People imbue beloved items with pieces of themselves. The longer a single person owns it, the more of themselves they put into it. The more owners an object has, the more pieces it collects over time
Eventually this leads to a low level of sentience in the item. This is why very old items often seem haunted. Dolls, rocking chairs, houses, etc. Anything that can be passed down can eventually gain some form of sentience
But this isn't something to be fearful of. This is merely something that we don't understand very well. And since we're humans we're naturally fearful of a doll that turns to you and says "mama". A rocking chair that rocks on its own. Was that a child's laughter I heard? There aren't any children here...
There's nothing inherently sinister in any of those experiences, though. The chair rocks because at least 5 generations of grandmothers and their grandchildren have rocked in that chair. Have loved that chair. Or at least experienced the love they have for one another in the vicinity of it. While rocking in it. And the chair has felt that love. Has been given life by that love. And so it rocks. It rocks to reflect the love it has absorbed
The doll was owned by 3 different children and it has a little speaker inside that says "Mama". It was loved by each child who owned it, taken with them everywhere they went. It was a source of comfort and familiarity in tough times. And the child played it's voice every time they were sad because it always cheered them up. Children love the biggest and the loudest so it's easy for a doll to soak it all in. And how else is any being supposed to communicate if it can only say one word? It says that word the best it can. "Mama!" -I love you. Will you love me too?
8 generations of the same family have lived in that house. There have been children living in it. There have been old people wandering the halls. People have shouted and cursed each other's names. Doors were slammed, things were thrown. Chairs were rocked, dolls were loved. But whatever the day or the weather, the house absorbed it all. Pieces of every conversation, of every hug and every fight were infused into the very grain of the wood, pressed into the bricks. Copies remain of the love and strife that were witnessed by the walls. So the house gives what it was given. "These were my people," it says. "This is how they lived within me. And I loved them. I loved them the way I will love you."
