Fear Files

Judy The Doll

My name is Jofranka Jaelle Daily and am married to my husband Jurg. He is Russian and moved to America when he was seventeen in hopes of joining the army but later decided to become an accountant and both of my parents moved from Germany a week before I was born. My life is (was) fairly quiet. I have five amazing children; Luminitsa (15), Sergei (14), Orva (13). Burian (6) and Odile (4). We live in Ohio, in a relatively small community with a vast variety of European ethnicities. I've always been a small-town girl so I found this new home extremely accepting.

My first paranormal experience started around the time when my husband got his new job at a small accounting agency on the outskirts of town in what we small-town folks like to call "the big city". My family had just moved to Ohio from Washington State and the kids were adapting quite well to their new school. About a week in to the move I was reading a book in the very small alone time I have between kissing my husband goodbye and picking up the kids (this is what I like to call the glorious invention called "school"). I was reading when I heard a clammer in the laundry room and what I thought was that a picture Jurg had hung up fell, being that he is no handy man. But then I started to doubt it as the noise sounded like it hit the floor as metal. When I entered the room I didn't see anything on the floor but a doll, one of those old Victorian ones. It was cloth with a sewn dress and yarn hair. I automatically assumed it was one of Odile's since she is an avid collector of dolls, no matter what kind. I returned it to her room and thought nothing more of it.

The week after that when the children were at school I heard another noise, this one a knocking at the door. What struck me as odd is that it was not the front door or even the back one; it was coming from inside Odile's room. My immediate thought was that Luminitsa had tried to skip school again and had gotten herself locked in. Surely she just needed to use the restroom. However, when I opened the door I didn't see Luminitsa or any of my children for that matter. Instead, the only thing out of place was that Odile's doll was placed on her bed instead of the dresser where I had left. But that didn't strike me as odd as I just assumed Odile had been playing with it and hadn't returned it to its proper spot, meaning that she'd be given a stern talking to after school.

I had forgotten, of course, to talk to my daughter, because that was the day Jurg came home from work and told me he had lost his job. That was also the day he told me he was leaving me, right in front of the children, and I flew in to my bedroom in a hysterical fit. Upon entering my foot caught something and I fell to the floor. I had slipped on one of Jurg's collared shirts and as I went to throw it at the window in a blind fit of rage I stopped mid-motion to gasp in horror as the doll had mysteriously moved itself from Odile's room to my windowsill. However, I was too busy to do anything about it.

Now here is where my story started getting far too startling for me. While Sergei was at soccer practice and Orva was at violin practice, Luminitsa was over at a friend's house which left me with Burian and Odile. The two were playing in Odile's room when I heard the phone frantically ringing. I ran to the kitchen to pick it up before the line went dead when I realized that phone wasn't ringing. I stopped dead in my tracks and I could just feel the colour drain from my face as I slowly trudged towards the sound. As I opened Odile's room the noise got louder.

"Gosh, Mommy, pick up the phone, would you?" I remember Odile saying. She pointed to her bed where the phone was laying. I just remember dragging myself to Odile's bed but not being able to pick the phone up, despite the ringing. That was because my family only has one phone that ALWAYS stays in the kitchen regardless. That is because that phone is a cord phone, attached to the wall. This was a different kind of phone. It was the one I used to have as a teenager that should have taken its rightful place in my parent's garage down in Florida.

You must remember that I have NEVER believed in ghosts or the paranormal or whatever you like to call it. But the first chance I got I let my best friend Crissy watch the kids as I drove all the way to my folk's house. When my parents got me to sit down on the couch and tell my story I just burst in to tears.

"What doll was it again?" my mother had asked me. I described the type of fabric the dress was made of and the colour yarn the hair was. "You mean this doll?" my mother had said. Then she showed me a picture in a box my father had brought down from the attic. It was me at age seven holding that same exact doll posing goofily with my older brother Jem and my two twin little sisters Julee and Carter. Behind us was a man I didn't recognize. I remember my father cursing and snatching the picture from my mother's hands. He said something along the lines of, "Well gosh darn it, Pansy (my mother's name), lookie who it is right here."

My mother said, "Well I'll be, Cheslav (my father's name)!" At that point I was hysterical and just begged them to tell me what was going on. My father asked if I knew who the man was in the picture and I said no. My father then went on to explain that it was my Uncle Ben who was making a funny face behind the four of us. I don't have an Uncle Ben.

But my father insisted I did. He said my Uncle Ben died when he was 35 of a heart attack on a golf course the day before my father's wedding to his first wife, Arjean. Jem's mother is Arjean and Julee, Carter and I belong to my father's second wife, Pansy (just to clear things up). I asked why my father never brought him up but he said there was no need to. As soon as we went through a whole stack of new photos, any time that doll showed up in my arms, Uncle Ben was standing behind me with a kind and warm smile on his face.

But I don't remember ever getting the doll and my old parents cannot remember how I came in to possession of that. Until just last month. It turns out that the doll belonged to my grandmother who used to be a medium and tarot card reader. It was passed to my mother, Pansy, but she never played with dolls and must have given it to me. Upon finding out this information I contacted my father and he laughed on the other end of the phone. We carried on a conversation, me in Ohio and him in Florida, for a good hour or so until Odile came in to the living room. After a few "Mommy's" I finally asked her why she was interrupting me. She said, "Judy's back and I don't like her. She keeps singing to me and she isn't very good." Then Odile looked to her side and brought her fingers over her lips. "Hush, Judy, and go away. I told you I'd tell my mother on you if you kept this up." I just smiled because Odile has dozens of imaginary friends. Didina is her imaginary school teacher, Justyne is a mean imaginary girl who picks on her if she eats her vegetables (which is her excuse not to eat them) and Zory is her imaginary boyfriend (at the times they aren't "fighting").

The voice on the other line said, "Oh, I see Odile is playing with Judy." I laughed and thought obviously Odile had called him and told him about her newest imagination. I just agreed and carried on.

That was when my father stepped out of the bathroom and asked who I was talking to. I had forgotten he had flown over with my mother to stay with us for the week. So who was the person I was talking to? I don't know because the line went dead after I figured out I was on my old teenage phone again, the one I had left down in Florida. And in Odile's hand was that doll. I remember telling Odile to drop that thing and that it wasn't welcomed in the house. "It's okay, Mommy, this doll won't hurt anyone." I asked her if the doll was Judy. "Once," Odile said, "before she got out." Got out of what, I had asked her. An insane asylum? Prison? What? "Out of the doll, silly!"

Jurg moved back in the house and since then Odile has seemed to have "misplaced" the doll. But my old phone shows up time and time again and rings even though the wire had been snapped long ago. I'm just afraid of this Judy who my youngest daughter keeps talking to. Orva has claimed to have seen her once, too, in the living room, talking to Odile in a very low whisper. But I honestly need help here since I am unfamiliar with anything paranormal. I just don't know what to do.