17 Creepy Dummies You’ll See Again In Your Nightmares

There’s something creepy about ventriloquist dummies. Maybe it’s the cold, dead eyes, or perhaps it’s the rigid, mechanical mouth. Maybe it’s just a perfect storm of separately, off-putting elements combined? In any case, they certainly don’t get any better with age. In fact, the further back in time you go, the more you realize children of the past must have had iron constitutions. How else could these demon puppets “entertain” kids without making them go completely catatonic out of fear? You could say the same about old-timey clowns, but that’s a list for another day.

So, in case you’ve ever wanted to say ‘My God, what is that thing?‘ seventeen times in a row, we present our list of the creepiest ventriloquist dummies of all time.

Mother’s Boy

We’re starting you off easy. Think this one is creepy? Trust us, it gets worse. It’s not too late to read one of our other lists.

​Eye See You

Told you it got worse. We apologize for the eye pun, by the way. We know it doesn’t get any cornea than that. Okay, now we’re really sorry.

Big Head Billy

There’s no way that thing was ever intended to look cute, right? Apparently, people in the past had a higher tolerance for nightmare-inducing ugliness. At least the gentleman operating it is handsome. Or is he just good looking by comparison?

The Living Cabbage Patch Kid

Kids around the world pretend their Cabbage Patch dolls are alive. We’re glad they aren’t, because they’d probably grow up to look something like this.

Don’t Lose Your Head

This is what happens when dummies behave badly. The fact that they look completely terrified makes this image so much worse.

Rough Customer

This dummy looks like he’d sell you a counterfeit watch in some grimy back alley. Adding to the creepiness: real hair.

​The Professor

Learning was fun, until this guy showed up. Now, learning is scary.

​Mrs. Fear

This one is bad, but we’ve all had at least one schoolteacher who looked a bit like this.

​Late Night with Conan O’God It’s Looking At Me!

We aren’t sure if they meant to make this dummy look like a weirdly off-putting, child-sized version of Conan O’Brien, but that’s exactly what they ended up with.

​Please, Make it Stop

Wait, is this a ventriloquist dummy, or an android child soldier sent from the future on a mission to wipe out humanity? Either way, it’s terrifying.

Pssst!

Who’s in control here? The ventriloquist, or the dummy? Our heads say ventriloquist, but deep down in the pit of our stomachs, in a place repressed by years of rocking back and forth while chanting ‘There’s no such thing! There’s no such thing!’, we just know it’s the dummy.

​Peekaboo

Parenting 101: Never trust a dummy with your baby. Unless, of course, that baby looks like…

​This

This dummy is too creepy — from its eyes, to the eyelashes, to that gaping mouth, we’d never want anything like this near us.

Amen!

America is a weird place. Where else could you find Evangelical gospel albums with a ventriloquist and her dummy getting creepy together on the cover?

The First Avenger

Remember this dummy from The Avengers? If the answer is no, you probably weren’t a kid in the 1960’s, when the British spy-fi television series of that name was all the rage. This freakish puppet was featured in the episode How to Succeed…. at Murder.

Caesar

Another famous dummy you might recognize, this one was the star of two Twilight Zone episodes, The Dummy and Caesar and Me. In both episodes, he moves and speaks independently of his puppeteer.

The Gang Is All Here

We aren’t sure what this guy’s act was all about, but something tells us it was freaky.