Date Collected
Fall 11-30-2018
Place item was collected
Logan, Utah
Informant
Ari Romo
Point of Discovery/Informant Bio
Ari is a 23 year old Latina woman going to school in Cache Valley at Utah State University. She is a Psychology major, and hopes to one day produce music. She enjoys working at Aggie Radio, where she runs her own show and helps out setting up the various music events that are featured throughout the year. She is very ambitious, and always tries her hardest to get the things she is passionate about done. She is the youngest of 5 children, and aunt to many nieces and nephews.
Context
Ari grew up in Arizona, and the event that is described took place in Taylor’s Ville Utah. I have known Ari for a little over a year. We were roommates in 2017, and have stayed close friends since then. On the night of the interview, we had just gotten done eating pizza and wings and watching movie when we started doing homework. I needed one last interview for my Folklore collections project and asked her on the spot if she had anything supernatural she could share with me. She agreed and I promptly started recording.
Text
: Me: “ok…so…I need context tell me a little bit about youself..where you grew up….ummm…where you were living at this time..”
Ari: “OK so my name is Ari Romo I grew up in Arizona but for a split second I was in Salt Lake City Utah the event at which this occurred was in Taylor’s Ville Utah…in one of the homes we were renting out umm….?”
Me: “So…yeah just tell me…tell me what happened…tell me a little about the doll though too.”
Ari: “Ok, so the main the subject in this story is a doll, a buddy doll is the name of the brand ummm my mom used to be a head start teacher aaaand because of that she had this… not quite life sized doll but it probably about the size of like a threeeeeee year old, a three year old and he had like a little cap he had like blue eyes dirty blonde hair striped shirt…I remember..”
Me: “Was he like plastic? Or was he like..”
Ari: “He was like plastic but he had fabric clothes….so anyways one day I was upstairs so we had a downstairs apartment that we rent out umm but we share a laundry room with them and like this hallway that just this has a ton of cabinets downstairs and it’s just like a really steep steps and it gets like dark when you go downstairs unless you turn the light on but it’s like dark for a little but so I was watching TV and then I heard this like noise like a cabinet closing and so I like looked up and my cousin and my brother and my other cousin and my other brother were there and their like ‘Ari-yvette,’ that’s what they call me, they’re like ‘Ari-yvette did you hear that?’ And I’m like ‘What was it’ he’s like I don’t know I like hear, I hear something and then we like hear the sound again and so we got up from the TV left the room went through the living room went towards the kitchen where the stairs were that go downstairs to the laundry room and the noise was coming from the laundry room, so we walk downstairs into the laundry room and the lights are like dim because it’s like a crappy light so it looks sketch and all the sudden there was a cabinet that was slightly a jar and so they made me open it, so I didn’t’;t know- [starts to laugh] I was just like these kids are probably like- I don’t know what was really happening at the time I’m just ‘a kid- so I open it and this doll falls out but it’s like a bigger doll and I was younger at the time, I think was six..
Me: “So you didn’t there was a doll in your house at this point in time, like that your mom had it at all?”
Ar: “No I didn’t know that there was a doll there,…and so the doll falls out and it kind of like goes on me and I start freaking out because here like- here’s a little back ground from me is that dolls just scare me like in general like cabbage patch kids, my grandma collects doll and she has like a room and this is what sparked the scariness, my grandma has a room that has like dolls all over but the thing is, they’re hung up with like nails,..”
Me: “Ewwwww…!”
Ari: “so like their back is like nailed to the wall and it’s like all around and and it’s her doll room
Me:”EW!!!!”
Ari: ”Ok so it freaked me out from the beginning so the doll comes on to me I start screaming I’m running around it’s still on me while I’m running around so now as I look back I don’t even know how it stayed on me because I was running and screaming and crying and so my sister comes down yells at everyone for being mean to me grabs the doll and throw it outside so we run outside to the window where my sister throws it, and she throws it to my dog clue, my dog is a very aggressive dog, so he started ripping up the doll instantly but I just remember looking at the doll and because it was plastic it was like destroying everything but it hadn’t quite hit the head yet, so the head was just like STARRING AT ME while the rest f it’s body was being like mutilated by the dog’s-by the dog’s like… teeth, it was THE CREEPIEST THING in the world, and so were like ok now the dolls gone don’t worry about it anymore……k someone grabs the doll throws it in the dumpster…. Ok…. I thought that was the end of the story… it was thrown in the dumpster gone forever.. a week later, THE DOLL IS BACK IN THE HOUSE!!!
Me: “No!”
ArI: “HOW IS IT BACK IN THE HOUSE!? IT WAS SUPPOSE TO BE THROWN INTO THE DUMPSTER! THE TRASH WAS TAKEN OUT BY THE DRIVERS! THE DOLL WAS BACK IN THE HOUSE AND KNOW ONE REMEMBERS PUTTING IT BACK! SO THEY’RE LIARS OR THE DOLL IS CREEPY VOODOO!!!” [Said while grinning and laughing.]
Me: “[laughing] So wait ok this doll was your moms doll and she used it for school???”
Ari: “Well she used it for school but like she hadn’t used it in like a long time so like originally she had like gotten it from her school.”
Me: “oh ok so like they gave it to her for like….?”
Ari: “I think it was just like a classroom equipment she just like never brought back.”
Me: “Oh ok…alright weird… what was it used for? Just like a play thing? Or was it used for like ‘where did the bad man touch you?’ or like?”
Ari: “[laugh screaming] no I think it was probably like a play thing!”
Me: “Ok laright..”
ArI: “So yeah that’s the creepy story..”
Me: “Where did it show up in the house?”
Ari: “Ummm I don’t remember I want to say it was that I was just like upstairs just like hanging out but the thing was that in that point in time it was really freaky because the doll was like… not only back in the house but it was already chewed up by the dog so it had like this eerie vibe to it and no one like said- liken o one everyone sad the didn’t bring the doll in the house so they were wondering why it was in there….I don’t trust dolls to this day I still don’t American girl dolls any like glassy like thing…no thank you…”
Me: “Well I’m sorry that happened to you..”
Ari: “It’s ok.”
Me: “How many people are in your family?”
Ari: “Well at the event or just in generally?”
Me: “Just like at this time- in this point in time how many people were in the house and like living with you and where were you in that age range..?”
Ar: “I was the youngest…yeah…I was the youngest at the time it was with my two cousins, one cousin was like a year older than me the other cousin was like three or four years older, and then I had two older brothers on with a four age gap one with a six age gap, and my sister wasn’t a part of it but she heard me screaming so she came down and yelled at everyone like a big sister would.”
Me: “Awww wel I;m sorry that happened to you..”
Ari: “[pretending to cry] It’s ok!”
Me: “Thank you for sharing your story with me.”
Ari: “You’re Welcome! [still pretending to be waayyy more traumatized for retelling the story than she was.]”
Me: “[laughing] Awww poor Ari!”
Ari: “I know!”
Me: [continues laughing]
Texture
It was late when Ari told me this story and we were both exhausted from eating a bunch of pizza and doing homework all night. She seemed a little reluctant at first to tell me the story, but quickly warmed up after answering some of my questions and getting more into the dramatization of it all. When Ari talks about her family she always talks about how much they would tease each other or pull pranks on each other. She often is smiling and laughing about how ‘mean’ they were to one another. Ari is a very family oriented person and it makes sense to me that even this prank, if it was one, was really mean, is now thought about with scolding fondness.
Course
ENGL/HIST/ANTHRO 2210
Instructor
Lynne S. McNeill
Semester and year
Fall 2018
Theme
G7: Marriage and Family
EAD Number
3.10.2.232
Recommended Citation
Mackelprang, Sierra, "The Doll`" (2018). USU Student Folklore Fieldwork. Paper 490.
https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/student_folklore_all/490