Something Strange

[Tetrachord]

Yesterday my husband and I were having a quiet coffee at our local golf club, overlooking a magnificent beach on the NSW South Coast in Australia. One of the most beautiful beaches you're ever likely to see. We have a holiday home in the area and know many of the folk quite well, but yesterday was a big surprise. A couple, in their late 70's, sat at the next bay of chairs closest to us. They were carrying a boy doll, dressed in a sun-suit and wearing a hat and sunglasses. Strange, but it got stranger. They gave the doll biscuits and started talking to it about the water and the beach. The woman sat the doll on her knee and started talking to it. We found it so disconcerting that we left the club immediately. The doll had a creepy look, with its tongue partially sticking out as though a baby the middle of laughter. I immediately thought of "The Shining"!!

We mentioned this to neighbours and friends and were told that the couple lost a child decades ago and treat this doll like a real human child. The doll is taken to the doctors, has its own room and accompanies the couple everywhere. This has been going on for 30 something years, apparently.

If anybody has heard anything more creepy and sad I'd like to know what it is!!!

[Pabmusic]

...If anybody has heard anything more creepy and sad I'd like to know what it is!!!

I don't find it particularly creepy, just very sad. I'm also surprised that so many people must have indulged this delusion (or else it would surely have been abandoned long ago).

People don't want to know about death (understandable) and make up so many tales to 'overcome' it.

[french frank]

If you have family in the UK, come home at once!!!

(Though, seriously, tragedy and traumas can have very strange effects, and if a couple are very close it affects both. Nothing as sad [sic] as that, though a young couple I once knew were rescued when they both tried walking out in the sea together, dressed in each other's clothes. He had suffered mental illness previously but she had always been his strong support.)

[Beef Oven!]

I don't think it's creepy. It's terribly sad. People react differently to things.

Without the background information, I can understand that it might have been somewhat disconcerting for you.

It's extremely unlikely that you were at risk, so perhaps next time stay and enjoy the rest of your coffee and the view.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

It is indeed very sad, and some people seek substitution for gaps in their lives. Look at the success of the Tamagotchi devices that took over people's affections some years ago. They're still around today, though the fashion has gone the way it usually does.

[Tetrachord]

Thanks everyone - excellent comments. I especially appreciated the one who suggested others had indulged the fantasy of the doll. Absolutely, yes, but I cannot help wondering whether these disturbed doll owners have a friend in the world. Apparently the local doctors tolerate the doll and its 'medical appointments' though, if true, I find this wholly bizarre. When she and her husband walked into the club with the doll my husband automatically gave them another chair (God only knows why he did this!!) and the woman took the chair and then replied, "thanks, but it's only a doll"!!!! So, at some level there's awareness. When she went off to the toilet the man started talking to the doll and fed it shortbread biscuits, even wiping its mouth.

As I said, it was too disconcerting to tolerate. And I wondered whether either of them had ever been offered grief counselling when they first lost their child.

[MrGongGong]

Look at the success of the Tamagotchi devices that took over people's affections some years ago. They're still around today, though the fashion has gone the way it usually does.

???

What on earth are you on about?

and

how many recordings of that piece do you have?

[Flay]

???

What on earth are you on about?

and

how many recordings of that piece do you have?

http://tamagotchi.wikia.com/wiki/Classictchi

[MrGongGong]

http://tamagotchi.wikia.com/wiki/Classictchi

I know what one is
but not sure how it bears any relation to this at all ??

[Serial_Apologist]

I know what one is
but not sure how it bears any relation to this at all ??

I'm finding, in this crazy world these days, that less and less seems to have anything whatever to do with anything else.

[oddoneout]

These doll babies are big in America and increasingly so in the UK, and are horribly life-like(sorry but I find them creepy) There are all sorts of reasons why they become part of people's lives, some easier to deal with than others. A woman I know who has reached the end of her child-bearing years and misses having a baby around likes taking her doll- babies around in a pram, and buying clothes for them. Enactors at historical events use them. I did get a shock at work once when explaining to a couple with a baby(as I thought) in a buggy where the baby changing facilities were to be told 'Oh it's OK it's a doll'.

[Petrushka]

The most deeply weird thing I've come across concerned an ex-work colleague. Several years ago her father passed away just a few works before her brother was due to get married. They decided to have him dressed in a wedding suit and a photograph of the dead father taken in his coffin was digitally inserted in the family line up in the wedding pictures.

Frankly, I found this far more creepy than the doll story in the OP.

[french frank]

These doll babies are big in America and increasingly so in the UK, and are horribly life-like(sorry but I find them creepy) There are all sorts of reasons why they become part of people's lives, some easier to deal with than others. A woman I know who has reached the end of her child-bearing years and misses having a baby around likes taking her doll- babies around in a pram, and buying clothes for them. Enactors at historical events use them. I did get a shock at work once when explaining to a couple with a baby(as I thought) in a buggy where the baby changing facilities were to be told 'Oh it's OK it's a doll'.

Not sure how to place the psychology. Is it something that becomes a 'fashion', with more and more people taking it up? So it then becomes perfectly acceptable, even normal, to indulge their fantasies in public? If so, is that a good thing (as in beneficial to them - or anyone)?

[Jonathan]

A few years ago, Heather and I were stood at Knaresborough station waiting for a train. A young chap was also on the platform and he had a teddy bear with him which he placed in the chair on the platform and took a photo of. He then sprayed it under its armpits with deodourant. We thought it was funny. Two years later, in Whitby, we saw him again. Here, he ordered a meal for it in a fish and chip restaurant.

[pastoralguy]

The most deeply weird thing I've come across concerned an ex-work colleague. Several years ago her father passed away just a few works before her brother was due to get married. They decided to have him dressed in a wedding suit and a photograph of the dead father taken in his coffin was digitally inserted in the family line up in the wedding pictures.

Frankly, I found this far more creepy than the doll story in the OP.

Photographs of corpses were quite common in the early days of photography when having an image was a very expensive proposition. Very often, the photo of the corpse was the only visual reminder a family would have of their deceased love one and various devices were created to hold the departed in a pose that the long time exposure time demanded. There are various example to be found on the internet including family line ups where the corpse would be photographed along with the living. (Put 'post mortem photography' into Google. It is quite disturbing to our modern eyes). However, one has to remember that photography hadn't developed into the mass pastime it is today so the photo would be the only remaining pictorial record. If one digs deep enough on the Internet, one can find find period photos of corpses in various states of decomposition. The Nicole Kidman movie 'The Others' explores this phenomena.

The movie 'Lars and the Real Girl' explores the relationship an extremely shy man develops with a 'sex doll' which is aided and abetted by his local community. Whilst it could have been played for cheap laughs, the movie is very sympathetic to its main character's state of mind.