Name That Trauma:: David A. on a Giant Raggedy Anne Doll

Dear fine folks at Kindertrauma,

I'm hoping you can help me with a memory that has plagued me most of my adult life. Before I started elementary school in the very early eighties (had to be 1981 or 82) and became a slasher freak at far too young of an age (thanks to the advent of cable and my hesher older brother), one memory of freakiness remains lodged in noggin.

My beautiful Mom, like most homemakers, was a total die-hard soaps freak and because there was nothing else for me to do at the time, so was I. I remember being vaguely caught up in the various plots of Days of Our Lives, Another World and the Young and the Restless. On one of these or possibly another I am forgetting, there seemed to be some sort of inheritance scheme involving a young woman with questionable mental stability. Someone somewhere was trying to drive her crazy and it seemed to be to get at her fortune (or possibly her man…I was about 4 yrs old, after all). The way they were doing this was by dressing up in a giant Raggedy Ann costume and tormenting her when she was alone. I seem to remember creepy music box-type music and that the camera would get this sort of hazy/psychedelic/fish-eye lens effect to symbolize her broken mental state. It seemed to stem from some kind of childhood trauma having to do with Raggedy Ann which scared the lady (and me too!).

In any case, this always stuck out to me as a brief moment of horror creeping into Mom's soaps and I, for the life of me, have never been able to figure out what I saw or met anyone else that knows what I am talking about. Does this ring a bell with any of your readers? If so, do they know what soap or what the hell was going on? Or should I doubt my own mental state? In any case, if I start to see any giant Raggedy Ann dolls showing up around the house, I'll let you know…

UNK SEZ: Yikes, I think I found your trauma, David! Apparently the soap in question was ANOTHER WORLD circa 1982. If you check out the video below (around the 4:40 mark), you'll get a glimpse of the tormenting doll costume! From what I could gather, a character named Alma Rudder donned the garb to drive a lady named Blaine insane (At the beginning of THIS episode, Blaine discusses the nightmarish encounter with her shrink). Thanks for sharing this David, I can see why this freaked you out as a kid!