Shadow People

+4

NOT REAL

The smash hit motion picture "The Conjuring" - based on the harrowing story of the Perron family's encounter with an evil entity and how they were saved by controversial demonologists, Ed and Lorraine Warren - has earned tens of millions of dollars and spawned as many nightmares worldwide. But while the core story of possession and witchcraft may have propelled the plot forward, it is the allegedly true story of a demonic doll named Annabelle that has left a lingering shadow on the memories of moviegoers across the globe; transforming this arguably inanimate (and ostensibly cursed) object into a surprise pop-culture phenomenon.

Let me be frank right from the outset: "I hate dolls." Always have.

It started with a dotty old great-aunt, who (of course) lived in a dusty, labyrinthine manor full of long corridors, peeling wallpaper, the lingering scent of mothballs and rooms that all seemed to have at least one porcelain doll with a cracked face that leered menacingly down at me from whatever perch it had made home.

As my beard began to transform from random Klingon-like patches into a cohesive whole and my school days drifted farther and farther into my past, I began to dismiss those childhood fears. I convinced myself that fearing inanimate objects was foolish, but I still harbored an intuitive distaste for dolls; especially old ones.

While looking for curios in old thrift stores and junk shops, I would always grow uneasy when I would catch a figurine or (God forbid) a marionette unmistakably staring at me with its glassy, dead eyes and a bio-electric chill would ripple up my neck. Oh, I'd act cool (especially if I was with my girlfriend) and chuckle and tell myself that it was all in my head, but a part of me knew better... and that's how I knew, when I hunkered down to watch the aforementioned film, "The Conjuring", that I had been right all along.

The Original Devil Doll

Like all cinematic depictions of purportedly factual stories, the filmmakers responsible for "The Conjuring" have taken some liberties with the source material. The bizarre case of Annabelle is no exception, as the pig tailed, rosy cheeked, ghastly apparition from the movie was, in actuality, a run of the mill Raggedy Ann doll.

Now, for the seven of you out there who might not know what that is, Raggedy Ann is an adorable rag doll with a triangle nose and a mop of red yarn for hair. The character was created by writer (and marketing genius) Johnny Gruelle when his daughter brought him an old doll and he drew a face on it. Gruelle would go on to feature the character in a series of children's books he wrote and, following the tragic death of his daughter, as the symbol for a virulent anti-vaccination campaign. On September 7, 1915, he received a U.S. Patent for his Raggedy Ann doll and with it a toy legend was born.

The Birthday Gift

The particular doll in question, the one which would serve as the inspiration for James Wan's disturbing plaything in "The Conjuring", was first purchased in an antique shop in 1970, by a woman looking for a unique birthday present for her daughter, Donna.

The woman, who's name (much like the ark from "Raiders") has evidently been lost somewhere in the annals of paranormal research, must have concluded that the antiquated, child-sized rag doll would be the perfect gift for her daughter who was just about to graduate from nursing school. Apparently she was correct in her assumption and, even though Donna was not known to be a collector of dolls, she happily brought the object into to the apartment that she shared with another nursing student, Angie. Once there the Raggedy Ann doll was tossed on the bed and promptly forgotten about... for the first few days anyway.

At initial the signs that something was amiss were subtle. From time to time, Donna would notice that the toy seemed to have changed position slightly, but simply attributed it to a jostling of the bed or something equally mundane. As the weeks passed, however, the doll's erratic movements became more troubling and both Donna and Angie became genuinely alarmed when they returned home to find the rag doll standing upright and leaning against a chair in the dining room, as if it had frozen mid-step when it heard the door open.