With her staring eyes, creepy little schoolgirl plaits and ventriloquist'sdummy sneer, the titular possesseddoll of the Conjuring spin-off Annabelle franchise is an appropriatelyhorrifying creation – even more so in her latest screen outing, Annabelle Comes Home.
The creature below,a vintage Raggedy Ann doll, is, at first glance, a much more appealing individual. But, if the late paranormal experts and husband-and-wife team Ed and Lorraine Warren were to be believed – and, as we'll later explore, that's a pretty big "if" – then she's the real, demon-haunted deal.
The "authenticAnnabelle", who resides in a glass cabinet at the Warrens' Occult Museum in New England, may be somewhatprettier than her cinematic counterpart, butaccording to the backstory put out by the Warrens (Ed passed away in 2006, and Lorraine died in April 2019, aged 92)and retold in full on the museum's website, she's alsopretty deadly.
The 'true' story
The second-hand doll, the talegoes, was given to a student nurse named Donna as a 28th birthday gift by her mother. Donna, who lived in a shared flat, was initially delighted by the present, but she and her housemate Angie soon began to notice that the doll was apparentlymovingaround the apartment whenever they were out, reappearing in strange places and newposes, sometimes propped upright.
Later, mysterious"Help Us" notes began to appear, written on parchment that neither of the young women owned, and drops of bloodappeared on the doll'sbody.
Their friend Lou, a regular visitor, warned them that the doll was evil, but a trip to a medium allayed the girls' fears. The Raggedy Ann, they were told, was indeed home to a spirit, but to a harmless one, belonging to a murdered young girl named Annabelle who simply wanted to feel safe.
Reassured by this explanation(their definition of what constitutes a "reassuring explanation" was clearly quite broad), the pair continued as before. But interactions with "Annabelle" took an increasingly sinister turn, whileLou found himself plagued by disturbing dreams.
One night, while Donna was away, Louand Angie heard a person loudly moving about her room. Upon opening the door, Lou saw that nobody was there, but noticed that the Annabelle doll had moved to the floor. He was then struck down, asdeep, burning scratches appeared on his body.
Terrified, the friends called in a priest, who turned to the Warrens. Theirmuseum's website relays their interpretation of events:
The Warrens, after speaking with Donna, Angie, and Lou came to the immediate conclusion that the doll itself was not in fact possessed but manipulated by an inhuman presence. Spirits do not possess inanimate objects like houses or toys, they possess people. An inhuman spirit can attach itself to a place or object and this is what occurred in the Annabelle case. This spirit manipulated the doll and created the illusion of it being alive in order to get recognition. Truly, the spirit was not looking to stay attached to the doll, it was looking to possess a human host.
An exorcism was duly performed, and the doll removed, apparently just in the nick of time –according to the Warrens, "had these experiences lasted another 2 or 3 more weeks the spirit would have completely possessed, if not harmed or killed one or all of the occupants in the house".
Even when Annabelle was safely encased behind glass in the Warrens'museum, complete with a handy "Warning, positively do not open" label, she still managed to exert hermalign influence, even reportedly causing another death. A foolhardy young visitor, attending the museum with his girlfriend, rapped on the grass cabinet and insulted its inhabitant. He was involved in a fatal motorcycle crash on the way home.
So how much of this should we believe?
In all honesty? If you swallowed mostof the above, you should probably consider taking a hefty pinch of salt as your second course.
James Wan's 2013 The Conjuring, which first introduced the Annabelle story, albeit as a small side plot, took the decision to portray the religious Warrensas a dedicated, well-intentioned pair, whose staunch beliefin the supernaturalwas aproduct of their many encounters with it.
The prosaic reality, however,is that there is little to noverification for manyof the claims made by the pair, who were involved in several dubious high-profilehauntings, including the Amityville case, which was later debunked severaltimes.
The 1980 bookThe Demonologist: The Extraordinary Career of Ed and Lorraine Warren, described by Wan as The scariest book I've ever read",offers a detailed account of the Annabelle case, and names the priests involved as Father Hegan, who first contacted the Warrens, and Father Cooke, who performed the final exorcism. As far as we can tell, however, neither of these men seem to have discussed the case elsewhere.
Similarly, Donna, who would presumably now be in in her 70s, and her friends Angieand Lou,have never come forward, or appeared in any subsequent interviews. The identity of the mysterious deceased motorcyclist, too, remains a mystery.
In fact the encased Annabelle doll, as far as the hardevidence goes, could be any old Raggedy Ann. It has even been suggested that the story could have been inspired by a 1963 episode of The Twilight Zone,which featured a haunted doll given by a mother named Annabelleto her daughter.
We're not suggesting, of course, that the Warrens were outrightfrauds, or that the Annabelle hauntingshould be dismissed as an obvious fabrication. Many independent observers have attestedthat the Catholic couple, who made plenty of money from writing and lecturing about the supernatural but never charged directly for their services, seemed likegenuine believers,motivated by a sinceredesire to help people.
But a1997 article by sceptics Perry DeAngelis and Steven Novella, which details a visit to the Catholic couples' Occult Museum, offers the following tellingassessment of the pair:
"Shortly after meeting Ed and Lorraine, two things became very clear to us. One, that they are sincere. They believe the things they say. And two, that they have precious little evidence to support their beliefs. What they do have in abundance, are ghost stories."
It then goes on to describe how, after exploring the museum and being warned by Ed about the Annabelle doll, the writersasked to examine some of the physical evidence of past hauntings investigated by the duo. They were greeted by an array of photographs of light blobs or "ghost globules", which most experts agree caneasily be created by accident or deliberate fakery, and a video tape of a boy "dematerialising" intothin air. After submitting the latter to externalexamination, they were told that a simple wipedframe was responsible for the on-screen disappearance.
In other words, even the Warrens' physical "proofs" were deeply suspect. Whether or not we choose to believe their more tenuous truths is ultimately a question of faith– or, to use a less kinder term, credulity.
To the makers of the Annabelle franchise, however, it's probably all just good marketing.
