Annabelle Comes Home: The true story behind the doll is even more terrifying than the film
28 June 2019, 14:16
Annabelle Comes Home is based on real-life events like the rest of The Conjuring series.
Annabelle Comes Home is finally out and terrifying viewers but the real story that inspired it will give you nightmares.
Annabelle Comes Home is the seventh film in The Conjuring universe and the third film based on Annabelle the doll. Just like its predecessors, Annabelle Comes Home, is petrifying. The movie takes place in between The Conjuring and The Conjuring 2 and it tells the story of how the possessed Annabelle doll terrorised the Warren family. The entire film is spine-chilling but what makes it even more frightening is that Annabelle the doll really exists and the plot is based on real-life events.
Is Annabelle Comes Home based on a true story?
Annabelle Comes Home centres on Ed and Lorraine's real life daughter Judy and how their work as paranormal investigators affected her growing up. In it, Ed and Lorraine leave Judy with a babysitter, Mary Ellen, overnight to look into a case and hell literally breaks loose. Mary Ellen invites a friend over, Daniela, who breaks into Ed and Lorraine's forbidden artefacts room and unlocks Annabelle's box. Annabelle then haunts Mary Ellen, Daniela and Judy.
The main storyline is fabricated. Judy didn't actually grow up with Annabelle. Judy was an adult and no longer lived with her parents in 1971 when the film is set. That being said, Annabelle is an actual doll who reportedly haunted people. According to the real Ed and Lorraine, a mother purchased Annabelle in 1970 from a store and gave her to her daughter Donna as a birthday present. From then on the horror unfolded.
Donna was training to be a nurse at the time and lived with her roommate Angie. As soon as she got Annabelle, Donna and Angie began to notice that Annabelle would change positions when they left the house, move rooms and even leave them written messages. After finding blood on the doll one day, Donna contacted a medium and, during a seance, they spoke with the spirit of Annabelle Higgins.
Annabelle told them that she was a 7-year-old girl who died where Donna and Angie's apartment complex was built. After seeing how compassionated Donna and Angie were, she inhabited the doll to feel loved. During the seance, she asked if Donna and Angie would let her stay and they agreed. However, Annabelle later tried to strangle their flatmate Lou and scratched and scarred him.
Following the incident with Lou, Donna and Angie contacted Ed and Lorraine to help. Ed and Lorraine immediately saw that the spirit wasn't a young girl but a demonic presence. They held an exorcism to remove it and took Annabelle to their home to avoid future incidents. However, on their way back, their car swerved erratically and their breaks failed. Only when they doused Annabelle in holy water could they drive safely.
On their website, Ed and Lorraine claim that their were instances in which Annabelle levitated and tried to murder guests. In response, they created a special glass box to keep Annabelle locked in so that she could no longer harm people, which you can see in Annabelle Comes Home. However, even then a guest reportedly died in a motorcycle accident, directly after banging Annabelle's box. (Pun not intended)
The real Annabelle looks very different to the doll in The Conjuring series. She's actually an almost sweet looking rag doll as opposed to the creepy porcelain version you see in the film. Don't let that fool you though. Speaking to USA Today, the real Judy Warren said: "The real one is so innocent-looking, and yet so evil."
Judy now watches over Annabelle and the rest of her late parents' occult museum of artefacts. Her husband Tony regularly performs a binding spell on Annabelle too to prevent her from attacking anyone. In other words, you can go to Conneticut and see Annabelle but we might have to give that one a pass.
