Sources
Pt 1
Pt 2
Transcript
What does a doll and a tombstone have in common? I suppose they’re both inanimate, man made objects and non sentient. Or are they?
This time, I’m bringing you another two-in-one episode. These topics were originally meant to be their own stand-alone episodes, but I just couldn’t find enough information for either one, and the various sources I went through were all pretty repetitive. So that’s that.
Join me as I yarn about two objects with unusual properties, Letta Me Out the Doll and the glowing cross of Lismore.
(Cue intro)
Just letting you know, that by the time you’re listening to this, I’ll be going on holidays for about a month. So instead of leaving you all hanging, I’ve prerecorded this episode and the two subsequent ones and they’ll be automatically published on schedule. Now that’s out of the way, let’s begin.
Okay, the first topic of this yarn is a doll called Letta Me Out, but we’ll call him Letta for short. Just like Annabelle and Robert, he’s within the realm of haunted dolls.
Letta was discovered in an abandoned house in Wagga Wagga, NSW, back in the early 70s. The house was rumoured to have been haunted, and that the creepy old man that used to live there was apparently a serial killer. The kids in the neighbourhood avoided the place like the plague. As a way to re-explore his childhood, a man named Kerry Walton and his brother were traversing the derelict property when he crouched down and went beneath the house and suddenly shone his light upon a strange male doll.
He has long brown hair and is wearing an old-fashioned green outfit and black leather loafers. The one thing that struck out to Kerry the most was the doll’s face. He had a rather menacing, unsettling sneer on his face and large dark eyes that pierced through your soul. In his own words, Kerry described the doll as making Chucky look like a Sunday school student.
Strangely enough, Kerry decided to put the doll in a bag and took it back to his home in Warwick, QLD, and named him Letta Me Out, after his brother pretended that that doll was saying, “Letta me out!” when they were driving back to Queensland. Lights coming from opposite travelling cars would create the illusion that the toy was moving around in the bag. Supposedly too, the doll also wanted to be let out of the dark, abandoned place he was found in. However, shortly after the doll became a resident of the home, strange happenings began to manifest. On the night he came home from his trip, Kerry couldn’t get a wink of sleep because he felt uncomfortable with the fact that the doll was in the room. So he got up, placed the doll the back in the bag and took it downstairs before going back to bed again.
One night, Kerry heard his children screaming and crying. When he tended to them and asked what’s wrong, his kids answered that the doll was moving and talking. But of course, kids are kids, and we all easily assume that their imagination got the better of them. Though, other people have apparently seen the doll move on its own and even change his facial expressions. Objects in the house would be moved around, and nobody living took responsibility for moving them. Dogs also didn’t take a liking to the doll, and they would growl at him and attempt to rip the doll to pieces. It’s also noted that there are heavy scuff marks on the bottom of Letta’s shoes, which appears to be caused by walking. Though, we could explain that away by assuming that the shoes were previously owned by a child who eventually grew out of them, but we don’t really know that, do we? That’s just a theory. But overall, Letta just gave off creepy and negative vibes. One time, a tradesman flat out refused to do work within the house because he was that spooked out by the antique plaything. When Letta was unveiled at an exhibition at a shopping centre, people actually screamed in terror upon seeing him. Others cried, while some got physically ill. In general, people couldn’t help but feel a sense of unease around the mysterious doll.
Later down the line when the family was in a bit of financial despair, Kerry did try to sell Letta to a local shopkeeper for 400 bucks; but on the day that he was to drop off the doll to his new owner, he claimed that some strange force took hold of him and he was hesitant to give Letta up. So he decided to keep him despite being short on funds, and he’s been with the Walton household to this day.
Letta and Kerry would on appear on TV every now and then, and they’d also make public appearances. During these appearances, you can also get your picture taken with Letta for a small fee. I guess he doesn’t bite.
Anyway, Kerry had the doll examined by scientists that work at the Australian Museum. They discovered that Letta is roughly about 200 years old, based on the nails were used to keep the shoes on the doll’s feet. They also found that he was likely created by nomadic Gypsies who wandered throughout Europe. While Letta was mostly made from wood, his hair was of human origin and his eyes were made of glass.
Psychic mediums who assessed Letta spoke of a rather sad story regarding him. Apparently, Letta is inhabited by a spirit of a young boy who died drowning. Another psychic sensed that the person who created the doll made him out of remembrance of the boy he tragically lost. Additionally, the maker was full of sadness, anger, and hatred, and that he apparently experienced discrimination throughout his life. Just a quick FYI, gypsies, actually known as Romani people, were and still are a marginalised group, and are unfairly seen as undesirables in Europe. So it doesn’t surprise me in the least that the maker felt resentment towards the society he was in. Anyway, moving on. Since psychics did claim all of this, we just have to take this information with a grain of salt. Another thing to note: on two separate occasions, during tapings for segments for current affair shows, lights have unexpectedly blown on set. Coincidence? Maybe.
It seems that Kerry and Letta are somewhat happy in each other’s company and the doll has his own little rocking chair he sits on in in the living room. Letta has his own Facebook page and an informative YouTube channel with archived footage if you wanna go have a follow. He also has merch as well. In a way, it seems like Letta has become one of Kerry’s own children and I guess he will be a part of the family for a very, very long time.
So that concludes the first part of the episode. No matter whether you believe in the paranormal or not, Letta is still a rather unsettling figure to look at regardless.
Sadly, when I was perusing through the Facebook page, I saw that Kerry’s wife, Evelyn, passed away in March. So, I give my deepest condolences to the Walton family. I hope Kerry and his family are doing okay during this sorrowful time.
Next, we go to Lismore, a city in Northeastern New South Wales. It’s here where the second mysterious object is located. As you expect, this is the aforementioned glowing tombstone.
You can find this tombstone in the North Lismore Pioneer cemetery. It marks the burial site of a railway worker named William Steenson, who in 1907 tragically died after attempting to stop a runaway train on the tracks. The gravestone itself is made from Balmoral red granite chiseled into a cross, with a Freemason symbol etched into the centre. This likely indicates that Steenson was a Freemason in his lifetime. The epitaph inscribed on the grave read:
Sacred to the memory of my
Dear Husband William Thomas Thurling Steenson, who died
At Lismore 30th September 1907;
from injuries accidentally received in execution
of his duty at Mullumbimby; aged 29 years
Though sorrow and darkness encompass the tomb,
Thy saviour has pass'd through its darkness before thee...
And the lamp of his Love.
Is thy guide through the gloom.
So, that’s where he laid in eternal, undisturbed peace for about eleven years. Then, 1918 rolled around.
It was during this year that the cross begun to shine. It emanated a bright white light so strong that it illuminated the surrounding graves. Because it was such an old cemetery, the North Lismore Pioneer Cemetery was forgotten about and became scungy and derelict, making the place look even more eerie. What was even eerier was the fact that one of the gravestones glowed amongst the overgrowth. This glowing grave was monikered The Ghost of the Hill. Visiting the site in the dead of night became a test of courage for kids. The challenge was to go up to Steenson’s glowing tombstone and read the inscription on the grave out loud. If you were around ten years old or so, would you have the balls to do it? Albert Dann couldn’t.
When Albert first moved to Lismore back in the day, the local kids took him to the cemetery and dared him to go up to the grave and read the name on it aloud. They’d reward him with a penny if he did it successfully. As he neared the said gravestone, it suddenly almost blinded him with a dazzling white light. Of course, this scared the crap out of him, and he ran the other way, with the kids taunting him that he couldn’t do it.
To others though, it was less of a creepy ghost tale and more of an instance of divine intervention. Was God behind all this? Don’t know. Or it could be that the light was a physical manifestation of Steenson’s heroic Freemason spirit. Maybe.
We flash forward now to 1978, when a lady told the newspaper, The Northern Star, about the time she visited the cemetery and saw the ghostly, glowing cross. After reading all about it, the public’s interest in the phenomenon spiked exponentially. Reporters from here and there went to Lismore to investigate this mysterious, glow-in-the-dark gravestone. The site also attracted curious people as well as geologists, stonemasons, and scientists. Almost everyone had a theory as to why the grave was glowing.
Some proposed that there were fossilised bioluminescent insects within the granite, but experts proved that false because of the certain composition of the rock, and the fact that it was the wrong type of environment that glow worms or such would thrive in. If the bugs were long dead, then they wouldn’t glow. Others theorised that the tombstone was impeccably polished, and simply reflected any light that shone nearby. However, that doesn’t explain why the cross glows even on moonless nights. Granite also doesn’t have any components that glow even under UV light.
In 1984, a photo of the grave was published, and you can have a look at that on the corresponding post on social media. It’s eerily glowing alright. Possibly, it could be caused by the camera’s flash, but as mentioned earlier, with or without a light source, the cross would glow anyway. And I’m not entirely sure if a camera’s flash could give that much light, unless the photographer used ten flashes at the same time. It is also noted that the base of the gravestone is made of the exact same granite that was cross was made of, yet it didn’t glow.
Two years later, in 1986, the cross vanished. Likely, someone probably hacked it off and took it, or maybe some other forces were at play. Eventually, Steenson’s grave got a replacement cross made with the same material. But unlike the original, this one was didn’t give off any light. Who knows what happened to the original. It’s also somewhat coincidental that the little epitaph on Steenson’s grave mentioned a ‘lamp’, which really denotes light.
To this day, nobody, not even experts, can come to a conclusion as to why the cross glowed. We also don’t know where it went to. I suppose, it’s another mystery that’ll remain unsolved.
So this concludes this rather short episode, made of two shorter episodes. Creepy dolls and glowing gravestones are two of many anomalies that we have here in Australia. Hopefully you enjoyed listening.
Like always, thanks for tuning in and listening to me ramble. Leave a rate and review, and feedback is always appreciated. If you don’t mind, share the episodes around and recommend the podcast to your family, friends, coworkers, and the the cop that stops you for a random breath test.
As always, I adore you and I’m forever grateful for you listening.
Remember to always look after yourselves. Lock your doors and draw your curtains closed, because it gets angry when you keep staring at it.
Alright! Ciao!
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