Went through an abandoned house yesterday that looked completely ordinary from the outside. Most of the place was stripped bare except for a few cabinets, an old wooden chest, and layers of plaster that had fallen off the walls. I was expecting the usual empty rooms and water damage, then I walked through this doorway and saw this thing standing in front of the window.

At first I genuinely thought someone was in the room. It’s roughly human height, and because the window is directly behind it the silhouette reads like a person before you notice the head. Once I got closer it was obviously some kind of handmade puppet or mannequin. The face is carved or molded, with huge glassy eyes, a hinged-looking mouth, fake hair, and a ridiculously long neck. The body is basically fabric draped over a frame with bundles of cords and wires hanging from the arms.

The weirdest part was how carefully it seemed to have been placed. The rest of the house was trashed, but this was upright in the middle of the room with one arm raised and the other holding a mess of cables. It didn’t look like something that had simply been dumped there. There were also no other puppets, toys, theater props, or anything else that would explain why it was in the house.

I took this picture from the doorway because I really didn’t want to squeeze past it to inspect the cabinet behind it. Up close, the expression was somehow worse. The eyes point slightly differently from each other and the mouth is stuck in this half-smile, so depending on where you’re standing it looks either goofy or deeply unpleasant.

I have no idea what it was made for. My best guess is some homemade theater prop or parade figure, although dragging something this large into an otherwise empty abandoned house seems like a strange amount of effort. I left it exactly where it was.

Found this thing standing in the back room of an abandoned house