Excerpts from How to care for your Haunted Doll (Fantasy Worldbuilding Concept)

A short story by Brittany Diana

Care for the Haunted Doll 

English Edition, Volume II

Available in: Deutsch/Dansk/Svenska/Norsk/Gaelige/Nederlands/Français/Español/Italiano/Català/Română/Polski/Čeština/Srpskohrvatski/Magyar/Suomi/Eesti/latviešu/lietuvių/Türkçe/Shqip/Afrikaans/Avañe'ẽ/Diné Bizaad/Kiswahili/Ελληνικά/русский/українська/српскохрватски/հայերեն/ქართული/ᏣᎳᎩ/日本語/漢語/한국어/हिन्दुस्तानी/ہندی-اردو /اَلْعَرَبِيَّةُ/فارسی /

If you are reading this, you either have somehow acquired a haunted doll or a haunted doll has found you in some way. And you most likely have keep the doll and if not, you cannot get rid of the doll successfully, we recommend that this book for witches and wizards, as they are most likely to encounter said doll and be aware of it, but anyone else can read this for any purpose whether it is for educational purposes or for purely for one's entertainment.

For Doll Exorcisms, call our artifact hotline (numbers in Emergency Services Section in Chapter IV on page 92, section 2) and for the magical apprentices reading, do contact your professor, mistress, master, or teacher.

For magical instructors, some volumes will have supplemental educational material.

For the willing and accepting Doll steward, one must ideally have had some experience with micro-magical beings, otherwise known as sprites, pixies, or wee faeries, or even in some cases ghosts. 

The Haunted Doll comes in many different shapes, sizes, forms, and spirit.

Outline: 

I: Doll Basics

II: Spells and Artifacts

III: How to entertain and placate a Doll.

IV: Resources and Emergencies

The Basics:

Dolls are one of many kinds of inanimate objects with a small spirit living inside of them and the haunting spirits are not necessarily ghosts but rather many kinds of small beings.

Before we delve into the details, let us establish what a haunted doll is and the essential information for anyone to know.

While Haunted Dolls can be good or evil, usually the more malevolent ones get the most attention in common folklore, there are examples of good dolls, either with a benevolent spirit or a tamed spirit by a witch that communicates with little spirits especially in magical artifacts. While this book will talk about spells, we recommend that you learn from in-depth grimoires on spirits or magic of communication as a medium. 

A haunted doll will usually be dormant especially to maintain the illusion of being without an animated presence. Most often dolls will only reveal their spirit in certain cases, either in a haunting, or when summoned by a call in their language (which again, spirit communication books should teach you their language or key phrases in thereof)

How to discern between good and evil dolls is not so easy, as some more evil minded ones might feign goodness but some dolls are neither or particularly mischievous, and mischief is neither good nor evil, but can distort most people's perception of moral alignment in other beings, temporal and spiritual.

Not all dolls are created by the same means

Some dolls are fae possessions, some dolls are actually animated by magic from a mage, like artificial familiars or wizard's servants, some dolls may be naturally or artificially made, but both can have similar if not the same manifestations of sentience, activity, or ability.

Entertain the doll with plates, typically picking up and throwing the plates on to the floor is how a Haunted Doll entertains itself, even so, they can smash all sorts of things, but they need to be stimulated.

This is one of many ideas to keep the Doll occupied whether you want to keep it or banish it. One can banish it by gifting or selling the doll to another person as a new owner, but remember a doll can choose its owner. Even if you rid the doll by gift or trade, the doll can return to keep haunting you. This method of removal is mixed at best, or at worst useless depending on the doll's commitment to you.

Resources

Some of these are country specific 

Most countries however have some kind of Society of Magical Artifacts or a branch of Artificer Guilds and  chapters of Mage Unions 

North American Magic and Artifact Union 

US Headquarters and Canadian Headquarters are in Washington and Ottawa respectively. 

The Royal Magic Artifact Society is an affiliate of the Royal Society in London.

The Magic Artifact Institute of Australia maintains offices in Melbourne, Vic, Sydney NSW, and in countries like Auckland, NZ and Cape Town and Johannesburg in South Africa, as the New Zealand and South Africa based divisions merged with the MAIAus based in Melbourne.

Dublin has a delegation from the European United Guilds of Magic with an Irish Artificers branch.

A detailed directory with addresses, phone numbers, and summoning spells is in the appendix.

Haunted Dolls may vary in experience, intent, size, power, and ability. Take each doll as its own! 

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That was a brief study of fantasy worldbuilding, I hope you all enjoyed reading it and if you want more, share and if you can support me on Patreon today!

Image Credit Mercury Press as featured on the Sun and Bustle.