The story of the real annabelle doll by taylor muenzberg
For someone who is scared of her own shadow (me), I don't know why I love scary movies. I'll sit in a dark theater and sacrifice a few nights of good sleep for the sake of a fright-fest. But the one thing I have never—and will never— do is attend a presentation by the Warrens.
Ed (now deceased) and Lorraine Warren were paranormal investigators whose work has inspired a slew of scary movies—‘The Amityville Horror’, ‘The Conjuring’, and ‘A Haunting in Connecticut’. And each year, around Halloween time, they (now Lorraine and her son-in-law, Tony Spera) put on a series of presentations—complete with video, recording, and photographic evidence—in Connecticut about their experiences with the "other" side: spirits, ghosts, demons, and the sort. This year, their presentations have been all about Annabelle, the so-called "devil doll" that inspired the recent movie bearing the same name.
While the previous movie adaptations of the Warrens' work have been fairly accurate, according to them, Annabelle is a very loose interpretation. In fact, between the Warrens' account and the movie, the only similarity is that both involve a creepy doll. But after reading about the Warrens' experience with the doll, I've come to determine that the story behind the real-life Annabelle is actually much more frightening than the movie version.
The basis of the movie is this: John Form purchases Annabelle, a vintage doll in a white wedding dress, for his expecting wife Mia, who collects dolls. The terror begins almost immediately when members of a satanic cult invade their house and attack the couple. Blood from one of the cult members, Annabelle Higgins, gets on the doll—and leads to the doll haunting the couple through a series of creepy events that eventually leads to another death.
Here are the real-life details, according to the New Haven Register and the Warrens' own website (visit at your own risk).
SO creepy, am I right? I'm not a superstitious person, but I'm also not looking to agitate any demon-doll-spirits—so I'll leave this one to you guys to debate. But if your into this kind of stuff, then you can actually visit the real Annabelle doll, which is located in Ed and Lorraine Warren's Occult Museum in Monroe, Connecticut. At present, tours of the Warrens' Occult Museum are limited and are only being given via an intimate event called Warrenology. Just keep this in mind. If you do visit the doll, do not, and I repeat DO NOT, touch anything. Not the case that the doll is in, not the table, nothing. They will tell you this, but don’t do it. Don’t even taunt the doll. One man died two hours later after doing this. So be careful. For more information, visit their website:
http://www.warrens.net/Occult-Museum-Tours.html
Ed (now deceased) and Lorraine Warren were paranormal investigators whose work has inspired a slew of scary movies—‘The Amityville Horror’, ‘The Conjuring’, and ‘A Haunting in Connecticut’. And each year, around Halloween time, they (now Lorraine and her son-in-law, Tony Spera) put on a series of presentations—complete with video, recording, and photographic evidence—in Connecticut about their experiences with the "other" side: spirits, ghosts, demons, and the sort. This year, their presentations have been all about Annabelle, the so-called "devil doll" that inspired the recent movie bearing the same name.
While the previous movie adaptations of the Warrens' work have been fairly accurate, according to them, Annabelle is a very loose interpretation. In fact, between the Warrens' account and the movie, the only similarity is that both involve a creepy doll. But after reading about the Warrens' experience with the doll, I've come to determine that the story behind the real-life Annabelle is actually much more frightening than the movie version.
The basis of the movie is this: John Form purchases Annabelle, a vintage doll in a white wedding dress, for his expecting wife Mia, who collects dolls. The terror begins almost immediately when members of a satanic cult invade their house and attack the couple. Blood from one of the cult members, Annabelle Higgins, gets on the doll—and leads to the doll haunting the couple through a series of creepy events that eventually leads to another death.
Here are the real-life details, according to the New Haven Register and the Warrens' own website (visit at your own risk).
- Annabelle is a vintage Raggedy Ann doll purchased in 1970 by a mother for her daughter Donna's 28th birthday.
- The doll did actually start to move around Donna's apartment. At first the movements were subtle and confined to the bed where Donna had left the doll. After a while, the movements became more noticeable. Donna and Angie began to discover the doll in different rooms than they had left it. It would even appear back in Donna's room with the door shut. Sometimes they found the doll with its legs crossed and its arms folded, while on other occasions it was found standing on its feet, leaning against a dining room chair. They even discovered it kneeling on a chair, which was strange, because if they tried to make the doll kneel on its own, it would fall over. It couldn't kneel.
- According to the story told by Ed and Lorraine Warren, a former owner of the Annabelle doll, Donna, claimed that she would come home to find penciled messages written in childlike writing on parchment paper, which she did not have in the house. The messages read "Help Us" and "Help Lou" (Lou was Donna's roommate Angie's fiancé and had been staying with them).
- Donna first contacted a medium about the doll, who told her it was inhabited by the spirit of a seven-year-old girl named Annabelle Higgins.
- After Donna came home to find some blood on the doll that seem to have come from nowhere, they decided to contact a medium. The medium held a séance (a meeting at which people attempt to make contact with the dead, especially through the agency of a medium.) and introduced Donna and her roommate Angie to the spirit of Annabelle Higgins, a seven-year-old girl who had played in the fields that existed where Donna and Angie's apartment complex now stood. Apparently, Annabelle Higgins’s lifeless body had been discovered after being killed in a car accident. Out of compassion, Donna and Angie gave the spirit - that they thought was that of Annabelle Higgins - permission to stay with them and possess the doll.
- "The woman had told them, the medium, that there was a spirit of a seven-year-old child in the doll by the name of Annabelle [Higgins]," says Ed Warren, "who had been killed outside of their apartment house in an automobile accident. Well, there was such a child, but God does not allow a child's spirit to go into a doll. This was a devil, a demon, inside the doll, which was impersonating the spirit of a child". Unlike the movie, the doll's owner never saw what appeared to be the ghost of the seven-year-old girl, Annabelle Higgins.
- After discovering the fact that the doll was actually possessed by a demon, they then held an exorcism for the doll and removed it from their home.
- The Warrens' had a special case built for the doll in their Occult Museum, since it escaped several locks in its first few weeks at their house. Of all the items in the museum, Spera claims that the doll is what he is most frightened of.
- Visitors to the museum who taunted the doll were all involved in near-fatal or fatal accidents upon leaving the Warrens.
SO creepy, am I right? I'm not a superstitious person, but I'm also not looking to agitate any demon-doll-spirits—so I'll leave this one to you guys to debate. But if your into this kind of stuff, then you can actually visit the real Annabelle doll, which is located in Ed and Lorraine Warren's Occult Museum in Monroe, Connecticut. At present, tours of the Warrens' Occult Museum are limited and are only being given via an intimate event called Warrenology. Just keep this in mind. If you do visit the doll, do not, and I repeat DO NOT, touch anything. Not the case that the doll is in, not the table, nothing. They will tell you this, but don’t do it. Don’t even taunt the doll. One man died two hours later after doing this. So be careful. For more information, visit their website:
http://www.warrens.net/Occult-Museum-Tours.html