Is you just you just you know what?

You let it just come through you.

I am but a vessel.

I am but a vessel.

I am but a gesture here for your entertainment.

Welcome strangers, strangelings, and strange Selenius to Madam Strangeways, where I, Madam Strangeways, narrate your true strange stories of the unexplained.

And as always, solicited or not, usually not.

I share my strange observations, strange research, and strange history and folklore as I drag you down a slew of strange rabbit holes, kicking and screaming if needs must.

Today I've got one new true strange story for you.

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I feel a storm coming in.

I think it's about to rain Hellcats and hell hounds, so you know what that means.

On to our true strange story here on Madam Strangeways.

The Porcelain Frog by Rob I was raised a Jehovah's Witness, so at a very early age I knew who Satan and demons were.

I'm no longer one but attribute some of this story to my knowledge of them and I don't know how to word this but because I was such a young age maybe I was more accepting of them.

The mentality that a Christian would be attacked by them I guess or the brainwashing that it was a demon maybe.

My mom and I lived in a small town in Colorado in a trailer.

I was maybe 10 years old.

My room was at the very end and could see down the hall into the living room and kitchen.

I had a Teddy Ruxpin bear slash tape player and I would record TRL music countdown on Kiss FM onto a tape, then play the tape using the bear because the recorder's speaker was blown.

We were dirt poor so everything I had was from yard sales and thrift shops.

One day at a yard sale I found this frog porcelain ceramic maybe figure that you could put over the eraser of your pencil and took it home.

Everyone in school had troll dolls and wasn't allowed to have them, so I was excited for the frog.

After a few hours I went to my room to listen to music and play Zelda, and when I walked in, the Teddy Ruxpin started playing Alanis Morissette You Ought to Know on its own.

Her album was the first cassette or first music in general I ever bought, but there's no way I'd play that song because it said the F word in it and my mom would have taken it away.

So I quickly UN velcroed the vest to take the cassette out but it wasn't in the effing bear.

I thought it was so weird and was more scared my mom would hear it than it actually playing music.

I put my TRL cassette in and started playing it and then Nintendo.

That night I had what to this day I think was my first nightmare.

Maybe I had them prior but this one I still remember to this day.

It was of my idea of what Satan looked like.

Similar to Hades in the Disney Hercules movie, but instead of blue flames they were red and the face was a mix of Hades and the Shadow King in the Marvel show Legion.

He was driving a convertible car on a highway with no trees or mountains, but it didn't look like a desert at sunset.

Maniacally laughing.

I woke up and immediately woke my mom up and told her about the dream.

I wasn't the kind of kid to cry and sleep with my parents ever.

I liked my own space and to this day have no idea why.

I even told my mom I always kept the Teddy Ruxpin on my night stand because I'd listen to music falling asleep and when I woke up the bear was sitting in the hallway in between my room and my mom's with its back towards my door and bed.

As I could see down the hall with my door open.

She walked right past it when she came to my room then going back to bed she picked it up and brought it into my room and put it on my dresser.

The following day we had to go door to door preaching and my mom was for some reason telling the car group my nightmare and one of the women immediately asked if we had purchased anything and brought anything into the house and sure enough my frog was on the list.

When we got home the bear was sitting on the couch and not in my room.

I would have no reason to play music outside of my room and never took it out there.

I remember just walking in and staring at it for a good minute.

My mom immediately asked me for the frog and threw it away.

After the toy frog left the house.

I never had an issue with the bear playing music on its own or nightmares like that ever again.

I hid that Alana's cassette every time I was done listening to it, so I have no idea how it got in the bear, no idea how the Teddy Ruxpin moved on its own, but for some reason I was more scared of the dream.

Rob, thank you so much for allowing me to Share your story.

I don't know where to begin.

Do I begin with troll dolls?

Probably not.

Do I begin with the fact that you were more scared of your mom hearing hearing that first Alanis Morissette song that dropped an F bomb?

You seem to be more scared of that than almost anything else.

Do we start with Satan on a road trip?

And if you've seen OK, I'm not, it sounds like the nightmare was absolutely terrifying.

And I know what you mean.

Like you explain a dream, it's like it doesn't sound that scary when you actually explain it, but it was horrifying and you were filled with terror.

I fully understand exactly what you're saying and I experienced those as well.

However, what it kind of made me think of was in Scott Pilgrim, if you've seen her read Scott Pilgrim, how Ramona travels through Scott's brain because there's like a shortcut in there and she rollerblades through his brain and that's why he thinks about her.

Is that maybe that's what we're hearing.

Maybe that's why Satan was just taking a shortcut through your brain in a car.

Just, I'm just throwing it out there.

I, I just genuinely, there's so much going on in this short story, I don't even know where to begin.

But I think where I will begin is that Rob, I hope that as an adult you have bought yourself a troll doll or like a troll pencil Topper because you owe that to your inner child.

You wanted one as a kid.

And honestly, here's the thing.

I assume that Mama Rob specifically did not want the troll dolls in her home because they were she probably perceived them as evil or like dark sided would be.

I assume why she didn't want them in the house more so than the fact that the family was not well off financially.

I I I assume, but look at this.

If Mama Rob had just allowed a troll doll pencil Topper into the home, 1 little pencil Topper, how much can 1 pencil Topper cost?

Michael $10.

If she had just allowed one singular troll doll pencil Topper in her home, Rob would never have had to buy the the Porcelain Frog pencil Topper figurine.

OK, we could have avoided all of this except that this is irony, isn't it?

Like, Speaking of Alanis Morissette, that just happened, folks, this is this is what good radio is all about, is you.

Just you just you know what?

You let it just come through you.

I am but a vessel.

I am but a vessel.

I am but a jester here for your entertainment.

So I think that the the mother actually kind of accidentally causing this to occur, although she was attempting to avoid having anything dork sided in the house.

I assume that that is actually an example of dramatic irony.

And you know, I could look it up right now, but instead correct me Madam strangeways@gmail.com.

I know there's a whole bunch of different types of irony, and Alanis, I don't think captured a single one of them.

Was that the album?

OK, I don't know.

We're not.

Listen.

Focus, Madam, please.

Let's focus.

So you may be listening and being like, what are you talking about?

What is what are troll pencil toppers?

What is a Teddy Ruxpin here?

I will tell you, dear listener, dear listener, Troll dolls.

I think they're now a movie.

I assume that's the troll franchise.

That coincidence is too much.

But in the 80s and 90s there were these tiny little naked creatures, humanoid gnome like creatures.

They were not creatures.

They were figurines.

They were little toys and they were naked and they had a little tiny jewel on their belly button for some reason.

And they had a really tall head of fluffy, like neon colored hair and they all had different colors.

And it was like, what color is yours?

You're just like, oh, what color is your belly button jewel?

Why was it?

Why were why in, in hindsight, why, why was that so popular?

Is it like, does that coincide with the rise in belly button piercings?

Did which one came first, the chicken or the egg?

Were trolls with their bellybutton jewels popular prior?

Are they?

Are they why bellybutton piercings became so popular?

Or was it vice versa?

If you know, let me know.

I'm out of Strangeways at gmailcom.

I'd be interested anyway.

You could get a miniature version.

They were probably, I don't know, a few inches tall, the toy, not counting the hair.

The hair kind of looked like Vegeta from Dragon Ball Z.

If you could imagine that, that if you haven't seen a troll doll and you know who Vegeta is and you look up, Google it and then tell me how right I am, which is very.

So you could have just a normal toy or they had little miniature ones that you could stick on the top of your pencil, like on top of the eraser at school.

And it was very cool.

Like everybody had them.

Not everybody, obviously.

I think I had one, but I was not cool.

So I don't know how that happened that that's a fluke.

Anyway, I know I had like, oh, you know what?

I just had this memory.

I just unlocked this memory.

Rob just unlocked this memory for me.

I got a light blue.

It was like a the one I had was like a sky blue hair.

It was light blue and I was not normally like a blue person.

Actually, now that I'm thinking about it, I do weirdly occasionally tend towards like a a soft pass still blue, which is really like really off brand for me.

But I don't know, there's just something about it.

Anyway, that's the one that I had was like, I don't know what the pencil, it doesn't matter.

We're moving on.

Madam, please, Madam focus.

All right.

So you could get it as a little pencil Topper and it was just a toy in the 90s or the early 80s, one of those two.

Now Teddy Ruxpin, moving on to Teddy Ruxpin.

He was a toy, yeah.

In the late 80s where you put a cassette tape in his back, you had to like UN Velcro his vest and then to get to the thing in the back where you could put in a cassette tape.

I'm not getting into what is a cassette tape.

That's where I draw the line.

I, I'm 'cause this will be an hour episode and that's not what we're doing today.

So you put the cassette tape in there and then his eyes and his mouth would move as the cassette tape played.

Now, this was specifically made to be used with a cassette tape that had a story about Teddy Ruxpin in it, where it's Teddy Ruxpin's voice talking to you and so his mouth would move like he was talking to you.

That's the idea.

However, Rob, who was very resourceful and and very clever, clever little boy, he decided he's going to use that to listen to his Alanis Morissette tape, which I love it.

I love the ingenuity.

So that's Teddy Ruxpin.

If you Google Teddy Ruxpin, you're going to be like, oh, this just looks like a Five Nights at Freddy's baby.

And you would not be wrong.

But remember, this is not that far removed from actually probably happening at the exact same time as Showbiz Pizza, AKA Chuck E Cheese using the animatronic animals in their little band, which is what inspired Five Nights at Freddy's.

So clearly this is just sort of happening in the zeitgeist along with belly button piercings and belly jewels.

So there it is.

That's that's if you were wondering what the heck is going on in the story.

There's in a nutshell.

I don't know why that's the sound of a nutshell, but we're just going to move on.

So you know, as as you know well, as you may know, if you don't know me, Hello, welcome.

So glad to have you.

I'm Madam Strangeways, pleasure to meet you.

If you have not listened to the show before, I'm going to tell you this I2 things about me.

I will always try to remind you that you can feel afraid and not be in danger.

Like in this story, Rob was very, very afraid, but Rob was not actually in danger.

Rob felt afraid.

Rob was not in danger and it's OK you can you can feel afraid.

It's totally valid, but not every single time that you're afraid you're in danger and our brains, I'm not going to get into it, but it's a big thing that helped me.

It's helped me tremendously the last few years using that saying.

So I hope that it helps someone else.

I actually stole it from the book Complex PTSD, and if it resonates with you, you might want to give that book a read.

I didn't know I had see PTSD either until someone told me.

But the other thing about me, aside from wanting to remind you that you can feel afraid and not be in danger, is that I like to look at things two ways.

One, here's a paranormal or a folkloric explanation about what happened.

And two, here's a more naturalistic or a more mundane explanation of what could have happened.

And then you can decide for yourself, like which one do you think it is?

I think in terms of a paranormal lens that this is a really cut and dry haunted object.

I I mean, like it's, it's textbook haunted object.

You bring an object into your home.

You bought it at a yard sale.

Who knows what was going on in that family's house.

Maybe they were Satanists.

By the way, I that's not, I don't.

OK, again, if you don't know me, I don't believe that that with the Satanist thing.

That's the thing so many people blame everything on.

Oh, and I heard that and they were Satanists or like, Oh my God, did you hear there were Satanists that live in, that lived, used to live in that part of town and they sacrificed babies and they did XY and Z.

And OK, I don't think so.

I don't think so.

But for the sake of looking at it through a paranormal lens, that is something that you do typically hear.

So what was happening in that family?

Like where did they get the frog?

Was the frog perhaps imbued with witchcraft, With warlockcraftwhydontwehavethatwordwhyiswitchcraftawordandwarlockcraftisnotletmeknowmadamstrangewayis@gmail.com If you know why that's the case anyway.

Is it imbued a negative energy?

Did they curse it?

Was it cursed the little frog?

I mean, little frog figure?

I don't know, but it sounds like a very classic haunted object because as soon as the object left the house, all of a sudden Teddy Ruxman is no longer possessed.

I do find it interesting that all of the activity surrounded the Teddy Ruxman doll, who is objectively really scary to look at.

I mean, like even this is the thing about the 80s is all the stuff that was for kids in the 80s was terrifying.

I honestly think I'm saying that like I'm sure that was the case in the 70s sixties.

I know if you go and you look at retro hollow meet, wow, retro vintage Halloween masks, they were scary and they were supposed to be for kids and they're really scary and they weren't like scary like they were intended to be scary.

Like now you can go to Spirit Halloween and they've got this, you know, gore fest supposed to be horrifying mask that you could no, no, no, no, no.

It was supposed to be for kids.

It was not meant to be scary.

And that's kind of how the 80s was.

So Teddy Rexpin was kind of terrifying on his own.

He really didn't need help being possessed, but I do find it interesting that Teddy Ruxpin is who was possessed.

If I if I was in a society for psychical research, I would want to.

Of course, it's not possible now, but I would want to have examined the doll.

I would have wondered, well, when were the batteries last changed?

Like was like, were the batteries dying around the time that this happened?

And then coincidentally, the batteries got replaced like around the time that the frog left.

And and so it did appear that maybe the timing of the frog leaving the house was actually just coinciding with fresh batteries.

But I don't know how to explain Teddy Ruxpin making.

I don't know how to explain Teddy Ruxpin playing Alanis Morissette without the tape inside the bear, which that part got me like it was it was obviously this is creepy, but I just that genuinely made me laugh where he's like, so I quickly and Velcro the vest to take the cassette out, but it wasn't in the effing bear.

So I don't know how to explain that.

But otherwise, all of the Annabelle adjacent teleportation that Teddy Ruxpin was doing moving all around the house and at night, it's really scary, very scary.

I don't know how to explain it.

I don't know how to explain how that happened from a paranormal standpoint other than just possessed item, cursed item causing chaos.

Now, from a more mundane or naturalistic or like skeptical point of view, here's kind of what I'm thinking.

Is you're already in a very religious house where Satan is being mentioned and demons are being mentioned, which I happen to also know a little bit about.

And so it primes you right.

It's just like I've said before in a previous episode when I was talking about the Warrens and Lorraine Warren and of course, being a self-proclaimed and self-taught demonologist, and when you call yourself a demonologist, everything's a demon.

It's just like when you have a hammer, everything's a nail, right?

So when you're being taught and told about Satan and demons on a regular basis, which you clearly were, it does kind of prime you to see demons or unexplained, you know, demonic activity, quote UN quote, where someone else would not see that sort of stuff.

However, that does not account for the things that you experienced and the things that you saw, like the cassette tape, well, from the Teddy Ruxpin playing music that was not inside the bear.

Like that part still gets me.

And I think it makes complete sense.

Your nightmare I think makes total sense because you were seeing this stuff kind of happening and you didn't understand what it was, but you were like, it's probably satanic because of your upbringing.

So I think that I think having that dream, while it was terrifying, I think it makes complete sense.

And I, I would say from a mundane or naturalistic point of view, that the nightmare didn't have anything to do with the activity except that it was on your mind and that's where your subconscious went because you're being constantly inundated with, you know, religious messaging.

However, the most simple and straightforward explanation, mundane explanation of all of the unexplained paranormal activity would just be down to memory being highly fallible.

So I'm sure you've heard that eyewitnesses are actually super unreliable and that you really can't count on them in court because our memories are really bad at details.

Our memories rewrite themselves.

Every single time we access a memory, we are impacting it some way and it is overwriting the previous memory.

And so really, what memories can you trust?

That's the real scary story here.

But I've even looked into this specifically around children because I remember seeing a bunch of really scary, unexplained shit when I was a kid.

And what was that about?

Well, partly what it may be about is that developmental psychologists say that children under the age of 12 have difficulty understanding the difference between fantasy and reality.

And on its face, that sounds obvious, right?

Like, well, yeah, they're children, obviously.

But when it's you that has the memory and you were a child, and you know what you saw?

You know what you saw, you know it doesn't.

It doesn't feel like a good enough explanation, but the the facts are there that if you were below the age of 12 when you saw something really scary, that your brain was even less reliable then than it is now.

And it's pretty unreliable right now.

So to me, that brings me a lot of relief to know that that is just a common thing that kids have happened, that they see things and they they misremember them or they misattribute it to being something scary.

And then not only that, but there has been at least one study, I think definitely more, but there has been at least one study citing that people can accidentally take on a scene from a movie as a memory.

They think that something that they saw in a movie happened to them.

They think that because they saw this in a film, they don't remember where they saw it.

All they remember was what they felt.

They remembered feeling the experience and feeling the emotions and so their brain accidentally saves it as a memory and it didn't happen to them.

It was a scene in a film.

So I I think that there's definitely from a mundane stance, that there's definitely a case to be made for just misremembering, especially over time.

How many times have you thought about that memory?

How many times has it been rewritten?

I don't know.

Tell me, let me know, Is this reassuring to you like it is to me?

Let me know madamstrangeways@gmail.com and also let me know what do you think?

Do you think there's something mundane?

Do you think it was something paranormal?

And also, did you ever own a Teddy Ruxpin?

Did you have a scary experience with a Teddy Ruxpin or a troll doll?

If so, let me know madamstrangeways@gmail.com.

Thank you for joining me for more true strange stories of the unexplained, remember that you can feel afraid and not be in danger.

You're safe here with me, probably.

Please follow the podcast, leave a rating on Spotify or Apple, or tell your friends and foes about the show.

It would mean the world to me.

The underworld, obviously.

I mean, come on.

Was that not?

Was that not clear?

Madam Strangeways is produced and narrated by me.

Madam Strangeways thememusicisbymarina.ryan@marinamakes.co Cover art is by Andrea Chisel Rodon at Cult of Teddy on Instagram.

You can submit your own true strange story at madamstrangeways.com or e-mail it to madamstrangeways@gmail.com.

See you soon, she said ominously.