Did you ever find dolls creepy before you got into BJDs?

I've never found dolls creepy, I actually find that trope in movies boring and not that creative. I've loved dolls my whole life, even when I was a teenager who thought she was "too cool" (narrator: actually she was not cool, possibly the farthest thing from cool) I still would look at my American Girl dolls with such fondess. Even back then it bugged me when people would be mean to dolls!

 

Ugh, any doll that was made before 1960 is scary to me. I wouldn't sleep in a room in my grandmother's house because of a doll she had sitting on a rocking chair near the bed. I literally could not go into the room. Even now it gives me chills!

I always was into teddy bears as a young girl. Then I got a Barbie and everything changed. My mom used to sew her clothes and I loved playing with my Barbies. I even had a Chrissy doll whose hair would come out of her head in different lengths. So weird!! Then I stopped playing with dolls altogether. Last year I got into Barbies with my nieces. Then I discovered Fashion Royalty dolls. I went a bit crazy. Now I've discovered BJDs and am so excited!

 

Dolls have never been creepy to me. I suppose the scariness really just depends on the proportions of the face and its expression. But it's funny, I was never really interested in them, even as a kid. Strangely I was more into legos and bionicle, lol. Then seemingly out of nowhere as an adult, I discovered BJDs and it was like... YES!

 

Not scared at all. I just didn't care for non-BJD dolls.

The quality didn't match my demands. They weren't properly articulated, looked too unrealistic, almost all were girls and the few boys available didn't appeal to me in the slightest. They didn't have diverse features or real hair and so on...BJDs are also stylized but in a much more realistic and sophisticated way. They were love at first sight. Another great thing was the anthros. When I was a kid I draw animals as anthros, animal bodies were too difficult for me, and I had several animal OCs who behaved like humans. So all these amazing anthros were another plus...

I mistook the first BJD I have seen for a heavily photoshopped human. He was made up of French resin and quite harsh light was shining from behind him, everything other was dark -- it looked like it was shining through real human skin and flesh. I was bewitched, there is no better world.

I actually like the Uncanny Walley effect, but strangely, I rarely feel it when looking at BJDs. There is no doll I was really scared of. Some very gory dolls make me a bit uncomfortable, but that happened only once or twice.

 

Totally yes.
I did not see the benefits of this hobby (and I had done cosplay at this time XD). At this time I was my own Doll XD

But now I have seen so many good looking (male) Dolls, I am sorry about being late XD
Because I could have made so many tiny cosplays ^^

 

Never found them creepy, but I used to hate ball joints. Thought they were so ugly and couldn’t understand why people would willingly swap out “normal” bodies for Obitsu bodies. Somewhere along the way visible joints stopped bothering me and now I really like them, not just for articulation but for their aesthetics too.

 

Never, but I can kind of understand why some people might find them creepy. That's why I'm not particularly offended when someone tells me that my dolls are "creepy".

 

Honestly a ton of dolls still really scare me; I was into dolls a LOT as a kid but around age 10 I grew an irrational fear of porcelain dolls? I've always been really into Barbies, and then in my teens, anime figures hahaha.
Now that I'm into BJD, I find myself into more mature OR super stylized dolls; the child-realism really freaks me out still. And I also definitely find myself drawn to MSD or smaller.... but that might just be my like of storage space talking.

 

When I first saw BJDs none of them looked creepy. They were all beautiful or cute. It wasn't until I was in the hobby for several years before I started seeing dolls which seemed very creepy to me. Mostly it's the extremely realistic vampires which creep me out.

 

It really depends, I still finds dolls with not so good eye placement (those staring right at you and seems to be dead inside) creepy, but with a little adjustment I will find even the same sculpt very pretty.

 

I've had porcelain dolls and clown dolls since I was a baby so I've never been afraid of them and have always loved them. I even like dolls made to look scary lol growing up I spent as much time in my great grandma's doll room as I could it was my happiest place.

 

I find many of the more dramatic anthros to be creepy. They remind me of the horror novel by H.G. Wells, The Island Of Doctor Moreau. The "mad scientist" Dr. Moreau experiments and creates half human/half animal creatures. The creatures suffer great physical and psychological pain. Eventually they turn on their creator.

 

I think it depends on sculpts and people? I don't think any BJDs are creepy. (Except the ones that are intentionally made creepy, of course) I think some vintage dolls are a little scary I have Xun but I've never thought that she is creepy. In the other hand, my boyfriend scares of her LOL

 

I generally don't find dolls creepy, especially not BJD's. The only ones that give me the heebie-jeebies are those hyper realistic baby dolls and the stereotypical porcelain dolls. Not sure why, they just give me bad vibes

 

Generally, no. I do not enjoy seeing some specific dolls like Reborn or Blythe, but I don't find them creepy necessarily. At least not in the sense that I'd fear to sleep with one in my bed. I guess that has nothing to do with them being dolls, it's just the uncanny valley of seeing something that resembles a human being but in the wrong way, the very same feeling we can get from human-mimicking robots with poorly simulated facial expressions. Reborns tend to appear to me more or less as stuffed taxidermy babies, especially with eyes open.

 

I like dolls because they can be creepy, I also find them very comforting to have around me. Sometimes they can be creepy and comforting at the same time.

 

Never! I've loved dolls as long as I can remember, even types that some BJD collectors get creeped out by. I'm primarily an antique doll collector, in fact- mid-late Victorian lady dolls (as opposed to dolls that look like children) are my favorite.

 

I never found them creepy and I am still honestly shocked they scare some people. Don't get me wrong, I understand and accept this reaction, I am just perplexed when I face one of the most common reasons: they look just... too real. :-) For me, that's the point.

 

My mother's fear of dolls made me fearful of dolls too, especially with stories of haunted dolls all over the net. But when I first chanced upon really well-dressed and aesthetically pleasing dolls on Facebook and Instagram, it made me see them as models instead, and as someone who's into fashion, it made me curious to learn more about them.

 

I was scared of baby dolls and Raggedy Ann as a kid! I remember hating the baby dolls that people had given me... I used to put them in the closet and shut the door, but it wasn't enough; I still just *knew* they were there. Eventually I told Mom to get rid of them!

I think for me it was the stare. That blank, thousand-yard baby doll stare. I'm an empathetic person, so I project "feelings" onto a lot of things. Especially as a kid, I would get scared that certain toys were mad at me if they had a particular expression!

I still don't particularly like baby-looking dolls, even BJDs. But that's because I don't like babies. I much prefer adult proportions, but I think I could fall in love with a toddler/small child sculpt if it was more anime, *or* if it leaned into the horror/creepy aspect. For example... I don't remember where, but recently, I saw a head sculpt with this hideous, grimacing smile that was SO creepy, and I kind of want to go back and find it so I can put it on my wishlist, LOL.

 

I have always loved and had dolls in my life. My brother on the other hand named my doll room "the morgue"!!!

 

I found my older sister's gigantic porcelain doll to be pretty creepy. It was a nearly life-sized (like 3ft tall) doll of a young girl with super long black hair and poorly fitted black eyes (that filled up most of the sockets). No joke, it kind of looked like the girl from the Grudge. And since my sister and I shared a room as kids, I'd wake up in the middle of the night, seeing her soulless black eyes staring back at me from the foot of my bed.

But other than that, I didn't really have a problem with most other dolls. I think I like smaller dolls better because they don't give me that uncanny valley feeling like life-sized dolls do.

 

I was never really into dolls before bjds so I always thought they were fine, but when I saw my first resin doll I fell in love with all types of dolls.

 

Yes and no. I've liked different kinds of dolls (and other toys) my entire life, and I even thrifted a few porceline dolls for my room during my youthful goth phase. I thought their curly hair and little bonnets were just the loveliest things...(they're in boxes at my mom's house now, because she doesn't like them lol).

BJDs are lovely, especially when they're stylized with an emphasis on being good looking. I love beautiful things. The world can sometimes be such an ugly place, so I tend to idealize it. But, I digress.

I'm not frightened of any particular type of doll, necessarily, but rather this intangible sort of energy that some of them carry. A doll who has been well loved will exude good vibes, I think. Even dolls that are designed to inspire unease can be rationalized by me, from an artistic perspective, because of the energy that went in to them. I think that's why I feel compelled to look at used BJD before considering new ones. They have history, a story, and I want to care for them. That, and I tend to be over-empathetic...

That brings in to question the unholy malevolence I felt from a life-sized purple and white ragdoll with a flat, printed-on face. She sat on a ledge over the play area of a thriftstore I used to visit as a child...I have to ask, who hurt you, purple pippi longstocking poser??

 

I didn't particularty like dolls as a child, and there were some creepy ones in the house. One that a relative made (it is crocheted), that was just hanging from my wardrobe's doorknob. It looked like it was wearing a baseball cap, but when you pulled up the front part, you could see it's very scary eyes. There was also a doll that could open and close it's eyes, but I put some glittery nail polish on it, and it made her eyelashes fall off, and after that her eyes went crazy. The third one was a child-sized (maybe like an elementary schooler) doll, that was just standing in the wardrobe. I was afraid that it will come out.

The only dolls I came to like were Bratz dolls. At the age when girls usually start to grow out of their doll phase, I thought they were the coolest thing ever. Which is really surprising, since when I first saw them, I thought they look like prostitutes... I don't know when was that point when I became convinced that they're pretty. But I have fond memories of them, so I still have them somewhere. I still prefer them over Barbies, and I thought it's a neat idea that their feet can be changed. I think I'm starting to get old-fashioned, since I don't understand the appeal of those other fashion dolls that came after them.

The thing is, I don't watch horror films, but it seems like they always have doll-looking ones in them, so I don't seem to be creeped out by the realistic ones. They look just like small people, not something unhuman and malevolent. Despite this, I got a rather doll-looking BJD as my first one, and while waiting for it, I worried that maybe I'll be afraid to sleep with it in my room. It didn't help that I read about BJDs moving on their own because of their stringing. But since actually having it, I concluded that it doesn't do anything, so now it seems silly to be afraid. Though there is a horror sculpt I'm interested in, so we'll see if it will bother me.

 

After seeing the movie „the doll master“ (a korean horror movie about a bjd doll coming to life and taking revenge?) I thought they were a bit creepy but I never really was afraid of dolls. My grandma had a lot in her house and I loved to play with them as a child.

 

Some dolls are creepy. Especially old porcelain jointed dolls.

Some BJDs are creepy - there are some aesthetics that kind of disturb me. I know the dolls themselves as individuals are probably fine... I just don't want them AROUND, you know?

I think the funniest thing I've ever done was to take one of my BJDs to a local doll show. The show was almost exclusively populated by quite old mountain ladies with even older porcelain dolls. We could all appreciate each other's dolls, but my doll (Saskia) has an unusually intense death glare and the ladies were not prepared for her! There were several instances of them looking her in the eye and jerking back while I tried to hide from their porcelain dolls.

 

I STILL find some dolls creepy, but I try not to pass that judgement onto their owner. The other day I went to an estate sale and there was a porcelain doll sitting on their couch looking out the window... It seriously looked like a scene out of a horror film. I think that may of just been the ambiance though because normally I think porcelain dolls are fine for me!

 

Have always thought dolls were special, small scale, life-sized, and everything in-between. Love a good clown makeup look, too. Gore? Suehiro Maruo and Shintaro Kago are two of my favorite artists.

Do I aesthetically like everything that can be classified under these? No. Am I afraid of them in turn? Hardly. I'd argue the amount of genuine fear versus social conditioning/pop culture memery swings heavily towards the latter, and the idea of being genuinely afraid of a harmless, inanimate object will forever make my eyes roll.

 

I never was easily afraid of dolls. I think there is something special, almost magic about the downsize scale. I remember being fascinated by « La poupée » by Hans Bellmer. As I love the horror genre, I think I may enjoy a little thrill.
But I can’t say so much about life size dolls, I find them less appealing and sometimes a little creepy yes (except the one of Bellmer which I find a lot of beauty in).

 

nope! even when i was kid i loved dolls so much i collected porcelain dolls and thought when i grew up i wanted to make my own, i even begged for a mannequin for my birthday. thankfully i didn’t get one haha. but i’ve always seen dolls as my friends!

 

Yes and no. Depends on the doll, the house it is in, the context of why the doll is there/owned, and other things. Hahaha. I was a collector of non-doll items, some Barbie, and some porcelain dolls since I was young while my family have been collectors of various things too (porcelain dolls if dolly related, but mostly non-dolls) for a few generations. My cousins on my Dad side and extended family there don't have issues with dolls but cousins on my Mom's side do, so I feel it could be cultural/upbringing and if they tended to be big horror film watchers (which my cousins on my Mom's side were).

That being said, I've seen some creepy dolls. Hahaha. Antique stores, consignment stores, thrift stores, collectors that have massive amount of antique and vintage dolls where the doll isn't theirs originally but someone unknown way back when. To be clear, a "well loved" children's doll is fine. Heck, an utterly adored adult person's doll that isn't to my aesthetic is fine too. My husband's teacher was a prominent doll collector in the area of certain vintage and antique dolls, and I actually didn't find her dolls that I've seen creepy. But there are certain ones I've "encountered in the wild"...can't really pin point why even if they are mint and otherwise fine looking dolls, that have something a bit wrong about them. Like, I've seen some awesome gothic/monster/demon/gory dolls and I'm fine. I would even say they were beautiful in their darkness. But I've also seen some dolls that are considered valuable and limited and traditionally beautiful but I'm ready to walk the other way. Heck, there are times where I feel like I shouldn't turn around in an antique or consignment store, and I turn around and see a doll that gives me weird vibes. I guess it's like people? You can meet a beautiful person but sense something is off and you need to stay away. Then you meet someone that isn't perfect and would otherwise be considered "ugly" but you find them so endearing that you love them.

Oh, someone mentioned clown dolls. Yeah, even the cute ones are kind of creepy. I like the prettier pierrot ones just fine (had a porcelain one myself and really loved the look of the Iplehouse ones), but there's like a fine line between those pretty ones and the creepy ones.

There were two Grail dolls that I got that scared me a little. I felt some unsettling vibes from them when I initially got them in the mail separately. Both were secondhand dolls. One, I had it hang out with my other dolls for a while and it felt right after some time had passed (he was left underneath a bed for years by the previous owner). Another one, I gave it a stuffed animal and had it watch TV with me (mainly comedies) and eventually sat it with some doll friends (she might have been a display doll at the secondhand store she was at). Now, though, I don't feel the unnerving vibes anymore. I want to believe it's because our happy household has shared some good energy to them and whatever bad energy they had has dissipated. My husband and I joke sometimes that we need to treat our dolls right so if every they come to life then we wouldn't be harmed. Realistically, we know the dolls will never come alive. But just in case....

 

Interesting thread! I was never afraid of dolls as a child, although I didn't have that many of them (a few remain special to my memory, such as a beautiful porcelain doll I hope to recreate in bjd form eventually).

However, I am afraid of people and the evil they bring to their homes. This is one reason why I'm reluctant to purchase secondhand dolls unless they are blank heads (so not part of a character or used in a concrete way) or just parts like hands. People can get into dangerous territory by messing with tarot cards, etc. As the great Christopher Lee once said in regard to experimenting with the occult: "never, never, never. You will not only lose your mind: you lose your soul.”

So, yeah, if I got bad vibes from a doll that doll would be going in the burn barrel - or would be sold to someone who did not care about vibes. But in general, I think a lot of the "creepy doll" factor is due to the influence of pop culture.

 

My relationship with dolls was pretty strange. As a younger child, I didn't care about them one way or the other; slightly older, and I entered this phase where I was afraid of dolls and thought they were all possessed, or something. And then as a teenager, I started loving horror regardless, so the "creepy" factor I saw in them turned into "beautiful."

 

As a child I had zero interest in any humanoid toys and only owned stuffed animals, but I don't think it was because I was scared - I just didn't care for the themes that most fashion dolls have (and still don't).

These days I'm just mildly freaked out by semi/realistic sculpts that have REALLY large eyes. It can depend on the faceup and how the rest of the doll is styled but if I'm just looking at blank photos it's a no for me (-_-

 

Never found them creepy at all.... my prospective daughter in law though says they are haunted and walk around the house at night!

 

I've never found dolls creepy in general. I think some dolls can be creepy, but not dolls in general. Everyone I know in real life hates them though lol.

 

I was never afraid of dolls but I did find most types creepy. What drew me to bjds in the first place was that they were dolls that looked really cool instead of unsettling to me.

 

Nope! I think it's because I've always been around dolls. My mom used to collect Barbie dolls and I was given a Precious Moments angel doll for a birthday when I was really young that I thought was really beautiful so I've always thought dolls were super interesting and beautiful.

 

When I was a really young kid, I was scared of specifically motorized baby dolls (like ones that cry and stuff), but I think that was more of a fear of the sounds and how unpredictable those dolls were to 6-year-old me , but other than that I wasn't scared. Although, I was a furry as a kid (even had a fursona! she was a blue cat with fairy wings) so I was only interested in plush animals or anthropomorphic animal shaped toys and I didn't have much interest in most humanoid fashion dolls anyway.

After growing up, I started appreciating dolls much more I think. My grandma gave me a little mass produced porcelain doll which has really pretty clothes when I was a young child but I didn't realize how much I liked it until I accidentally dropped it in middle school and immediately went to fix it! I think I did an okay repair job for a 13-year-old using school glue LOL . I still have it and I think she looks so cute, I may see if I can repair her better someday. It's a little funny because a lot of my friends find her kind of scary, but I think fixing her made me view broken or repaired dolls as interesting and kinda cool rather than creepy or haunted!

I do have a soft spot for people talking about haunted dolls though, it's a little weird 'cause I don't really believe in ghosts (not for lack of trying) but I just think haunted dolls are kind of funny? Like if any of my dolls tried to haunt me I could just pick 'em up and put it in a box... timeout for the ghost

I WILL SAY I am... a little scared of mannequins. Don't know how to explain that one, maybe I watched one too many haunted mannequin TV shows as a child! With some of the bigger dolls that have come out in the past bit, I'm not sure where the line between mannequin and doll is for me. I seem to be cool with larger BJDs though, like I think as long as it's under 3 and a half-ish feet tall and poseable I'm not going to be unnerved~ The only hesitation I have about 60+ cm dolls nowadays is how I'd store them!

 

Porcelain dolls were never my favorite and gave me the creeps. When I was a kid, I had one attached to a music box stand, and her arms would wave around to the music when I wound it up. The problem was that it was pretty old, so after winding it up it'd go off randomly, usually in the middle of the night, and that's how people die in horror movies so I buried her in the back of my closet.
She's probably haunting someone else now as we speak.

 

I have always loved dolls, when I was a child they were a source of comfort and an escape. My overactive imagination was also something that I could let out whenever I played with my dolls when I was little.
I started collecting dolls when I was a child, I went from simple baby dolls, to barbies, and then to porcelain dolls. Then I grew up and I got into other hobbies, until I recently got into Pullip’s first and now into bjd’s.
However, my mom does think they are “freaky” lol she can stand them but not for long periods of time…I always joke and say that I’m going to leave one in my parents’ bedroom at night .

 

I did think some dolls were creepy up until like...5ish years ago I think! But the ones I found creepy (and still do to be perfectly honest ) were the ones my grandma has always loved collecting, the porcelain ones with creepy glass eyes that just STARE at you in your sleep. I used to say I would never sleep in the same room as one haha. BJD's though not really. Unless as some people said already, they're meant to be creepy, in which case I'm like..."well done!". They feel more delicate, and more of an art form (without taking anything away from other kinds of dolls, that can also be amazing), and they're more in line with my specific taste.

 

I think I’ve never found dolls creepy unless they were intentionally made that way. Though some of them are somewhat unnerving, haha. I’ve never been much affected by the whole uncanny valley appearance, but I do think dolls that are broken/dirty give off a different vibe than one that’s well taken care of, and the former is more likely to freak me out

 

I never liked baby dolls, they always scared me so much. A little off topic, but I was also scared of some gorilla plush i used to own. I think what it was is that they were both really hyper realistic and my child brain hated it. I feel like because most popular doll sculpts don't tend to have extreme facial expressions or deeply carved in expression lines, i don't get the creepy factor i got from baby dolls. Those fluttering eyes also didn't help.

 

Ahhh, there are 19th century dolls that give me the creeps, and ventriloquits' dolls, too... Of more recent dolls I find reborns unsettling... (not crepy, but really unsettling...)

But I always liked modern dolls, like Barbie, Sindy... and now BJD and Blythe and others...

 

baby dolls sometimes freak me out, like, can't look at them without feeling sick-ish freaked out, and that's as a doll collector with fairly broad tastes and a love of a lot of things other people find scary. BUT, while getting into the doll hobby hasn't made those particular dolls any less creepy to me, it HAS given me more understanding to the people who collect them, because broadly speaking it's all the same hobby, and we've all got things we find cute and things we find creepy. I think some childlike dolls are adorable but get hives over baby dolls, while there are other people who think baby dolls are sweet but wouldn't be able to sleep in a room with a minifee. And my ex just thinks all dolls are terrifying.

Like, in the non-doll areas of life, horror media is my comfort zone, I'll drift off to a cozy, happy sleep in front of an old horror movie, I read Stephen King to de-stress... not my mom's idea of a happy, relaxed time. But I've got friends who think spiders are adorable and I'm a serious arachnophobe. So creepy and cute are highly subjective, and not mutually exclusive.

 

i probably didn't find dolls creepy but before bjds i wasn't really into dolls. But now I think about it i do find dolls with the staring kinda looking eyes make me feel uneasy. And ventrilorits dolls since the one in the Goosebumps book/tv series.
The realism of reborn dolls throws me when i see them as I work with babies and they are so lifelike.
I am not in realist looking dolls as it just seems to make my brain confused and uneasy. I also have a vivid imagination that doesn't help when looking at them.

 

Yes I still find some dolls to fall into the "uncanny valley" of creepiness. I can't say what it is that gets me, but I'm sure I'll figure out the commonality eventually

 

Heh, before I found this thread I posted in my intro how I used to find BJDs creepy. I mean jeez, stumbling across a case of nude, highly realistic, hollow eyed figures tucked into the back corner of a used anime merch store? Nothing at all haha.

These days I find I don't like when people are fitting eyes and they're rolling around, or off center lol. Nope, skip!

I do think it's interesting when people don't like dolls at all, it shows just how sensitive we all are to the precieved human form.

 

Yes and no. I never really found anything like Barbies or Monster High Creepy, or BJDs either. But I did (and still do, really) find reborn dolls, blythes, and some old porcelain to be creepy, probably because of the uncanny valley effect.

 

Not really . I used to have since I was kid a lot of dolls . I was in love with them . And still I am . But I have to say that I was scared of clown dolls . And generally clown .

 

Not really; I've had dolls in one form or another my whole life. The only ones to skeeve me out at all are those Re-borns.

Oh, and CPR Annie; I swear every time I've ever qualified on it; she tries to slip me some tongue...

 

I didn't find dolls creepy by themselves but my grandmother had this room in her house where every inch of the available space was home to a different doll (even the walls O.o) and that room was pretty unsettling to me. They weren't a particular brand or anything, but she couldn't say help it when somebody said they were going to throw a doll away.

 

I find the Reborn Babies somewhat creepy. Too realistic. I don't deny the artistic talent that goes into sculpting them, but the idea of them is what bothers me a little.

I know this is extreme, but to me its like the difference between a stuffed toy animal and a taxidermied real animal. If something looks like a live person (or animal), it should BE alive.
A few years ago I attended the funeral of an 18 month old girl. It was an open casket, and the baby looked like one of the Reborn Baby dolls. That memory still haunts me.

 

I think I have gone back and forth with the creepy verses not. Now I just lean into the creepy when I show people my office. My dolls are not creepy to me but I can see where they can be to others.

 

I've always found ventriloquist dolls to be terrifying- which I can trace back to an episode of Goosebumps I watched as a very small kid that I was never able to shake, lol. And like some others have mentioned above, I too find the reborn dolls to be quite unsettling. But I haven't seen any BJD's that have left me feeling creeped out.

 

I never thought about those being dolls. They creep me out as well. And my friends think my dolls are creepy.

 

I don't find dolls creepy. The only thing I don't understand is the gore on bjd but I don't find it scary. My b/f finds bjd scary. My bestie (best friend) also. No idea why but I'm into dolls as a child.

Edit: ventriloquist dolls,,I searched it up. It reminds me on Saw movies. The plastic ones. I believe it was Saw. Not sure. Brr.

 

I agree about the gore on BJDs. I don't understand the appeal. It's one thing to see gone in a horror movie, as it is over in a flash, but to have a doll that you look at all the time, with gore on it, is beyond my comprehension.