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Overview and History[]
Annabelle is a Raggedy Ann doll that currently resides at The Warrens' Occult Museum in Monroe, Connecticut. The focus of a long series of studies by paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren, the later owners of the aforementioned museum, the doll has gone down in popular culture as one of the most reportedly haunted dolls in existence.
According to the story provided by the Warrens, the doll was gifted to a young college student named Donna (last name unknown) by her anonymous mother in 1970. Within several days of receiving the doll, Donna and her roommate Angie reported noticing strange phenomena coming from the doll, mostly in the form of anomalous movement. While the changes in position were slight and subtle at first, the doll would allegedly begin appearing in strange poses in different rooms around the house. The phenomena later transitioned into crudely written notes found on scraps of parchment paper, usually messages with the phrases "Help Us" and "Help Lou".
Donna and Angie reportedly contacted a medium, who told them that the doll was possessed by the spirit of a young girl named Annabelle Higgins who was ostensibly murdered in a nearby field and who appeared to be benign. However, the doll's antics took a darker turn one night when the girls' friend Lou stayed with them for the night and had a frightening encounter with the doll. Said encounter involved waking one night, seemingly jolted from a nightmare. Finding himself in a state of sleep paralysis, he reported seeing Annabelle glide down the length of his bed and begin strangling him until he passed out. The next morning, while packing for a road trip, the trio were startled by a strange sound in Donna's room as though the apartment had been broken into. While searching the room, Lou was seemingly violently attacked by an unseen assailant, receiving numerous claw mark-like wounds that healed within two days.[1]
Interpretations[]
Ed and Lorraine Warren believed that the doll was the vessel of a malevolent and inhuman spirit. While a great deal of phenomena was attributed to Annabelle, no such activities have ever been conclusively dominated. Donna's story was mostly made public second-hand by the Warrens rather than by Donna herself, a fact that calls a great deal of the details of the story into question. Most skeptics tend to regard the legend as a fraud due to the lack of concrete evidence.
Popular Culture[]
Film[]
- A character based on the legend is a recurring antagonist in the horror film series The Conjuring and was the focus of three such films in 2014, 2017, and 2019. This version is a porcelain doll rather than a Raggedy Ann doll due to rights issues with the creators of Raggedy Ann.
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