Is 'haunted' doll tucked away in Bucks County barn too creepy even for vampire museum?

Sometimes a thing is so creepy that even a guy who collects creepy stuff is creeped out. Such is the case of Ed Crimi and his haunted doll.

“Oh, yeah, this thing’s creepy. I mean, real creepy,” said Crimi, proprietor of the Vampire Museum and Paranormal Activity in Buckingham.

He’s not exaggerating. More on that in a bit.

Even the way Crimi acquired the doll for his museum last week was weird. He runs a high-end European antiques dealership in Bucks County. He received a strange call from a fellow dealer, whose first name is Nick, but who asked that his last name not appear in this story.

Nick had acquired the doll when he purchased the contents from an estate believed to belong to Robert Thomas, the founder of the Farmer’s Almanac, Crimi said.

“I’ve done business with him in the past, and he’s a good guy, but he said get this thing outta here. He wants it out. He said he’d (expletive) pay,” to have it removed.

Crimi, along with a friend, Eric Mintel, a local ghost hunter who documents creepy things on his YouTube channel, traveled into Bucks County McMansion territory, near Indian Springs Road in Doylestown. There, behind a massive house, across a field of snow and ice, in a barn-like shed, he’d find the doll.

Crimi called Nick to get the doll’s backstory.

“From what I’m told, it’s from the Robert Thomas estate,” Nick said.

“Why don’t you want it?” Crimi asked.

“It gave me the creeps,” he said.

“So it gave you the creeps and you’re giving me $200 to get rid of it?” Crimi said.

“Exactly.”

“I’m gonna have to look at it first,” Crimi said.

Crimi, a devout Catholic who has studied with priest exorcists in the Vatican, believes that paranormal forces, good and evil, permeate our lives. Under certain circumstances they can attach themselves to inanimate objects, like creepy dolls. It’s why he recommends having any item purchased in an antique shop or yard sale “cleansed” before it’s brought into a house.

“Holy water works really well,” he said.

The men arrived at the McMansion, which appeared deserted. Around back, far from the house, was a barn-like shed. The doll was in there, Nick said.

As the doors swung open, a blast of freezing wind hit them, and continued blowing. Inside was lawn equipment, boxes of old newspapers and furniture covered in sheets. The men searched for the doll.

“That one?” Mintel said. “Looks like a baby carriage.”

The cloth was pulled away revealing a doll seated in a Victorian era highchair on wheels. Seated in the chair was a doll, old, its body bizarrely impaled with hand-made iron nails. In the doll’s left hand was a carved wooden skull. Embedded in its stomach was a timepiece. Its glass eyes created the illusion of following the men. On the highchair tray was a small volume on occult spirituality, and a page from the 1838 Farmer’s Almanac.

Crimi looked troubled.

“I don’t like it,” he said.

Visit, if you dare Vampire killing kits, haunted dolls, and a door you shouldn't open in Bucks County

He called Nick.

“This is the creepiest thing I’ve ever seen,” he said. “Look, I have the museum, but I don’t like the feeling of it … Tell me the story of it.”

Nick wasn’t clear on the doll’s provenance, not unusual in the antiques trade. Crimi told him he’d research the thing before adding it to the Vampire Museum. Otherwise, it will stay in remote (and undisclosed) storage.

“Please, get it outta there,” Nick pleaded.

“It’s symbolizing death,” Crimi said. “The person who (created the doll) definitely had a purpose. I don’t know what the purpose is.”

Mintel noticed sawdust all over the chair. He speculated it was a talisman to keep the doll in check.

“Maybe,” Crimi said.

He told his employee, Robbie Ronky, to place the thing in the museum’s delivery truck.

“Robbie, whatever you do, keep that sawdust on there,” Crimi said.

“In the wind. I’m gonna walk back in the wind and keep the sawdust on it. Right,” Ronky said.

He picked up the chair with the doll, put it in the truck and drove to the museum.

Crimi appeared unsettled. He felt a “heavy” and malevolent spiritual presence so disturbing that he insisted on immediately driving across to Lambertville, New Jersey, to St. John the Evangelist Church, where he’d say prayers of liberation.

Crimi’s secretary called. She said Ronky had gotten half-way back to the museum when the truck conked out. Crimi called Ronky. Unlike the weird doll, the truck breakdown was no mystery.

“Water in the diesel fuel,” Ronky said, as Crimi, relieved, proceeded to the church in Lambertville.

JD Mullane can be reached at 215-949-5745 or at jmullane@couriertimes.com.

This article originally appeared on Bucks County Courier Times: Bucks County vampire museum finds new haunted doll for collection