Ventriloquist Doll Becomes Animated At Night: Owner Still Keeping It Despite Haunting

Michael Diamond is a connoisseur of some of the rarest sideshow displays and apparatus in the UK. The alternative entertainer owns oddities such as the elephant-headed boy from Brading Waxwork Museum and several shrunken heads on display in the collector's "Freak Room."

But hidden away in the corner, covered in a blanket, is a display cabinet with heavy chains. It is the home of a haunted ventriloquist doll called Mr. Fritz, which, according to Diamond, was captured blinking and moving its mouth during a video recording.

The doll has struggled to find a home since 1945, but Diamond says that it's going to stay at his house, specifically the "Freak Room." The doll was given to him earlier by a former prisoner at a Nazi World War II camp, but it's no ordinary doll.

Similar to the infamous "Annabelle," Mr. Fritz starred in a disturbing GoPro video over two evenings on September 19 and 20. When Mr. Diamond saw the footage, he was shocked to see the doll's mouth and eyes moving, as if the cabinet opening by itself isn't scary enough.

Michael, 48, who is married to Sally, 46, and has two children, Amber, 19, and Caleb, 11, said that he "had a weird feeling in [his] stomach," when he watched the playback. He said that he wanted to set a camera in front of the doll because he noticed that the cabinet door "kept coming off its latch."

The oddities collector said that he was taken back by paranormal activity. However, he wouldn't admit that he's "scared of Mr. Fritz but," but said that he's "wary of it."

An American prisoner made the doll at Stalag II-B, a German World War II post in the town of Czarne in Poland. He believed that the owner used to be a ventriloquist before he was held captive by the Nazis.

After the war, Mr. Fritz traveled to America be and was owned by an antique shop in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. It eventually came to the UK when a local militaria collector gave it in July.

He said that his "wife and daughter both hate it," but insisted that he wants to "give it a permanent home." Diamond stated that he gets "emotionally attached to [his] collections." To stop it from ever happening again, Michael covered it in a blanket and chained the box up.