Cowboy Marvin is out trick or treating.
As a special Halloween treat he asked a friend to stop by and share
a spooky tale.
Stacey Graham
is here to tell you about
 |
| Annabelle at the Warren's Occult Museum |
Annabelle
Passing an antique store in 1970, Donna’s mother couldn’t resist buying the large rag doll with round button eyes as a birthday gift for her college-aged daughter. Donna loved the doll, displaying it prominently in her bedroom of the apartment she shared with fellow nursing student, Angie. Days later, the women noticed something peculiar about the doll. After making her bed each morning, Donna would place the doll – legs straight out and arms to the sides – on her bed, when she returned in the evening, the legs and arms would be positioned differently. Limbs would cross or the doll’s arms would be folded in its lap.
A week or so passed, and
each day the doll would change its position from how it was left in the
morning. Donna tested the doll by purposefully placing the limbs in crossed
positions to see if they’d be in a similar state when she returned. Not only did she find the arms and legs
uncrossed, the doll would be found hunched over or knocked to one side.
Eventually, the girls found
the doll making a break for it in the front room; returning home one night,
Donna and Angie discovered the doll sitting in a chair near the front door –
kneeling. Other times, they would find it sitting on the sofa, and probably
hogging the remote control.
The doll started to leave
notes around the apartment. Written in pencil on parchment paper, of which they
had neither in the house, they found messages pleading for help, “HELP US” and
“HELP LOU” were scrawled in childlike handwriting across the yellowed paper.
Thinking the doll and its
antics were the trick being played on them by someone able to access their
apartment, Donna and Angie began to mark positions on the doors and windows to
track anyone coming into the room. Never finding evidence of a person entering
the apartment, they began to get scared.
One night, the women found
blood on the back of the doll’s soft cloth hand – and three drops of blood on
its chest. They decided to contact a medium to see if she could find an
explanation for the odd occurrences surrounding the doll. The psychic told them
a young girl had died on the property when it was simply fields to run in and
no buildings had swallowed her playground in concrete. The girl’s name was
Annabelle Higgins and was seven-years-old. Annabelle had decided she’d liked
the rag doll and felt the students were able to relate to her, the psychic
continued, so she had possessed the doll to be near them. The women called the
doll Annabelle from that moment on and treated the expressionless toy as if it
were a child. They felt it was no longer a plaything – it was a child in need
of love.
Lou, a friend of Angie and
Donna’s, had never felt comfortable around the doll. While he couldn’t place
why he’d rather be in a separate room from Annabelle, it turned out he should
have listened to his instincts. Napping on the couch in their front room, Lou
dreamed of the doll. Feeling himself wake up he looked around the room and then
saw Annabelle at his feet. The doll began to climb up his legs, moving over his
chest until it reached his neck. In his dream, he saw the soft arms touch
either side of his throat and the horror of himself being strangled by the rag
doll. Waking in terror, he knew the doll had to go.
Later, while preparing for a
trip the next day, Lou was alone in the apartment with Angie. Hearing noises
coming from Donna’s bedroom, Lou suspected they’d finally catch whatever had
been playing with the doll and discover who was behind the tricks on his
friends. Quietly opening the door to the room, Lou saw nothing was out of
place, except that instead of being in her normal place on top of the bed,
Annabelle was lying crumpled in a corner. As he walked further into the room
and closer to the doll, he felt a dark presence behind him. Spinning around to
face the attacker, Lou fell to the ground as Angie ran in to find her friend
bleeding. Peeling away the material of his shirt, they found seven claw-like
marks on his chest, the scratches burning like fire into his flesh. Remarkably,
the wounds healed completely within a day or two but they knew they needed help
to deal with whatever had possessed the doll.
Donna contacted the
Episcopal Church who suggested they contact Ed and Lorraine Warren, the
founders of the New England Society for Psychic Research. Ed, a demonologist,
and Lorraine Warrens Warrens
On way home, the Warrens
A special case was built for
the doll and it moved to the Warren ’s Occult Museum Occult Museum
Scared?
Want more?
Check out Stacey's other books.
Available at
Available at
Llewellyn | Amazon paperback or Kindle | Barnes & Noble |Books-a-Million | Powell's
Visit Haunted Stuff's website
Reviews: Jenn's Bookshelves
Visit Haunted Stuff's website
Reviews: Jenn's Bookshelves
About Stacey:
I'm a multi-tasking mother of five whose early jobs included faking a British accent for tourists at a historical mansion, and speaking with Italian men over the phone for far too long while working at a travel agency in Portland, Oregon.
I have degrees in history and archaeology/anthropology from Oregon State University and may or may not have seen Bigfoot at an off-campus deli. It was Oregon, it's hard to tell. I enjoy writing terrible zombie poetry and baking delicious granola that my husband refuses to eat. I currently live on the tippy top of a mountain outside of Washington, D.C. where helicopters hover overhead when the President gets his groove on to visit Homeland Security's secret bunker.
