The Real Annabelle Story: Ed & Lorraine Warren's Possessed Doll

The Real Annabelle Story: Ed & Lorraine Warren's Possessed Doll

Welcome, Strangelings, to a special deep dive episode. You'll hear all about one of Ed and Lorraine Warren's classic paranormal case files--Annabelle, the possessed doll. As usual, I'll share the scary story first, then drag you down the rabbit hole with me, kicking and screaming.

Listen to the full deep dive episode HERE!

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What Is the Real Annabelle Story?

Donna, a nursing student in the 70s, received an antique doll as a birthday gift from her mother. It was a Raggedy Ann doll, a popular doll that went back as far as the 1920s. The doll was large at nearly 2 feet tall and was a rag doll made of soft cloth with bright red yarn for hair, black button eyes, a stitched triangular nose, and a serene painted smile, dressed in a frilly dress and apron with signature striped stockings.

Within days, she and her roommate Angie began noticing strange occurrences. At first, they both found that the doll seemed to move on its own. Sometimes they'd even find it seated on the couch with its legs crossed, as if relaxing. Other times they would discover it standing upright on its own--an impossible feat for a rag doll.

Donna and Angie also began to discover notes left around their tiny apartment written on parchment paper that said help us and help me and help Lou. The handwriting seemed to belong to a very young child, but no children had been to their apartment--and chillingly, neither of them owned any parchment paper.

One day, Donna got a gut feeling that something wasn't right. She was drawn to inspect the Annabelle doll and saw what appeared to be droplets of blood appearing from thin air on its soft fabric hands and chest.

What Did the Warrens Say About Annabelle?

Desperate for answers, Donna contacted a psychic medium. The medium held a seance and introduced Donna and her roommate Angie to the spirit of Annabelle Higgins, a 7 year old girl who had played in the fields that existed where Donna and Angie's apartment complex now stood. Tragically, Annabelle's lifeless body had been discovered in the fields and her restless spirit had chosen the Raggedy Ann doll to inhabit.

What they didn't know, however, was that this kind of invitation only made things far worse.

The unexplainable activity intensified. Their friend Lou, who had long suspected the Raggedy Ann doll was evil, experienced a terrifying nightmare--paralyzed with fear, he watched in abject horror as the rag doll glided slowly up his leg of its own accord, climbed up onto his chest, and began choking him. He couldn't breathe. He couldn't stop the doll. Eventually, deprived of oxygen, he blacked out.

Shortly after, Lou heard the sound of rustling from Donna's bedroom. Donna's bedroom was empty except for Annabelle, lying limp and crumpled in the corner. Slowly, he approached the doll and suddenly felt an icy sensation prickle down the back of his neck--the unmistakable feeling that someone or something was right behind him. Without warning, a searing pain exploded in his chest. When he unbuttoned his shirt, he and Angie were horrified to find 7 distinct claw marks scored across his chest. Three vertical slashes intersected by 4 horizontal ones. Yet as quickly as the injuries appeared, they began to heal. Within 48 hours, there was no trace of the attack at all.

Father Cook decided to bring the case to the attention of the renowned ghost hunters and paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren. After assessing the situation, Ed said the doll wasn't possessed--it was being manipulated by an inhuman spirit to create the illusion of possession. This entity was looking for a way to break the women down, eventually possessing one of them.

Lorraine, known for her clairvoyant abilities, confirmed Ed's assessment, describing an overwhelming sense of malevolence emanating from the doll. This wasn't Annabelle Higgins, she later said. This was something much darker--a demonic entity in disguise.

What Happened to Annabelle After the Warrens Took It?

The Warrens conducted a blessing of the apartment and removed the doll to keep it at their house for safekeeping. During the drive home, they reported multiple near accidents as their car's brakes failed. Ed stated that he stopped the disturbances only after sprinkling the doll with holy water.

After returning safely home, Ed placed the doll in a chair beside his desk, where it initially seemed to remain still. But within days, strange activity began again, this time at the Warrens' home. Annabelle levitated multiple times before falling limp and lifeless again as if nothing had happened. When the Warrens locked the doll in their office while away, they'd often return to find it inexplicably seated upstairs in Ed's favorite easy chair, seemingly waiting for them.

One day, Father Jason Bradford, a Catholic priest and exorcist, visited the Warrens. Spotting the doll on its chair, he picked it up, dismissed it as harmless, and tossed it carelessly back into its seat, saying: you're just a rag doll, Annabelle, you can't hurt anyone. Ed immediately warned him: that's the one thing you better not say.

Hours later, Father Jason phoned the Warrens with terrifying news. On his drive home, his car brakes failed as he approached a busy intersection, leading to a near fatal accident that completely totaled his car. He was lucky to be alive.

They placed the Annabelle doll in their occult museum in Monroe, Connecticut, securing it in a locked glass case inscribed with a sign warning: positively do not open.

One of the museum's most infamous stories involves a young man who mocked Annabelle during a visit. Ed Warren recounted: this young man went up to the doll, banged on the glass, and taunted it, saying if you're real, scratch me. I told him to leave and he did, laughing about it. Three hours later he was dead. Lorraine later reflected on the event, saying that these objects are dangerous not because of their material, but because of what they represent--a gateway to something far worse.

Is the Annabelle Story Actually True? Problems with the Warren's Case File

Welcome to what is now an accidental series on the many case files of the Warrens.

There's just so much juicy stuff in just this story and then also all of the other stories. I can't possibly tell it all in one episode or we'd be here for 666 hours.

The sources for the story of Annabelle start with the NESPR blog--that is the New England Society for Psychic Research, founded by the famous paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren. They founded it back in 1952. The second source was The Demonologist, a book written by Gerald Brittle in 1980 about Ed and Lorraine's experiences. But it's worth noting they were not writers, so their agents would hire authors to write their stories for them.

So first of all, and I think this is very important--no one in this story has ever actually been identified. Not a single person has ever come forward. Not Donna, not Angie, not any of the multiple priests involved, not Lou, who was attacked and strangled by a Raggedy Ann doll. None of them have ever come forward, which is a little weird because of how lucrative not just the Warrens are in general, but also all three of the Annabelle movies. There's a lot of money to be made.

Also, from my research, I can't find any written reference to this Annabelle story prior to The Demonologist in 1980.

Then you've got Ed Warren kind of contradicting himself. In a 1980s video of him touring the occult museum, he claims Donna was given the doll as a Christmas gift, not a birthday gift. He also says that Annabelle was a six year old girl who died in a car accident outside of the apartment. But in The Demonologist book, of course, he says that it was the spirit of a child who lived in the area before it was an apartment complex.

I just feel like, in order to be taken seriously, you kind of need to have all your little weird demon ducks in a little demon row. Just a thought.

Ed and Lorraine Warren: Ghost Hunters or Demon Hunters?

Interesting that Ed Warren waited until The Exorcist swept the nation in 1973 to start calling himself a demonologist. Isn't that interesting?

Just in a nutshell, Rosemary's Baby and The Exorcist really primed America to be more open to the idea of demons and Satan being a real and present danger. Which prior to these movies, it was mostly only fundamentalists who believed in the devil and demons. But then in the late 60s, early 70s, you start to see this really stark rise in public belief in Satan and the paranormal in general.

And let me tell you, Ed and Lorraine Warren glommed onto this and they held on tight--with a death grip. Suddenly they began to brand themselves not just as ghost hunters, but now they're demon hunters.

Ed Warren created his own demon lore to suit his needs. Literally. He took liberties with, and basically created his own fanfic universe of how demons worked. And he did that to suit his own needs--those needs included telling as many people as possible that you could be the victim of an invisible demon. And the kicker is, he would have wanted you to call him if you thought that you were being bothered by a demon, because then him and Lorraine, they could come give you a visit. And then, depending on how marketable whatever was happening to you was, maybe they could get a book deal or a movie franchise out of it, as well as future speaking engagements and guest appearances on talk shows like Sally Jesse Raphael.

You may hear that the Warrens didn't take any money for their services, but that doesn't make them selfless or pious. No, they got something out of it. They got a lot of something out of it.

With the lore that Ed and Lorraine Warren created from scratch, they wanted you to feel afraid and they wanted you to feel like you were in danger. It was their entire business model. And that's messed up. It is. It's just messed up.

Did Ed Warren Also Think Cabbage Patch Dolls Were Possessed?

Ed Warren really ran with this whole possessed dolls thing. He also claimed that Cabbage Patch dolls attracted demons. He said there was like a demonic infestation about Cabbage Patch dolls attracting demons to possess their little doll bodies, which would then allow them to levitate and also say things. They weren't talking dolls, to be clear. Cabbage Patch dolls, if you've never met them, can't talk as a general rule. But he says that these demons would possess them, in which case they would then say things like I'm not just a doll, I'm the Lord of hell.

So he just had like a thing for evil dolls, I guess. I don't know, I don't get it.

What About the Real Raggedy Ann Doll?

So they created this knock off ventriloquist dummy looking kind of marionette for the movies, you know, with the big round cheeks and like the big wide eyes. I don't think that the doll that they made for the movie Annabelle was an improvement. I think the Raggedy Ann doll is way scarier--picture it gliding up whose leg to strangle him with the smooth little fabric doll hands. Like, that's--oh God, I don't like it.

They do have this like vacant blank smiling stare, which is why I think it's scarier. And it's like innocent. And you would think if something innocent is probably not going to strangle you until you black out--whereas if you see the ventriloquist looking doll in the Annabelle movies, you see that doll and you're like, that doll is definitely going to try to suffocate me in my sleep.

Many people believe that Johnny Gruell, the creator of Raggedy Ann, created the doll as a tribute to his daughter Marcella, after her tragic death at age 13 from an infected vaccination. And then that same doll later became possessed by a demon that terrorized countless people. And then--oh wait, no, just kidding. That's not true. Gruell actually had already begun the process of designing and patenting the Raggedy Ann doll before Marcella's illness.

Robert the Doll--The Haunted Doll That Predates Annabelle

If you haven't heard a story about Robert the Doll, I'm just giving you a super nutshell version. Please go find a podcast about Robert the Doll and listen because it's a wild ride.

Robert was created around 1904 and gifted to a Key West boy by the name of Robert Eugene Otto. The child Robert Eugene went by the name Gene, and then he named his doll after himself--after his first name that he doesn't use. Very weird. Also weird was how huge this doll was. This doll is 40 inches tall, twice as big as Raggedy Ann, so it's nearly 3 and a half feet tall.

I feel like if you are a doll and you are over 20 inches tall, I do feel like there's a case to be made. I feel like maybe you do have a higher chance of being possessed, just because we just don't need dolls that are like the size of children.

His display case is apparently covered in letters of apology sent in by people who took his photo without consent, and then they had nothing but terrible luck afterwards. So they're writing him like: please forgive me, Robert, I'm so sorry I took your photo. Please just stop making me lose all of my jobs and my dog and my truck.

Wait a minute--maybe Robert the Doll is somehow partially responsible for all of the country music that we have today. Interesting.

This doll definitely predates Annabelle. And that's when we first hear about Annabelle--1980, remember.

You Can Feel Afraid and Not Be in Danger

Scary stories can and should be fun, you know, even when they're scary--even maybe because they're scary. It's like horror movies--horror movies let us feel fear and anxiety in safe environments. In some people, it can actually help alleviate anxiety because you're training your mind to learn that yes, it feels afraid right now, but it is safe. And that's what I'm all about. You can feel afraid and not be in danger.

The thing is, there's plenty of unexplained stuff out there to keep us up at night. We don't need potentially grifters or possible flim flammery making it worse. We don't.

Want to hear more? Listen to the full deep dive episode HERE!