The Portlanders Who Remove Unwanted Creepy Toys And Find Them New Homes

A new online business called Unsettling Toys has figured out how to aid horror fans and scaredy cats, alike. 

By Heather Kroeker

“Eeny, meeny, miny, moe, which one of you is haunted though?” (Unsettling Toys)

If horror movies have taught us anything, it’s that we should probably stay far, far away from creepy toys.

From Chucky, the possessed, knife-wielding “Good Guys” doll from the Child’s Play franchise, to the eerie and unholy night-terror that is Annabelle from The Conjuring films, warped playthings have long been used as a vehicle for scaring the shit out of people. 

Perhaps the idea of something that’s supposed to comfort us, especially in our childhood years, turning out to be far more sinister than what we thought is the thing that excites — and scares — us most about the prospect of owning creepy toys. 

Or perhaps it all comes down to morbid curiosity. After all, the most alarming thing about Chucky and Annabelle is that they were both inspired by true stories, making the likelihood of purchasing an evil gift for your kid seem even more real.   

As toys age, they tend to look exponentially more “haunted,” especially if they’ve been well-used or mishandled. Facial cracks, dirt marks, or chipped off body parts can reinforce their paranormal patinas even more. Come across one, and the bulk of us are likely to chuck it, burn it, or take some other extraordinary measures to remove it from our lives. 

But not everyone feels this way. Some people actually like being spooked by inanimate objects. 

Unsettling Toys, a new business based out of Portland, Oregon, is well aware of this. One of the main reasons they exist is to make it easier for fright lovers to “adopt” nightmares of their own. 

Brian Jillson and Sara Derrickson don’t get spooked by creepy toys which is why they try to help those who do. (Unsettling Toys)

But that’s only part of the story.

Brian Jillson and Sara Derrickson — the two-person team that launched Unsettling Toys in March 2019 — are also motivated by a desire to help those who don’t love being scared from having paranormal experiences of their own. They do this by visiting people’s homes and removing their unwanted, creepy toys. Via social media and their online store, they then post photos of the rescued toys in the hopes of finding them willing new owners. 

As lifelong horror movie buffs and collectors of freaky items, the couple has been gifted their fair share of sinister knick-knacks from friends and family over the years. But though they find such oddities amusing, they know not everyone feels the same way, which is how the idea to start Unsettling Toys came about.

“We thought to ourselves, ‘Huh, we should really make a company to take these toys from the people who don’t like them and give them to all the people who really love that sort of stuff,’” Derrickson told OK Whatever.

Despite the epiphany, the two sat on the idea for a while, continuing to grow their collection of bizarre items. It wasn’t until the beginning of 2019 when Derrickson, who works as a school psychologist, and Jillson, who is a bartender, decided to finally launch their haunted toy side business.

In their first six months, they found new homes for 18 toys with 13 different families. 

“We were surprised at how many people are really drawn to creepy objects and want them in their houses,” Derrickson said. 

The rescued items for sale on Unsettling Toys’ website are a far cry from the adorable dolls and cuddly plushies you would normally see at toy stores. Their ever-changing gallery of “unsettlingly available” tchotchkes often features Victorian dolls wearing frocks of lace, plastic babies with impish faces, sad-looking clowns, and hard-to-identify stuffed animals. 

The business doesn’t post individual prices for their creepy toys online, but most cost between $25 to $40 and include free shipping.

Each purchase also comes with a “certificate of adoption and placement” that wishes the adoptees many adventures with their new creepy toy — and guarantees the company will take it back, free of charge, “if the toy turns out to be super awful.” 

Because no adoption — be it of a creepy toy or new dog — is official without a certificate. (Unsettling Toys)

Through their new business, Jillson and Derrickson are also giving second chances to toys that would otherwise be discarded in landfills or lost in antique stores. 

Most of the wares sold by Unsettling Toys come from people who’ve explicitly contacted them to remove the unwanted items from their homes themselves. If they live nearby, Jillson and Derrickson usually remove the toys free of charge. And, with every removal, they also promise to return and retrieve it again if it “ends up coming back on its own volition.”

The shortest adoption turnover Unsettling Toys has had so far was around one week. They’ve noticed that dolls that are antique, porcelain, or noticeably flawed sell the fastest. 

“Some of them get snatched right up,” Derrickson said. 

Though not all. Some, like Winston, a tattered stuffed lion, have been with them since they started.

The toy’s former owner, who received the lion as a house-warming gift, started experiencing nightmares about it within a month. In one, the man dreamt that Winston was upholstered with cat fur, while in another, he was convinced that it was actually human skin. After his third nightmare, in which he dreamt that the creepy toy was melting, the man reached out to Unsettling Toys to find Winston a new home.

Another longtime resident on Unsettling Toys’ digital shelves is a doll named Blue Baby. With cracked porcelain skin, stained blue clothes, and matted brown hair, Derrickson, Jillson, and their two kids found the toy so terrifying that they kept it locked in their basement for years after receiving it. 

Winston the lion seems to be upholstered in skin, not fur. (Unsettling Toys)

“He has a very heavy head and a very strangely weighted body,” Derrickson said. “If you move him, his head flops violently from side to side. His eyes are stuck in the closed position, with one just barely cracked open. His fingers and toes are missing on the tips. His skin is all crackled and he’s just a very unsettling toy — mostly to see and especially to handle. My kids want nothing to do with him.”

Before Blue Baby became a member of the Unsettling Toys foster home, he was owned by a woman who purchased him at an antiques sale with the intention of  restoring him. Among other things, one of the first issues she noticed about him was that his moveable eyelids were permanently closed.

Upon bringing Blue Baby home, the woman began to startle frequently, often seeing things move out of the corners of her eyes. She decided to relocate the doll to a different room in the house, which helped quell her unease for a time. 

One day, she heard Blue Baby fall spontaneously off a shelf in her office despite no one else around. When she picked him up, she discovered that one of his eyes was now open. That was the tipping point for her and she got in touch with Unsettling Toys soon after.

Unlike the couple’s donors, who want nothing to do with the seemingly haunted toys being removed from their homes, their online customers have a fascination with the supernatural and otherworldly.

It’s not uncommon for interested buyers to contact the business directly with questions about the creepy toy’s backstory or the reasons why the previous owner put it up for adoption.  

Clients have even sent pictures of their own toy collections to the couple, requesting that they show it to the toy they’re interested in adopting to see if it wants to join their creepy clan.

A few days after our interview, I received an email from Derrickson with the news that Blue Baby had found himself a loving adoptee.

Blue Baby has reportedly tried smothering his owner with a pillow. (Unsettling Toys)

“When Brian and I learned that [the owner] was going to adopt Blue Baby, we were excited,” she wrote. “She says that she feels comfortable with dolls and objects that are unsettling to others, so she may be a perfect fit for Blue Baby.”

And it seems she is. 

In a review left on the Unsettling Toys Facebook page, Blue Baby’s new owner — a woman named ZuZu Halloway — explained that she decided to adopt the haunted toy after he began appearing in her dreams. 

“Believe it or not, he chose me,” she wrote.  “He sent me dreams of him, and I couldn’t stop thinking about him.”

Now named Zachary, it seems the doll formerly known as Blue Baby has also wasted no time in scaring the shit out of his new owner. He plagues her with nightmares, moves freely about the house, and has attempted to suffocate her with a pillow at least once. 

As for Halloway, she couldn’t be more pleased. 

“If you’re looking for someone strange or different, this is the place to find it!” she wrote near the end of her review. “[Unsettling Toys] really paired me up with the child of my nightmares!”

Your eyes are hungry. Feed them with words.