The possessed Xuxa doll

A 1989 rumour in Sorocaba that a Xuxa doll, modelled on the children's television presenter, was possessed and had attacked someone. A crowd gathered at the cathedral, and the parish priest told the press it was a rumour.

Xuxa dolls, based on the children's television presenter Xuxa, were sold in the late 1980s, Wikipedia says, and one became the subject of a rumour that the devil had taken it over and that it had killed a child. In Sorocaba the story held that the doll was kept in chains in the cathedral's sacred art museum, Aventuras na História wrote in 2021.

On 9 November 1989, the local paper Jornal Cruzeiro do Sul recalled in 2014, word spread quickly and a crowd went to the church to find the doll said to have attacked. Mgr Mauro Vallini, the parish priest at the time, closed the doors to calm things down and told the press and the police that the whole affair was a rumour. Aventuras na História gives the same account.

The rumour travelled. Cruzeiro do Sul records a Minas Gerais version in which a girl found a knife inside her doll and, on the toy's order, killed her mother. The paper notes that no police report about the case was filed in Sorocaba. Wikipedia says at least one report of the story appeared in a newspaper. Cruzeiro do Sul counts the episode among the city's best-known urban legends.