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Ep 36: The True Story Behind "Annabelle"
13 Plays5 years ago
This week we are talking about the spookiest doll of them all...ANNABELLE. If you want to watch the video version of this podcast head over to www.youtube.com/girlygore
If you have requests for future episodes or just want to hang out follow us on Instagram @sinistersisterspodcast
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Transcript
Introductions and Podcast Setup
00:00:09
Speaker
Hey, what's up, readers? Welcome back to the Sinister Sisters podcast. I'm Felicia. And I'm Lauren. And we're best friends. And we like scary movies. And that's us. That's us. We're still on the pullout bed. We are still on the pullout bed. It's as if we have never moved. It's true. I think I'm going to leave it like this for a while. It's so nice. I know. It's like why haven't I done this the whole time I lived here? Because my TV is right behind where the camera is, so I can just chill here as an extra bed and watch movies.
00:00:35
Speaker
Yeah. It's incredible. It's incredible. It's really incredible. I stayed on my brother's pullout couch when we were in D.C. and I was like, what is this life of amazing pullout couches? Yes, of living room-bedroom combos. There's nothing better, I think.
00:00:50
Speaker
So, here we are.
Passion for True Horror Stories
00:00:53
Speaker
We are doing some more of these true stories behind horror films that we love because you guys seem to like them and we like doing them. I feel like it's really interesting to do, I don't know, I just feel like sometimes we talk about popular movies and people are like, we know everything and we don't care about your review of this, but it's fun to talk about popular movies because they're better than other ones.
00:01:18
Speaker
Here we are. No? You disagree? Is this because you tried to do hashtag four, which is a smaller horror movie, and turned out there was no information on the internet about how it was a true story? Yes, and so I'm continuing to talk about the Conjuring series.
Annabelle's True Story and Film Connection
00:01:32
Speaker
So I am doing Annabelle, the true story of Annabelle. Which I wanted to work out, so I'm actually excited.
00:01:37
Speaker
Felicia is the only one. Everyone else has already done this recently. Me and all of you. But Annabelle, you know, is in The Conjuring, which was 2013. Also had her own movie called Annabelle 2014, because clearly she was the best part of The Conjuring movie. I think people... I think so. I think so too. Very interesting. Very spooky. Annabelle creation was 2017. I really liked that one. Yeah, I really liked that one a lot. And then Annabelle comes home in 2019. I also really liked that one.
00:02:05
Speaker
I think that was a little lesser for me, but I did really like Annabelle creation. Because yet again, just like in Sidious 3, I love it when a protagonist has a physical disability. Oh my god, that's so true. I know, that's really not. It was a little girl with like a crutch. Little leg braces, I think. I don't know. Anyway, so the physical doll that Annabelle is
00:02:31
Speaker
based off of is actually very different looking which i just think is helpful to know it's so different so it's a raggedy and all in real life which i had those yeah scary very scary um when they went to make the movie obviously they couldn't use a raggedy and all because raggedy and dolls did not want to be oh i didn't even think of that yeah the whoever the owner of
00:02:52
Speaker
They were like, no, you can't do that. Yeah, they were like, we do not want our doll to be a conduit of evil in a big movie. So they had to make this wooden doll, which is actually much creepier, I think. Well, I don't know. It's really creepy. But this doll also continues to be featured in the Warren Museum, which is also very cool.
Creepy Events and Skepticism
00:03:15
Speaker
So they say her reign of terror began in 1970.
00:03:19
Speaker
when she was purchased by a mother for her daughter, which I read that sentence and assumed it was a, I don't know, six year old, seven year old daughter. No, it was a 20 year old, 28 year old nurse
00:03:34
Speaker
Really weird gift for me. It's lower than us. I don't know. I feel like either something's going on with the mother or something's going on with the daughter. Yeah. So it's a strange present for a 28-year-old, a raggedy Andal. Strange. I know. But not in 1970. Because now they're kind of rare, right?
00:03:50
Speaker
In the 70s, they definitely were not rare. Exactly. Weird gift. Drama started right away. They claimed that the doll was levitating. Creepy. Not good. Bad signs. The doll would change positions. Her leg would be crossed after they left her room and came back.
00:04:08
Speaker
That's spooky. Spooky. The doll would be lying on its side. The girl and her roommates began to find parchment paper notes that would say, like, help me or help us were the two phrases. But they didn't have any parchment paper in the house. Oh, weird. They know. That's creepy. I feel like maybe an intruder. But they thought the same thing. As a reminder, Lauren's a skeptic. I am a full believer. Do not believe in ghosts.
00:04:39
Speaker
Do I want to go back to this page? Yes. So the doll also began appearing in different rooms. Then they left it. Um, at one point it appeared to be leaking blood. Ew. Also super creepy. And then it sort of, um, when they said, we can't take it anymore. Uh, they had a male friend who was taking a nap and woke up with the doll staring at him and he felt as if he was being strangled. Yikes. Creepy.
00:05:06
Speaker
Also, red flag number 235. I know. Also, we had deep scratch wounds on his body. So they pretty quickly decided it wasn't an intruder, I guess, because of that encounter. And they contacted a medium who, in my opinion, from this story, seems like she was just low rent or gave them bad advice or I don't know what. Low rent is such a casting term and I'm really sorry. I like it.
00:05:34
Speaker
Anyway, you didn't watch Lock and Key yet, but there's a guy that looks exactly like Chad Michael Murray, and I was saying he's like a low end child. A low end Chad Michael Murray. He looks so much like him and so funny. I love that. Well, this medium held a seance, and so the roommates and the girl and the medium were introduced to the spirit of Annabelle Higgins, who was a young girl who lived at the property when she was seven years old.
00:06:03
Speaker
There were some conflicting things where like I read one article where it said they found her dead body like in a nearby field With like no cause of death and then there was another one that said she got into a car accident. So
00:06:14
Speaker
unclear it's hard to get correct facts about legends like for sure yeah and you know nonsense but it's hard to get hard facts about nonsense i'm so sorry you're gonna like ghost i hate ghosts i'm really i there's gonna be one day that because of this i get attacked yes definitely will for sure anyway
00:06:36
Speaker
Uh, so in the seance, the spirit relayed to the medium that she felt comforted with, or she felt, you know, good with the two roommates there and wanted to stay with them and be loved. So they gave the spirit permission to inhabit the doll. Stupid.
00:06:53
Speaker
Stupid, but we'll get to like where I'm not even really sure what's going on.
The Warrens and Annabelle's Containment
00:06:57
Speaker
But the things got worse from there. Okay. So bad advice. So then they finally were like, all right, you know, we should contact the Warrens, which also in other articles, it says the Warrens like became interested in the case. Like they heard about it somehow. Which makes me feel like more they're looking for money. But anyway, maybe they contacted the Warrens. So
00:07:19
Speaker
they were contacted and they when they came to the house uh determined that the doll was not possessed but was being manipulated by a inhuman presence got it yeah so i don't know if it matters that they said like you can come into the doll yeah like if that didn't really make a difference yeah maybe yeah i don't know but
00:07:42
Speaker
So basically not, if it's an inhuman presence, it had no interest in inhabit, or like it couldn't inhabit the doll. It was just looking for a human host and was using the doll to, yeah, get to one. So anyway, that's what they decided. So then Ed and Lorraine Warren decided they needed to take the doll for safety, which also like feels conflicting with other things the Warrens have done.
00:08:09
Speaker
that they could just take the doll and everything would be fine for the girls. I think it's about like putting the doll, well at least at the Warren's like their museum or whatever that apparently is closed now, Lauren found out, but it's like putting it in an encasement where it can't hurt people and like blessing that, like having a priest come and bless it and do all this stuff. It's like, so it's in hands of professionals versus in the hands of like someone that doesn't know what to do with it.
00:08:34
Speaker
but it feels like sometimes they say it's not in the doll. Like it's not about the doll. It's like, it's not about the house. It's about like possessing the people. I don't know. So anyway, this one I guess was not. And so they took the doll. Um, and I don't know if the priest was there with them, but they do, there are articles that say like a priest blessed the girl's house and blessed the girl and her roommates and all of that, but they took the doll.
00:09:00
Speaker
And on that car ride, they claim the doll willed the car's brakes and steering to fail repeatedly and eventually ed through holy water on the doll in the back seat. And that calmed her down. Oh my God. She also is crazy. I love that idea. Like take that. Take that you little doll. So then they got home and they were okay. And they put her in the museum.
00:09:25
Speaker
And that's the other thing that like there are differing facts about where like some tell all these stories about like they brought Annabelle back to the house and she was like doing her normal shit and they ended up putting her in a glass box or if they just did it right away, but she's been on display in a glass box that says please do not touch. Which also is hilarious.
00:09:49
Speaker
um so they have a priest come to the museum and this seems like something that they do pretty regularly uh and the priest has prayers that bind the evil to the object and sort of keep it in like they described as like an electric fence for the doll so cool so cool cool uh and then i said the thing they couldn't use raggedy and in the movie oh yeah i thought that was interesting too they i read a little bit about like
00:10:19
Speaker
They changed her look, movie to movie. So in the conjuring, obviously she looks like a very evil doll. But then for the prequel, they filled out her cheeks a little bit. They changed her painting. Made her sweeter looking early in her life. Yeah, I know, right? I guess at some point she was a good doll to have. I know. I kind of want one.
00:10:42
Speaker
An Annabelle replica? Like replica. They're very cool. I would like that. Not for me, I would not for the movie. Yeah, exactly. But um, so she...
Annabelle's Ongoing Influence
00:10:53
Speaker
Oh, so there are now like all these stories of Annabelle continuing to wreak havoc that I thought were kind of interesting. The most famous one is that there was a couple that visited the museum. And the man mockingly banged on the glass window of the cabinet.
00:11:08
Speaker
Don't do that. Don't do it. Literally says, just don't do it. Don't be a jerk. So he was banging on the cabinet and Ed Warren asked him to leave and I guess he did that. And so then they got involved in a fatal motorcycle accident that led to the young man's death and the girlfriend who was in the hospital for a long time and was not okay, but eventually survived.
00:11:33
Speaker
I know said they were joking about the doll when the boyfriend lost control of the bike and crashed into a tree. Yikes. I never heard that before. I know. It's creepy. Yeah, that's scary. I do think mostly motorcycles are unsafe, but that's probably true. They look really cool, but, but if I was the girlfriend and we were talking about the doll and my boyfriend died in a motorcycle accident right then, I would believe it was a doll. Yeah, absolutely. Especially if you'd like rode the motorcycle and he was fine. Yeah. I don't know. Uh, and then,
00:12:03
Speaker
The other one, I watched a video right before we started. Zach Baggins, I'm not sure if that's how you say it, but he's the Ghost Adventures host. He supposedly had an experience with Annabelle.
00:12:17
Speaker
um he the video of him he has like you know they have all those like cameras that show ghost activity yes which i don't even really i don't know i don't know they say like changes in temperature changes and hard to say if any of that's anything who knows but he said in the video you can see the figure a figure leave the doll and enter him which is also like wouldn't you i don't know is that what you saw
00:12:46
Speaker
Not really. Okay. Yeah seems like a Like a shimmer or shimmer just a little shimmer little glimmer glimmer, but he says that and then he said the next day There's a lightning bolt that struck a pole next to his car. Oh, no and left a huge gash and it's wake Yeah, so it's wake. It's wake Clearly not my words clear copy and paste. I Think it's actually an interview that he said which also is like oh really crazy that you would say wake
00:13:15
Speaker
Yeah, he's pretty extra dramatic. I will say watching that video of him, I felt really let down. He has changed a lot physically in the last couple of years. I've never watched it. He's like, he's like this like big buff, you know, he always like wears like tight t-shirts and this was not the Zach that I knew and love. Oh no. I know.
00:13:36
Speaker
But yes, as I said, I think the museum is closed. Yeah. The website has totally changed. Oh, sorry. This is the Warren Museum. They both have died. They both have died, which is very sad. Lorraine died, I guess last year. Yeah. Yeah. So it's kind of recent. Yeah. But yes, I don't think you can go visit it, at least from what I was seeing. But they were at some point selling evenings with Annabelle, which I think is crazy.
00:14:04
Speaker
Um, up near there. That's where I'm like, that's, it seems like that where I'm like, I feel like it starts to make me think that it's all a hoax because it's like, why would you sell time with these really evil things if you were actually trying to help people? Right. Or if they're not actually evil. Right. Which I did, to be fair, I did read that, um, Ed and Lorraine never charged for their investigations, which I thought was cool. I know. I didn't know that, but like if you called them to help you deal with the paranormal.
00:14:35
Speaker
situation. They wouldn't charge you. They would just charge you for like the travel and the food reimbursements. Yeah. That's cool. And there was that one, I remember like they had all these reporters and they did the seance and nothing happens. And I was like, if they were like money hungry, they would have just faked something to happen. But the fact that nothing happened and they were like, Oh, nothing happened. I was like, Oh, maybe you are like legit. I don't know. I know. It's, it's very interesting. I want to know. I know. I want to read more about the Warrens just like as a,
00:15:03
Speaker
The website that they do have now is really interesting because if you go to the cases, you can read a case file about each of them. I know. So there were some on there that I'd never heard of that I was like, I need to look into this. But where was I going? Oh, but they were selling evenings with Annabelle.
00:15:23
Speaker
Where it was like a banquet hall where you would get like a buffet dinner. I know it's crazy and then Yeah, and they would have like Annabelle and then sometimes they would have like other items from the Warren Museum But I found it like on Facebook like a Facebook event
00:15:38
Speaker
That's hilarious. So anyway. And it does seem like the conjuring from the last Annabelle movie, it seems like they're going to take some of the other Warren's cases and branch this out into other films too. Yes. So maybe we'll get to learn more. I know. At some point. I hope so. But the stuff about Annabelle, it seems like, I don't know, it seems like a lot of that was featured, at least in the conjuring.
00:15:59
Speaker
movie like that I didn't realize that the notes were real um because she left oh yeah I didn't realize that was a real thing no but I'm also I don't know all of that is always fascinating to me because I'm like if we could actually watch what was happening we really think that a ghost was conjuring parchment paper I don't know and taking a crayon and writing with it I don't know
Podcast Picks and Horror Genre Recognition
00:16:21
Speaker
But it's like, how did it get there? I don't know. It came through the window? I don't know! Anyway, I think that's all my information about Annabelle. Yeah, that's great. Is that enough? This felt like a short episode. That's OK. Do we have more things to talk about? We can do recommendations. Oh, yes. Do I have any recommendations? Do I have another one? I probably do. You go first if you have one. OK. What about a movie I haven't finished watching yet?
00:16:51
Speaker
Yes. Does that count? Always. Oh, there's a movie on Netflix. Did someone actually recommend it to me? I mean, not Netflix. Oh my god.
00:16:59
Speaker
There's a movie on shutter that someone recommended to me like a while ago like maybe six months ago and I never got around to but it's called the Transfiguration and it's about like a 14 year old kid that is really obsessed with vampires and Then starts to like develop vampire like tendencies I don't know exactly right now But it's like very much felt like an indie film where it doesn't even seem like it's a horror movie But there's like things happening that you're just like what the fuck
00:17:27
Speaker
I don't know. I really am enjoying it. I'm like halfway through it right now. I'm going to finish it either today or tomorrow, but so far so good. I love that. Is that weird to recommend something I haven't finished watching? No, I don't think so. Yeah. I've been listening to a lot more podcasts recently.
00:17:44
Speaker
I think we've already talked about them on this podcast. I was like, what are we doing right now? But I really have been enjoying the Shockways podcast. I had still been listening to Nightmare University with Rebecca McKendry. This is so smart. She's so smart and amazing. So smart. And I've just listened. We both just talked about it. But there was an awesome interview with Alex Wolfe. Is that the main name? Yes, that is on the boo crew. On the boo crew. From Hereditary and also Naked Brothers Band.
00:18:13
Speaker
But I thought it was so interesting and he talked about his writing and directing debut. Yeah, yeah. He's done so much for being such a young person. Yeah, but he seemed so interesting just listening to him talk and maybe was making me feel differently about Nicolas Cage a little bit.
00:18:33
Speaker
I'm obsessed with Nicholas Cage now. I'm just like... I know, you've totally changed. I have to watch his movies. It was literally Mandy and Colorado Space that I was just like, hell yeah, dude. It's so good. It's so wild. I will say this is so unrelated, but I just needed to take a moment because I thought it was so cool that the opening musical number of the Oscars, did you watch it this year? Nope.
00:18:57
Speaker
But it's Janelle Monae, and it's all these horror movies. I knew. Yes, I saw this. But I thought it was so exciting, because I was like Us was represented, Midsummer was represented, when they weren't even nominated for big Oscars. And I thought it was so cool that it was just such a moment. We're having such a moment for horror. And it made me feel really inspired to keep doing what we like and watching them. Yeah, absolutely. No, I think that's really cool. I did see. I didn't watch.
00:19:27
Speaker
It's amazing. Just her opening number was all I saw. That's really cool.
00:19:33
Speaker
I think people are definitely, I mean, obviously horror is very trendy right now in Hollywood, which I'm not bothered by. I'm like, hell yeah, more movies. That's great. But it does seem like people are starting to be like, oh, right. Like these movies also have something to say the same thing that like this at the same rate as like 1917 or whatever. Right. Like everyone has something to say. Yeah. And I thought I can't remember where I heard this because now I'm just repeating it. But obviously it's incredible that Parasite won best
00:20:01
Speaker
Insanity. Insanity on multiple levels. Totally. Like foreign film. Right. Like horror adjacent thriller or whatever. It's like, it's so many levels. It's huge. It's insane. But the thing I was listening to was like, you know, everybody's like, oh my God, horror is like, you know,
00:20:20
Speaker
like going into like class and like exploring all these things and it's like yeah where have you been always has done that always has done that and so i thought that was like it's very cool to see horror just it's like if you look at any time period and what horror movies came out around that time period it literally reflects whatever people were most scared of in society at that time which might be an interesting thing to talk about at some point yeah i don't know i don't know how in death we want to go but that sounds like maybe we could go decade by decade but
00:20:49
Speaker
Oh, sounds like an endeavor. Yeah, maybe we have to go. Maybe we should like shrink it like less than a decade to use. There's a lot. But anyways, yeah, so I don't know. I think I think that's really cool that it's I'm excited about it, even though there's like a lot of things always at the Oscars that you're like, oh, snub, how could they? How could they not see these things? It's like, as I look at the people that are voting on it, it's like it only matters so much. But it does matter in the way where like someone like that can get a lot of representation and people will go check out a lot of like Korean cinema.
00:21:18
Speaker
Yeah, and now everybody wants to work with him, the director, and it's awesome. It's very awesome. But Felicia has to go watch Parasite right now. I do, literally right now. Because I still haven't seen it like a little loser. But that's it. Just called her out. Call me out. OK, call me out. Anyway, here's a short episode for you this week. Yeah. And we hope you have some sweet, sweet nightmares. Thanks for listening. Bye. Bye.