Jasper

Jasper was discovered in the attic of a shuttered boarding house across from the Saratoga Race Course. Beneath layers of moth-eaten riding silks lay a small doll perched upon a rocking horse — frozen mid-motion, as if captured just before the finish line.

Old records suggest the room once belonged to a stable hand who vanished after a fatal pileup during the 1913 Travers Stakes. His belongings were never claimed, save for a single doll left “rocking gently though the air was still,” according to the foreman who found it.

For decades afterward, those who came into possession of Jasper reported a pattern: sleepless nights, phantom hoofbeats outside their window, and a relentless rhythmic creak — like wood swaying to an invisible gallop.

The horse’s paint has faded to a pale ghost-gray, though the reins remain supple. Jasper’s painted eyes are closed, yet owners swear they flutter open during thunderstorms or when a horse dies nearby.

Some say if you touch him, you’ll hear the whisper of a race call — names you’ve never heard, horses that never existed.

Others report the sound of an unseen crowd cheering at midnight, then falling suddenly silent, as if the finish line was never reached.

Most disturbing are the nights when the doll rocks without sound — the air around him electric, the scent of dirt and sweat thick enough to taste.

In 1976, Jasper was displayed in a Saratoga antique shop’s front window during racing season. Each night, passersby reported seeing him swaying on his horse despite the shop being locked. On the final night of the season, the shop owner arrived to find the window shattered from the inside — the doll sitting on the floor, covered in track dust.

Outside, hoofprints marked the sidewalk leading away from the glass.
They stopped at the curb.

No horse had been in the area for decades.