My dolls are beautiful, not creepy: Singapore porcelain doll collector

Surayah Akbar, 32, understands the craze in Thailand over life-like “spirit dolls”, also called “child angels”, as she has a collection of 30 porcelain dolls.

She says her dolls don’t have spirits inhabiting them, but she doesn’t agree with the moves of Thailand’s aviation authority to prevent Thai Smile’s reported plans to sell seats and meals for dolls on the airline.

“I think it’s very subjective because these are people’s beliefs,” the mother of four and owner of homemade aromatherapy line Myrrh and Mysteries told Yahoo Singapore.

She says she loves porcelain dolls because she appreciates the craft that goes into making them, particularly intricate details such as the painting of the eyelashes and lips.

“I just love them because they are beautiful, and I don’t want to acknowledge them with names… I appreciate them because it’s porcelain, it’s handmade and it makes me appreciate the craft,” she says.

How her collection began

Surayah began her collection five years ago, when she bought her first doll at retail store Cash Converters with her mother.

Her favourite until today, the doll has golden blonde hair, bright red eyes, a dark blue velvet dress, and a miniature rattan basket on its left hand.

“When I first saw the doll, I kept thinking about her when I [would] go to other stalls… I suddenly felt like I fell in love with the doll,” she said, adding that she “returned to the place and grabbed her”.

All the 30 porcelain dolls she now has are pre-owned, she says. She bought all but the first from Singapore owners via websites such as eBay or Gumtree Singapore.

She recently purchased eight Treasures Collection dolls from a Singaporean family. A member of the family, who is now deceased, previously owned the dolls.

To date, Surayah has spent almost $3,000 on her collection.

“Sometimes each doll may fetch up to $250. That also depends on the handicraft. All of these dolls are handmade, including the dolls’ gowns. Sometimes they use real hair… you really need to know where the dolls are from,” she said, pointing out that none of her dolls have real hair attached to them.

Suraya said that dolls with spirits attached to them are the ones that cost more than a thousand. “You can buy dolls with spirits attached to them, online. If you want them to be playful, you can ask for that,” she said.

Disturbances

While she maintains that her dolls do not have spirits, she says some odd things have happened around them.

Once, late at night when her family was about to sleep, Surayah and her family heard pebbles being thrown about at a fountain in her living room.

“We thought it was our cat, so we went out of our rooms, we saw our cat sleeping on the dining table. So it’s definitely not her, because she can’t be there within seconds… In my heart, we already suspected that it could be one of my dolls,” she says.

She only had five dolls at the time and had displayed all of them in a glass cupboard, attached to an adjacent wall.

Surayah also once heard tiny knocks coming from the same glass cupboard where the dolls were placed.

Most of her dolls are now being kept in her kitchen cabinet.

Apart from the dolls, she recalled an incident involving a life-sized Elmo – a character from children’s show Sesame Streets – soft toy she bought for her son 15 years ago.

“The toy was talking even though it had no batteries in it,” she said. Her husband would take the batteries out at the end of each day to avoid them from corroding.

No names

Many parents don’t realise that when their children speak to their toys, be it Barbie dolls or a Teletubbies soft toy, they are “feeding them with energy”, says Suraya. She never speaks to her dolls or gives them names, unlike many other collectors.

“All these dolls, be it Barbie dolls or porcelain dolls, when you play with them, you will feed them with your energy. Feeding them with positive or negative energy, when you talk to them, it will consume your energy. Slowly, they will have their own spirit,” she said.

While some of Surayah’s friends are fascinated by her collection, many find it “creepy”.

“A lot of friends who came said that I shouldn’t be keeping them. All these are very creepy, very scary; definitely these spirits will go in them. But that’s the whole point, they don’t get the emotional attachment that me, my kids, my husband and our previous helper, have towards all of them. My husband can give away all of them but not this one (her first doll),” she said.

“If an Ustaz (Muslim scholar) comes to my house and tells me that I need to get rid of my doll because it’s possessed, I will get rid of the spirit in the doll, but I won’t get rid of the doll. That’s how much I love them,” she added.