BECAUSE I KNOW YOU NEEDED MORE POSTS ABOUT CREEPY DOLLS: Avram Grumer of Pigs&Fishes; writes: “Eve, I think you’re wrong about why dolls are creepy. While it is true that modern society doesn’t quite know what to do with children, that’s got nothing to do with dolls. Dolls are creepy because they are designed to appeal to some very basic human instincts — the desire to cherish and protect infants, and this is an impulse non-human primates also display, meaning that it’s almost certainly an instinct that’s older than humanity itself — but they’re also these inanimate lumps of plastic, dead things.

“I don’t know where the children chanting in horror movies comes from.”

I basically agree with this–I wasn’t trying to list every single reason dolls are creepy–but I think the other factors I detail here also play a role. And I think they help explain the creepy chanting children, too.