Who would want to bring a toy possessed by a ghost into their home? Here’s a look at the very strange world of haunted doll collecting.

Most fans of all things creepy and mysterious might enjoy the occasional horror film or a night in a haunted inn. In recent years, a strange subculture has emerged on the internet involving dolls that supposedly contain the spirits of the dearly departed. A quick search on eBay will turn up lots of listings for “haunted dolls.” As ridiculous as all of this might sound, some of these toys have sold for upwards of $1,500.

Collectors who believe that the dolls are actually haunted say that they’re “adopting them” and are trying to help out the spirits trapped within them. While most of these ghostly toys are reportedly harmless and nice, there are others that are closer to Chucky, the evil doll from the Child’s Play movies. These scary toys are allegedly capable of insulting people, running around, and breaking things.

But how does a collector know if the doll they’re buying is the real deal or just another boring old Cabbage Patch Kid? They test them with electronic devices like the ones used by ghost hunters that (take this with a grain of salt) can record the voices of the supernatural. There are also other meters that can supposedly measure abnormalities in electromagnetic fields (but they tend to get messed up by radio signals).

Experienced collectors also tend to keep holy water handy if they wind up with an evil doll and a backup plan for disposing of them if things get out of hand. While dolls tend to be the most popular haunted items that you can buy online, there’s also other stuff like haunted cabinets and computers. A reportedly possessed laptop was put up for auction on eBay earlier this year. The seller claimed that the eight year old MacBook could levitate and write notes with a pen and paper.The laptop went on to earn bids of over $3,000.

Also, knowledge is power. The British branch of eBay actually provides “A Common Sense Guide to Buying & Selling Haunted Items”. Among the advice offered: don’t buy a haunted doll from someone claiming to have found 100 of them in an abandoned building. These “mass sellers” tend to be fraudsters.