Annabelle (doll)

Annabelle is an allegedly haunted doll housed at the occult museum of self-described paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren. A character based on the doll is a reoccurring antagonist in the Conjuring Universe.

Background[According to the Warrens, a student nurse was given the doll in 1968. They say the doll behaved strangely, and that a psychic medium told the student that the doll was inhabited by the spirit of a deceased girl named "Annabelle". The student and her roommate tried to accept and nurture the spirit-possessed doll, but the doll reportedly exhibited malicious and frightening behavior. It was at this point that the Warrens say they were first contacted, moving the doll to their museum after pronouncing it demonically possessed.^[1] The doll remains in a glass box at The Warrens' Occult Museum in Monroe, Connecticut.^{[2][3][4][5][6]}

Texas State University assistant professor of religious studies Joseph Laycock says most skeptics have dismissed the Warren's museum as "full of off-the-shelf Halloween junk, dolls and toys, books you could buy at any bookstore". Laycock calls the Annabelle legend an "interesting case study in the relationship between pop culture and paranormal folklore" and speculates that the demonic doll trope popularized by films such as child's PlayDearest, and The Conjuring likely emerged from early legends surrounding Robert the Doll as well as a Twilight Zone season 5 episode 6 titled "Living Doll" (in which the character of the mother is coincidentally named Annabelle), released 5 years prior to the Warren's story. Laycock suggests that "the idea of demonically-possessed dolls allows modern demonologists to find supernatural evil in the most banal and domestic of places."^[1]

Commenting on publicity for the Warren's occult museum coinciding with the film release of The Conjuring, science writer Sharon A. Hill said that many of the myths and legends surrounding the Warrens have "seemingly been of their own doing" and that many people may have difficulty "separating the Warrens from their Hollywood portrayal". Hill criticized sensational press coverage of the Warrens' occult museum and its Annabelle doll. She said, "Like real-life Ed Warren, real-life Annabelle is actually far less impressive." Of the supernatural claims made about Annabelle by Ed Warren, Hill said, "We have nothing but Ed's word for this, and also for the history and origins of the objects in the museum."^[7]