On Christmas in 2013, a family expected to enjoy their typical holiday traditions of unwrapping gifts and sharing the joy of the season with each other. Little did they know that a nightmarish doll infiltrated their home and would haunt them for years to come. At the end of this episode prepare for an update from the family.
Happy Holidays
It was Christmas in Houston, Texas. The sky was blue with a few clouds and the high was 55 degrees Fahrenheit. As an average family sat around the Christmas tree in their home, they were overcome with joy as they unwrapped presents and were caught up in the enchantment of the holiday season. All seemed ordinary as a little girl opened a sweet doll. While this doll, was a seemingly innocent toy, purchased from the store, the events that followed made this toy a gift they’d never forget giving.
As the little girl held the doll in her hands she took in the doll’s big blue eyes, and blonde hair that was long and perfect for brushing. The doll wore a beautiful blue dress and had a necklace with a button that made the doll sing and speak predetermined sayings. It was wonderful!
The little girl was so excited to have Elsa, the ice princess from Disney’s newest animated movie that had released one month before Christmas. But this doll was unlike the thousands of other Elsa dolls that children opened that holiday because this doll intended on staying by the girl’s side forever.
For two years, this doll had been a mere plastic toy that was a joy to play with. Over and over again her necklace was pressed and she would sing the iconic tune “Let It Go”.
THE DOLL LEARNS SPANISH
But in 2015 Elsa ceased to be a sweet doll that was just a child’s toy. Spookily, she began alternating between speaking English and Spanish, which the doll had never done before. This cast an eerie feeling over the home as the family was terrified of the dolls new voice.
The owner of the doll stated that:
“There wasn’t a button that changed these, it was random.”
This eerie occurrence brought to mind memories of the Tickle Me Elmo’s that struck fear into the hearts of parents during my own childhood, as they unexpectedly spouted lewd sayings. However, I decided to deep dive and research this doll to uncover an explanation of why this doll had suddenly begun to speak Spanish.
After a couple of laborious minutes spent typing a few keywords into Google, I found a listing for the doll. In fact, I found several from Amazon, to eBay, to Etsy. Each of these Elsa’s did indeed possess a switch discreetly located on the back of her neck that allowed for a switch between English and Spanish, providing a simple explanation for the doll’s unsettling language change.
However, I was still confused on how the parents didn’t notice this after years with the doll. Was the switch never triggered? Was the function initially broken? Or was this doll missing a switch altogether?
I continued researching, diving deep into old parenting forums who swore with the unconventional method of yeeting the doll against the wall with just the right force, Elsa would, in fact, switch languages. So, I considered the possibility that the little girl decided Elsa was needed to be punished and was thrown into the unknown and the experience left the doll with a new functionality. But does this rule out the fact this could be paranormal? Not quite . . . There were a handful of parents who vehemently insisted that the doll did not have a switch and she only came with the ability to speak English.
This was a shocking revelation that was quite exciting to find and deepened this mystery. There were, hypothetically, at least two versions of this Elsa doll. One with the switch, and one without and since the parents were unyielding in saying there was no way to switch the dolls language, and even professing this online and to the news were skeptics could easily debunk this, I have to believe the parents that there doll did not have this switch or button.
Yet, there is still a possibility that this Elsa was installed with a chip designed for the dual language capabilities and perhaps this was solely an accident by the manufacturer. Regardless of if this doll did or did not have a switch, I am sure it would be very jarring for a doll to start speaking another language after two years of use without that functionality.
Just when I thought I had resolved the paranormal reports of the doll and I nearly ended my research into this case, I saw another report from the family that haunted me as this was only the tip of the increasingly bizarre experiences with Elsa.
Investigation Into the Electronics
For the sake of this family and the now deleted Facebook posts this story is based off of, I am going to keep the names of this family anonymous, as it is in my opinion that if they wanted their names attached to this story still, their posts would remain in the public domain. So, I am going to respect their privacy.
The mother of this family reported that the doll would being speaking and singing at random, constantly switching between English and Spanish, as if at the dolls will.
My own experiences growing up had taught me that toys, particularly those with limited or no electromagnetic interference or EMI suppression, could be triggered by the electromagnetic energy of thunderstorms as toys like these can be highly sensitive to electromagnetic fields.
As my investigation continued, I uncovered a plausible explanation from researchers – low batteries can trigger toys to act on their own accord. In the case of Elsa, the family reported that they had never replaced her batteries in the years they owned her, raising the possibility that this could have caused the randomly triggered speaking.
However, if you are a firm paranormal believer, perhaps you could assume that a spirit was the thing causing the strange EMF fields around the doll that triggered the doll to speak.
Yet, an unsettling question lingered: the doll had been reported to speak even when switched off. There is no explanation for the toy speaking when the doll was switched off, unless the switch had gone bad or the wires inside of the toy were touching in a way that would render the switch ineffective. However, this could not be confirmed and the strange and unsettling occurrences did not stop here…
Honey, I'm Home!
In December of 2019, the creepiness and discomfort Elsa caused came to a tipping point and the family decided that it was time to rid themselves of the doll once and for all. Haunted or not, she was without a doubt unsettling. The father of the family took matters into his own hands, and without hesitation, he threw away the doll.
Weeks had passed where life had returned to normal for the family. There was no more Elsa. No more Spanish singing, no more creepy chatting. All of the strangeness had finally ended . . . or so they thought. A spine-chilling revelation unfolded as the family opened up a wooden storage bench inside of their living room. To their terror Elsa sat happily inside of the bench, as if she had never left. Elsa refused to let them go and had defied logic by somehow moving from the trash to inside the house once again
The mother took to Facebook and posted:
“The kids insisted they didn’t put it there, and I believed them because they wouldn’t have dug through the garbage outside.”
I agree that there was no reason for the children to lie and go digging through the trashcan. It is hard enough as an average sized adult to reach the bottom of a large can, nonetheless for a child. It left me wondering if the mother or father were playing some sort of joke on each other, but I couldn’t imagine why either would bother doing this, especially since the posts are now deleted, and both were obviously disturbed by the activity.
But I dove deeper and wanted to know exactly who these people were and with another five seconds of research, I found them!
Who Are You?
I stumbled upon the family’s current social media feeds. There, they shared their professions as musicians, aspiring actors, writers, and directors. This initially might have raised a red flag, upon closer examination of their accounts and scrolling through hundreds of posts I uncovered intriguing details that swayed me away from considering this haunting a publicity stunt.
Despite the global attention the Elsa doll caused their online presence remained modest, with fewer than 300 followers. It was apparent that they did not exploit any of the eerie occurrences on their platforms, and stuck to strictly their profession. After digging through several hours of video footage, there was nothing mentioned besides in one video from a few years ago with less than 70 views.
In this video the couple shares a cover of the highly requested Let It Go hit single and the mother briefly mentions their “incident” with an exhausted sigh with a bit of trepidation with a nervous smile. Her husband looks over his shoulder, and then she too, checks behind her back, as if looking to make sure a child isn’t eavesdropping on them bringing up the forsaken doll.
Had this been a stunt for fame or infamy, I would think that they would be openly attempting to cash in on the coverage yet not a single article mentioned their personal work and many neglected sharing their name or full names at all.
And this is to not say that the couple isn’t successful, they very much are accomplished in music and have quite a bit of a resume behind them performing with some of the biggest names in music.
This left me with believing this was truly an experience they believed to be true with no attempt at any nefarious intentions as they could have easily twisted, name dropped or somehow turned this into something about them, but yet the story wasn’t really about them at all, every article was focused on this doll.
And their story grew even more wild . . .
The Return of Elsa
When they uncovered Elsa hidden in a wooden bench in their living room, they found that Elsa now refused to speak English and only spoke in Spanish.
The tension in the house was high as they were more determined than ever before to rid their lives of Elsa. The father took action and decided to send the creepy doll into the unknown. He rifled through the drawers of their kitchen, pulled out a few trash bags and got to work. He placed Elsa in a bag, tying it tight, ensuring there was no escape as he again placed her in the bottom of another bag and filled it was trash, burying her beneath muck and garbage. Once this was done, the bag was tightly tied and placed into the trashcan once more, but this time he ensured she was on the bottom and piled several other bags on top of her. There was no way she could escape and the father had finally won the battle as trash day came and the garbage people hauled her away.
Elsa was gone.
Shortly after she was hauled away, the family went out of town for the day and had a brief sense of normalcy. It was as if all their troubles were gone and the creepy saga had finally ended. It was almost as if they could laugh about how silly it was, but that was until the family arrived home. The family entered the house to find it just as they had left it. Yet the mother’s hair stood on end as she heard her daughter say: Mom, I saw the Elsa doll again in the backyard.
To their horror, Elsa was indeed propped up against the fence on the inside of the backyard, meaning she had not only escaped the double bags, and the garbage truck, but had also made her way over their locked back yard fence and into the corner with one arm raised in the air as if she was giving the family a friendly wave.
The mother rushed to Facebook to ask for help, yet again. She was begging for anyone to help her get rid of the doll. And for those of you who think this is a different doll, think again, because the family determined that it was indeed the same doll because she had a few distinct markings from their daughter coloring on the doll, and every time she returned, she had those same exact markings.
Who Stole the Cookie From the Cookie Jar?
Now, I can’t speak for their garbage truck people, but I’ve previously thrown away a family photo album only to come home it find it on my porch. Thanks to security cameras, I saw that when the trash went into the truck, the bag burst open and the man who seen this, saw the album opened it, flipped through a few pages, took a photo, then returned the album to my porch.
While, I was a little distributed to find he had taken a family photo, I realized he had only taken one of me with the Jonas Brothers and figured he wanted it because of them, not me. Perhaps something similar happened. Perhaps the bags tore open and the person saw the doll, hopped the fence and placed her back with the family or perhaps Elsa clawed her way out of two bags and was inspired by Toy Story and made her way out of the truck and back home to her family.
For those of you thinking this is still and elaborate hoax, along with a large portion of the internet listen to what the mother had to say about the naysayers:
“Sadly, no. Either the doll is haunted or some crazy psychopath has dug the doll out of the garbage (that was already taken away) and [has] broken into my house/property multiple times. I am going to go with the haunted thing.”
Into the Unknown
But luckily, for the family, help came quickly as a family friend offered to take Elsa. He lived across the United States in Minnesota and the family quickly took the doll and placed her in a box. As they placed Elsa into the box, she began to laugh for thirty seconds straight. The doll never laughed before in this way. She did giggle after a few of the preprogramed statements, but never just a giggle and never for that long. Wrapping the box tightly with tape and ensuring she would never return they mailed the toy without a return address, preventing her from tracing her way back.
Now in a beautiful icy home, Elsa was in the care of an adult man who was not going to let her get away with any funny business. He took drastic measures and duct taped the doll to the front of his jeep’s brush guard and made a chilling promise to the family: if anything, unexplained were to happen with the doll, he would weld Elsa to a steel pipe and sink her deep into a remote, desolate lake within the heart of the woods.
And the mother told the news that if the doll did make her way back to Texas, she would have to consider help for supernatural problems. She told news outlets she didn’t burn the doll because she heard if there was a demon inside the fire would release it and she didn’t want to risk anything that could potentially cause harm.
And this is a belief within the occult space, that if an entity is bound to a vessel, burning the body would act as a way to release the spirit inside back into the world acting as a type of unbinding ritual.
However, after the family sent the doll away self-proclaimed paranormal experts that we will leave unnamed decided to weigh in with their thoughts.
Paranormal Experts Weigh In
KII EMF, Pendulum & Dowsing Rods
They claimed that the doll has a severe negative attachment and the family should have determined if the doll was haunted by using a K-II EMF meter, a pendulum or dowsing rods.
In this case, an EMF meter would have absolutely shown spikes, because Elsa herself is an electronic. These meters detect electromagnetic frequencies, and those frequencies are everywhere. They are emitted by your cell phones, power lines, phone and radio towers and even by your cortical tissue and even your heart.
The use of EMF detectors in the paranormal field should be used in an area without electricity and lots of testing to get a baseline reading of the place or object should be done throughout the day over the course of a few days to determine any legitimate fluctuations or abnormalities otherwise, it can’t be taken as significant evidence of something out of the ordinary.
And while a pendulum and dowsing rods are great divination tools, they aren’t tried and true spirit detectors. These forms of divination rely on micromovements in your hands to cause change, even if you swear you are holding completely still, there is a slight movement in our limbs. These tools are best used when tapping into your own inner knowing to answer questions your subconscious may know, but you may not. Or these tools can be used if you are attempting to answer questions you may not know by connecting to your own psychic ability, however they cannot give concrete answers to determine if something is indeed haunted.
Considering the family suspected something paranormal could be at play, it is likely these ideomotor functions would indicate their fears of it being haunted if they took to these tools.
Psychic Mediums, Priests, and Sage
This claimed paranormal expert continued to criticize the family for shipping the doll to a friend, claiming that they should have contacted a psychic medium, or a local paranormal society, or a priest to could have helped the spirit cross over, and at the least they needed to sage their house.
However, it is only a savior complex that leads us to believe that spirits, if they are present, need our help. Quite often spirits do not want to leave and do not need help being yeeted over to the proverbial otherside. What is the otherside even? And does it even exist? And why would we assume that the otherside is better for a spirit than being on this side?
As a psychic medium, I think ridding the doll from their lives, haunted or not, was an excellent decision as they don’t owe the doll any favors, even if it was a spirit inside of the doll or manipulating the doll, we are the ones currently living and they have to prioritize themselves over the doll. Having grown up with a Barbie doll that had poltergeist activity associated with it, I too gave my doll away, and was much happier then. So, I do agree that ridding themselves of the doll was the right choice.
Intervention from the paranormal field is not required if dealing with potential paranormal activity, and religious intervention is only needed if the people being affected are religious (or if the spirits are believed to be religious) and want intervention just like how sageing a place won’t work for someone who doesn’t believe in smoke cleansing. These methods are intention plus belief which gives power to the magic.
Plus, white sage isn’t always the best option as it is a part of a cultural practice that has led to widespread use by people outside of specific indigenous communities which has led to overharvesting. If you are dead set on using sage, grow it, or support a local grower or/and indigenous communities by purchasing from them or consider other species of sage that aren’t under environmental threat. There are many alternatives to sage, and they likely can be found in your spice rack.
R-E-S-P-E-C-T
The final warning from this paranormal expert states that Elsa is being disrespected by being tied on the front of the jeep, claiming that no one deserves their spirit to be trapped and be subject to that fate. But how do they know that there is a spirit inside? Or that they are trapped?
I now wonder if every toy tied and taped to a large vehicle originated as a haunted object, or perhaps they are merely decorations and Elsa is happy building snowmen as she rides through the wintery wilds of Minnesota because after all, the cold never bothered her anyway.
The Final Update
But lastly, the gave a final update in late 2020 where the mother stated:
“No, she hasn’t come back. We have had our fair share of weird things happening around the house though. Like doors opening and closing by themselves and lights/tv turning on and strange stuff like that. So it’s been interesting. But not the doll at least.”
It seems that this home may be the center of some anomalous activity and I hope it remains happy. As an investigator, my first thought wouldn’t be that the doll is haunted, but perhaps if we lean into the idea that a spirit is around that it merely was trying to keep the doll around for the girl and to be kind. Perhaps the strange electrical activity is connected to this doll with there being EMF fluctuations in the home, however doors opening and closing by themselves is another story . . .
It is important that we never paint a narrative when dealing with activity and take it for what it is. I ask you, with the facts presented what do you think was going on with Elsa? Was it just a strange coincidence or was it a ghostly interaction?
