Annabelle (doll)

If you are a fan of horror movies, you might have heard of Annabelle, the creepy porcelain doll that haunts and torments its owners. But did you know that Annabelle is based on a real doll that is said to be possessed by a demonic entity? In this blog post, we will explore the true story of Annabelle, the doll that inspired one of the most terrifying franchises in cinema history.

Annabelle is not actually a porcelain doll, but a Raggedy Ann doll that was given as a birthday gift to a young nurse named Donna in 1970. Donna lived with her roommate Angie, another nurse, in a small apartment. At first, they thought the doll was cute and harmless, but soon they noticed some strange things happening around it.

The doll seemed to move by itself, changing positions or locations when no one was looking. Sometimes, they would find it sitting on a sofa or on a bed, when they had left it on a chair or on a shelf. They also found notes written on parchment paper that said "Help us" or "Help Lou", even though they didn't have any parchment paper in the apartment. Lou was Angie's fiancé, who often visited them and disliked the doll.

One night, Donna came home to find the doll on her bed with blood on its hands and chest. She was terrified and decided to seek help from a medium, who told her that the doll was possessed by the spirit of a seven-year-old girl named Annabelle Higgins, who had died in a car accident on the property where the apartment was built. The medium said that Annabelle wanted to stay with Donna and Angie, who felt sorry for her and agreed to let her.

However, this turned out to be a huge mistake, as the doll became more violent and aggressive. Lou had a nightmare in which he saw the doll crawling up his leg and trying to strangle him. He woke up with claw marks on his chest that healed mysteriously within two days. Another time, he heard noises coming from Donna's room and went to investigate. He saw the doll on the floor and felt someone grab him from behind. He turned around and saw no one, but felt a sharp pain in his chest. He lifted his shirt and saw seven bloody slashes on his body.

Donna and Angie realized that they were dealing with something evil and contacted a priest, who referred them to Ed and Lorraine Warren, famous paranormal investigators and demonologists. The Warrens examined the doll and concluded that it was not possessed by a human spirit, but by an inhuman one, a demon that was pretending to be Annabelle to trick them into giving it permission to inhabit their lives. The Warrens said that the demon's ultimate goal was to possess one of them and kill them.

The Warrens performed an exorcism on the apartment and took the doll with them for further investigation. They placed it in a special glass case with a sign that read "Warning: Positively do not open" in their occult museum in Connecticut, where it remains to this day. The Warrens claimed that the doll continued to cause trouble even in their museum, such as making objects move or fall, causing power outages, or attacking visitors who taunted or challenged it.

The story of Annabelle became widely known after it was featured in Gerald Brittle's book The Demonologist (1980), which chronicled the cases of Ed and Lorraine Warren. It also inspired several movies, such as The Conjuring (2013), Annabelle (2014), Annabelle: Creation (2017), and Annabelle Comes Home (2019), which portrayed the doll as a porcelain one instead of a Raggedy Ann one for legal reasons.

Whether you believe in the supernatural or not, there is no doubt that Annabelle is one of the most frightening dolls ever created. If you ever visit the Warrens' museum, be careful not to get too close to her glass case, or you might regret it.