DALLAS (TNA) – As children, all of us had our favorite playthings: dolls, teddy bears, toy soldiers; the list goes on. But how many of us ever suspected that those same toys might have been haunted?

According to paranormal expert Gina Lanier, a surprising number of American toys have ghostly connections. Indeed, she estimates that no less than three percent of all teddy bears in the country may be haunted by spirits of the dead.

This allegedly haunted doll reportedly brings bad luck to its owners.

Lanier, who lives in New Orleans, is a lead investigator for the website HauntedAmericaTours.com and knows this firsthand.

“I have a teddy bear, one that the original owners don’t want back, who sits on a shelf in my house,” she said. “And no matter where I position him, I always find him later looking out of the window.”

She speculates that the child who owned him long ago used to like playing outside, and now that person’s energy is in the teddy  bear and making him want to be outside.

But Lanier’s teddy bear isn’t the only haunted toy in New Orleans. She says the Big Easy is a big place for other ghostly toys.

“A lady here in the city has a doll that she likes to dress up, but when she puts a certain hat on the doll, it always throws it off,” Lanier said. “For whatever reason, it doesn’t seem to like it. These are not like a poltergeist that comes in at random and picks a person.”

So far, Lanier hasn’t found any cases where the toys have been haunted by anything other than the original owner. Dolls are passed down from generation to generation, and so it’s the beat up ones with the chewed up noses and a lot of history that tend to be haunted. She says lots of times, but not always, there is a tragic event involved.

Without doubt, the most famous story of a ghostly toy is that of “Robert,” the haunted doll of Key West, Fla.

Robert was the lifelong companion of a local painter named Robert Eugene Otto, whose nanny had given him the doll as a child in 1896. Initially, all was normal and young Gene (as Otto was known) played blissfully and contentedly with his new friend.

Over time, however, the doll began to take on sly and even malevolent characteristics.

Objects would be found broken in the doll’s presence, the pitter-pattering of tiny feet could be heard around the family home, and there was even talk of the family finding Gene cowering in the corner of his bedroom while Robert the doll sat towering over him in a high chair with an evil stare in his eye.

Even in adulthood, Gene was never free of the demon doll. After inheriting the family home upon the death of his parents and marrying a local socialite, Gene continued to hold on to Robert, keeping him stored in the attic.

To her horror, Mrs. Otto would begin to hear Robert’s small doll feet walking around the house, and she even heard the sound of sinister singing emanating from the attic.

When Gene died in 1972, it was widely believed by the locals that Robert would die too. That was not the case, however.

After Gene passed away, the old house stood empty for some time. As a result the grounds of the large home quickly became a play area for the local children. That is, until the doll’s face was seen at the attic window peering menacingly down at them.

Finally, after the house was sold, the new owners donated Robert to the nearby East Martello Museum, where he still resides to this day. Not surprisingly, rumors that Robert restlessly wanders the museum by night continue to circulate.

Full-time author and investigator of the unknown Joshua P. Warren has crossed paths with haunted dolls, too. He even owns one – a cursed doll given to him by a friend.

The demonic doll is made of hard resin, has long stringy hair, and is hunched over like a witch. It also has one bright, prominent eye, while the other was squinted shut.

The doll was supposedly the cause of a lot of bad luck, such as financial problems, car accidents and ill health to its owners. Now it sits in Warren’s paranormal museum in Asheville, N.C., where it seems happy with its new digs.

“I haven’t had any problems with it; at least, not yet,” Warren said.

Kenneth Mayence, a writer and researcher of the paranormal, has also studied a wealth of incidents suggesting that specters are often attracted to children’s toys.

One case he investigated involved a haunted rocking horse that would rock on its own for no reason.

The horse had originally belonged to a little boy in another family who would constantly rock on it until one day, about five years ago, when the boy fell off and got jammed between the wall and the rocking horse.

Mayence says the boy broke his neck and died. The boy’s family gave the horse to another family and they called Mayence in when strange things began to occur.

“They told me how you could put the horse in the center of a room and nothing would happen,” Mayence said. “If you put it near to a wall, it would start rocking; slowly at first. But over an hour it would start rocking more furiously. This may be due to residual thoughts: The last dying thoughts of the boy were of rocking on the horse, so his spirit stayed associated with it.

“There was nothing malicious about the haunting, but it was enough to unnerve the family who asked me to investigate it.”

Mayence had another “X-Files”-type experience involving a young boy around 10 years old who liked to play with toy soldiers.

The kid suffered from leukemia and eventually was put into the hospital, and Mayence says his toys were brought in so that he could play with them.

“He ended up dying and the mother buried his favorite two toy soldiers with him,” Mayence said. “But they apparently came back and appeared several times to the mother: in her car, and on her nightstand. I would have to say that this was a case of the ghost of the child moving them.”

Electronic toys can also apparently attract the dead, says Mayence, who once investigated a case involving a guy who was a fanatic of the 1960s science fiction TV series “Lost in Space.”
“He owned an original, remote-controlled toy robot like the one in the show,” Mayence said. “After he died, his wife told me how the robot would suddenly turn itself on and move around the room. She would turn it off and it would turn itself back on again.”

This robotic haunting went on regularly for at least 10 months after he passed away, then began to decrease, and finally stopped after about two years.

“I have found that usually it’s a case of the toys being haunted by someone else, rather than the toys themselves actually being haunted,” Mayence said. “I suspect that after someone dies, it may be a strong memory, or a strong connection that they had with the toy, that survives and causes these effects to happen.”

Amateur ghost-hunter Bob Shaw offers a cautionary note to anyone who suspects they may be in possession of a haunted toy.

“Most haunted toys cause no harm other than spooking people by moving around, moving objects or making noises, but a few are without a doubt malevolent, like Robert [the haunted doll],” Shaw said. “If you have a haunted toy I’d suggest you get rid of it. Haunted toys might sound like fun and a bit of excitement, but sometimes they can be a nightmare.”

Wireless Flash News Service contributed to this story.