'Ceeci'

Recovered from: Southern fence line, Raybury Family Farm, 1978

The night was filled with laughter from the fall festival - the next morning Ceeci was found leaning against a broken post. A faint sweetness clung to her fabric, like sugar warmed in the sun. Some swore they caught the faint scent of spun sugar whenever the wind shifted, as though the doll had absorbed the memory of candied apples and sticky fingers. Her dress was dusted with hay and bits of crushed leaves, as if she had been carried through the fields by unseen hands before being placed at the fence.

Someone recalled a boy who had wandered the field alone for hours, tracing the fence with his fingertips, humming softly to himself as though following a song only he could hear. No one ever saw him leave. His absence was first dismissed as a child slipping home unnoticed, but by morning his name was spoken in hushed tones, like a warning. He simply vanished, dissolving into the night air the way cotton candy disappears in water - leaving only Ceeci behind, silent and waiting...

Raybury Family Farm Collection:

Long before the first Raybury plow ever struck the earth, the land was already something…different. Locals whispered of a strange patch of ground where pumpkins grew wild, even in years of drought or blight. No one knew who first planted them.

In 1889, Elias Raybury inherited a huge tract of Appalachian farmland through a deed left in a stranger’s will. He and his young wife, Adeline, built a modest homestead beside the unnaturally fertile patch. Though the surrounding crops often failed, the pumpkins thrived year after year-glowing vibrant orange under moonlight.

Generations of Rayburys worked the land, building a reputation for the “finest pumpkin harvest in the county.” By the 1950s, the family opened the property to the public - inviting curious visitors to cider tastings, hayrides, and the now-infamous annual corn maze. But something wasn’t right.

Over the decades, guests began to disappear. A child went missing one autumn. A woman vanished along the hayride path the next. Search parties came up empty…except for the dolls.

Strange dolls. Not quite handmade, not entirely found.

Some bore soft, rounded heads like miniature gourds-skin textured like aged pumpkin rind. Others had hollow eyes set deep in cracked faces, their limbs a mix of orange pulp and hardened vine. Each seemed different…but all shared one thing: a faint but undeniable humanness that no one could explain.

Some say the land is cursed. Others believe it’s alive-and it trades.

It gives bounty. In return, it takes.

Not every visitor leaves. But sometimes, when the moon is high and the wind still, a doll appears where a person once stood.

Rooted. Watching. Waiting.

And the patch is always full.