Real Life "Chucky" Doll Freaks Out Neighbors in Alabama. "I Almost Had a Heart Attack."

Chucky, the murderous red-haired doll introduced in the 1988 horror movie Child's Play, has had an extensive life, spawning numerous movie sequels and a recent streaming series. But despite the character's ubiquity, some Alabama residents weren't ready to see him walking around a local neighborhood. Read on to learn how their "biggest fear" came to life.

Kendra Walden thought she was hallucinating, she told the Today show, and everyone in her car was screaming. "When we got closer to him we saw that it was real," she said. "It scared the heck out of us." (Walden noted that her Marine brother's "biggest fear in the entire world" is Chucky and "would have died on the spot.")

Walden posted some images on Facebook of what looked like the grimacing ginger doll—clad in the recognizable overalls and striped shirt— walking around a residential neighborhood. "Dear parents of the little boy in the Chucky costume in Pinson," she wrote. "Get your kid. I almost had a heart attack."

Turns out "Chucky" was a five-year-old named Jackson who dressed up in one of his old Halloween costumes.

WIAT-TV caught up with Jackson's mother, Britnee Reed."That's just kind of how his personality is," she said. "He dresses up in different costumes throughout the week. He loves to make people laugh."

Reed was at work at the time and discovered Walden's post when a co-worker sent it to Reed, saying it looked like something her son would do. "I zoomed in and said, 'Oh my goodness,' that's my kid," she said. She called her mother, who was babysitting Jackson; she had helped him dress up and was overseeing his march of terror from the nearby porch.

Walden's post has attracted more than 109,000 shares and 12,000 comments. "THIS is what happens when there's not a Chucky movie at least every few years," said one commenter. "He takes to the streets."

Reed said feedback to the incident has been mostly positive. "We actually got a message from people asking for him to be at their kid's birthday party," she said. The family will be declining those invitations, although Jackson had one request for the media.

"Tell them I was a good Chucky," Jackson told WIAT. "And make sure you send my grandma a copy of the pictures, too."

Charles Lee "Chucky" Ray is a fictional character of the Child's Play horror film franchise. Chucky is a vicious serial killer who transfers his soul into a "Good Guy" doll and tries to transfer to a human body. The character has become one of the most recognizable horror icons. In 1999, the Chucky character was nominated for the MTV Movie Award for Best Villain for the film Bride of Chucky.

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Child's Play creator Don Mancini explained that Chucky draws heavily from the My Buddy dolls: "In my original script, he was originally called Buddy, and we couldn't use it because of the 'My Buddy' doll." In the early 1990s, a now closed chain of appliance stores called The Good Guys thought about changing their name after the Child Play movies started coming out, because they were getting a lot of prank calls about the movies, and people kept going in the stores asking them if they sold Good Guy dolls. Chucky's grip on our imaginations remains strong to this day. In an episode of And Just Like That…, the HBO spinoff of Sex and the City, Miranda confronts a prankster dressed as Chucky, who is harassing people on an NYC subway platform.