A few years ago, the horror film by John Leonetti "The Curse of Annabelle" was released on the wide screen. The box office in the United States amounted to several tens of millions of dollars. The film went beyond the United States and began to be shown in other countries. However, in France, during the session, the audience observed unmotivated outbursts of aggression. They were so pronounced that very soon in France they decided to out of harm's way the picture to be banned.
Perhaps the reason for the unmotivated aggression among the audience (by the way, not only French - this phenomenon was observed in other countries, but not everywhere the authorities reacted so quickly) is that the film is based on real events that took place in 1970, when the doll became real a nightmare for their masters. True, she did not at all resemble a doll from the film - the prototype was a rag toy.
In 1970, Donna, who was completing a nursing course, was given a birthday present by her mother, a rag doll, Annie, which she had bought from an antique store. Large - about a meter tall - the doll looked quite friendly - wide-eyed, surprised, sweet smile, red hair.
True, the impression was somewhat spoiled by a triangle of red fabric instead of a nose - it resembled a hole in the place of the nose near the skull. In the apartment that Donna rented with her friend Angie, Annie's doll was assigned its place - on the mistress's bed.
After a while, the girls began to notice with surprise that the doll was changing position. “Every morning I sat her down on the made bed: arms at the seams, legs stretched out,” Donna told reporters. - When we returned home in the evening, we found that her limbs were in a different position.
For example, the legs were crossed and the hands were folded in the lap. After about a week, suspicions began to arise. I decided to deliberately leave the doll with crossed arms and legs and see what happens in the evening. Upon returning home, we found a doll with arms outstretched. Every time we found it in all kinds of positions."
All this seemed strange to the girls, but nothing more. They explained this by the fact that they simply forgot in what position they left the doll. The girls were really scared when one day, when they came home, they found Annie kneeling on a chair.
And if Donna tried to put the doll on her knees herself, she fell. The next time, the doll was already on the floor, leaning on a chair. It seemed that her movement around the room was stopped by the sound of the front door opening.
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And after a while, notes began to appear, written in pencil on parchment in a childish clumsy handwriting: "Help me", "Call me", etc. But the girls had no parchment or pencils in the house! The first thing that came to mind was that someone outside had access to their apartment and rummaged in their belongings.
The fact that the notes could be related to the doll did not occur to anyone. And how could sensible people, brought up in accordance with the modern thoroughly materialistic culture, think of this?
Donna and her friend set up several traps that they saw in spy films: windows were sealed, and rugs and small objects were placed in such a way that a person moving around the rooms would certainly move them.
But it didn’t work. The traps remained intact, and the doll continued to live its life. It seemed that the force that moved the doll was still inside. Notes continued to appear.
Time passed, and gradually the girls got used to the "living doll". It would seem that Annie was in a friendly mood, and sometimes even sweets were found in the apartment that no one bought - like gifts from a doll.
However, peace did not come for long. Two months later, when Donna returned home, she saw that Annie had moved from bedroom to living room again. When the girl approached the doll, she was seized with horror: the hands and dress of the toy were stained with blood oozing from the chest.
Frightened to death, the girlfriends turned to the medium for help, and she offered to hold a seance. As a result of the session, it was possible to find out that once on the site of the house in which the girls lived, there was a wasteland, and on it they found the body of a seven-year-old girl Annabel Higgins, who died under unexplained circumstances.
The girl's spirit told the medium that she was happy in these places during her lifetime, and asked permission to stay, having possessed the doll. Donna later said: “We gave her permission. We are nurses and we face human suffering every day. We have a sense of compassion. Since then we have started calling the doll Annabelle."
But the girls did not even suspect what consequences would entail their consent to leave Annabelle's spirit with them in the same house.
The girls were often visited by a friend named Lowe. I must say that from the very beginning he did not like the doll, he seemed to subconsciously feel the threat coming from it.
The young man more than once advised his friends to get rid of the doll, but they only brushed it off. And Donna even said that it was like leaving a child. It looks like the doll took a dislike to the guy too.
One night, the young man woke up in his apartment, seized with an incomprehensible panic. Looking around, at first he did not notice anything unusual. But, looking at the foot of the bed, Lowe was numb with horror. An Annabelle doll was sitting at his feet.
Then she began to slowly move up the body of the young man. Lowe was numb with fear.
Reaching his neck, the doll began to strangle him. Then Lowe did not remember anything - he lost consciousness. Having regained consciousness, he decided to get rid of the doll, despite the fact that he understood that the spirit of Annabelle thus forbade the young man to interfere in his affairs.
The next day, Angie and Lowe were discussing something in the living room when a strange sound was heard in Donna's room. As soon as the young man approached the bedroom door, the sounds stopped. Gathering up courage, he opened the door and saw that the room was completely empty, only a doll was lying in the corner.
Approaching her, Lowe felt as if someone was standing behind him. But, turning around, did not notice anyone. Suddenly an unbearable pain pierced his chest, and he screamed.
Angie came running to scream and found the guy lying on the floor in a state of shock. When Lowe took off his shirt when he returned to the living room, it became clear that scratches appeared on his chest, similar to claw marks! There were seven of them: three transverse and four longitudinal.
After this terrible incident, the young people realized that they could not do without the help of specialists, and turned to the priest, Father Cook, who introduced them to the demonologist Ed Warren, a former police officer, and his wife, medium Lorraine.
(It was this married couple who, a year later, was engaged in the sensational case of the Perrons' troubled home in Harrisville, whose story is reflected in the film The Conjuring (2013). But the Warrens are best known for their investigation of the case in Amityville in the second half of the 70s.)
After examining the situation in detail, Warren concluded: “Annabelle is not! And it never did. You were deceived. We are dealing with a demon."
According to the demonologist, the spirits of dead people do not possess inanimate objects, they have power only over people. What moved the doll could not be a human spirit, it was some kind of evil spirit.
It was he who moved Annie, creating the illusion that she was alive. And it was he who introduced himself as the spirit of a little girl, in order, through compassion, to obtain permission to stay and interfere in the lives of the girls, and in the future to move into one of them.
Warren emphasized that this something was an evil entity, and advised to conduct an exorcism ritual. The ceremony was conducted by Father Cook, who took an active part in this story. Curiously, the demonic doll did not offer any resistance. After the ceremony, Father Cook assured those present that the demon would no longer spoil their lives.
However, the Warrens weren't so optimistic, so they put the doll in a bag and took it with them.
Father Cook, saying goodbye to the Warrens, advised them to drive home on country roads so as not to endanger other drivers, because no one could know what to expect from a demonic passenger. And, as it turned out, the priest was right.
On the way, the car's brakes failed several times at turns, a couple of times the driver narrowly escaped a collision. Finally Warren's patience ran out.
He stopped the car, sprinkled holy water on Annabelle, and baptized her. After this procedure we got home without incident.
At first, at the Warrens' home, the doll behaved calmly, and then again took up the old one. She moved independently and rose into the air.
Unable to cope with the demon, Warren invited Bradford's father to help the exorcist. He did not behave very carefully, grabbed the doll and began to shout at her: "You are just a doll, you cannot harm!" - and threw Annabelle on a chair.
The Warrens were worried, because Bradford's father behaved defiantly with the doll, which should have caused trouble. And so it happened: on the way home, the exorcist had a serious accident and only miraculously survived.
Deciding that Annabelle posed a mortal danger to people, the Warrens placed her in a sealed glass box with the inscription: "Do not open." She became an exhibit in their occult museum.
Once a young couple visited the museum. The guy, wanting to impress the girl, began to knock on the glass box and ask the doll to show its claws. Warren told the unreasonable visitors to leave the museum immediately.
On the way back, the young man's motorcycle hit a pole, the guy died on the spot, and the girl spent a whole year in the hospital. And this, according to the Warrens, is not an isolated case of Annabelle's revenge.
Ed died in 2006, and Lorraine, who turns 90 next year, continues to run the museum.
Until 2014, the doll was unable to leave the prison, but she changed positions while in the glass box.
And over the past two years, strange things have started happening at the Lorraine Museum. Annabelle is the mistress in the mirrors and inspires her with terrible thoughts. Lorraine assures that the head constantly sounds: "Death", "Kill".
For 40 years, the Warren couple did everything to ensure that Annabelle remained a simple exhibit of their museum, and now Lorraine is no longer strong enough, and the doll again poses a mortal threat.
Lorraine stated that the museum will be closed to visitors until she is satisfied that the demonic doll has been neutralized.
However, how she is going to neutralize the doll is not yet clear. Only one thing is clear: the simple destruction of the toy may not be enough, and getting rid of the demon that has taken possession of it, apparently, is not so easy.
The researchers dealing with this problem could not help but have a question: why did the demon choose this particular doll? Most likely, the point is in the author of the antique doll and in his mood and state in which he (or she) created it. After all, it has long been known that a doll is often not just a toy, but a purely magical object.
Moreover, the doll became a toy not so long ago, and at the dawn of its existence, the image of a person in the form of a figurine performed purely magical functions.
No wonder many mystical cults such as the Voodoo cult used dolls as a haven for a variety of entities. Curses were slandered on the doll, with their help a love spell or a conspiracy to die was performed.
Modern designer dolls often create a kind of energy field around them, which psychics and people with increased sensitivity feel.