On a beach in Texas, a woman stumbles across a creepy plastic doll with barnacles growing out of its eyes and sand covering its body.
No, this isn't the start of a horror movie starring the baby doll from Sid's room in Toy Story; rather, it's just another day in the life of the researchers from Mission Aransas Reserve at the University of Texas Marine Science Institute.
As creepy as the scenario may sound, it's actually not all that uncommon as the workers find 'a couple of [the dolls] every month', according to a video posted by the reserve on Facebook.
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Watch the mini real-life horror movie below:
Jace Tunnell, director of the reserve, told the Star-Telegram he and his colleagues have collected 30 dolls since he began keeping count.
He described the creepiest ones as those that have lost all of their hair, and noted it's not only baby dolls that wash up on the beach, as he once also found the head of a sex doll.
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"I posted a picture of it and I didn’t realise that’s what it was,” he said. “We got a lot of followers on the page after that.”
Researchers typically stumble across the dolls while conducting their regular surveys of a roughly 40-mile stretch of beach running from north Padre Island up to Matagorda Island, with the dolls apparently particularly drawn to the latter spot.
The Mission Aransas Reserve researchers are typically surveying the coast for sea turtles, marine mammals and endangered bird species, but Tunnell said every day on the job offers 'something new'.
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One of their latest doll discoveries was shared on 25 April, when the reserve shared the video of the aforementioned barnacle-growing doll.
Two of the workers discovered the toy half-buried in the sand, with the man behind the camera describing it as 'pretty wild'.
"Maybe we're gonna sell this one on the internet," he said.
Tunnell revealed there is actually a market for the washed-up toys, with the sex doll head having previously been sold for $35, which the reserve donated to a sea turtle rescue program.
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The question of why dolls specifically make repeated appearances on this particular beach is yet to be answered exactly, but a two-year study conducted by the University of Texas Marine Science Institute revealed the Texas Coastal Bend region is a magnet for rubbish.
Tunnell explained the area gets '10 times the amount of trash … than any other beach in the Gulf of Mexico', so it may be that the dolls are so creepy even before being abandoned that somehow they end up in the ocean.
The director admitted they 'could definitely be haunted', which is probably a big part of the reason he throws them in a bucket ready to be sold at a yearly fundraising auction.
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Emily Brown