Mandy, 'supernatural' doll at Quesnel Museum, gets QR code to share ghostly stories
The Quesnel Museum is using QR codes to connect visitors with audio and video about its exhibits
Mandy, a reputedly haunted doll at Quesnel & District Museum, has creepily captivated tourists for years — and now a new digital project will bring spooked visitors even closer to the ghostly stories of the doll's mysterious past.
The B.C. museum is adding QR codes to 50 of its exhibits, including 100-year-old Mandy, which visitors can scan with their smart phone or tablet to access audio and video for a new take on familiar - or ghoulish - exhibits.
"We have to keep up with the times even though we like to be in the past," Honey Affleck, chair of the museum's commission, told Daybreak North's Russell Bowers.
When visitors scan Mandy's QR code, they can find out more about the doll, which was donated to the museum in 1991 by Lisa Sorensen — a woman who didn't want her daughter playing with the doll.
'Baby crying in basement'
The museum's website shares theories of Mandy's "supernatural" link: "The donor of Mandy told the museum that she would wake up in the night and hear a baby crying from the basement.
"Upon investigation, she would find a curtain blowing in the breeze from an open window. She told us later that after the doll was given to the museum, she no longer heard a baby crying."
Mandy is now rumoured to follow museum visitors with her eyes, and Affleck said the cleaning staff make a habit of cleaning her area first.
"She's in a locked cabinet, completely enclosed, but she still has a way of making her presence known," said Affleck.
"You try to videotape her and your video camera light will go off and on, and we have had people who have said that in May 2000 the lamb that always sits on Mandy's lap wound up underneath her display case."
The museum is also working to bring visitors new artifacts — it's currently in the process of restoring the wooden wheel of the Cornish water wheel boat from the city's past.
To hear the full interview with Honey Affleck, click the audio labelled: Quesnel Museum keeps history up to date.