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Why Are People Freaking Out About the Annabelle Doll Escaping?

Perfect. Twitter going crazy about the world’s most notorious doll escaping an occult museum is just what this cursed year needed.
annabelle doll horror movie
A screenshot from the 2019 movie 'Annabelle Comes Home' courtesy of
Warner Bros Pictures

If the horror that is 2020 wasn’t distressing enough, people all over the internet have apparently been panicking about one of the most feared horror villains escaping and being out in the open. On August 14, Annabelle was trending on Twitter all day and turns out, it was because someone said the haunted doll had escaped her resting place.

If you don’t know who she is, chances are you either live under a rock or have been possessed by the doll and had your memory erased. She is an allegedly haunted doll and the recurring antagonist of the Conjuring universe, which has an Annabelle series within it. She is kept in an occult museum that was started by paranormal investigators, Ed and Lorraine Warren

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The Warrens were given the doll in the 1970s by a student nurse. Allegedly, the nurse had seen the doll behave strangely, and after going to a psychic medium, she was told that the doll was inhabited by the spirit of a deceased girl called Annabelle. When the student couldn’t keep the doll anymore for the apparently malicious behavior it had portrayed, she had contacted the Warrens. 

The Warrens had, since then, built this aura of terror around the two feet tall doll. "Looks are deceiving," Lorraine Warren told USA Today in 2017. "It's not what the doll looks like that makes it scary; it is what has been infused within the doll—evil." And so, for over five decades, the doll had remained in a glass box at their Connecticut museum surrounded by mystery. 

Until now, if the Twitter rumours are anything to go by (which we all know, they aren’t). 

Not sure what it says about us, but we reacted to this the way we have with every unfortunate event that has occurred: with memes. 

Luckily, it probably just seems like a case of mistranslation, funny coincidences, and the internet hyping up half-baked information. Debunked by YouTuber Hi Tech, this might all be because of an interview. 

An interview with British actress Annabelle Wallis was published by The Hollywood Reporter on Friday, where she talked about convincing Tom Cruise to let her “run” alongside him in The Mummy. The interview title was changed to "Annabelle escapes" when it was translated into Chinese. And that was what caused this intense meltdown. 

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The Warrens’ son-in-law, who has been taking care of the museum after their death, also posted a video showing the Annabelle doll in its glass cage. “Annabelle’s alive,” he says in the video. “Well, I shouldn’t say alive. Annabelle is here in all of her infamous glory.”

Honestly, supernatural scares are the last thing we need but if there’s a year that can prove paranormal, it's this one. Good luck, folks. 

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