On the subject of people believing imaginary stuff, did you know that it is possible to buy "haunted dolls" on eBay?
I knew that people occasionally sold allegedly-haunted paintings or dolls or whatever on eBay. Big deal; people sell all sorts of goofy crap there, now and then.
But "haunted dolls" appear to be becoming a mainstream product, now. There are more than a hundred of the darn things on ebay.com right now. And a "Completed Items" search shows that this isn't just some nutty seller who never gets a sale. People buy these things quite routinely, for average prices around $US30. Occasional outliers, with unusually florid all-caps gibberish in their descriptions and unusually blurry product shots, sell for more than a hundred bucks a doll.
Given that the dolls probably come from thrift stores and so cost close to nothing (old dolls are cheaper, and they look creepier! It's a win-win!), this looks like a pretty neat business to be in.
To realise your $US25-plus of profit per item, you do apparently need to write at least a thousand words describing all the creepy stuff each doll is supposed to do. But I'm sure a certain amount of copy-and-paste will pass unnoticed by the extremely sophisticated customers for these items. And it's not as if anybody daft enough to buy one in the first place is likely to demand a refund on the grounds that the doll they received is insufficiently imbued with otherworldly energies.
This is a pretty new market, though. I'm sure there's some room to optimise the business.
How about haunted rocks?
I mean, they're millions of years old; just imagine how much more haunty-ness they've soaked up over all that time!
Get 'em while they last!
12 April 2008 at 11:01 pm
These auctions are a trove of fantastic quotes... For example this one contains these depressing musings:
"What is magic? Magic has a thing in itselfness. [...] Does anyone really know what magic is or how it works? No. It just works. It's like asking what is electricity?"
I could weep.
13 April 2008 at 2:09 am
Can I sell you a few cans of Body Thetan Repellant? Spray it under your arms once a day, after taking a shower!
Even total strangers avoided me until I tried it. So it MUST work!! Eliminate your bad ol' Thetans today!!!
(sigh- If it ain't ALL CAPS, it's exclamation marks that show the rantings of the loonie fringe)
13 April 2008 at 2:27 am
Ever see "Rozen Maiden"?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rozen_Maiden
13 April 2008 at 6:50 pm
I get a few too many people might have been reading Joe King's somewhat overrated "Heart Shaped Box"
14 April 2008 at 8:55 am
I for have a stone at least 2 billion years old that has some of the energy from an elder god impressed into it. I'm happy to part with it (and the lead lined box it goes in), but I have to warn you it has driven nearly all its owners insane! (I'm obviously one of the lucky ones, but no guarantees if you're silly enough to look in the box!)
15 April 2008 at 11:47 am
Every so often I see something that makes me weep. 'Sentry Spirit', 'Playful Spirit' and such. I am staggered to believe that people can go on to ebay and see pages of these dolls and not even think, for even a second, that they are being taken for a ride. It's like we have a surplus of belief. If only we could harness it and turn it into rotary motion then we can solve the energy problems of the world.
Unless the dolls have a switch on the back you can set to 'evil' before you ship them. That would be cool.
16 April 2008 at 4:12 am
You say haunted rocks like you've never heard of the idea... heck it's been on TV here in the States. I used to watch Ghost Hunters as a simultaneous exercise in annoyance and extreme comedy and as I recall they did an episode on the Stanley Hotel (supposedly the hotel that inspired "The Shining") where they stated that the "haunting" was probably due to the rock formations under the hotel holding the "energy" of past events. Oy. So, grab some rocks, put em on with a claim that they are from the area around the Stanley Hotel and Bob's yer uncle.
16 April 2008 at 4:14 am
The word 'eBay' was unintentionally omitted from the preceding post. Place it wherever you like. ;)
17 April 2008 at 7:19 pm
A friend of mine once bought one of those cheap little porcelain wall-hanger masks at a thrift shop, planning to sell it on eBay. He thought it was the most horrible thing he'd ever seen, so he listed it as a haunted mask and made up a fake-o spook story to pair it with.
The punchline, of course, is that another friend of mine bought it and we all shipped it off to the person he was just leaving on a vacation to go see. She placed it on his pillow. I'm told the screaming and cursing were quite entertaining. :-)