Inside Maryborough’s haunted doll museum | VIDEO, PHOTOS
A pub-turned-museum with a chilling history may just be the creepiest thing you can do.
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Entering Maryborough’s Haunted Doll Museum, one immediately feels the blank stares of thousands of eyes.
Even before walking into what was once the Engineers Arms Hotel, built in the 1800s, there are plenty of hints as to what lurks behind the historic walls.
Parked outside is a hearse with a coffin full of dolls, a sight that sends a chill down the spine.
The balcony on the upper level of the hotel has become a gathering for hundreds of dolls, all watching and waiting.
Their owner (and in some cases, creator) is Slovakian native Silvia Heszterenyiova Sullivan.
She’s amassed 27,000 dolls, though 15,000 are still in storage.
Her collection includes those that are more than a century old, many she has made herself and replicas of some the world’s most famously terrifying dolls.
Silvia moved to Australia with her two daughters 15 years ago.
Many years ago, her daughters bought her a lifelike Reborn Doll, which is the favourite in her enormous collection.
From there, she was inspired to buy moulds and create her own lifelike dolls.
But soon, Silvia’s love of the macabre kicked in and it wasn’t long before some of her dolls began to take on haunted appearances, whether it was the milky eyes of a zombie or the ruby red lips of a baby that appeared to have been drinking blood.
The collection is on display at the hotel in Maryborough, at the corner of March and Kent Streets.
As a devoted lover of horror movies, I wasn’t expecting to be unnerved by the museum.
I’d forgotten just how creepy dolls can be.
As I waited for Silvia to change into one of her costumes, I walked around and took in the various dolls, which included an eerie Siamese twin doll and, worst of all, ventriloquism dolls, which I’ve always felt spooked by.
I’d be lying if I didn’t say that, wandering the exhibits alone, there weren’t times when I wanted to flee.
Thankfully when Silvia appeared, dressed in a regal black Victorian-style dress, I could relax and appreciate the stories behind the dolls in her collection.
On our guided tour she explains she was working in aged care 10 years ago when she started to make therapy dolls for patients with dementia.
“Because I like the paranormal, I started to make reborn dolls, I also made vampire, zombies or ghost babies,” she says.
Eventually her dolls took over the house and garage and people suggested she should create a display to share with the public.
Five years later, Silvia opened a doll museum in New South Wales.
It was during a visit to Hervey Bay that she drove past the Engineers Arms Hotel and fell in love with its unusual shape and aesthetic.
In 2023, she moved to Maryborough.
Now, Silvia lives in the apartment above the museum, over her vast collection.
Last year she opened her doors for Halloween, not expecting much interest.
However, more than 1000 people turned up.
To supplement her quirky income, Silvia works as a security guard at various businesses and venues across the Fraser Coast.
But on her days off, she shows people through the museum.
On Thursdays, dressed in Victorian garb and looking every bit the owner of a haunted doll museum, Silvia goes to the Maryborough Markets, telling people of her business, and many are enticed to go see the collection for themselves.
Replicas of some of the world’s most famous haunted dolls are on display there.
One of the most popular is the Robert doll, modelled after the one exhibited at the East Martello Museum in Key West, Florida.
The original creation, Robert the Doll, which wears a sailor suit, was once owned by eccentric artist Robert Eugene Otto.
The doll was reportedly manufactured by the Steiff Company of Germany, purchased by Otto’s grandfather while on a trip to the country in 1904, and given to Otto as a birthday gift.
According to legend, the doll has supernatural abilities allowing it to move and change its facial features and has caused car crashes, broken bones, job losses, divorce and other misfortunes.
Staring at the replica in a display cabinet, it's impossible not to feel unnerved, especially when reading a description of the misfortunes the real doll had allegedly caused throughout the years.
Visitors are warned to ask Robert’s permission before snapping a photo, which I regrettably forgot to do.
Looking again at the case, I could see the letters written by adults and children asking the doll permission to take its photo.
Also among the collection is a replica of the Annabelle doll, the Raggedy Ann made famous by the Conjuring films, which tell the stories of paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren.
The doll, which was owned by a student nurse, was moved into their Occult Museum in Monroe, Connecticut, in the 1970s after it exhibited “malicious and frightening behaviour”, according to its Wikipedia page.
In the Conjuring movies, the doll is depicted as a porcelain doll with much more menacing features.
A version of this doll is also on display at the museum, along with a doll inspired by The Nun, another terrifying figure from the movie series.
In one corner there is a doll version of the possessed Regan from The Exorcist.
But it is a doll Silvia made herself that she believes is the most haunted in the museum.
It is a replica of Chucky, the terrifying doll made famous by the Child’s Play movie released in 1988.
Silvia had been working on the doll, spending months creating it, but at the end felt the doll looked “fake, and so dolly-looking”.
“So, one day, actually it was the evening, I started to pull out her hair,” she explains.
“I thought it would be better to change her to look like Chucky.
“So I changed this beautiful girl to look like Chucky and then I added scars, because still I wasn’t happy with him.
“I think now he’s much better looking than the other girl.”
Silvia says her Chucky doll has been known to move inside his glass display cabinet.
“There’s definitely something going on with him, because he’s always sitting in a different position.”
It’s worth noting at this point that the Engineers Arms Hotel itself has a reputation as one of the spookiest places in a city full of haunted homes and venues.
It stands alongside Mavis Bank, the Criterion Hotel, City Hall and Baddow House as being among the region’s most eerie places.
Silvia tells the chilling story of the family who lived in the hotel when it first opened, each of whom died an early death.
The hotel was built in 1870 for Thomas Dillane and his wife Ann.
Legend has it, the hotel is haunted by ghosts of the Dillane family, who all suffered tragic deaths, some in the rooms of the hotel.
The couple had four children, three sons and a daughter.
They lost their son, Thomas David, at the age of eight months after complications caused by teething.
Then the family patriarch Thomas died of consumption at the age of 45 in September 1877.
Ann struggled to continue raising her family and again faced tragedy when her eldest son Patrick died when his heart stopped aged 17.
Packing her bags, Ann returned her family to Dublin, Ireland, for a new life, but tragically her daughter Margaret died within a month of their arrival.
Ann and her remaining son, Michael, returned to Maryborough and took back the hotel in 1891.
But in 1893, Maryborough suffered its worst flood in history when the Mary River rose more than 12m, and the water engulfed the hotel where they later found Ann’s body.
Only Michael was left, and he died a year later at the age of 22 from kidney disease.
Silvia says she’s never sensed a bad or evil spirit at the hotel but does sense spirits around her.
She has been told that the hotel has a “full house” of ghosts and spirits having fun and laughing, and they are enjoying the museum.
Since moving in, Sylvia says she has heard the sounds of children running upstairs in the hotel.
She has even spoken to them in her head, she says, telling them they can look at and touch her dolls, but asking them not to break them.
She also says her security cameras have captured movements at 2am or 3am, and sometimes they’ve been mysteriously turned off.
In a smaller room of the museum are more of the Reborn Dolls Silvia created herself.
She calls it the Disney Room, because she also keeps multiple Mickey and Minnie Mouse dolls there.
Despite having some of the collection’s cutest dolls, she says it’s the room where the spirits are most active.
“I think they come and touch them and move them because they want to see if they are a real child or just a doll,” she says.
“There’s lots of movement here.”
To contact Silvia about doing a guided tour of the museum, check out the Facebook page of the business here.
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