Paranormal investigators plan to return to Quesnel to continue investigating an antique doll that is purportedly haunted.
The Paranormal Road Trippers have been investigating all things paranormal with the latest equipment across British Columbia, Washington and Oregon.
Earlier this year, Mike M. and his girlfriend, Sandra, stopped in the Quesnel and District Museum and Archives to see Mandy the doll.
“Mandy is very well known in our community,” Mike, a self-described history buff, said. “There’s been a lot of stories on her, a lot of YouTube videos, and a lot of articles written on her.”
Mike first investigated Mereanda or Mandy for short in 2015.
One of the investigators, he said, went into a trance by staring at Mandy and got sick, having to run outside.
“Was it Mandy, or was it the food? We don’t know,” Mike said, laughing.
This year it was just Mike and Sandra who came up from the Lower Mainland to investigate Mandy once again.
In their video posted to YouTube, something appears to touch Sandra’s hair.
Sandra, according to Mike, does a few sessions-one in English and one in German.
“Right when she started her little session there, her hair got touched,” Mike said. “We were very taken aback by that. Of course, as paranormal researchers, we go into every investigation hoping we get some sort of contact.”
Read More: New paranormal podcast shares story of Quesnel’s Mandy doll
The infamous doll was donated to the Quesnel and District Museum and Archives in 1991.
In the video, museum and heritage manager Elizabeth Hunter says she understands Mandy belonged to a woman who had kept her in a trunk. The woman’s granddaughter, who had recently given birth to a daughter, found the doll while helping clean out her grandmother’s house and decided she did not want her daughter playing with it.
“The grandmother said bad things happened when I played with her (Mandy), so we put her away in a trunk,” Hunter said. “But I don’t know what bad things happened.”
At the museum, Mandy the doll has attracted attention across the globe and even travelled to New York to appear on the American talk show “The Montel Williams Show” in 1999.
With their paranormal detection equipment in place and rolling, Mike and Sandra asked Mandy sitting in a locked glass case, to give them a sign that she knows they’re there and touch or knock on the glass. Any other spirits were also invited to reveal themselves and chat with them.
“As we continued our investigation, we did not get any evidence,” Mike says in the video. “We used an array of audio recorders, proximity sensors, EMF (electromagnetic field) detectors and we even pulled out a spirit box—nothing.”
Read More: ‘We’re not busting ghosts’: Northern B.C. paranormal investigators check out bistro
Although the only evidence captured was when some sort of force moved Sandra’s hair, Mike concluded they will return to further investigate Mandy the doll in the future as they did not feel they were done with her.
Mike says The Paranormal Road Trippers are nonpartial and do not assume they will obtain evidence at every location.
“There’s another video we did of a haunted road in Abbotsford,” he said. “Sandra and I drove to this route, and we tried a lot of these experiments people told us to do, and we didn’t get anything, but that’s OK because it’s fun, and people like to see that. Same with the doll — a lot of people don’t have things happen, and we were lucky enough clearly, it appears her (Sandra) hair got moved.”
Mike and Sandra also completed paranormal investigations east of Quesnel in Barkerville, which Mike describes as one of B.C.’s spookiest locations rich in history and folklore, and one of his favourite places to investigate.
He encourages others to learn more about the past by visiting the Quesnel and District Museum and Archives.
“Also, don’t forget to say hi to Mandy.”
Do you have something to add to this story, or something else we should report on? Email: rebecca.dyok@quesnelobserver.com
Like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.