Well, my friends, it’s October, and you know what that means over here on the Bar Chaplain blog: I’m bringing back “What Makes It Scary?” for another round. Last year, we looked at ghosts, mummies, clowns, vampires, zombies, witches, and the Frankenstein monster to address what makes them scary. While we won’t have as many posts this year (because residency), I still wanted to snag a few traditional movie monsters and talk about the psychology and spirituality behind the terror. So let’s kick things off with…

Why Are Haunted Dolls Creepy?

Chucky, Annabelle, Slappy the Living Dummy— they look almost human, but they’re not quite. Their unmoving faces watch us as we go about our daily business, but what’s really going on behind those vacant eyes? Like clowns, creepy dolls play on our fears by corrupting something innocent from childhood, but in so doing, they also touch on an important psychological concept: the uncanny valley.

The uncanny valley is the science of creepy.
Something is “uncanny” when it closely resembles something familiar, but there’s also something a little bit off about it. When we detect this “off-ness,” our brains send us a little shudder and put us on edge, readying us to fight or fly or freeze. The uncanny valley is why, in spite of incredible leaps forward in technology, we can still distinguish between a human actor and a computer generated image: there’s just something not quite right with what we’re seeing. Maybe it’s the eyes, maybe it’s the corners of the mouth, maybe it’s the ever-so-slightly-unnatural way light and shadow hit the skin— our brains can tell we’re looking at something which is supposed to be human, but our brains also tell us something isn’t quite right. It’s not clear why we developed this tendency to discern the uncanny, but it’s likely an ancient defense mechanism.

So what does this have to do with dolls (be they haunted or creepy or whatever)?

Well, a doll is always an approximation. It’s proportions and expressions may resemble ours, but our brains still register their not-quite-right-ness as a threat. For that reason, many of the haunted dolls in horror movies are at their creepiest when they’re not moving,
when they’re occupying that space on the periphery of our thoughts,
when they’re making our alert minds ask the question:
“I know it’s not human, but it’s not acting like a doll either, so what is it?”
A good haunted doll story plays on this unconscious response to the uncanny.

And that’s why dolls are scary.