When Ben Hatcher moved into his Peterborough home and discovered a creepy, tattered, old doll in a freezer in his basement, he closed the lid and put the spooky encounter behind him.
He said he didn’t think about the toy again until a year later, when he received another dilapidated doll as a birthday gift from his friend Kathryn Bahun, an elementary school teacher.
“Every year there is a big neighbourhood garage sale and Kathryn was there and there was a booth just selling dolls,” he told CP24.com on Friday.
“It happened be the day of my birthday party. She didn’t want to show up empty handed. There were very few dolls left at this booth so those that were left were the dolls that nobody really wanted in their homes. She thought it would be a really funny gift to get one for me. She picked one up for herself.”
He said the two started to brainstorm ideas for funny things they could do with the creepy dolls, including a creepy doll calendar or a speed dating event.
They picked up more dolls at flea markets and garage sales, he said.
“Over time, we just slowly started to accumulate them and after a while we were like, ‘Ok, if we don’t do anything with this these, we might just be weirdos that have creepy dolls.’”
He said that’s when they decided to create the Creepy Doll Museum. In 2019, they found a theatre is Peterborough to host the event during the Halloween season.
“When we opened that first night, there was a lineup around the block,” Hatcher said. “In Peterborough at least, it has become at least a bit of an annual tradition.”
Creepy Doll Museum comes to Toronto
This year, Bahun and Hatcher decided to take their show on the road to Toronto.
The weekend, the Creepy Doll Museum will come to the Red Sandcastle Theatre on Queen Street East in Leslieville. For two nights only, the pair’s collection of hundreds of creepy dolls will be on display from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. on both Friday and Saturday night.
Each doll on display has a name and biography written by one of a handful of Ontario authors.
“Some of the biographies are pretty creepy. Some of them are strange. Some of them are really funny and cute and sweet. So there is a variety of backstories,” Hatcher said.
If available, the authors will include some of the doll’s real-life history.
Some of the dolls have been found in truly creepy places, including the attic of an abandoned motel in Gananoque, Ont. A couple in the collection were found in the back of a barn in Wellington County where they had been chewed by rats, Hatcher said. The doll found in Hatcher’s freezer, Jasmin, is now the de facto mascot for the museum, he noted.
“She has sunken eyes and a rattle in her head,” Hatcher said.
Despite being a “fan favourite” and being on all the museum’s signs and merchandise, he said attendees who vote for the creepiest doll at each year’s event have never crowned Jasmin the winner.
Dolls donated from people across Canada and overseas
Since launching museum, the curators have continued to add to their collection, mostly through donations.
“It is people who have these dolls in their homes that might have been their grandmother’s or their great aunt or uncle’s doll from their childhood,” Hatcher said.
“They don’t necessarily want them in their home because they look extremely creepy but there is a guilt factor in just like donating it to the Salvation Army or throwing them out.”
He said people are happy to learn that there is loving home for their wayward dolls.
But the curators won’t take just any doll that is donated to them.
“Generally speaking, they are all old. So they are from an era when these dolls weren’t considered creepy,” he said.
“We don’t really accept dolls that are purposefully creepy. So like a doll that is meant to resemble Chucky or a horror franchise, that’s not really for us. These are meant to be dolls that at one time were a loved plaything and over time, they have just turned into these creepy monstrosities.”
He said as a rule, they don’t alter the doll in any way.
“The way that they come to us is the way they are displayed. We don’t like cut off digits or give them weird haircuts or change their clothing,” Hatcher said.
“So if they come to us naked, we’ll display them naked. If they come to us in ripped clothes, they will be displayed in ripped clothing.”
Curator keeps dolls on display at her home in Peterborough
When Halloween is over and they go back to their normal lives, Hatcher, who works for the provincial government, said the dolls are on display in Bahun’s home in Peterborough.
“There is a lot of them on display in her living room, kitchen… Apparently she keeps about 100 of them underneath her bed,” he said. “Her children seem to be surprisingly OK with it.”
He added that not everyone who sees the dolls in his friend’s home are so calm about it, including a local appliance repairman.
“He walked in and saw all the dolls staring at him and said he had to go get some tools from his truck. He hopped in his truck and just peeled away,” Hatcher recalled.
“My nephew… he hates them. He refuses to sleep over if there is a doll in the house.”
When asked about the level of fear guests experience during the event, Hatcher said it is more “fun and spooky” than scary.
“We haven’t have anyone scream in terror and run out the emergency exit yet,” he said with a laugh.
“There is a surprising number of people who come out on first dates, which is just amazing. We haven’t had a proposal yet in the museum but our fingers are crossed that some day that will happen.”
He said the curators would love to take the dolls on the road to other cities, but conceded that the logistics could be challenging.
“I think it would be tricky to cross the border with two or three hundred creepy dolls,” Hatcher said.
“As far as we can tell, we are the only creepy doll museum in the world.”
