The Doll in the Woods

My Southern eyes took in many unusual sights when I lived in Vermont.

I watched snow fall from clouds as gray as jasper a week before Halloween.

Once, I watched a man fill a bowl with banana slices, pour heavy cream over them, and drown the whole thing in maple syrup while my blood sugar vibrated.

It was a lot to take in.

Still, that didn’t top the wildest thing I witnessed.

And it definitely wasn't the creepiest.

That belonged to the doll in the woods.

Lauren and I first spotted her on a random afternoon.

Mud season had almost ended. For the uninformed, this is the time between winter and spring, when cars slide around unpaved roads like jello on a porcelain plate.

We drove north.
We passed the local, honest automotive shop.
We blinked and missed the Friends Cemetery.

A few farmhouses dotted the road, nudging us into a stretch of woods filled with private drives marked by old last names like Isham and Zeno. Every hundred feet or so, blue sugaring lines stretched like veins from tree to tree.

We were watching the lines when we saw her.

A hundred yards up a small embankment, a doll perched on a stump.

It looked like the Raggedy Ann doll I had as a child.
The same type of toy Ed and Lorraine Warren called “Annabelle.”

I didn’t know if this plaything had a name.

I only knew she sat there, alone, in the woods.

Lauren and I locked eyes and compared goosebumps.

We talked about her for the rest of the drive.

We chose a different route home.

A couple of weeks passed, and we spotted her again.

This time, she had moved.

She sat closer to the road, propped against a tree.

Our minds churned out rational theories. The most likely one: a great gag. Probably a local hiker or resident who wanted to stir the pot and create lore for the daily front porch forum email.

We asked a few trusted souls. They said they’d seen her too.

One feller told me he spotted her during his early morning walks.

“Did you ever go up to it?” I asked.

“Nope. I saw it and kept moving.”

The curiosity of old Vermonters runs as cold as their Januarys.
Lauren and I never stopped to investigate either. Call it adapting to our surroundings.

We kept spotting her. Sometimes she sat closer, sometimes farther up the hill. The doll turned into a marker for us—she signaled when we’d left the village center or when we were almost home.

And then one day, we looked and she was gone.

Maybe a bear or another critter dragged her off.
Maybe the owner thought she needed a good cleaning.
Or maybe the gag had run its course.

I considered all of these possibilities.

Still, I silently prayed for the doll to return to the woods.

That way I'd know where she was.

We moved away from Vermont without solving the riddle.

It’s one of those stories I still think about now and then.

Usually right before I fall asleep.

Sometimes I think about reaching out to the folks I know who still live there. Ask them if the doll is still around.

But I don't.

Maybe I'm afraid of the answer I'll get.