The Conjuring movies featured many dark forces like Bathsheba Sherman, The Crooked Man, The Occultist, and more. But the most prominent and subtle antagonist of the series is the Annabelle doll that is a vessel to a demonic entity. The toy is based on a real one from the case files of the real Ed and Lorraine Warren, and a lead investigator for the New England Society for Psychic Research recently died while touring with it.
The Evening Sun has reported sad news out of the Gettysburg from the Devils on the Run tour, which travels around the country with the Annabelle doll. On July 13, Dan Rivera, a senior lead investigator for the Connecticut-based New England Society for Psychic Research, died on that tour where he attended to show the “demonically possessed” toy (which, unlike its depiction in the movies, is an old Raggedy Ann).
Emergency crews responded to calls from a Gettysburg hotel where CPR was performed on Dan Rivera. Three days later, the Pennsylvania State Police shared a report with People providing more details on what happened to the lead investigator:
Members from PSP Gettysburg responded to a hotel in Straban Township, Adams County for a report of a deceased [man]. The decedent was discovered in his hotel room by workers. Nothing unusual or suspicious was observed at the scene.
As of yet, no cause of death has been confirmed. Annabelle’s origins were first brought to the big screen in the first Conjuring movie. The film starts in 1968 with Ed and Lorraine visiting a nursing student who was gifted the doll and brought it back to her home.
The story is that strange occurrences took place with the nursing student and her roommate, and a psychic medium told them the doll possessed the spirit of a young girl named Annabelle. Paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren were called in and kept the doll in a glass case to better contain any “evil” stored in it.
While the Annabelle doll made a brief appearance in the first Conjuring movie, the demonically possessed doll’s story was expanded in future movies. In the haunted doll’s first spinoff movie, Annabelle, we see the antique doll in possession of young couple John and Mia Form. After satanic cultist Annabelle Higgins breaks into their home, she bled to death while holding the doll to further bind the demon into it; the doll causes paranormal disturbances in an attempt to take Mia’s soul.
Annabelle: Creation connects back to the previous spinoff movie that told the origins of cultist Annabelle Higgins. We learn she was originally an orphan named Janice, possessed by a demon attached to the infamous creepy doll she encountered in her childhood. Then, set after the events of The Conjuring is Annabelle Comes Home: which sees the babysitter of the Warrens’ daughter and her friend accidentally open Annabelle’s case and unleash the evil inside.
What makes the demonic Annabelle doll so terrifying throughout the Conjuring universe is that she’s not like Chucky, who physically fights their foes. She’s a magnet for demonic energy in summoning or empowering evil spirits, a master of manipulation, and causes psychological torment without ever moving.
Our thoughts go out to the friends and family of lead investigator Dan Rivera. The New England Society for Psychic Research has said in their statement that they’ll continue its previously planned events of the tour, believing “Dan would have wanted the work to continue.” You can see Ed and Lorraine’s infamous Annabelle doll movies and the rest of The Conjuring series on your HBO Max subscription.