Free Speech: How I Haunted A Village

Connan Mockasin reveals how he put the wind up his neighbours…

“I was brought up in a small beach village and I haunted it ten years ago with my two brothers. This is how we haunted it. We invented an entity. It started as tape players hidden really well in the vineyard fields next door to our parents’ place. On the tapes, we recorded sparse bits of slowed-down, reversed voices and breathing etc. A few of the tapes were designed so we could interact with the entity to make it more realistic, for example, after some reversed Latin speech, there would be a few seconds of silence where I would ask “what does that mean?” Then the entity would speak back, “it means I want BLAKE!”. The entity got the name Dolly Dearest off a film. We made a costume for Dolly Dearest out of silk which had a hunch, hood and extended arms. When wearing the costume you had to always have your arms straight and hold the arm extension so that your hands became the elbow joints of Dolly Dearest. Before long we started getting loads of people of all ages coming to our parents house at night trying to spot ‘Dolly Dearest’! It was interesting how the story was evolved by the believers. We started hearing that Dolly Dearest was actually four different entities. One tall dark one, two medium-sized and one small one, a doll like figure with blond hair, which would have come from when I sprinkled some of my old hair around that I had kept from when I was a kid. Apparently the four entities were a family from a Maori tribe who burnt to death on 1836, exact date even, and they had come down from the hills in search of some help. Eventually, after nearly two years, the prank started to get out of hand and when the spiritualists church sent a letter to my parents wanting to do an exorcism on our property, Mum made us stop Dolly Dearest. The exorcism was done. Dolly Dearest is still yet to be unveiled to the people of Te Awanga village and I’m guessing it’s alright to tell this story to The Fly as there’s no way they would get copies there. I’ve also done another haunting using a tape machine and vacuum cleaner in Lewes (East Sussex). ‘Til next time though, ooowww!”