The Mannequin
June 1st 1922
Dear Journal,
Today my mother bought a mannequin for me to put my products on in the store window. It is unusually heavy for a mannequin, but a mannequin nonetheless. I am thankful for it as I believe it will attract more women to my dress shop.
June 5, 1922
Dear Journal,
I was working at the shop today when an alarmed customer told me the mannequin was staring at her. This is strange as the mannequin has no eyes. Just a blank face. I went to check out the mannequin and it did feel like it was staring at me with intensity. Strange.
June 6, 1922
Dear Jounal,
Today the owner of the haberdashery next door went missing. Sad as we were good friends. It also seems that my mannequin has gone missing. It must be in the back.
June 7, 1922
Dear Journal,
I found my mannequin. Some horrible person dressed him in the clothes of the haberdashery owner and placed him back in my window! I am now a suspect for murder of the poor man! Murder! This is completely atrocious! I cannot wait until he is found!
June 15, 1922
Dear Journal,
Today they declared the poor man dead. I am the prime suspect for his murder. I am so scared! Why do the police think it was me!
July 1, 1922
No
July 3, 1922
Someone ripped a whole page out of my journal! To replace that page I will sum up the end of the month. My sister is missing. Again some cruel murderer put the clothes on my mannequin! My customers continue to tell me story’s of the mannequins staring, and now moving positions to face them. I am going to take the mannequin down and sell it, it’s scaring away customers.
July 4, 1922
You regret this
July 5, 1922
Something is happening. The mannequin was moved back into its window. I hear people knocking on my door at night, my window has been cracked. I’ve not yet found a customer for the mannequin. I sent in an advertisement to the news but someone replaced it with the words “No no no no no no!”
July 10, 1922
My mother! She has gone missing! Everywhere in the shop I go the mannequin stares! My poor mother! Where is she?
July 17, 1922
Her clothes! My mothers clothes ON THE MANNEQUIN! I can’t believe myself it took me a week to notice! I may be crazy but, I think it’s the mannequin!
July 18, 1922
DIE
This journal was one of the items found in the home of the missing Mary Stanfield. Her clothes were found on the mannequin in the front of her shop. The mannequin has been sold to a new owner in the city of New York.
Credit To: G.Sturgis
The Mannequin,
so the mannequin gets naked, kills random people like the other store owner and then wears their clothes..not creepy!
It’s a fairly good idea for a pasta, but the punctuation made me stop and re-read a few times.
It was a bit redundant with the whole “poor him,” “poor her” thing.
Nice idea, just poorly written..
5/10
For some reason I really liked this!
While the grammar in your story was not perfectly correct, I believe that it was fitting, because it sounded like thoughts a person would actually have, and, as you must know, we don’t always think in complete sentences. I like the way The Mannequin is written.
It also has a very good storyline to it.
The only problem I have with your story is that the ending is too abrupt. The last part, where the events of the woman’s death are being summarized, should be a bit longer and more carefully explained. There needs to be a more compelling ending. Please don’t end it by saying that the mannequin has been sold to another customer. It would be better to add something else after that. You might possibly emphasize the fact that the new owner hasn’t got a clue that this mannequin has been wearing the clothing of murder victims or that one of them was its previous owner, and then you could close it off by mentioning that this poor new owner has no idea what she’s gotten herself into.
I rated your story an 8/10.
it sounded good but you gave too much its kind of like you ruined your own surprise you know
A bit too predictable. The sense you want to go for in a creepy pasta is foreboding. There’s a thin line between the two and you stepped way too far into predictable. I knew the the gist of the story after the third journal entry. After the fourth one, however, I knew how every single event was going to occur and in what order; I suspect a lot of other readers will, too. Another topic I feel I should bring up with this story is that inanimate objects that kill people are the hardest to make unique stories out of. (The second pasta I ever wrote had the same concept. It’s barely even mediocre.) This isn’t to say that I don’t enjoy the concept. I would actually like to see this story polished a little bit and resubmitted because I appreciate the concept you’re going for and know with some work, it can be expertly presented. You definitely have the passion and mindset to make this as creepy as it should be. Keep writing!
The grammar was fine. The people in these comments seem uptight.
I liked the way story the story began, how it was set, and the fact that it was to the point and not too long. But I was kind of disappointed at the end; I was hoping for a twist.
This was boring. The story was predictable, and at no point did I feel creeped out or even immersed.
The only real grammar issues I noticed were missing apostrophes, but that’s not to say the writing was good. It was dull and lifeless, utterly lacking in flair. You made this journal come from the 1920s, but that didn’t inform the word choice or manner of writing, so I’m left wondering what the point was.
You didn’t have a twist. Not every story needs a twist, but one might have saved this from being completely bland. This is the beginning of an outline, not a story.
This may sound sort of like a stupid idea, but I think it would have been cool if the story had just ended at the final entry in the journal. For some reason it always bugs me when people use the “This book/diary/journal/etc. was found in bla bla bla place”, thing. It just seems kind of overdone. When I read stories in this style I imagine it like I had found the book myself and was reading it, so to have a little thing at the end explaining that the book was found is kind of off putting. This is probably just personal preference though. An idea for if you ever want to revisit this story though is that after the last entry the story picks up with the new owner of the mannequin. Like the book was just there when they got the mannequin, and they figure it’s just some silly joke. Then the story continues with a more detailed experience from them.
Agree with the previous reviewer. The story lacks detail and emotion. It leaves a feeling that the diary was started specifically for the mannequin, as if the poor owner had nothing else going on in her life and from the very beginning knew what was about to happen. Thus she just didn’t bother mentioning anything else. The story reads like bare facts or statistics, it’s a skeleton of a story (or a naked mannequin, if you pardon), but not a full creepy pasta, which it really could be…
BUT WHO WAS THE CLOTHES?!
I think this is just the worst story I’ve read. Honestly. BTW, journal entries aren’t so short.
How horribly predictable.
Interesting premise, but ridiculously poor execution. 3/10
you shouldve brought the people back to life with no memory of what happened after the mannequin switched clothes
For some reason I just bursting laughing when I read the entry for July 1st.
i think there was a twilight zone episode like this.
Good concept, poor execution
I concur with Gracie Krueger, with a little more effort this could have been a downright creepy tale.
It was a good idea, but a little underdone. Work on details next time.
When I was little I was in a shop and smacked a maniquine in the but when t was actually a woman who looked like one lol
Can someone PLEASE explain this? Totally confused.
There is no explanation for stupid.
I liked the way you replaced some dates with random negative words, but the mannequin being able to change the words in the newspaper, that was just bullshit
The journal entries were too short for my taste.
THEN WHO WAS MANNEQUIN?!?!