this idealized vision of security. Another fear that is made evident in this story is the apprehension and dread that accompanies thoughts of the taboo. The Clown Doll manifests our society’s fear of things or people that are different, such as little people or the mentally or physically handicapped. Those with mental illness are unknown, taboo, and frightening to our society. There are many examples of mentally ill people being the center of movies about serial killers or stories in which we “normal” people cannot control the actions of those with mental illnesses. People afflicted with these diseases are normally kept away from everyday society

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