Dolls - Harmless Toys or Channels of Terror

Dolls have been an integral part of the horror genre for many years, and Hollywood has been a major exploiter of this phenomenon. There have been countless films about the voodoo religion, particularly voodoo dolls. Although their origin can be traced to identifying pressure points for use in healing it is thought that slaves exploited the myth as a form of self defence against ruthless slave owners. Thus the belief that a specific individual can be cursed through a voodoo doll was born, and exploited. Such is the popularity of the voodoo doll myth today that tourists can buy voodoo dolls in Port au Prince, Haiti – the centre of the voodoo religion!
A more authentic use for dolls in voodoo is the practice of nailing the doll – together with a shoe - to a tree near a cemetery. They are supposed to act as messengers between the lands of the living and that of the dead. However the myth of the voodoo doll appears to owe its origins to ancient Europe…
The pagan cults used a poppet to symbolise the fertility of Nature during festivals and harvests. The person who produced the poppet was said to infuse the doll with life, and it was considered to be a little person. Poppets were also associated with witchcraft, and were often produced to cast a fertility, healing or binding spell upon an individual. These dolls were usually produced from natural products such as clay, a potato, a root or a tree branch, a corn shaft, an apple or a lemon. Paper and wax were also used, together with cloth that was usually filled with herbs. The poppet was then used for image magic, and whatever actions were performed upon the effigy would be effective to the human subject. Does this sound familiar? To counter the usually dreadful effects of the poppet a wax figure could turn the spell against the one who cast it, and counter the witchcraft… if the evil was discovered in time!
It seems that dolls are usually produced in the female form, but they have also...