Nathan Radke

But it was big news for people in the haunted doll community, which, as we'll see, is a thing.

And the reason is when Rivera died, he was on tour with the original Annabelle doll.

And if that name sounds familiar, it's because that doll is the inspiration for a character in the Conjuring horror movie franchise, which I think is one of the biggest horror movie franchises ever.

Well, I mean, dolls are kind of perfect for this kind of thing because you and I have talked about the Uncanny Valley before.

And dolls are right in the center of the Uncanny Valley.

They're almost human looking, but not quite human looking.

And as far as like haunted objects go, you could not do better than a doll.

Because a lot of them are old and weird, and old and weird equals haunted.

A lot of them have sort of loose joints in their arms and their necks, which means if you jostle them a little bit or if you're carrying them funny, it almost looks like they move on their own.

Do you remember those dolls that when you sat them up, their eyeballs would open?

Yeah, I mean, it was terrifying.

And, of course, most frightening of all was Betsy Wetsy.

Oh, I don't know of Betsy Wetsy.

Betsy Wetsy was a 1950s doll that you could feed liquid to, and then she would urinate.

That is haunting.

No, absolutely, which is why in pop culture, there's a long history of using dolls in this way.

There was a Twilight Zone episode in the 60s.

There was obviously the Chucky series.

Poltergeist had some haunted dolls.

And in the Conjuring movie franchise, we have this character that's this terrifying sort of ceramic-faced Victorian doll named Annabelle.