The Doll That Promised Never to Leave You

Before the movies and the glass case, there was her. In 1903 Vermont, a farmer’s wife sewed a rag doll for her daughter, Clara—button eyes, red yarn hair, blue calico. Neighbors said the doll never stayed where it was left. It stared from an upstairs window, appeared in the barn loft, even in a locked pantry. As Clara’s illness worsened, the house felt colder. Her mother swore the yarn hair looked darker and the button eyes caught the lamplight like wet stones. Clara whispered the doll talked to her at night and promised she would never be alone. She died before spring.

The family kept the doll—until the rocking chair was found empty and the doll was waiting on Clara’s grave at dawn, dress damp with dew. No one claimed it after that. It passed from house to house, then into a county museum’s locked trunk. The note pinned to ...