Strange Tale of the Possessed Raggedy Ann Doll

In 1970 a loving mother doting on her only daughter, purchased a Raggedy Ann doll from an antique store. The cute red-headed doll was a present for her daughter Donna who was at that time residing with her roommate Angie in a small apartment and preparing to graduate from college. Thinking nothing more of the doll than a sign of affection from her mother, she placed the doll on her bed in her room and basically forgot about it. And thus began one of the most unusual cases of a possessed object on record.

As time passed, Angie and Donna noticed a strangeness about the doll. The young ladies reported the doll would move, relatively unnoticeable movements at first, like a change in position, but as time passed, the movement became more noticeable. The doll was once found standing upright, leaning against a chair with its legs crossed. After awhile the girls said the doll would actually change rooms! It would be left in the living room before they locked up and left for work or school and upon returning it would be found on Donna's bed in her room. 

A few weeks later, Donna began to find penciled messages written on old-fashioned parchment paper. The alarming messages looked like they were written in the handwriting of a small child, scribbled and almost illegible. The messages clearly stated "Help Us" or "Help Lou". Donna didn't have any idea exactly who the "us" was and she had no clue where the paper came from as she had never kept parchment paper in the  apartment nor had she ever used that type of paper herself. Could it have been conjured out of the air by the doll itself? Could a cloth doll possibly be writing messages?

Donna returned home one evening to find the doll had moved once again. This time though, Donna felt as though something was really off. A menacing presence seemed to emulate from the doll and she had the deepest urge to inspect it. What she found would haunt her forever.

The doll had blood on it. Blood was on both the back of its hands and its chest. Now completely scared and desperate for help, Donna decided it was time to seek an expert.

Determined to get to the bottom of things, Donna contacted a medium who agreed to hold a seance. During the seance, it was revealed there was a spirit that had taken up residence in the doll. Her name was Annabelle Higgins. From what the medium could determine, Annabelle Higgins was a young girl of only 7 years when her lifeless body was found in the field upon which the apartment complex Donna resided in was built . The spirit basically took up residence with the doll and it wanted to stay. Upon hearing this, seeing no harm in it and feeling sorry for what the spirit had experienced in life, Donna agreed it could stay. The true nature of this entity however, had yet to be revealed.

Lou, Donna's boyfriend, was less than thrilled with the doll. On numerous occasions Lou warned Donna the doll felt threatening and sinister. Something was off and Lou knew it. Lou's dislike of the doll was well known. He was destined to have more than one terrifying experience with Annabelle.

Lou awoke one night from a deep sleep and in panic. Once again he had a reoccurring bad dream. Only this time somehow, something seemed different. It was as though he was awake but couldn't move. He looked around the room but couldn't discern anything out of the ordinary and then it happened. Looking down toward his feet he saw the doll, Annabelle. It began to slowly glide up his leg, moved over his chest and then stopped. Within seconds the doll was strangling him. Paralyzed and gasping for breath, Lou, at the point of asphyxiation, blacked out. Lou awoke the next morning, certain it wasn't a dream. He was determined to rid himself of that doll and the spirit that possessed it. Lou, however, would have one more terrifying experience with Annabelle. Preparing for a road trip the next day, while waiting for Donna to return from work, Lou and Angie were reading over maps alone in the apartment. The apartment seemed eerily quiet. Suddenly, rustling sounds coming from Donna's room aroused fear that someone had possibly broken into the apartment. Lou, determined to figure out who or what it was, quietly made his way to the bedroom door. He waited for the noises to stop before entering and turning on the light. The room was empty except for Annabelle whom was tossed on the floor in the corner. 

Lou scoured the room for forced entry but found nothing out of place. As he got close to the doll however, he felt that somebody was behind him. Spinning around he was quick to realize that nobody else was there. Then in a flash, he found himself grabbing for his chest, doubled over, cut and bleeding. His shirt was stained with blood and upon opening it, there on his chest was what looked to be 7 distinct claw marks, three vertically and four horizontally, all were hot like burns. These scratches healed very quickly, half gone the next day, fully gone by day two. 

Had the entity finally revealed it's true nature? Due to Lou's experiences, the doll was no longer believed to be a docile spirit but inhuman and demonic in nature. Donna decided to contact a priest, Father Hegan. With his help, their case was referred to the world famous paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren.

"Ed and Lorraine Warren immediately took interest in the case and contacted Donna concerning the doll. The Warrens, after speaking with Donna, Angie, and Lou, came to the immediate conclusion that the doll itself was not in fact possessed but manipulated by an inhuman presence. Spirits do not possess inanimate objects like houses or toys, they posses people. An inhuman spirit can attach itself to a place or object and this is what occurred in the Annabelle case. This spirit manipulated the doll and created the illusion of it being alive in order to get recognition. Truly, the spirit was not looking to stay attached to the doll, it was looking to posses a human host.

The demonic spirit was essentially in the infestation stage of the phenomenon. It first began moving the doll around the apartment by means of teleportation to arouse the occupants curiosity in hopes that they would give it recognition.Then, predictably, the mistake of bringing a medium into the apartment to communicate with it. The inhuman spirit now able to communicate through the medium, preyed on the girls emotional vulnerabilities by pretending to be a rather harmless, lost young girl which, during the seance, was allowed permission from Donna to haunt the apartment. It then set about causing negative phenomena to occur; it aroused fear through the weird movements of the doll, the symbolic drops of blood on the doll, and ultimately it even attacked Lou, leaving behind the symbolic mark of the beast. The next stage of the infestation phenomenon would have been complete human possession. Had these experiences lasted another 2 or 3 more weeks the spirit would have completely possessed, if not harmed or killed one or all of the occupants in the house."

An actual exorcism was performed on the doll before the Warren's left, hoping it would rid Annabelle of the infectious demon. At the conclusion of the investigation, Ed and Loraine decided the best course of action to prevent the spirit from doing further harm was to relieve Donna of its presence and take the doll home with them as they weren't completely sure if the doll had been exorcised of the entity.

If you want to visit Annabell, she can be found at the Warren Occult Museum in Moodus, Connecticut. There, housed in a permanently locked glass case, you will find Annabell. Be aware though, museum workers report Annabell still moves about occasionally and is known to make growling noises at visitors.

Devilish Doings In Tyler, Texas

In a little 1950's ranch-style, unremarkable suburban house in Tyler, Texas, there occurred one of the most famous instances of poltergeist activity in the world.

In 1965, a gentleman named L. Howard Beaird moved his wife, Johnnie (everyone just called her by the name of "John") and their teenage son, Andy, to the little home in Tyler after Howard and John both retired, having worked together for 32 years at the same company. Almost immediately upon moving in and until the family fled the house 3 years later, some of the most strange and horrifying events imaginable began to make their lives a horror.

One of the reasons Howard decided it was time to retire was because John began exhibiting signs of having mental issues. Previously, she had thoroughly enjoyed spending time with Howard and Andy, going to a nearby park to walk, going shopping together, taking weekend trips, but gradually she began pulling away, preferring to eat alone, not wanting to go anywhere. Howard thought maybe a change of scenery to a different town, a different home, would be good for her and so shortly before their last day of work, he purchased the house in Tyler and spent several weekends getting it ready for them to make it their home.

After the move though, John got worse. She began getting up at 5:00 every morning and eating breakfast at a nearby cafe. The house had a small workshop in the back yard which Howard had turned into an office for his part-time business of making rubber stamps and John wouldn't return home until she knew Andy had gone to school and Howard would be out of the house in his little office. In the evenings, she would take a cab to various restaurants around town and not return until after dark. She would then go straight to the bedroom and shut the door, refusing to come out. She said people were spying on her, watching her every move. When Howard told her that wasn't true, she became convinced he was the leader of the group watching her and forbade him to come into the bedroom. Howard began sleeping with little Andy in his room. 

John began smoking, something she had never done before. She began chain smoking and leaving lit cigarettes on furniture and in the bed. Howard told her she had to stop smoking, but she wouldn't. Radio's and clocks in the house began to quit working and upon inspection, Howard found that John had removed the inner workings and hidden packs of cigarettes and matches in them. Even though she could easily get more during her morning and evening trips around town, she hid hundreds of packs of cigarettes and lighters under sinks, behind books, taped to the bottom of drawers, under her mattress, above closet shelves, literally all over and around the house.

Howard and Andy were scared John would set the house on fire with one of her careless cigarettes, but she didn't allow them to be around her so John was sent to live with her sister in a different town since she was also retired and could be with her 24 hours a day. That's when things got interesting.  Even though John was now living with her sister, Howard continued to sleep in Andy's room because once John came back home for a visit and found that he had slept in the master bedroom and had thrown a fit and stormed out.

One night in July, 1965, Howard and Andy went to bed and as soon as the bedside lamp was turned off, hundreds of June bugs began flying into the room hitting them in the face and head. They came with such force that it stung when they hit and the ones that missed smashed against the wall behind the bed and splattered. Some hit the metal window blinds with a loud thwack, leaving their insides splashed across the white slats. When Howard managed to turn the light back on, the flying bugs stopped. Andy was screaming in fright, but Howard told him the bugs must have come in through a hole in the wire window screen and he would fix it in the morning. As soon as he turned off the light, the bugs, hundreds and hundreds, began hitting them again. Once more, when Howard turned on the light, the flying bugs simply stopped. No bugs were flying, none were crawling around; they were all dead. Howard and Andy slept with the lights on that night.

The next morning, there were so many dead bugs in the bedroom, Howard had to use a shop vac to get them all. They found that not only were there thousands of dead June bugs, most of them were dry and brittle, like they had been dead for weeks. They also found the bugs were only in the bedroom and nowhere else.

All was quiet for several days and then the voices started. At first, there would be an unidentified voice quietly speaking in a different room, but when Howard or Andy went to investigate, nobody would be there. They could not hear the voices clearly enough to understand what they were saying. This went on for several weeks until one night the bugs came back exactly as before. It was close to September then, long past June bug season, but there they were, again in the thousands and again only in the bedroom shared by Howard and Andy. After that night, the voices became louder. They seemed to resonate from the walls and could be identified as 7 different people known to the family. Sometimes what they said made sense, sometimes it was just gibberish. The problem was that all 7 of the people who were speaking had been dead for several years.

Objects in the house began to be moved. When Andy was at school and John was at her sister's house, Howard would come back inside the house from his shop in the back yard and find the kitchen chairs sitting atop the table or his lounge chair in the living room would be moved to the other side of the room; numerous pictures would have fallen from the walls or the TV and all the radios would be turned on. One time the refrigerator was moved from the kitchen into the bedroom on the other side of the house. One night, the bugs didn't return, but after laying down, Howard felt something moving against his arm. When he turned on the light and pulled back the bed covers, there were dozens of slimy slugs crawling around. They started inspecting the bed every night before crawling in.

One would think a rational person would get out of the house with all of that going on, but Howard had sunk all of the family's savings into the house when they bought it and the housing market was in a downturn. He didn't feel like they could afford to lose their investment so he and Andy stayed. John would sometimes come back for a few days, but for the most part, she stayed away. Kind of. Eventually, another voice joined the original seven - John's. Howard would often have long back and forth conversations with John. He knew for sure it was her because she talked about things, sometimes intimate things, only the two of them would know.  Yet when he called his sister-in-law's home phone, John would be there and her sister would confirm she had been there all day.

Howard told about one particular December night. "It was a Saturday and Andy and I went to bed about 10:30. Something that sounded exactly like fingers drummed lightly on the bed. Although we were under the covers, we could feel whatever it was tugging at the sheets, actually trying to jerk the covers off of us! We would turn on the light and the tugging would stop. There were no bugs that night, but when the lights were off, both Andy and I could feel something on our arms that seemed like small flying bugs bouncing up and down, sort of like gnats will do. We would slap at them, but there was absolutely nothing there. We would turn on the lights and see nothing. We sprayed the air everywhere with insect spray, but it did no good. It felt exactly like someone grabbing the hair on your arms with the thumb and forefinger, not actually pulling very hard at first, but later jerking the hair hard enough to hurt.

While we were laying in the bed with the light on, my work shoes weighing possibly two pounds each, flew right over our heads and landed on the other side of the bed! Andy's house shoes got up from the floor and flung themselves against the blinds. My clothes, which were hanging in the closet with the door closed, got out of there somehow without the door being opened and flew across the room. Finally we turned off the lights again and heard a strange sound we could not identify. It was under the bed and sounded like rollers being turned rapidly with the fingers, but the bed wasn't on rollers. Suddenly, something hit the blinds like a bullet! We turned on the light and found that the handle from the gas jet under the bed had unscrewed itself, and both the bolt and the handle had flung themselves against the blinds. Then the bed started moving away from the wall. We would roll it back again only to have it do the same thing over and over. That was the last thing we could stand that night. It was almost 2 A.M. Sunday. I told Andy to put on his clothes. We went to a motel to spend the rest of the night.

As we were walking down the driveway, after closing and locking the door, a handkerchief still folded hit me in the back of the head. Just as we got in the car, another handkerchief I had left on the bedside table hit me in the back after I had closed the car doors. By the time we arrived at the motel, we were so weary we both fell right asleep and nothing else happened that night." 

For almost 3 years Howard and Andy had endured this nightmare. Then one night, the bugs came back. This time, they were not June bugs, but rather the little crawly bugs that pull themselves into a ball when disturbed. In the south, they are called "pill bugs" and are a favorite for little children to play with. Once again, there were thousands and thousands of them flying through the air slamming into Howard and Andy, the bed, the walls and the window blinds with a force like they had been shot out of a cannon. Upon inspection, the bugs had been dead for so long they would fall apart in the hand like a brittle little shell. The frightening thing - pill bugs move slowly, have no wings and cannot fly or jump.

The next day, Howard returned to the house from his shop and smelled it full of gas. He found the gas line to the kitchen stove had been unscrewed. Things had taken a decided turn to the dangerous side. Depressed housing market or not, this proved to be the final straw as Howard decided to sell. It took a while as word had leaked to the real estate agents about what was happening inside the little house and often, people who came to check it out commented they felt uncomfortable inside it. Howard had to drop the price even lower until finally, even though he lost all of the money they had put into it, he accepted an offer from a young family.

Howard and Andy moved to another house in the Tyler area. John joined them and soon seemed to get better. They now both sleep in the master bedroom and have resumed their lives as a married couple. John says she doesn't really know anything about what happened back then and Howard states they are just scary memories now. Andy graduated high school, attended barber college and is said to be working in a salon giving good haircuts to people somewhere in Texas. There has been no paranormal activity at their new house. The family who purchased their former home has mostly refused to comment, stating that paranormal activity is the devil's doings. They stated they have staunch Christian beliefs and have not experienced anything "of a devilish nature" while living in the house. They do admit there have been a few unsettling things happen which they do not understand and have no explanation for, but refuse to give details. They say they have complete trust and faith in their God to protect them.