One of the Quesnel Museum's most-popular displays is a doll by the name of Mandy.
Leading into the darkness of the museum, to talk about the doll, Elizabeth Hunter, the city's museum and heritage manager said Mandy is less fragile than a doll make of porcelain, but as evidenced in Mandy's appearance, still fragile.
Hunter turned on the lights to the museum and very close to the entrance stopped at Mandy's display case which advises people against flash photography as it could further damage the famous doll.
"The doll was probably from the late 20s, early 1930s, made of composition which means sawdust and glue or some wood flour - sort of moulded and then coated and painted," Hunter explained about Mandy's origins.
Hunter said how Mandy ended up in the museum was because a grandmother had kept her in a trunk and when her granddaughter came and helped her clean, the grandmother gifted the doll to her for the child she just had.
"The granddaughter took a look at it and thought 'I don't want that around my baby' and donated it to the museum," Hunter said.
She explained Mandy arrived at the museum in 1991 and when cataloguing for the museum was done, they took photos on film and had to develop them in a dark room.
"She was left in the dark room and the person who was doing the cataloguing or developing of the film claimed that when they came back in it was sort of like a poltergeist. The pencil case was knocked off to the ground, things were all thrown around. So that was the first local Mandy story," Hunter said. Staff members at the time described it as though a child had a temper tantrum.
Another odd occurrence staff noticed was Mandy's stuffed lamb found on the ground, outside of her display case, which was locked.
Mandy's fame saw her travel to New York City to be on the Montell Williams Show where psychic Sylvia Brown said Mandy belonged to twins who died and their mother's grief was infused into the energy of the doll.
"That story we can't connect to the family who donated it," Hunter said but noted Mandy is a very old doll. "The grandmother who had it as a young girl probably got her secondhand, so she would have been in the second generation to have her. So perhaps there's the connection but I can't prove it."
While she hasn't had any personal spooky experiences with Mandy, Hunter has witnessed other people have strange reactions to her.
"We had a family who came in all hyped up about Mandy and the little girl passed out in front of her and when we called first aid, her blood pressure was so low that they took her to the hospital and kept her overnight for observation," Hunter said. "I have lots of psychic investigators who come and bring all their gizmos and little lights flash and they all tell me that she has remarkable energy."
But Hunter is skeptical about it. She wonders if the little girl was just so hyped about the haunted doll that she scared herself into passing out.
"Generations of kids in Quesnel have told stories about her. So she's a bit of a distraction when we do education programs because all they want to do is talk about Mandy," Hunter said of the legend of Mandy being spread far and wide in Quesnel. "You will get kids that are too petrified to tour the museum because they've heard all these stories about how Mandy escaped from her cage and flew through the air and caused blood to rain down on their house or blood will come out of her eyes or whatever."
Hunter explained that many of the "paranormal" events surrounding Mandy could be explained by the spooky doll, but emphasized that there's always another explanation.
She told a story about three siblings who saw Mandy as children. Two of them were excited while the third was terrified. After they grew up, the two siblings bought a Mandy magnet for the third sibling from the museum gift shop. After receiving the magnet, she threw it in her kitchen's junk drawer rather than on her fridge. Her house burnt down that same night, Hunter said.
"She thought it was because she disrespected Mandy," Hunter said, adding the cause of the fire was the upstairs neighbours not cleaning out the lint trap of their dryer.
Other stories about Mandy include her eyes following people as they walk by, difficulties relating to photography such as cameras not working when pointed at her and a myth the family who donated her heard crying from their attic before she was given to the museum.
Hunter explained that Mandy is one of the museum's biggest attractions. There used to be a billboard and advertisements which read "Quesnel Museum: home of Mandy" but Hunter jokes that it should be "Quesnel Museum: home of Mandy and so much more."
