Antiques Roadshow fans wish they'd never seen 'scary cardboard people'

What did you miss?

Series 47 of Antiques Roadshow premiered on BBC One on Sunday night.

Within this hour-long showcasing of oddities, historical artefacts and family heirlooms at Ealing's Pitzhanger Manor, expert Mark Hill encountered a pair of dummy boards backed with mahogany and oak. They depicted a young girl and a young lad, and he went on to estimate they'd go for £2-3,000 at auction, much to the cheerful surprise of their owner.

And yet, fans of the show writing on social media site X were left pretty haunted by the pieces themselves, which Mark described as "silent companions" during his analysis.

What, how and why?

"Kind of an unusual thing to have in your home in this day and age, do they live in your home?" Mark asked the Antiques Roadshow attendee, who revealed that his wife had inherited the dummy boards from her grandparents.

"These sort of became popular in the Netherlands in the 17th Century, and they had a series of uses really," the aficionado explained.

"Obviously they're incredibly decorative but they're also sometimes known by the slightly more polite phrase of 'silent companions'. You might've had one of these placed next to a fireplace or next to a chair in the corner of a room to relieve your sense of loneliness."

As it turned out, these particular dummies were crafted towards the end of the 19th Century, which diminished their worth considerably.

How did Antiques Roadshow fans react on social media?

While Mark took a deep dive into the function of the antiques, viewers let rip on their ghoulishness.

"Christ! WTAF?? Scary cardboard people!! Feck having them in me living room!!" read one online response, while somebody else labelled them "cursed objects".

Their moniker of 'silent companions' really didn't help the matter, as you can see...

Antiques Roadshow airs Sundays on BBC One.

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This article originally appeared on Yahoo TV UK at https://uk.news.yahoo.com/antiques-roadshow-scary-cardboard-people-200342688.html