I hate to play favorites but Belle is my most adored haunted doll. I write about her and my other haunted dolls, along with more famous ones I've met along the way, in Dollcraft: A Witch's Guide to Poppet Magick & Haunted Dolls

Here is a little story about my best known haunted doll, Belle. My collection has grown quite a bit over the last few years but we have a special connection. She’s an almost 110 year old German doll.

She was sent to me by a girl in Belgium who saw me on a TV doing a séance with another haunted doll, Peggy. Peggy The Doll is a cute little blonde, looks like Doris Day who gives people heart attacks. This girl had seen me with Peggy the Doll, and figured I could handle Belle the doll.

She had Belle for 3 years, Belle had made her sick and her toddler sick. Belle had made her hair fall out. Negative haunted dolls are not fun.

She saw me able to handle Peggy and asked if she could send her to me. Even in photos, I saw the good spirit in Belle (hidden under the negative spirit) and gave her permission. I knew that I would know how to banish the negative spirit. So she sent her to me.

This was several years ago now, I had never, ever done a Facebook live before, never done one ever. But for some unknown reason to me, I was adamant on documenting the opening of this big old box from Belgium.

It wasn't even my idea. I think it was the doll's idea because I wouldn't even have thought of that, never doing one before with anything else. So here I am, unpackaging this well wrapped doll, slowly and carefully on Facebook. This dolls energy was so powerful that 50,000 people watched me unwrap this doll. Those weren't my fans, friends or people. I have a lot of followers, but not millions of followers. That was the power of the doll calling them in. I've never had numbers even within zeros of that before, since or before that I mean nothing before that. So that's how strong it was: So I open it up…And here's this doll, and she was dark, she was evil…I don't even know if it was a human spirit that was in her….It was dark, and so I knew that that was not going to work in my household….

I needed to act fast!

With me, and seeing clients there, and my husband and my animals. Dark spirits are always going to go for the weakest, most vulnerable thing, which would be your animals, your pets, children, clients, and all that. Which is why you definitely want a positive haunted doll.

I knew that I could not let the sun set before banishing that evil spirit, because again, no matter how fun, a haunted doll is, you don't want something negative.

So I banished it. She seemed like an empty vessel, but I let her sit because I knew there was still a positive spirit in there.

So slowly the sweet little girl spirit started to emerge from Belle. She did drain peoples energy though, even though we got the negative spirit out. Even good haunted dolls will often do this.

They can drain your energy because they have to feed off your life force, just like you're in a haunted house, and the batteries on your cell phone go dead, the batteries on your flashlight go out, and the lights flash on and off.

Haunted objects, especially haunted dolls will drain your energy just as much as anything else.

So, I noticed that people would come over and just be like, “Oh what a cute doll, I'm so tired” and we don't want that in our home either.

What I did to counteract that is I kept a little cup of rue in Belle’s hand. Rue is one of my “go to” herbs for everything. I kept it in her little hand, and that kept her from draining everybody's energy, and slowly, slowly, as she got accustomed to being in the house and liking being in my house with all the activity, movement, fun animals and people, she didn't drain people's energy and anymore.

But I still always kept protective things around her for a long, long time. And slowly at the same time as she got more comfortable, this beautiful little girl spirit started to come out more and more.

She has the spirit of a beautiful little girl, 6 or 7ish years old. I think she had a sickly and short life, and her spirit just came into the doll. Maybe this was her doll, and her spirit escaped into it, I'm not sure. She's beautiful. Here face is porcelain, and her arms and legs are made of composite (a mix of wood and glue). Her eyes move, you will see her open and close and see facial expressions change with her mood. Now, her porcelain face doesn’t REALLY change the facial structure, it’s all her energy and intent. Kind of like putting on a “glamour” in witchcraft.

So again, now I have this beautiful little spirit that does not drain energy anymore and she is a truly becoming a family member. My husband and I will be downstairs in his drum room, or watching TV and we hear the pitter patter of her little feet upstairs.

The dog and the cat are with us, and there's nobody else in the house.

At first my animals did not like her at all. They had to get used to her. And then, as everybody got comfortable, just like bringing anybody into your house, then they loved her, and wanted to hang with her all the time. They bring her little toys and gifts. And she's become member of the family.