Annabelle | The True Story Behind America’s Most Haunted Doll

In the world of paranormal encounters and urban folklore, few stories are more chilling than this one.

Before The Conjuring turned her into a horror icon, Annabelle was real — a simple Raggedy Ann doll at the center of one of the most documented real hauntings in American history.

In this episode of State of the Unknown, host Robert Barber explores the true paranormal story of Annabelle - from the strange movements witnessed by two nursing students in 1970s Connecticut to the terrifying investigation led by Ed and Lorraine Warren.

Discover how an innocent gift became one of the most infamous haunted objects in haunted America, and how its legend continues to shape creepy history and eerie stories to this day.

If you love true paranormal stories, haunted history, and the darker corners of American folklore, this one’s for you.

Chapters

• 0:00 The Real Annabelle Revealed
• 2:45 Donna, Angie, and the First Signs
• 5:15 Notes, Nightmares, and Escalation
• 8:05 The Seance and “Annabelle Higgins”
• 11:20 The Attack and Calling the Church
• 13:30 Warrens’ Diagnosis: Infestation
• 16:00 Blessing, Removal, and the Drive
• 18:35 The Museum and Growing Legend
• 21:00 Hollywood’s Reinvention vs. Records
• 24:20 Rumors, Tragedy, and Persistence of Myth
• 26:30 Why Dolls Disturb: The Uncanny

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:01

What if I told you one of the most terrifying dolls in history isn't Chucky? It's real. You've seen her in the conjuring movies, but the truth about Annabelle is a lot stranger and honestly way more terrifying than anything Hollywood ever showed. The real Annabelle wasn't porcelain. She wasn't made to look scary. She was just a plain old raggedy and doll, cloth, stuffing, button eyes. The kind of toy you wouldn't think twice about. She was made by the Knickerbocker Toy Company, a simple children's doll sold all over the U.S. In the 1970s, two nursing students in Hartford, Connecticut started noticing something strange about her. They'd leave the doll on the bed, come home from class, and she'd be in a different spot. At first, it was small things, an arm at a different angle, her head tilted. But it didn't stop there. One day she was on the bed, the next, sitting in a chair across the room, legs crossed, hands in her lap. The apartment was locked, no one else had a key. And the air in that place started to feel different. Still, heavy, like it was waiting for something to happen. Before long, Donna started finding little pieces of parchment paper on the floor, folded neatly, written in a child's handwriting she didn't recognize. Just a few words, scrawled in pencil. Help us. Her name was Donna, a nursing student in Hartford, Connecticut. Her roommate Angie worked as a nurse too. They lived the usual life: long shifts, late nights, piles of notes and textbooks on the table. But that doll started to take over their lives. At first, they laughed it off, figured it was a prank, or maybe just their imaginations. But things got darker. Their friend Lou, who spent a lot of time at their apartment, started having violent nightmares. He said the doll climbed onto his chest and tried to choke him. When he woke up, he had deep scratches across his torso. That was the moment they stopped trying to explain it away. They called in a medium. And that's when the name Annabelle first appeared. And tonight, we're opening the case file on the doll locked behind glass. The one the Warren swore was too dangerous to leave unprotected. This is the true story behind the doll known as Annabelle. What began as a simple gift from a mother to a daughter spiraled into one of the most documented hauntings in American history. This is State of the Unknown. Donna and Angie were just two young women sharing a small apartment in Hartford, Connecticut. Nursing students, overworked, underpaid, and doing their best to keep life simple. Classes during the day, long shifts at the hospital, dinner at odd hours. The apartment was modest, second floor. Creaky floors, walls, thin enough to hear the neighbors' TV. Nothing unusual about it. The doll came from Donna's mother. A gift. She'd found it in a hobby shop one afternoon. Just a little something to make the apartment feel homier. A raggedy and doll. Soft, friendly, stitched-on smile. It was the kind of thing you'd expect to see on a child's bed, not in a college apartment. But it reminded Donna of home, so she set it on her bed. For the first few weeks, it just sat there, exactly where she left it. Then one afternoon, Angie came home before Donna and noticed something odd. The doll wasn't on the bed anymore. It was sitting on the couch, legs straight out, head turned slightly towards the door. She figured Donna had moved it. But when Donna got home, she swore she hadn't touched it. They laughed it off, probably just one of them forgetting. But the next day, it had moved again. And the next. Sometimes it was subtle, a change in position, an arm resting differently, or its head tilted. Other times it was unmistakable. They'd leave for work, lock the door, and come back to find the doll in another room entirely. Once it was standing upright, balanced perfectly against a chair, like someone had posed it there. That's when the air in the apartment started to feel different. Still, heavy, like the room itself was watching. Then something new started to happen. Donna began finding small pieces of parchment paper, folded neatly, tucked under furniture, or lying in the middle of the floor. The paper looked old, almost yellowed, and neither of them owned anything like it. On each piece, written in what looked like a child's handwriting, were short messages. Help us. Help me. It was always the same pencil, faint uneven strokes. That's when the laughter stopped. Because it wasn't just about the doll moving anymore. It was about messages from something that shouldn't have been able to write. And whether they admitted it out loud or not, both of them started to wonder the same thing. What if it wasn't a prank? And what if something inside that doll was trying to get their attention? Don and Angie weren't going through this alone. They had a close friend, Luke Harlow, who stopped by often. Dinners, late-night coffee after shifts. The kind of friend who noticed when something felt off. And almost from the start, Lou hated that doll. He couldn't explain why. He just said it gave him a bad feeling, a quiet warning in his gut. Every time he passed down his bedroom, he'd glance towards the bed and swear it felt like the doll was looking back. The women teased him for it. It's just a toy, Lou, Angie said. He didn't laugh. He told them flat out they should get rid of it. They didn't. Then Lou began having nightmares. The same one, night after night. He'd wake frozen in bed, unable to move or call out. At the foot of the mattress stood the doll. Sometimes it just stared. Other times it climbed slowly onto his chest. He could feel the weight, the pressure on his ribs, the tightening around his throat until the room spun and he snapped awake, gasping for air. At first, he told himself it was stress or exhaustion. But the dreams kept coming, and he wasn't the only one feeling uneasy anymore. Donna started hearing faint knocks at night. Angie swore she saw a doll's head turn towards her when she walked past the bedroom door. None of it made sense, and all of it felt wrong. That was when they decided they needed help. If this really was something spiritual, maybe someone who claimed to speak to spirits could explain it. They found a local medium through a coworker. One evening she arrived carrying a small leather case and a bundle of white candles. The lights were low, the air heavy with melted wax and incense. She asked Donna and Angie to sit with her on the floor. Hands joined, eyes closed, she began the session, quietly at first, asking whatever presence was there to identify itself. For a long time, nothing happened. Then the medium's breathing changed. She began to tremble. Her voice dropped as she told them a story. A young girl named Annabelle Higgins, who'd once lived near that spot and died suddenly. Lost and lonely, the spirit had found comfort in the doll. She means you no harm, the medium said softly. She just wants love, a home. The two women listened, hearts pounding. They didn't know if they believed it, but pity overtook fear. Before the session ended, they spoke into the still air and said the words that would change everything. You can stay here. You are welcome. It was an act of kindness, and according to the Warrens, the moment the real danger began, because if their later investigation was right, it wasn't a child's spirit that it answered. It was something that only pretended to be one. After that seance, Donna and Angie felt calmer for a while. They'd been told the spirit of a little girl only wanted to feel safe, and they believed her. They stopped worrying so much about the doll and tried to get back to normal life. But within a few days, the energy in the apartment changed. Objects started shifting again, more often and in stranger ways. The doll would appear kneeling on a chair or sitting against the wall by the front door as if she's waiting for someone to come home. It was deliberate now, posed. And that uneasy heaviness crept back into every room. Lou noticed it first. He had already had that terrifying dream about the doll, but this time it wasn't a dream. One afternoon, while he and Angie were packing for a short trip, they heard faint movement from Donna's room, a shuffling sound like fabric dragging across the wood. The apartment was locked. Donna was at work. Lou opened the door. Nothing moved, but the doll was sitting in the corner of the room. Its head was tilted slightly upward, button eyes fixed on him. He took a step closer and the air changed. Thicker, heavier, charged. Without warning, pain tore across his chest. He stumbled back, pulling up his shirt to find three long scratches slashed diagonally across his skin, fresh and bleeding. They were gone within two days, but the experience left him shaken. That was the moment Donna and Angie realized they were in over their heads. Whatever they'd invited in wasn't a child's ghost looking for comfort. They called the church. Father Hegan came first, young, practical, but clearly disturbed by what he saw. After hearing their story, he escalated it to Father Cook, who brought in outside help, Ed and Lorraine Warren, founders of the New England Society for Psychic Research. The Warrens arrived soon after. Ed was a self-taught demonologist. Lorraine, a clairvoyant and trans medium. They'd already investigated hundreds of hauntings by that point, but what they encountered in the Hartford apartment felt different. According to Ed's notes, the air in the home carried what he called a mocking presence. They listened carefully as Donna and Angie recounted the movements, the notes, the seance, and their act of compassion. To the Warrens, it all fit a familiar pattern. This wasn't a haunting, they said. It was an infestation, the early stage of demonic possession. The entity had pretended to be a child to win their trust, and by allowing it to stay, they'd given it permission to act. The warrants warned them that once an inhuman spirit gains that kind of foothold, it never stops on its own. The only way to close it off was through a full church blessing. Donna and Angie agreed, desperate to end it. And that decision to bring in the church and remove the doll would become the turning point that transformed Annabelle from a local haunting into one of the most infamous cases in the Warren's entire history. By the time Ed and Lorraine Warren arrived, the apartment already felt spent. Like whatever had been happening there had burned through the air itself. Father Hegan had told them everything. Father Cook agreed to meet them there and perform a full blessing of the home. It wasn't an exorcism in the cinematic sense. This was a standard episcopal rite, a way to reclaim the space and cut off whatever influence remained. Father Cook moved slowly from room to room, reading from the book of blessings, sprinkling holy water, and marking small crosses above each doorway. Donna and Angie followed a few steps behind, clutching rosaries. The Warrens observed quietly, Ed taking notes, Lorraine describing what she felt as a cold current that drifted from room to room. When it was over, the tension in the air lifted. For the first time in weeks, the apartment felt normal again. But Ed wasn't convinced it would stay that way. He told the women that the doll had become a focal point, a physical anchor for the entity, and leaving it there could restart the whole cycle. So they took it. The Warrens wrapped the doll in a clean white cloth, carried it down the narrow stairs, and placed it carefully in the back seat of their car. According to their own account, the trip back to Monroe, Connecticut was anything but ordinary. Several times the steering locked, the brakes failed, and the engine stalled, until Ed reached into the back seat, sprinkled the doll with holy water, and said a short binding prayer. After that, the drive was uneventful. Whether coincidence or not, it became one of the stories the warrants repeated for decades. At home, the doll went first into Ed's office on a simple wooden chair beside his desk. When he returned the next morning, it was said to be levitating just slightly off the seat. That's when he decided it needed a permanent enclosure. He built a case himself, solid oak, glass panels, a small cross mounted inside, and across the front, a printed sign that read, Warning, positively do not open. That case became the centerpiece of the Warren's Occult Museum, a basement room lined with artifacts from their investigations. Each item, they said, carried traces of the supernatural. But none drew as much attention as Annabelle. Even inside the case, the Warrens claimed, the doll still moved. Slight changes in posture, the faint shifting of fabric when no one was near. And the stories grew. Visitors who mocked the doll, who ignored the warnings, were said to have suffered accidents afterwards. Ed often told one story in particular. A young couple visiting the museum, the boyfriend tapping on the glass and laughing, while his girlfriend told him to stop. Ed asked them to leave. On the way home, their motorcycle crashed into a tree. She survived. He didn't. I heard that same story myself years ago when I saw Ed and Lorraine Warren speak at a campus event. Lorraine's delivery was calm, measured, and it seemed utterly sincere. Whether or not it happened exactly as they said, her conviction was unmistakable. And it stayed with me all these years later. Those accounts, the drive home, the levitation, the motorcycle accident, all come from the Warren's own lectures and files. They can't be independently verified. But they became part of the legend, the version of Annabelle that still lives in public imagination. After the museum's closure, the collection remained under the Warren family's care. In 2025, the property was purchased by new caretakers who now act as legal guardians of the artifacts, including Annabelle, under agreement with the Warren family. While the museum is still closed to the public, the doll remains at the Monroe site under close supervision. Warning. Positively do not open. After the Warren's case files became public, Annabelle's story didn't stay confined to their museum. It started to move. First through newspaper write-ups and television specials in the 1980s. Then through the explosion of paranormal pop culture in the 1990s and early 2000s. By the time the conjuring hit theaters in 2013, the Warren's name had become part of American folklore themselves. They weren't just investigators anymore, they were characters. And Hollywood saw Annabelle as the perfect starting point. But the version of Annabelle that appeared on screen looked nothing like the real doll. The filmmakers made her porcelain, cracked, pale, with hollow eyes and a carved grin that could carry an entire horror film by itself. In real life, the Raggedy Ann doll was the opposite, harmless, even a little goofy looking. That contrast might actually be what made the story work. The filmmakers amplified what was only implied in the Warren's accounts, turning a quiet psychological haunting into something visual and immediate. The film Annabelle, released in 2014, invented almost everything that people associate with the doll today. The satanic cult, the possessed woman, the gifted to a young couple storyline, all pure fiction. None of that appeared in the Warren's case files. In their telling, Annabelle was never linked to any ritual or murder. The only backstory came from that seance, from a medium claiming the doll was inhabited by the spirit of a young girl named Annabelle Higgins. The Warrens insisted that explanation was false, that the entity pretending to be the girl wasn't human at all. Still, the Hollywood version worked. It struck a nerve. Annabelle became the center of her own film franchise. Annabelle in 2014, Annabelle Creation in 2017, and Annabelle Comes Home in 2019. Each movie layered on more myth, giving her origins, motives, and even a cinematic personality. She went from case file curiosity to pop culture icon, joining Chucky and the doll from the Dead Silence movie as one of the most recognizable faces in horror. But here's the irony. The real Annabelle doesn't look terrifying. She never did. And maybe that's why her legend endures. Because the fear doesn't come from her appearance, it comes from the idea that something evil could hide inside something ordinary. By the time the films had turned her into a household name, the real doll was still locked behind glass in Monroe, Connecticut. Quiet, motionless, staring through the same scratch glass case she'd been in since the 1970s. And yet, through those movies, that doll became bigger than she'd ever been in life. The story the Warrens told, part faith, part folklore, had been reborn as something that now lived on in every Halloween aisle, every replica doll on eBay, every meme that warned, don't tap on the glass. Even decades after the Warrens investigation, Annabelle's story still finds its way into headlines. She's part of pop culture now, but every so often, something happens that reminds people why her legend refuses to fade. In July 2025, Dan Rivera, a longtime member of the New England Society for Psychic Research, died suddenly while traveling with the museum's Haunted Objects Tour in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Annabelle was part of that tour. Almost immediately, social media lit up. Posts claimed that the doll had claimed another victim. Some even insisted Rivera had touched the case. But the facts told a different story. According to official reports and statements from the Warren Family Foundation, Rivera suffered a sudden heart-related medical event consistent with his health history. He wasn't even near the doll when it happened. Still, the rumor spread faster than the correction. Because that's what Annabelle's legend does. It grows. Every time her name surfaces, the line between truth and folklore blurs just a little bit more. You know, the Annabelle case has always stood right on that edge where faith, fear, and folklore meet. On one side, you've got what the Warrens documented the scratches, the seance, the blessing, the case in the museum. On the other, you've got decades of retellings, accidents, curses, and stories that may have started as cautionary tales, but became part of the legend. And then there's Hollywood, layering fiction on top of both, until the lines between truth and myth all but disappear. The funny thing is, the real Annabelle doesn't look scary. She never did. She's cloth and stuffing, a red yarn smile and two-button eyes. Something you'd expect to find in a kid's bedroom, not behind a glass case, Mark a warning. And maybe that's exactly why her story gets under our skin. Because it's not just about what the doll looks like, it's about what it represents. There's something deeply unsettling about innocence corrupted, about the idea that something ordinary could become a vessel for something dark. Psychologists call that feeling the uncanny valley. When something almost human doesn't feel quite right, dolls fall right into that space. They remind us of childhood, but twist it just enough to make it unsafe. And Annabelle has come to embody that. She's not just a case in the Warren's files anymore. She's become a symbol, part folklore, part faith, part pop culture myth. Each time the story is told, it picks up a little more weight. I still think back to that night I saw Ed and Lorraine Warren speak in person. I can still hear them telling that story about the young man who mocked the doll, tapping the glass, daring it to move, and never making it home. I can't confirm it happened, but I can tell you this. Hearing them say it, the conviction in their voices, it stuck with me all these years. Because belief, whether you share it or not, has power. And that's what keeps Annabelle alive. The power of belief, of fear, and stories we can't seem to stop telling. This has been State of the Unknown. It's just a doll. That's what makes Annabelle so unsettling. A child's toy, cloth and yarn, harmless on the surface. But for decades, she's been at the center of one of the most infamous cases in American paranormal history. Maybe it's because she looks ordinary. Maybe it's because she reminds us that the things we fear most don't always look frightening. Sometimes they sit quietly in plain sight, waiting to be noticed. If you've been enjoying State of the Unknown, thank you. It means the world that you're here week after week exploring these stories with me. The best way you can help the show grow is simple. Leave a quick rating or review. On Spotify, it's just a couple of taps. On Apple Podcasts, you can even write a few words. I read every one, and I can't tell you how much it means. Next time, we're heading into another true story. One that asks whether a haunting can outlive the people who started it. Until then, stay curious. Stay unsettled. And whatever you do, don't tap on the glass.