MANNEQUINS IN HORROR CULTURE

Mannequins are one of those things that are somewhat necessary even though they are undeniably scary. And as if they weren’t creepy enough on their own, now you have to deal with moving mannequins – or cyberquins as they’re called – that can run, walk, cycle, and generally motion like human beings. Be warned, the following set is not for the faint of heart.  The creepiest of all creepy mannequins are of course the ones that look like children. Why else would there be dozens of horror flicks with deranged ventriloquist’s dummies, deranged dolls, and maniacal mannequins? We can in part thank Don Mancini and his cult-favorite Child’s Play series for making us perpetually look over our shoulders for children of the devil.

Though many have tried to explain our irrational and inexplicable fear of mannequins, there is no concrete explanation thus far. Some, like the psychologist Ernst Jentsch, attribute this pediophobia to the uncertainty we feel about an object being animate or inanimate when the object resembles a living thing so closely that it can cause confusion about its nature.