'A haunted doll scratched my husband as he slept'
If you found scratches over your man's body, you might suspect there's another woman involved.
It was true for the marks Debbie Merrick found on her husband, Cameron. And adding insult to (literal) injury, she believed they came from a woman she invited in to their Norfolk home.
But the 'other woman' was a DOLL.
In July 2017, mum-of-one Debbie was at her wit's end after a series of unsettling events occurred at the family home. Was it to do with the three old dolls she bought for a fiver from a second hand shop?
A week after placing her new purchases in their spare room, Debbie's husband Cameron, 50, was alarmed to find he had woken up one morning with "small scratches" on his leg.
The frightening situation saw Debbie and Cameron invited on to This Morning, where they spoke to Eamonn Holmes and Ruth Langsford about their unwanted guest.
Debbie said:Â "The smoke alarms keep going off, and one night I heard the floorboards creaking and thought it might have been my daughter Holly up, but when I checked on her she was asleep.
"Then one morning my husband said to me, 'I've got scratches all over my legs'.
"It definitely hadn't happened before. They looked a bit like cat scratches and were sore.
"My husband is a complete non-believer. He's still trying to come up with an explanation.
"The scratches do look like they've been done by something small, like little doll hand scratches.
"Holly keeps telling people that the creepy doll scratched her Dad's leg.
"I've had a nightmare about a doll dragging itself along the floor towards me."
The family believed that their smoke alarms kept going off because the entity attached to the doll was moving through the house and causing sudden changes in temperature, triggering the devices' heat sensors.
A psychic friend added to Debbie's alarm when she warned her, "that doll has something in it."
Refusing to be under the same roof as the old doll, the pal insisted Debbie get rid of it, so she put it in a box in the shed - but the freaky antics continued.
Debbie said: "When I brought the dolls through for my friend to take a look she said, 'get it out, it's got something in it.'
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"She refused to sleep in the same house as it, she was freaking out about it. I put it in the shed in a box, and placed things on top of it.
"Then the other day I had to go into the shed to get something, and when I looked in the box the necklace on the doll was completely off and the doll was in a different position, I'm sure.
"When I'd packed it away I'd made sure the necklace was wrapped around its neck about four times.
"I was quite scared of it to be honest. I just kept thinking 'how?' I didn't want to touch it and when I had to touch it I felt sick."
Eager to be rid of the phantom-ridden figurine, she listed it on eBay for £25 - but even that proved to be hard.
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She added: "I took some pictures of it because I wanted to put it on eBay, then I left it. I even struggled to upload the pictures to eBay, it was really strange, that had never happened before.
"I don't want to go back into the shed now. I won't touch it again, it can get picked up if it's bought, and if we need to post it my husband can package it up.
"Some people on social media have told me it has something in it, some said it doesn't.
"There could be something in the doll. I believe things can attach to items – that's why I have no old furniture in my house."
If it didn't sell, she planned to give it to a charity shop, which is good of her!
However, it later sold for £866 to a "paranormal enthusiast"... whose dad made the headlines when he woke up covered in similar small scratches.
