Dan Rivera dies: The story of Annabelle, the Raggedy Ann haunted doll made famous by Conjuring films

Paranormal investigator Dan Rivera died suddenly on July 13 while on tour with the infamous "haunted" Annabelle doll. Rivera was the lead investigator for the New England Society for Psychic Research (NESPR) and was taking the doll to different parts of the United States along with other items kept at Warrens' Occult Museum in Monroe, Connecticut. The "Devils on the Run Tour" was a hit after it started in May this year. Annabelle has been described as “demonically possessed" by society. The 54-year-old paranormal detective's death has set tongues wagging. People are speculating whether Annabelle had something to do with his death. The tour was visiting Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, when Rivera passed away. The police have reportedly called it a natural death and do not suspect any foul play. However, Annabelle is once again in the limelight. It first became famous from the Conjuring movie series. The films revolve around a paranormal investigator couple, Ed, a demonologist and Lorraine Warren, who is a medium. They declared Annabelle haunted in the 1970s and put it in the museum, where it has stayed since then. However, now it is on a tour because the museum had to close to the public due to zoning issues.

The story of Annabelle

The legend of Annabelle started in 1971 when a 28-year-old nurse in Hartford got a three-foot Raggedy Ann doll for Christmas from her mother. According to Boston Ghosts, she took it home where she lived with a roommate. They slowly started noticing strange occurrences in their house. Initially, they left it around in strange poses to scare each other. "It became a tradition; who could pull off the best scare before the start of the shift?" However, later, the doll started showing up in various places on its own, and could even move its arms, one of the nurses said. She believed it was demonic and took it to a medium who told her that the spirit of a little girl named Annabelle lived in the doll.

The medium said that the little girl was 5 years old when she died in a car accident near the house of the nurses. This melted the nurse's heart, who started treating it like a child. However, the doll soon started terrorising them. According to Boston Ghosts, they could hear noises in the walls, beds started shaking, temperatures went up and down, and the doll occasionally growled. One of the nurses' boyfriends suggested that they burn the doll. What followed next was something we have all seen in poltergeist movies. The afternoon before they planned to burn the doll, the man woke up frightened, with his hands on his neck. He said he had a dream that the doll was choking him, and sure enough, he had the marks in his neck to prove that. Annabelle was passed on to Ed and Lorraine, who declared the doll haunted.