“Yea, but it did more than that,” Lara put in. “The doll also changed rooms by itself. We came home one night and the Annabelle doll was sitting in a chair by the front door. It was kneeling! The funny thing about it was, when we tried to make the doll kneel, it’d just fall over. It couldn’t kneel. Other times we’d find it sitting on the sofa, although when we left the apartment in the morning, it’d be in Deirdre’s room with the door closed!”
“Anything else?” Lorraine asked.
“Yes,” said Deirdre. “It would leave us little notes and messages. The handwriting looked to be that of a small child.”
“What’d the notes say?” questioned Ed.
“It would say things that meant nothing to us,” Deirdre answered. Things would be written like HELP US or HELP CAL, but Cal wasn’t in any kind of jeopardy at the time. And who ‘us’ was—we didn’t know. Still, the thing that was weird was that the notes would be written in pencil, but when we tried to find one, there was not one pencil in the apartment! And the paper it wrote on was parchment. I tore the apartment apart, looking for parchment paper, but again neither of us had any such thing."
“It sounds like someone had a key to your apartment and was playing a sick joke on you,” Ed stated flatly.
“That’s exactly what we thought,” said Deirdre. “So we did little things like put marks on the windows and doors or arranged the rugs so that anyone who came in here would leave a trace that we could see. But never once did it turn out that there was a real outside intruder.”
“While the doll was moving around, and we’d become suspicious of burglars, something else screwy happened,” Lara added next. “The Annabelle doll was sitting on Deirdre’s bed, as was usual. When we came home one night, there was blood on the back of its hand, and there were three drops of blood on its chest!”
“God, that really scared us,” Deirdre said frankly.
“Did you notice any other kind of phenomena occur in the apartment?” Ed asked them.
“One time around Christmas we found a little chocolate boot on the stereo that none of us had bought. Presumably it came from Annabelle,” said Lara.
“When did you come to determine there was a spirit associated with the doll?” questioned Lorraine.
“We knew something unusual was going on,” Deirdre answered. “The doll did change rooms by itself. It did pose in different gestures: we all saw it. But we wanted to know why. Was there maybe some plausible reason why the doll was moving? So Lara and I got in touch with a woman who’s a medium. That was about a month, or maybe six weeks after all this stuff started to happen.”
“What did you find out?”
“We learned that a little girl died on this property,” Deirdre told the Warrens. “She was seven years old and her name was Annabelle—Annabelle Higgins. The Annabelle spirit said she played in the fields long ago before these apartments were built. They were ‘happy times’ for her, she told us. Because everyone around here was grown-up, and only concerned with their jobs, there was no one she could relate to, except us. Annabelle felt that we would be able to understand her. That’s why she began moving the rag doll. All Annabelle wanted was to be loved, and so she asked if she could stay with us and move into the doll. What could we do? So we said yes.”
“Wait a minute here,” Ed interjected. “What do you mean it wanted to move into the doll? Do you mean it proposed to possess it?”
“Right, that was the understanding,” Deirdre replied. “It seemed harmless enough. We’re nurses, you know, we see suffering every day. We had compassion. Anyway, we called the doll Annabelle from that time on.”
“Did you do anything different with the doll after you learned it was supposedly possessed by a little girl spirit named Annabelle?” asked Lorraine.
“Not really,” said Deirdre. “But of course it wasn’t just a doll any more. It was Annabelle. We couldn’t ignore that fact.”
“All right, before you go any further, let’s back up a minute,” Ed requested. “First you got the doll for your birthday. After a while the doll began to move—or at least change places enough for you to notice it This made you curious, so you decided to have a séance, and a spirit came across that called itself Annabelle Higgins. This supposed little girl spirit was seven years old and asked if it could come live with you by possessing the toy doll. You said yes, out of compassion. Then you renamed the doll Annabelle. Right?”
“Right,” said Deirdre and Lara.
“Have you seen the ghost of a little girl at any time in this apartment?” Ed asked.
“No,” both the girls answered.
“You said a chocolate item showed up here once,” said Ed. “Has anything else strange ever happened that you couldn’t explain?”
“One time a statue lifted up across the room,” Deirdre recalled, “then it tumbled in the air and fell on the floor. None of us were near the statue—it was on the other side of the room. That incident frightened us totally.”
“Let me ask you something else,” Ed went on. “Didn’t you think that maybe you shouldn’t have given the doll so much recognition?”
“It wasn’t a doll!” Deirdre corrected him. “It was the spirit of Annabelle we cared about!”
“That’s right!” said Lara.
“I mean, before you knew anything about Annabelle?”
“How were we to know anything?” Deirdre asked. “But looking back on it now, maybe we shouldn’t have given the doll so much credence. But really, we saw the thing as being no more than a harmless mascot. It never hurt anything…at least until the other day.”
“Do you still think what’s moving the doll is the spirit of a little girl?” Lorraine queried.
“What else could it be?” Lara said in reply.
“It’s a damn voodoo doll, that’s what it is,” Cal blurted out “I told them about that thing a long time ago. The doll was just taking advantage of them.…”
“Okay, Cal, I think it’s time you told your side of things,” Ed remarked to the young man.
“Let me put it this way: I didn’t like the doll, and the doll didn’t like me right back,” he said. “The thing’s got a mind, and dolls don’t have minds, right? So, from the beginning, I didn’t think this thing moving around their apartment was cute.”
“Beyond that, tell me about what’s happened to you,” said Ed.
“Tell them about the dreams,” coaxed Lara.
“Well,” Cal picked up, “the thing gives me bad dreams. Recurrent ones. But yet what I’m going to tell you is not a dream as far as I’m concerned, because I somehow saw this happen to me. The last time it happened I fell asleep at home, a really deep sleep. While I was lying there, I saw myself wake up. Something seemed wrong to me. I looked around the room, but nothing was out of place. But then when I looked down toward my feet, I saw the rag doll, Annabelle. It was slowly gliding up my body. It moved over my chest and stopped. Then it put its two arms out. One arm touched one side of my neck, the other touched the other side like it was making an electrical connection. Then I saw myself being strangled. I was writhing and trying to push the doll off my chest, but I might as well have been pushing on a wall, because it wouldn’t move. I was literally strangling to death, but I couldn’t help myself, no matter how hard I tried.”
"Yes, but the priest I spoke with said you’d been physically attacked. Is this what you consider to be a physical attack?" Ed pressed him.
"No," Cal asserted, "That happened here in this apartment when Lara and I were alone together. It was about ten or eleven o’clock at night, and we were reading over maps because I was going off on a trip the next day. Everything was quiet at the time. Suddenly, we both heard sounds in Deirdre’s bedroom that made us think that someone had broken into the apartment. I quietly got up and tip-toed to the bedroom door, which was closed. I waited until the noises stopped, then I carefully opened the door and reached in and switched on the light. Nobody was in there! Except, the Annabelle doll was tossed on the floor
in a corner. I went in alone and walked over to the thing to see if anything unusual had happened. But as I got close to the doll, I got the distinct impression that somebody was behind me. I swung around instantly and, well..."
"He won’t talk about that part," Lara said. "When Cal turned around there wasn’t anybody there, but he suddenly yelled and grabbed for his chest. He was doubled over, cut and bleeding when I got to him. Blood was all over his shirt. Cal was shaking and scared and we went back out into the living room. We then opened up his shirt and there on his chest was what looked to be a sort of claw mark!"
"Can I see the mark?" Ed asked.
"It’s gone now," the young man told him.
"I saw the cuts on his chest too," Deirdre spoke up in support.
"How many were there?" Ed asked.
"Seven," said Lara. "Three were vertical; four were horizontal."
"Did the cuts have any sensation?"
"All the cuts were hot, like they were burns," Cal told him.
"Did you ever have cuts or wounds in the same area of your chest before this incident happened?" questioned Ed.
"No," the young man replied.
"Did you lose consciousness before or after the attack took place?"
"No," was his answer again.
"How long did it take the wounds to heal?" Lorraine then wanted to know.
"They healed up almost immediately," said Cal. "They were half-gone the next day, and fully gone the day after."
"Has anything else happened since that time?" asked Ed.
"No," came the joint reply.
"Who did you first contact after the incident occurred?"
"I contacted an Episcopal priest named Father Kevins," Deirdre told Ed and Lorraine.
"Why did you decide to call him instead of a doctor?" Lorraine asked.
"Do you think someone off the street would have believed where that claw mark on Cal’s chest came from?" Deirdre asked rhetorically. "Besides, we agreed the cuts weren’t half as important as how Cal got them. We wanted to know if this was going to happen again. Our problem was who to ask?"
"Was there some reason why you specifically called on Father Kevins?" Lorraine questioned.
"Yes. We trust him," said Deirdre. "He teaches nearby here, at a junior college, plus Lara and I both know him."
"What did you tell the priest?" asked Ed.
"The whole story—about Annabelle and how it moved on its own, and especially about Cal’s cuts," Deirdre replied. "At first we were afraid he might not believe us, but that was no problem—he believed us all right. Although," she finished, "he said he’d never heard of such a thing happening these days. At the time we were all scared out of our wits, and I asked him what he thought had happened to us?"
"What’d he tell you?" Ed asked her.
"He said he didn’t want to speculate," replied Deirdre. "But he did seem to feel it was a spiritual matter, possibly an important one, and said he was going to contact someone higher up in the Church—a Father Everett."
"That’s what he did," Ed told her.
Lara then asked the Warrens concernedly, "What do you think did that to Cal’s chest?"
"Let’s discuss that in a minute," Ed answered. "First, to finish up, let me just ask you a few questions. Has this kind of thing ever happened to you before—to any of you?"
"No," they told the Warrens.
"Did the name Annabelle, or Annabelle Higgins mean anything to you in real life before this incident occurred?"
"No," they again answered.
"Although you never saw anything spiritwise in here, Cal said he felt a presence in the room before he got hurt..."
"There is something in here," Lara stated firmly. "In fact, I can’t even stand to be here. We decided to get a new apartment. We’re moving out!"
"I’m afraid that’s not going to help you very much," Ed said dryly.
"What do you mean?" Deirdre asked, astonished.
"To put it in a nutshell, folks, you inadvertently brought a spirit into this apartment—and into your lives. You’re not going to be able to walk away from it that easily."
Ed’s statement was understandably troubling. Prudently, he and Lorraine remained silent and allowed the three young people to collect their thoughts.
After a long minute, Ed spoke again. "We’re going to be able to help you, beginning right now. Today. The first thing I’d like to do is to call Father Everett and have him come over here. Then you’re going to have to understand what has happened and why Cal got that ugly claw mark on his chest. May I use the phone?"
Ed had no trouble getting hold of the Episcopal priest who had been waiting for him to telephone. Lorraine, in the meantime, walked into the living room to discern the spirit presence that was in the apartment. After the phone call, the Warrens both returned to the kitchen with the others.
"All right," Ed said matter of factly, "when Father Everett comes here, he’s going to have to perform a sort of blessing, an...exorcism of the premises."
"I knew it!" Cal proclaimed. "I knew it would lead to this."
"Yes, I think you did," Ed told him. "But I’m not sure any of you know the reason why. To begin with, there is no Annabelle! There never was. You were duped. However, we are dealing with a spirit here. The teleportation of the doll while you were out of the apartment; the appearance of notes written on parchment; the manifestation of three symbolic drops of blood; plus the gestures the doll made are all meaningful. They tell me there was intent, which means there was an intelligence behind the activity. But ghosts—human spirits—plain and simply can’t bring on phenomena of this nature and intensity. They don’t have the power. Instead, what’s taken over here is something inhuman."
"Inhuman?" Cal asked, perplexed.
"Demonic," Ed told him immediately. "Ordinarily, people are never bothered by inhuman demonic spirits, unless they do something to bring the force into their lives. And, I regret to say, you girls did something to bring the demonic into your lives."
"Like what?" Deirdre urgently wanted to know.
"Well, for the most part, you made honest mistakes, but in this case, you made the wrong mistakes," replied Ed. "Your first mistake was to have given the doll so much recognition. You see, the reason why the spirit moved the doll in the first place was to draw attention to itself. Once it had your attention, it exploited you. Rather than reciprocating your care and concern, it simply brought you fear and even injury. This is the nature of the inhuman spirit: it’s negative, it enjoys inflicting pain. Right at the very beginning you should have been intolerant of the unnatural activity. However, instead of cutting the thing off at the start, it aroused your curiosity, and that fact got noticed—supernaturally.
"Your next mistake was in calling a medium,” Ed went on. "Whoever functioned as the medium was unwittingly used as an instrument of communication by the entity. During the sitting, this inhuman spirit fed you false information. The demonic is a liar. It’s even been called the Father of Lies. Well, you were lied to—by a spirit of deception—and unknowingly you believed the He. Your worst mistake, though, was in giving the spirit the permission it needed to ‘move into the doll.’ That’s what it wanted and it preyed off your ignorance of its existence to do so."
"Why?" asked Lara.
"Because to really interfere in your life, the demonic has somehow got to get your permission to do so. And unfortunately, through your own free will, you gave it that permission. It was like handing a maniac a loaded gun.”
"Then the doll is possessed?" questioned Deirdre.
"No, the doll is not possessed. Spirits don’t possess things: spirits possess people," Ed informed her. "Instead, the spirit simply moved the doll around and gave it the illusion of being alive. But because you girls believed this was the spirit of a little girl, Annabelle, the appearance and reality were the same to you. In short, you left yourselves wide open, and a deceptive, negative spirit took advantage of you—with your permission, of course. This is how the phenom
enon was brought on."
Ed paused to see if there were any further questions, but none were asked.
"Now, what happened to Cal earlier this week," Ed proceeded, "was bound to occur sooner or later. In fact, you all stood in jeopardy of coming under possession by this spirit, this is what the thing was really after. But Cal here didn’t believe in the charade, so he was an ongoing threat to the entity. One way or another, there was bound to be a showdown. And what happened? For starters it tried to strangle Cal to death. When that failed, it cut him with a symbolic claw mark. We’ve seen this claw mark in other cases: it’s a telltale sign of an inhuman presence. You got off easy this time. Had this spirit been given another week or two, you might all have been killed."
"Is this—this...demonic spirit in the apartment now?" Lara asked, petrified. “
Yes, I’m afraid so," Lorraine answered her. "There is only one entity involved, but its behavior is completely unpredictable."
The Warrens’ words seemed to hit home. "You’re for real, aren’t you?" Deirdre said incredulously.
The front doorbell rang. Father Everett had arrived. The interview session ended in the kitchen as Deirdre got up and answered the door. With the sun about to go down in an hour, Ed was eager to have the house blessed, remove the doll, and return home.
As the Warrens packed up their gear, Father Everett—whom Ed and Lorraine had never met in person—came into the kitchen. A tall, middle-aged man, the Episcopal priest was clearly uncomfortable in his role as exorcist. Once the preliminary greetings were out of the way, Ed then told the priest that in his judgment the spirit that was responsible for the malicious activity was inhuman, that it was still in the apartment, and the only way it could be made to leave was through the power of the words written in the exorcism-blessing.
The Demonologist: The Extraordinary Career of Ed and Lorraine Warren Page 6
