Well, click on this link and take a listen on WABC New Radio from this weekend. At 45 minutes and twenty eight seconds, host Liz Rattoballi and I discuss the interesting phenomenon of how a rumor about a demonic doll on the loose went instantly viral.
People who have excellent taste in entertainment and are, therefore, fans of horror films, novels, and TV shows, and they're familiar with the possessed and homicidal doll from the “Conjuring” universe. I enjoy the films quite a bit and have been impressed by the consistently high quality of the writing, performances, and overall skilled construction of an ongoing franchise whose numerous entries don’t yet look like contrived products of a film-conveyor-belt.
“The Conjuring” films are a highly fictionalized adaptation of various investigations by self-described demonologists Ed and Lorraine Warren. The evil doll that shows up in several of the “Conjuring” films, and even got her own spin-off series of (so far) three films, is a very real doll and has been alleged to be possessed by a demonic entity. The Warrens had claimed that Annabelle came into their possession in 1970 after being contacted by two young nurses who had witnessed unnatural phenomena around Annabelle. The doll, given to one of the women as a gift, was supposed to have moved on its own, left written notes for them, and even attacked some of their acquaintances. At that point the nurses contacted the Warrens, who determined that the doll was possessed by a demon. Ed and Lorraine placed Annabelle in a case in their museum, stocked with a collection of similarly haunted objects, where the doll is still kept today.
Controversy, however, has always surrounded the Warrens’ paranormal claims. Their various paranormal investigations and conclusions about otherworldly manifestations had repeatedly been put to scrutiny by skeptics, and the couple have been accused of either being too eager to believe in the paranormal or knowingly embellishing the claims of supernatural events. They had, for example, staunchly argued that the Amityville haunting was a clear case of a demonic entity terrifying a family in 1976. The case and a bestselling book about it, the various skeptical examinations concurred, was an amalgamation of exaggerations and outright lies. Similarly, skeptics have pointed out that the stories of the supernatural manifestations around Annabelle had only been forwarded by the Warrens with no other testimony supporting the veracity of those claims. Overall, the Warrens’ claims of the paranormal have been dismissed by skeptics because the couple could never present any valid, incontrovertible scientific proof of the paranormal. Essentially, they have been repeatedly accused of telling sensationalistic tall tales in order to sell books and capitalize on their Occult Museum.
But last week a rumor circulated online about Annabelle supposedly having vanished while on a tour of haunted objects. The demon doll was said to have disappeared from the tour while it was in Louisiana, and mayhem followed in her wake. Annabelle had been blamed, for instance, on the escape of a group of convicts from a New Orleans prison as well as the outbreak of a fire at a resort in White Castle, LA.
Except Annabelle was not missing at all. While the rumors circulated online, Annabelle was back in her case in the Occult Museum. A spokesman for the museum confirmed this with a TikTok video.
The sudden spread of all this speculation is what we discussed on the show and the pleasure we get from being scared and the need to entertain the possibility of the supernatural.
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