Case File: Annabelle

This is a terrifying case of a raggedy Ann doll named Annabelle. The case is from the
1970’s and is highlighted in the book The Demonologist. This is one of the Warrens
most asked about cases. The referral came from an Episcopal priest. A somber toned
clergyman told Ed Warren of two young nurses who had communicated with what they
thought to be a human spirit. One of the girls’ friends had been attacked physically, and
the activity was still in progress, so Ed accepted the case. With that the priest gave Ed the
phone number of the girls. Ed immediately called the number and upon reaching one of
the girls, Ed verified the existence of the problem and told the young women that he and
Lorraine were on their way.
Ed and Lorraine arrived at the apartment and the case begins. "Ok girls, I’d like to hear
the whole story, Who here can tell me?" "I can" said Donna. "All right, Lou, Angie,
please add any details she leaves out," Ed directed. "There are two stories," Donna said. "
One that began earlier in the week with Lou. The other one’s about Annabelle. But I
suppose they’re both about Annabelle." "Who’s Annabelle?" Ed promptly asked. "She
belongs to Donna, she moves, she acts alive, but no, I don’t think she’s alive. She’s in the
living room" said Angie, pointing across the table. There, sitting on the sofa." Lorraine
looked to her left, into the living room. "Are you talking about the doll?" "That’s right,"
Angie replied, "the big raggedy Ann doll. "That’s Annabelle, she moves!"

Ed got up and
walked into the living room to inspect the doll. It was big and heavy, the size of a four-
year-old child, sitting with its legs stretched out on the sofa. The black pupil-less eyes
stared back at him, while the painted-on smile gave the doll an expression of grim irony.
Looking it over without touching the thing, Ed then returned to the kitchen. "Where did
the doll come from?" Ed asked Donna. "It was a gift" Donna replied, "My mother gave it
to me on my last birthday." "Is there some reason why she bought you a doll?" Ed wanted
to know. "No. It was just something novel-a decoration" the young nurse answered.
"Okay." Ed went on. "When did you first start noticing activity occur?" "About a year
ago," replied Donna. "The doll started to move around the apartment by itself. I don’t
mean it got up and walked around, or any such thing. I mean when we’d come home
from work it would never be quite where we left it." "Explain that part to me a little
more" Ed requested. "After I got the doll for my birthday," Donna explained, "I put it on
my bed each morning after the bed was made. The arms would be off to its sides and its
legs would be straight out-just like it’s sitting there now. But when we’d come home at night, the arms and legs would be positioned in different gestures. For instance, its legs
would be crossed at the ankles, or its arms would be folded in its lap. After a week or so,
this made us suspicious. So to test it, I purposely crossed its arms and legs in the morning
to see if it really was moving. And sure enough, every night when we’d come back home,
the arms and legs would be uncrossed and the thing would be sitting there in any of a
dozen different postures." "Yeah, but it did more than that," Angie added. "The doll also
changed rooms by itself. We came home one night and the Annabelle doll was sitting in a
chair by the front door. It was kneeling! The funny thing about it was, when we tried to
make the doll kneel, it’d just fall over. It couldn’t kneel. Other times we’d find it sitting
on the sofa, although when we left the apartment in the morning it’d be in Donna’s room
with the door closed!" "Anything else?" Lorraine asked. "Yes," said Donna. "It would
leave us little notes and messages. The handwriting looked to be that of a small child."
"What’d the note say?" questioned Ed. "It would say things that meant nothing to us,"
Donna answered. Things would be written like HELP US or HELP LOU, but Lou wasn’t
in any kind of jeopardy at the time. And who us was-we didn’t know. Still, the thing that
was weird was that the notes would be written in pencil, but when we tried to find one,
there was not one pencil in the apartment! And the paper it wrote on was parchment. I
tore the apartment apart, looking for parchment paper, but again neither of us had any
such thing.’’ " It sounds like someone had a key to your apartment and was playing a sick
joke on you," Ed stated flatly. "That’s exactly what we thought," said Donna. "So we did
little things like put marks on the windows and doors or arrange the rugs so that anyone
who came in here would leave a trace that we could see. But never once did it turn out
that there was a real outside intruder."
"While the doll was moving around, and we’d become suspicious of burglars, when
something else screwy happened." Angie added next. "The Annabelle doll was sitting on
Donna’s bed, as was usual. When we came home one night, there was blood on the back
of its hand, and there were three drops of blood on its chest!" "God, that really scared us,"
Donna said frankly. "Did you notice any other kind of phenomena occur in the
apartment?" Ed asked them. "One time around Christmas, we found a little chocolate
boot on the stereo that none of us had bought. Presumably it came from Annabelle," said
Angie. " When did you come to determine there was a spirit associated with the doll?"
Lorraine questioned. "We knew something unusual was going on," Donna answered.
"The doll did change rooms by itself. It did pose in different gestures, we all saw it, but
wanted to know why? Was there maybe some plausible reason why the doll was moving?
So Angie and I got in touch with a woman who’s a medium. That was about a month, or
maybe six weeks after all this stuff started to happen. We learned that a little girl died on
this property," Donna told the Warrens. "She was seven years old and her name was
Annabelle Higgins. The Annabelle spirit said she played in the fields long ago before
these apartments were built. They were happy times for her. She told us. Because
everyone around here was grown-up, and only concerned with their jobs, there was no
one she could relate to, except us. Annabelle felt that we would be able to understand her.
That’s why she began moving the rag doll. All Annabelle wanted was to be loved, and so
she asked if she could stay with us and move into the doll. What could we do? So we said
yes." "Wait a minute here," Ed interjected. "What do you mean it wanted to move into the
doll? Do you mean it proposed to possess it?" "Right, that was the understanding," Donna replied. "It seemed harmless enough. We’re nurses, you know, we see suffering every
day. We had compassion. Anyway, we called the doll Annabelle from that time on." "Did
you do anything different with the doll after you learned it was supposedly possessed by
a little girl spirit named Annabelle?" asked Lorraine. "Not really," said Donna. "But of
course it wasn’t just a doll any more. It was Annabelle. We couldn’t ignore that fact."
"All right, before you go any further, let’s back up a minute," Ed requested. "First you got
the doll for you birthday. After a while the doll began to move – or at least change places
enough for you to notice it. This made you curious, so you decided to have a séance, and
a spirit came across that called itself Annabelle Higgins. This supposed little girl was
seven years old and asked if it could come live with you by possessing the toy doll. You
said yes, out of compassion. Then you renamed the doll Annabelle. Right?" "Right," said
Donna and Angie. Have you seen the ghost of a little girl at any time in this apartment?"
Ed asked. "No," both the girls answered. "You also said a chocolate item showed up here
once," said Ed. "Has anything else strange ever happened that you couldn’t explain?"
"One time a statue lifted up across the room," Donna recalled, "then it tumbled in the air
and fell on the floor. None of us were near the statue-it was on the other side of the room.
That incident frightened us totally." "Let me ask you something else." Ed went on.
"Didn’t you think that maybe you shouldn’t have given the doll so much recognition?" It
wasn’t a doll!" Donna corrected him. "It was the spirit of Annabelle we cared about!"
"That’s right," said Angie. Ed added "I mean, before you knew anything about
Annabelle?" "How were we to know anything?" Donna asked. "But looking back on it
now, maybe we shouldn’t have given the doll so much credence. But really, we saw the
thing as being no more than a harmless mascot. I t never hurt anything…at least until the
other day." "Do you still think what’s moving the doll is the spirit of a little girl?"
Lorraine queried. "What else could it be?" Angie said in reply. "It’s a damn voodoo doll,
that’s what it is," Lou blurted out. "I told them about that thing a long time ago. The doll
was just taking advantage of them…"
"Okay, Lou, I think it’s time you told your side of things, tell them about the dreams,"
coaxed Angie. "Well," Lou picked up, "The thing gives me bad dreams. Recurrent ones.
But yet what I’m going to tell you is not a dream as far as I’m concerned, because I
somehow saw this happen to me. The last time it happened I fell asleep at home, a really
deep sleep. While I was lying there, I saw myself wake up. Something seemed wrong to
me. I looked around the room, but nothing was out of place. But then when I looked
down toward my feet, I saw the rag doll, Annabelle. It was slowly gliding up my body. It
moved over my chest and stopped. Than it put its arms out. One arm touched one side of
my neck, the other touched the other side like it was making an electrical connection.
Then I saw myself being strangled. I might as well have been pushing on a wall, because
it wouldn’t move. It was literally strangling me to death, I couldn’t help myself, no matter
how hard I tried." "Yes, but the priest I spoke with said you’d been attacked?" Ed pressed
him. "No," Lou asserted, "That happened here in this apartment when Angie and I were
alone together. It was about ten or eleven o’clock at night, and we were reading over
maps because I was going off on a trip the next day. Everything was quiet at the time.
Suddenly, we both heard sounds in Donna’s room that made us think that someone had
broken into the apartment. I quietly got up and tip-toed to the bedroom door, which was closed. I waited until the noises stopped, then I carefully opened the door and reached in
and switched on the light. Nobody was in there! Except, the Annabelle doll was tossed on
the floor in a corner. I went in alone and walked over to the thing to see if anything
unusual had happened. But as I got close to the doll, I got the distinct impression that
somebody was behind me. I swung around instantly and, well…."
"He won’t talk about that part," Angie said. "When Lou turned around there wasn’t
anybody there, but he suddenly yelled and grabbed for his chest. He was doubled over,
cut and bleeding when I got to him. Blood was all over his shirt. Lou was shaking and
scared and we went back out into the living room. We then opened his shirt and there on
his chest was what looked to be sort a of claw mark!"
"Can I see the mark?" Ed asked.
"It’s gone now," the young man told him. "I saw the cuts on his chest, too," Donna spoke
up in support. "How many were there?" Ed asked. "Seven," said Angie. "Three were
vertical, four were horizontal." "Did the cuts have any sensation?" Ed queried "All the
cuts were hot, like they were burns," Lou told him. "Did you ever have cuts or wounds in
the same area of your chest before this incident happened?" questioned Ed. "No," the
young man replied. "Did you lose consciousness before or after the attack took place?"
"No," again he replied. "How long did it take the wounds to heal?" Lorraine questioned.
"They healed up almost immediately," said Lou. "They were half-gone the next day, and
fully gone the day after." "Has anything else happened since that time?" asked Ed. "No,"
came the joint reply. "Who did you first contact after the incident occurred?" "I contacted
an Episcopal priest named Father Hegan." Donna told Ed and Lorraine. "Why did you
call him instead of a doctor?" Lorraine asked. "Do you think someone off the street
would have believed where that claw mark on Lou’s chest came from?" Donna asked
rhetorically. "Besides, we agreed the cuts weren’t half as important as how Lou got them.
We wanted to know if this was going to happen again. Our problem was who to ask."
"Was there some reason why you specifically called on Father Hegan?" Lorraine
questioned. "Yes. We trust him," said Donna." He teaches nearby here, at a junior
college, plus Angie and I both know him.
"What did you tell the priest?" asked Ed. "The whole story-about Annabelle and how it
moved on its own, and especially about Lou’s cuts," Donna replied. "At first we were
afraid he might not believe us, but that was no problem, he believed us all right. He said
he’d never heard of such a thing happening these days. At the time we were all scared out
of our wits, and I asked him what he thought had happened to us. He said he didn’t want
to speculate, but he did feel it was a spiritual matter, possibly an important one, and that
he was going to contact someone higher up in the Church, a Father Cooke." "That’s what
he did," Ed told her. "Did the name Annabelle, or Annabelle Higgins mean anything to
you in real life before this incident occurred?" "No," they replied. "Although we never
saw anything in here, Lou said he felt a presence in the room before he got hurt… there is
something in here," Angie stated firmly. "In fact, I can’t stand to be here. We have
decided to get a new apartment. We’re moving out!" "I’m afraid that’s not going to help
very much," Ed said dryly. "What do you mean?" Donna asked, astonished. "To put it in a nutshell, you inadvertently brought a spirit into this apartment-and into your lives.
You’re not going to be able to walk away from it that easily."
After a long minute, Ed spoke again. "We’re going to help you, beginning right now.
Today. First thing I’d like to do is call Father Cooke and have him come over here." Ed
had no trouble getting hold of the Episcopal priest who had been waiting for his call. "All
right," Ed said "when Father Cooke comes here, he’s going to have to perform a sort of
blessing, an … exorcism of the premises. "I knew it!" Lou proclaimed. "I knew it would
lead to this." "Yes, I think you did," Ed told him "but I’m not sure any of you know the
reason why. To begin with, there is no Annabelle! There never was. You were duped.
However, we are dealing with a spirit here. The teleportation of the doll while you were
out of the apartment, the appearance of notes written on parchment, the manifestation of
three symbolic drops of blood, plus the gestures the doll made are all meaningful. They
tell me there was intent, which means there was an intelligence behind the activity. But
ghosts, human spirits, plain and simply can’t bring on phenomena of this nature and
intensity. They don’t have the power. Instead, what has happened is something inhuman
has taken over here. Demonic." Ed told them. "Ordinarily people aren’t bothered by
inhuman demonic spirits, unless they do something to bring the force into their lives.
Your first mistake was to give the doll recognition, that is the reason why the spirit
moved into the doll to, draw attention to itself. Once it had your attention, it exploited
you, it simply brought you fear and even injury. Inhuman spirits, enjoy inflicting pain,
it’s negative. Your next mistake was calling in a medium," Ed went on. "The demonic
has to somehow get your permission to interfere in your life. Unfortunately, through your
own free will, you gave it that permission.
"Then the doll is possessed?" questioned Donna. "No, the doll is not possessed. Spirits
don’t possess things, spirits possess people," Ed informed her. "Instead, the spirits simply
moved the doll around and gave it the illusion of being alive. Now, what happened to Lou
earlier this week" Ed proceeded, "was bound to occur sooner or later. In fact, you all were
in jeopardy of coming under possession by this spirit, this is what the thing was really
after. But Lou didn’t believe in the charade, so he was an ongoing threat to the entity.
There was bound to be a showdown. Had the spirit been given another week or two, you
might have been killed." Ed calmly concluded. "There is only one entity involved, but its
behavior is completely unpredictable." said Lorraine.
When Father Cooke arrived, the interview session ended in the kitchen, Ed was eager to
have the house blessed, remove the doll, and return home. Once the preliminary greetings
were out of the way, Ed told the priest, that in his judgment, the spirit responsible for the
malicious activity was inhuman, and still in the apartment, and the only way it could be
made to leave was through the power of the words written in the exorcism-blessing. "I’m
not totally familiar with demonology," admitted Father Cooke. "how do you know such a
spirit is behind the disturbance?" "Well, in this case, it wasn’t all that difficult to
determine." Ed said frankly. "These spirits work in characteristic ways. What’s going on
here is essentially the infestation stage of the phenomenon. A spirit, in this case an
inhuman demonic spirit, began moving the doll around the apartment through
teleportation and other means. Once it aroused the girls’ curiosity which was the spirit’s purpose in moving the doll-they made the predictable mistake of bringing a medium in
here, who took matters a step further. She told them, in the trance state, that a little girl
spirit named Annabelle was moving the doll. Communicating through the medium, the
entity preyed on the girls’ emotional vulnerabilities, and during the séance managed to
extract permission from them to go about its business. Insofar as demonic is a negative
spirit, it then set about causing patently negative phenomena to occur; it aroused fear
through the weird movements of that doll, it brought about the materialization of
disturbing handwritten notes, it left a residue of blood on the doll, and ultimately it even
struck the young man, Lou, on the chest leaving a bloody claw mark. Beyond the activity,
Lorraine has also discerned that this inhuman spirit is with us now. Lorraine’s an
excellent clairvoyant, and she’s never been wrong about the nature of a spirit that’s
present. However, if you want to go a step further, we can challenge the entity right now
with religious provocation?"
In this case, the recitation of the exorcism-blessing took the priest about five minutes to
perform. The Episcopal blessing of the home is a wordy, seven page document that is
distinctly positive in nature. Rather than specifically expelling evil entities from the
dwelling, the emphasis is instead directed toward filling the home with the power of the
positive and of God. There was no trouble or mishap during the procedure. When he was
finished, the priest the blessed the individuals who were present, and after doing so,
declared all was well. Lorraine also confirmed that the apartment and people were free
from the spirit entity. Ed and Lorraine’s work was done, they then took their leave and
started for home. At Donna’s request, and as a further precaution against the phenomena
ever occurring in the home again, the Warrens took the big rag doll along with them.
Placing Annabelle in the back seat of the car, Ed decided it was safer to avoid traveling
on the interstate, in case the entity had not been separated from the rag doll. His hunch
was correct. In no time at all, Ed and Lorraine felt themselves the object of vicious
hatred. Then, at each dangerous curve in the road, their new car began to stall, causing
the power steering and breaks to fail. Repeatedly the car verged on collision. Of course, it
would have been easy to stop and throw the doll into the woods. But if the item didn’t
simply "teleport" back to the girls’ apartment, at the least it would place anyone who
found it in jeopardy.
The third time the car stalled along the road, Ed reached into his black bag, took out a
vial, and threw a sprinkling of holy water on the rag doll, making the sign of the cross
over it. The disturbance in the car stopped immediately, allowing the Warrens to reach
home safely.
For the next few days, Ed sat the doll in a chair next to his desk. The doll levitated a
number of times in the beginning, then it seemed to fall inert. During the ensuing weeks,
however, it began showing up in various rooms of the house. When the Warrens were
away and had the doll locked up in the outer office building, they would often return to
find it sitting comfortably upstairs in Ed’s easy chair when they opened the main front door.

It also turned out that Annabelle came with a "friend", a black cat, who would
occasionally materialize beside the doll. The cat would stalk once around the floor, taking
particular notice of books and other objects in Ed’s office; then return to the doll’s side,
and dematerialize from the head down.
It also became apparent that Annabelle hated clergymen. During the follow-up process of
the case, it was necessary for the Warrens to consult the Episcopal priests associated with
the incident in the young nurses’ apartment. Returning home alone one evening, Lorraine
was terrified by loud, rolling growls that reverberated throughout the house. Later, when
she was listening to the playback of the telephone answering machine, they were back to
back calls from Father Hagen. Between his two calls was heard the incredible growling
noises she’d heard earlier in the house. One day Father Jason Branford, Catholic exorcist,
had been working with Ed and asked about the new addition to the office-Annabelle. Ed
told Father Jason about the case and gave him the paperwork for his review. After
hearing Ed’s account of want had happened, the priest picked up the rag doll and said
"You’re just a rag doll, Annabelle. You can’t hurt anything." The priest then tossed the
stuffed figure back on the chair. "That’s one thing you better not say again," Ed warned
him with a laugh. Yet when Father Jason stopped to say goodbye to Lorraine an hour
later, she pleaded that he be especially careful driving, and insisted that he call her just as
soon as he arrived at the rectory. "I discerned tragedy for that young priest," says
Lorraine, "but he had to go his way." A few hours later the telephone rang. "Lorraine"
said Father Jason, "why did you tell me to be careful driving?" "Because," she told him,
"I felt your car would go out of control, you would have an accident." "Well, you were
right," he stated flatly. "The brake system failed. I was almost killed in a traffic accident.
My car is a wreck."
Later in the year, at a large social gathering at the Warrens’ home, Lorraine and Father
Jason went into the den to chat for a few moments. By a strange coincidence, Annabelle
had moved into that room the day before. While speaking with Lorraine, the priest saw an
ornamental wall decoration make a quick movement. Suddenly, the twenty-four inch long
Boar’s tooth necklace above them exploded with percussive force. Hearing this stunning
noise, the other guests immediately converged on the room, at which time someone in the
crowd had the foresight to snap a photograph. When developed, the print appeared
normal, except above the doll were two beacons of bright light, both pointing in the
direction of Father Jason Bradford.
"On another occasion," Ed recounts, "I was in my office, working with a police detective
on a case that concerned a witchcraft related murder in the area. As a cop he’s seen every
kind of crime, he’s definitely not the sort of man who gets scared. While we were talking,
Lorraine called me upstairs to take a long distance call. I told the detective he was free to
look around my office, but to be careful and not touch any of the objects, because they’d
come from cases where the demonic had been invoked. Well, I wasn’t away for five
minutes when upstairs came this detective stark white. When I asked him what had
happened, he refused to tell me," Ed remembers, breaking into a grin. "He just kept
mumbling ‘The doll, the rag doll is real….’ He was talking about Annabelle of course.
That little doll made a believer out of him! In fact, as I think back on it, any meetings I’ve
had with the detective from that day on have always been in his office."
"Profane objects like the Annabelle doll have their own aura. When
you touch them, your human aura mingles with theirs. This change
attracts spirits, it’s almost like setting off a fire alarm. Therefore, for
protection, I bless myself with holy water then ‘bless’ the rag doll
with holy water in the sign of the cross. Like I say when we’re doing
field work I’ve never met an atheist in a haunted house."
It’s difficult for people to accept the existence of something they’ve
been conditioned not to believe in. Still, lack of knowledge allowed this negative spirit to
wrangle it way into the lives of these three unwary young people. Many, nevertheless,
contend that the notion of spirits is irrational or unfounded. They say the phenomenon is
an illusion, or a hallucination, or it doesn’t exist at all. At best, the activity can be
explained away by science. Or can it?