“Think of it like living with a roommate who doesn’t always use the same dimension.” – Unknown
Those who know say the doll chooses you. I have to agree, if only for the learning curve. I’ve had my own haunted doll experience and definitely wanted to book an interview when I got a note about this haunted dolls book.
Haunted dolls are very much a real phenomenon. Some people actively seek them out. Others step in out of curiosity… and later realize they’re in a step far deeper than expected. There’s even a niche market of buyers and ethical resellers for objects that refuse to stay quiet.
Interested? Fiona references the Supernatural Sisters in her book.
Fiona Dodwell, is a freelance writer and author whose lifelong passion is the paranormal. While researching her book, A Cursed Collection of Haunted Dolls, she made the informed decision to accept a haunted doll into her life. That doll, known as Knock Knock Harry, wasted no time making himself known. He’s active, expressive, and now becoming a central figure in the second book Fiona is writing.
The Entertainer
Harry has a reputation for showmanship. He’s disrupted interviews, inserted himself into recordings (EVP), and even caused a technical surprise in my own studio. Fiona has publicly documented similar interruptions during podcast appearances, so this isn’t an isolated incident.
“Did my haunted clown, Knock Knock Harry, interrupt our previous podcast recording? Fear not, I’ll be back on Jim Harold’s show in the new year.”
She posted this alongside a clip: Link, of Dar and Jim Harold discussing the interruption on their Paranormal Report channel, a public, third-party confirmation that Harry doesn’t limit his performances to one platform.
After our interview, I was left with a powerful surge of positive energy, and a completely scrambled audio setup that I didn’t find until the next morning – when it took an hour to trouble shoot and fix during the middle of my air shift! So yes… Harry showed up.
And you’re about to meet the woman who knows him best. Wendy’s Coffeehouse Interview link, Fiona (and Harry).
Insight on Harry – My Read
My personal read on Harry, based on how he presented during our interview, is that he is a born entertainer. A showman. At one point, I received the impression of a playful self-comparison: Harry… like Houdini, a magician, a performer, he said, “someone who can “pull a rabbit out of a hat.” That impression is mine alone; only Fiona would know whether it truly fits his self-identity.
That symbolic “rabbit in the hat” moment came with a strong visual, from Harry, of a cat and a film, which circles back to a perfect cultural parallel. He gave me the classic 1958 film Bell, Book, and Candle, where a witch’s familiar, a cat named Pyewacket, plays a pivotal role. At the very end of the movie, the streetlights suddenly shut off, and the culprit is revealed to be Pyewacket sitting atop a streetlamp. A reveal: the cat has supernatural abilities too.
That moment is a perfect nod to the electrical connections that surround both Fiona’s experiences with Harry and my own long-standing nightlight phenomenon. It’s a symbolic wink across time and story.
The Nature of Harry’s Energy
Harry embodies a classic trickster energy, but with rules. He mirrors what he receives. He respects people who respect him. When acknowledged with sincerity, he responds with flair. He is the life of the party, not to be underestimated, and frankly requires full diva status. Dominant presence. Magnetic personality. Education through entertainment.
Harry offers clues about his self-styled persona through the language and references he chooses. By calling Fiona his “stenographer,” he signals a distinctly old-school, early-to-mid-20th-century sensibility, an era of radio voices, stage performance, and charismatic showmen.
Reference to the 1958 film Bell, Book, and Candle further reinforces that identity: playful urban mysticism, familiars interacting with electricity, glamour mixed with mischief, and magic presented as performance rather than menace. Together, these cues paint Harry as a mid-century trickster-entertainer, media-aware, theatrical, stylish, and intentional in how he makes an entrance.
The Magician, the Misdirection, and the Real Lesson
When Harry identifies with the archetype of the Magician, I interpret that not as illusion for illusion’s sake, but as sleight of hand through consciousness, intentional misdirection that reveals a deeper truth. A magician knows where you’re looking… and just as importantly, where you’re not.
The true misdirection with haunted dolls is assuming the doll itself is the source, but it isn’t. The energy that animates, accompanies, or expresses through the object isn’t stuck. It can travel. It appears, withdraws, and operates independently of the physical vessel that seems to house it. And that is the deeper lesson.
The doll is a symbol, a prop, a focus point for human perception. And that’s precisely why haunted dolls are so intriguing. They challenge the materialist worldview at its foundation. If influence, interaction, and intelligence can occur without being physically tethered to an object, then the rules of classical physics no longer fully apply.
We’re no longer dealing strictly with matter, we’re dealing with agency without mass, intention without form, and movement without boundaries. That’s the magician’s real trick, showing you that what you thought was impossible was simply based on incomplete assumptions.
The Lesson from Harry
“Knock, knock.”
“Who’s there?”
“Clueless. …And you?”
He gives it all away in the name. A knock-knock joke, the oldest form of invitation and misdirection. A magician’s name, the archetype of sleight of hand, illusion, and reveal. It’s all encoded right there. The knock is the interruption. The door is perception.
The joke is on the one who thinks the object is the source. The lesson is about where attention goes, and how easily it can be guided, redirected, distracted by the prop while the actual movement happens somewhere else entirely.
“Clueless” is the starting position. We begin at the door thinking the trick is in the knock when the magician is already elsewhere in the room. That’s his game. And it’s a very old one.
The Kicker – my 60 sec. audio script
The Lesson from Harry
The lesson Harry seems to enjoy delivering is wrapped in the oldest joke in the world:
“Knock, knock.”
“Who’s there?”
“Clueless.” …And you?
A knock-knock joke is an invitation. A magician’s name is misdirection. Together, they point to the same truth: what you think is the source… usually isn’t.
The doll is the prop. The knock is the distraction. The movement happens somewhere else entirely. That’s the magician’s art, guiding attention just long enough for perception to trip over its own assumptions. Harry reminds us why haunted dolls are so compelling. They challenge the idea that consciousness must be anchored to matter… that intelligence must live inside a thing.
If it can travel. If it can appear, withdraw, interrupt, and illuminate? Then the rules are different than we were taught. And maybe that’s the real joke. Not that the world is strange. But that we ever believed it wasn’t.
The Takeaway
Harry, as he presents himself, carries a trickster-performer energy, more Houdini than horror. A born entertainer. And, for the record, he is very clear on one point: he is not a ghost.
Follow Fiona and Knock Knock Harry on Instagram. Link
Conscious Living & Wendy's Coffeehouse 