Somewhere, an evildoer who devised a sinister plot is shrieking the menacing theme to the "Psycho" shower scene.
Or perhaps a happy person with a doll collection is whistling "It's a Small World" as part of a plan to spread joy throughout the land.
Business owners along Catalina Avenue in Redondo Beach's Riviera Village aren't sure which to think.
The shopkeepers found dolls - eight of them - hanging from the trees, sitting atop walls and a fountain, and adorning planters - outside their businesses when they arrived for work on Wednesday.
The questions: Who put them there, why, and is it something evil or good?
"That's way creepy," said Rocky Post, owner of The Village Garden. "Haunted like out of a horror movie."
These weren't Cabbage Patch or simple bedwetting dolls. These were 18-inch-long porcelain dolls, the kind a collector might, well, collect.
There's the little English girl with the teacup design on her dress, the little Russian girl in her fur cap and stole, the blonde Swiss girl and the bride in her white gown and veil.
"Somebody dolled up my business," said Leah Workman, who runs Artisan Crew Engineering Inc., a website developer.
Dolls also were displayed outside Curl Up And Dye, La Dolce Vita and Balisimo.
Some of the dolls were hung with vines wrapped around their necks, although not in any apparent threatening manner.
"It was creepy, but I wasn't scared," Workman said Friday. "It didn't seem violent."
One doll's body had become unattached from her head, which was discovered smashed on a table.
Did someone do this on purpose? Or did someone just drop the delicate doll?
Business owners wondered if it was someone's art project. No one was quite sure about voodoo being involved.
"Somebody is up to something," Post said.
The price of the dolls wasn't clear. Similar dolls on Amazon.com were available from a few dollars to about $70.
Workman said the business owners took the dolls down, searching through the foliage for them like an Easter egg hunt.
No one wanted to bother the police with the find, but Workman placed an advertisement on Craigslist in the hope of finding the owner.
"The dolls appear valuable, so we got to thinking that someone might be missing them," she said.
The rightful owner will have to provide some specific information in order to collect them.
"Some of us think they belong to a younger sister of a narced-out teenager," Workman says in her ad. "We also think it could be something blamable on boredom, house-parties and copious amounts of the wacky weed.
"The longshot bet is `cheating girlfriend with creepy doll collection getting her comeuppance."'
Post, an artist, wondered about his friends.
"You are probably going to find out who did it in my Rolodex," he said.
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If ya can't laugh at yourself...guarranteed someone else will.
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