This story is part of the October 4 edition of Good Weekend. See all 14 stories .

Ever longed for a baby – without the dirty nappies? Ever dreamt of cradling a newborn – without the broken sleep? Ever pined for a child of your own – without the cost of actually raising one? Well, reborn dolls are for you. Mesmerising, intriguing and for some, deeply creepy, “reborns” are hyper-realistic dolls, painstakingly handcrafted to resemble flesh-and-blood babies, complete with fat rolls, inscrutable expressions and silky hair. They are dolls, but this isn’t child’s play, unless you are David Cronenberg.

Lifelike porcelain dolls date back to the 1800s and were regarded as both toys and art, but the “reborn” phenomenon is thought to have first surfaced in the mid-1990s. An article in The New

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