The Possessed Doll in the Attic Trunk: Belleview, 1977

In 1977, when the Redding family pried open the old cedar trunk in their Belleview attic, they found a porcelain doll swaddled in moth-eaten linens, positioned with its face pressed toward the wood. The next morning, Mrs. Redding found the blanket unraveled on the floor-and the doll sitting upright at the trunk’s edge, head tilted toward the door. For weeks, footsteps echoed above them each night, always ending in a single dull thud. Tools and children’s toys went missing and reappeared arranged around the trunk like a circle of sentries. Mr. Redding nailed the trunk shut, but they heard scratching and something tapping against the inside, even through solid wood. When the attic was finally emptied for sale, a brittle photo fell from the trunk’s lining, showing the same doll at a 1911 funeral-held tight in the arms of a pale, unsmiling girl who had died the next day.