![]() Once they were married, Ed would paint houses rumored to be haunted, then have Lorraine tell the owners her husband had a gift for them. ![]() They met as teenagers at the movie theater where Ed worked, but each developed their affinity for the supernatural as children, Ed while growing up in a house he believed was haunted, and Lorraine while at a Catholic girls' school where she claimed she began sensing people's auras. Portrayed in the Conjuring films by Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga, Ed and Lorraine started taking cases - going to houses and checking for demons, ghosts, and other supernatural problems - in the 1940s. Though Annabelle is popular enough to take over a suburban Connecticut banquet hall, she's just one point on the long timeline of Ed and Lorraine Warren's careers as paranormal investigators. "She's gonna be furious if you go on in there with a phone on," the guy in line behind me said to his friend. They were patiently waiting to be checked in for "An Evening With Annabelle," which consists of a lecture, videos, buffet dinner, and later, we'll all learn, an impromptu acoustic cover of the Beach Boys' "Sloop John B." Everyone in line had to sign a waiver before entering, absolving the hosts from "any liability or traumatic influence associated with viewing the items or being in the presence of Annabelle," but this did not deter eager patrons from making jokes about the lady we were about to meet. On a warm Saturday night in June, a couple hundred people gathered in the parking lot of an Italian restaurant in Monroe called Roberto's. She lives in Monroe, Connecticut, and if you have $169 to spare and the desire to spend four hours in a room with several possessed artifacts, you can meet her. She is the rare horror character who really exists, though in real life, she doesn't look anything like her on-screen counterpart. You know her as Annabelle, first seen in The Conjuring and later in her eponymous spin-off. But only one family has built an empire out of their creepy doll. More recently, Brahms, the emotionless goblin that Lauren Cohan had to babysit in The Boy. All those nightmares from the Puppet Master movies. The museum closed due to zoning violations, and the artifacts are now in the possession of the Warrens' son-in-law, Tony Spera." That's not to say Annabelle's on-screen counterpart hasn't been up to no good lately.Creepy dolls have been a staple of horror movies for about as long as horror movies have been a thing. Thankfully, the real Annabelle doll hasn't escaped from the Warren museum because, as Newsweek reports, "Annabelle hasn't lived in museum for quite some time. Think of it as similar to an electric-dog fence - keeping the dog within set boundaries." Now fast-forward to August 14, 2020, where social media was convinced of rumors that Annabelle had somehow found its way out of its confines to make life even more miserable. ![]() The evil can’t penetrate the holy prayers that bind it. We have a Catholic priest who performs a binding prayer around the doll which acts as a blockade. It isn’t out into the world causing harm to others. At least as it sits, we know where it resides. ![]() Lorraine Warren, who died last year, explained in 2014 why simply destroying the Annabelle doll isn't an option, saying that "getting rid of the doll would only get rid of the vessel, not the evil that resides within the doll. They incarcerated it in a special glass box at their home, which later became The Warrens' Occult Museum in Monroe, Connecticut. As chronicled in the Conjuring series and its Annabelle spin-offs, the possessed doll came into the Warrens' possession in 1970. ![]()
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