Chapter Three - The Real Annabelle Case

CHAPTER THREE

The Real Annabelle Case

ANNABELLE WAS JUST a Raggedy Ann doll.
Cloth body. Button eyes. Red yarn hair.
She looked harmless.

That’s what made it worse.

The story begins in 1970, when a young nursing student named Donna received a gift from her mother: a used Raggedy Ann doll, bought secondhand from a hobby store.

Donna shared an apartment with her roommate, Angie.
Both were sweet, logical, grounded. The kind of girls who didn’t scare easy.

But shortly after Annabelle moved in, things got weird.

They started finding the doll in different positions. Legs crossed, arms folded, moved from one room to another.
Then notes began to appear on parchment paper.
Messages like “Help us.”
But the girls had no parchment paper in the house.

Eventually, Donna came home to find blood on the doll’s hands.

That’s when they called in a medium.

The medium conducted a séance and reported that the spirit of a little girl named Annabelle Higgins had attached itself to the doll.

She had supposedly died in a nearby car accident.
She was lonely.
She just wanted to be loved.

Moved by compassion, the girls agreed to let Annabelle stay.
They treated the doll like a person. They talked to her, left her notes, and even brought her little gifts.

That’s when things got violent.

A friend named Lou warned Donna and Angie that something felt off about the doll.

He started having nightmares of Annabelle crawling up his body and choking him while he slept.
One day, while awake, Lou heard noises in Donna’s room.
He entered and saw nothing, until he felt something behind him.

Suddenly, his chest was slashed.
Seven claw marks. Three vertical, four horizontal.

There was no explanation.
No attacker.
Just the doll, sitting on the floor.

The girls called their priest.
The priest called another priest.
And that priest called Ed and Lorraine Warren.

The Warrens quickly determined that there was no child spirit.
According to them, it was a demonic entity using the child story as bait.

That’s the pattern they saw in many cases:
The spirit pretends to be harmless… until it isn’t.

Ed believed the entity was in its “infestation” phase, seeking permission to fully possess either one of the girls, or the apartment itself.

The Warrens had the apartment blessed by a priest and took the doll with them.
But the story doesn’t end there.

On the drive home, Ed claimed the car lost power multiple times.
Brakes failed.
The steering locked.
They had to douse the doll in holy water just to make it home safely.

Once home, they placed it in Ed’s study.
But Annabelle didn’t stop.

They’d find her levitating, moving from room to room.
At one point, she was discovered sitting in a chair, levitating, and spinning slowly.

That’s when Ed had the case built.
A locked glass box, surrounded with prayers, holy symbols, and warnings:

“Positively Do Not Open.”

She’s still there to this day at the Warrens’ Occult Museum in Monroe, Connecticut.

One visitor mocked the doll, banging on the glass and daring her to curse him.

Ed kicked the guy out immediately.
On the way home, he and his girlfriend crashed their motorcycle.
She survived.

He died.

Critics say:

• There’s no photographic evidence of the notes
• The doll’s “movement” was likely imagined
• The scratches could’ve been self-inflicted
• The story fits a perfect scare-arc

Believers say:

• Too many people saw too many things
• The priest who blessed the apartment was deeply shaken
• The Warrens didn’t make money off this case
• And above all: why take the risk?

Even ghost-hunting skeptics who visit the museum won’t touch that box.

Not because they believe in Annabelle.

Because they don’t want to find out.