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We’re back! Podcasting siblings Jamie and Bambi return just in time for Halloween with an episode all about Ed and Lorraine Warren, the demonologist and clairvoyant couple made famous by The Conjuring movies starring Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga. Learn what Ed smelled like as a sixteen year old boy and how the nuns punished Lorraine for seeing into the future. Find out how their careers began as hobo artists collecting ghost stories before they learned how to monetize their hobby for fun and profit! We’ll take a look at the world’s most famous creepy doll: Annabelle. Were the Warrens truly battling the forces of Satan or were they just shady grifters? Research, skepticism, and swearing are all required to untangle this mess.

In this episode recommend people donate to Feeding America to address growing food insecurity in our country. We also express support and solidarity with the Atlanta Forest Defenders and encourage you to learn more and help stop Cop City.

How's your brain feeling?

My brain is feeling okay.

I have a mild headache like all the time and then I get severe headaches three or four

times a week.

Yeah, severe headaches to migraines.

Today I'm okay.

But yeah, I went to the neurologist and I'm going to get Botox.

Nice.

Yeah.

And they said because they basically cover my forehead and temples and then the back

of my neck and my shoulders.

So it should also give me some pain relief.

So we'll have the doctors considered an alternative explanation.

Like you're being attacked by demons.

Uh, no, no one has suggested that I'm being attacked or sexualized by demons because that's

because the people we're talking about today aren't here because speaking of massive headaches.

Oh, okay.

Have you ever seen any of the conjuring movies?

I have.

I saw the first one.

You saw the first one.

What'd you think of the conjuring?

Um, it was okay.

Yeah.

I liked the conjuring, but I liked the, the movies in general as movies.

Yeah.

As a horror movie, it was a solid seven.

Yeah.

It was, it was decent.

It had some good scares, some fun, and it presented, uh, you know, some heroes you could

root for.

Yeah.

The cinematography.

And it was really good.

James Wan is a great director.

That movie, that movie, it was a good movie.

I liked it.

So just as a film goer and a horror fan, I said, I sometimes like the weirder, more fringe

stuff as a more horrid dude, but in terms of like mainstream pop horror conjuring, good

movie.

Um, so because it's spooky season, it's October as we record this, um, my favorite time of

year.

Yeah.

And we've been on hiatus for a little while.

So I thought I would ease us back in.

So instead of talking about anything super like historically important or weighty, you

know, in terms of big events, we would just get a little lighthearted, uh, talk about

some ghosts and demons and werewolves and shit.

Huzzah.

So there we go.

So, uh, yeah, the conjuring films, which at this point there are three conjuring movies

and a bunch of spinoffs.

There's like three Annabelle movies, two nuns, uh, one lawyer, the curse of La Llorona, which

is sort of like the one that's sort of on the edge.

Yeah.

That's like Mexican folklore too.

So it's the, and that one's actually supposed to be like the scariest one because I mean,

the conjuring was, it wasn't that scary.

It was a decent movie, but it wasn't scary.

So for anybody living under a rock or digging this up a hundred years from now, the conjuring

films present a pair of demon fighting, ghost busting heroes named Ed and Lorraine Warren.

So this attractive pair uses faith, psychic powers and expert knowledge to battle the

forces of Satan and free people from demonic possession.

So outside of their work, they are presented as wholesome, selfless and deeply compassionate

people who do their work as a service to God.

And they are deeply in love and have a damn near perfect marriage.

Oh, and the whole God thing, it cannot be stressed enough.

They are, they are very religious and I want to say they're Catholic.

Yes, they're Catholic.

And let's just say that the, even though the movies certainly present them as Catholics

and they're always talking to priests and doing all that shit, it tones down just how

Catholic these people are, because that's going to be a huge part of what we're talking

about today.

So we're going to look at the real life Warren's and see how they hold up to Patrick Wilson

and Vera Farmiga.

Spoiler alert.

Not great.

Well, I mean, just from pictures.

Well, I mean, physically it's not even fair to compare them to movie stars.

They are, you know, the movie Warren's are very good looking.

Yeah.

And I have to say, and especially like I saw, um, part of a documentary, um, I want to say

it's called the devil's road and I, yeah, it is one of our, uh, research points for

today.

Okay.

Even though that is a blow job of a duck.

Oh, it is.

I was like trying to decide, I was like, is this a documentary or propaganda?

So I kind of like, so it's a, it's a doc Uganda or yeah.

It's like, well, it's like most of those paranormal, like anytime you're watching a documentary

about these kinds of topics and there's like dramatic music and quick cuts and dramatic

voiceovers.

The only really interesting thing was it did have interviews with the original people that

were experiencing some of this stuff.

So yeah.

And we're going to be talking about that and those people and all of it, we're going to

get into all of it.

So, um, by the way, everybody, this has changed our history.

The podcast where we take beloved fixtures now in pop culture for over 10 years and reveal

them to be slimy grifters and sex criminals.

That is not true.

That is, we've, we've done other things.

Sometimes that's what we're doing today.

Sometimes we talk about maligned women as well.

We'll see if you think we're maligning this woman, uh, Lorraine Warren, uh, as a disclaimer,

we are a comedy podcast.

I'm not a historian, but I did read the Halloween tree by Ray Bradbury once.

And uh, yeah, I now know some stuff about the Mexican day of the dead.

So I'm qualified.

Awesome.

I am qualified to wear these headphones and talk into this mic by the powers vested in

me.

The power of Mike can, Mike said I could, uh, if you go to chainsawhistory.com, you

can find ways to support the show, check out our bonus content, uh, and other shows like

the value of series where we read children's books to each other and no time for love.

Doctor Jones, where we talk way too much about the adventures of Indiana Jones.

So yeah, uh, the Warrens aren't just fun weirdos who became famous for their demon battling

exploits.

Uh, they are shady grifters who get into some really ugly territory.

No, like this is the thing that sucks.

Like when I started this, the whole idea was to do something a little more lighthearted

knowing that they're probably going to be fraudsters and assholes or whatever.

And then it just gets darker than I wanted it to always does.

Every time you learn too much about people, especially people who are admired by so many

well people start out as complicated.

That's just when you, anytime you get something that's not to be too mean to Catholics, but

let's just say stuff tied into the Catholic church often takes you to some dark places

involving under aged people.

Well, I mean, I'm not a big fan of organized religion and neither was Jesus.

So Jesus was a real cool dude.

He was probably also a socialist.

So like we're saying, we don't, we usually talk about people who actually have a real

effect on like history and events and like, you know, affected the course of how America

especially went.

I think it's safe to say the Warrens benefited from and contributed to some significant cultural

moments from the public obsession with ghosts and possession to the satanic panic of the

1980s.

They suck.

Yeah.

Well, and a lot of their, the techniques and stuff that they not only that they used, but

they, some of them that they invented, I think that are used today, they made ghost hunting

a popular thing to do.

They were part of this first generation of people doing this and one of the first to

really make a name for themselves.

This is the reason the channel, the travel channel now sucks.

Yeah, because that's all it is.

Descendants are now all over it all the time.

No, we can't have great hotels anymore.

We have to have ghost hunters times 500.

Ed Warren died just a couple of years before YouTube was invented and thank God, no one

wanted to look at his fat, nasty ass, but he still did it.

Like trust me, he, the, the amount of Ed Warren footage out there from even including the

other own TV show they did for awhile.

So anyway, let's get into it.

The research on this one was mostly articles and interviews.

This was a lot of smaller things instead of the usual one or two books.

I did read the authorized biography called the demonologist, the extraordinary career

of Ed and Lorraine Warren by Gerald Brittle that I think came out in like 1980 so that

sounds like a blow job.

I don't recommend it.

Yeah, it was totally a blow job and also had a very clear point to it, which is to scare

the shit out of you.

So you'd join the Catholic church.

Also watched the documentary, the devil's, devil's road, which was on max.

I hate everything.

So the book, the demonologist is the closest we get to like an autobiography cause it was

kind of an author.

They know the Warrens didn't really write their own stuff.

They hired writers to do for them or came up with partnerships with writers.

The demonologist gives us the version of the Warrens that the Warrens wanted us to have.

They literally worked with this guy to present this, this message in this way.

So this is how they're described in the introduction of the book quote Ed and Lorraine Warren are

a cordial, happy couple in their mid fifties who have a unique friendship in marriage and

distinctly positive outlook on life.

What the Warrens have seen, however, and what they have learned over the course of their

extraordinary combined career has given them wisdom way beyond their years, unquote gross.

So the version we get in the movies very much matches this description.

I mean, they sound so nice.

Yeah, they sound too nice.

They sound like saccharine.

But this isn't the introduction to some boring biography Bambi.

This book is about kicking some demon ass.

So the first few pages give us a scene in which the Warrens freshly returned from a

haunted house in Long Island.

Yes, that haunted house in Long Island are terrorized by a demonic presence.

Ed confronts a swirling black shape with signs of the cross and the name of Jesus in order

to save his wife from a psychic assault.

So according to the demonologist quote, what confronted Ed and Lorraine Warren in those

early morning hours was not a ghost, nor was it something seen only by them.

The same swirling black mass has been reported by others.

Rather, this was the appearance of something far more ominous than a ghost could ever be,

the manifestation of a comparatively rare phenomenon known as an inhuman demonic spirit,

a preternatural entity.

The inhuman spirit is considered to be possessed of a negative, diabolical intelligence fixed

in a perpetual rage against both man and God.

Unquote.

Oh, sounds so serious.

So the forces of Satan have followed Ed and Lorraine back from New York from the house

and the house that would soon be known as the Amityville Horror House.

And so we get this action and a taste of their most famous case before we even get to chapter

one.

It's like Ed literally sees this tornado of black energy that he has to throw his cross

at and yell at until it goes away to save Lorraine.

Yeah.

Weren't they going to do like a blessing on that house and then it never happened?

Well we're going to get to that.

Okay.

So, but this was literally just like this little tease like, yeah, this thing like right

after they went to the house for the first time, you know, they got attacked in the middle

of the night.

And they were like, and threw something at it.

Ed screaming demons is something we're going to be talking about a bit.

So according to the book, Ed and Lorraine's work, quote, by necessity was not public.

Instead the Warrens remained in the background, either working privately with individuals

experiencing true spirit related problems or as investigators performing onsite research

where strange or unusual phenomenon were in progress, unquote.

So it's this humility that explains all the books, movie deals, speaking engagements,

and constantly being on the news.

Very humble.

The humblest.

But it's time to light the candles, hold hands and conjure up the past.

The story of Ed and Lorraine Warren begins damn near a hundred years ago because it was

on September 7th, 1926 that a thick necked and large four headed baby was born in Bridgeport,

Connecticut.

One that we could later thank for the nun too.

The kid's name was Edward Warren Miney.

Miney?

Miney.

Yep.

Ed Warren isn't actually Ed Warren.

So the very first lie is his actual name.

You know, I would change that too.

No, and fair.

So according to Ed's IMDB page, and thanks not just for the Conjuring movies, but the

many other movie deals he was involved with going way back before that.

He's got so many.

He's got a bunch of credits.

So his IMDB page says, quote, he was the son of Pauline Dennis and Frank Edward Miney.

His father was of Slovak and Czech descent and his maternal grandparents were Polish,

unquote.

I mean, Miney is a really terrible last name.

So yeah, no idea exactly why, when, or how Ed decided to ditch his last name in favor

of the middle name, whatever.

But Miney is his last name on his official public documents.

Maybe he really, maybe he wasn't too fond of his father, Frank.

I mean, we really don't know a lot about Ed's dad other than he was a Connecticut state

trooper and apparently wasn't too keen on any of Ed's ghost shit.

And fair.

Yeah.

Fair.

Also, there's some rumor that Frank was abusive to his wife and children, which also makes

sense.

Yeah.

That's fair too.

Listeners Google 40% of all cops, if you don't know what I'm talking about and you can catch

up with us.

Ed reports that he was five years old when he first encountered the supernatural, the

spirit of the former owner of his family's house.

He described it as a semi-transparent apparition wearing some sort of shroud.

She scowled at the kid and vanished.

Just like, Ed said he was scared, but there was no mention of whether he filled his little

tidy whities.

He was five.

So when Ed told his family about the incident, his dad gruffly told him to forget what he

saw and don't tell anybody else.

Yeah.

Don't be a lunatic dork.

Don't ever tell anyone else, which is why we know about it today.

Today.

Just told everyone who would listen for the rest of his life.

Ed came from, and this is going to shock you, an incredibly religious family.

No.

They're Catholic immigrants.

It didn't just come out of nowhere.

He said that his grandfather had bequeathed his entire life savings to the church so that

a stained glass window of St. Michael could be installed in their local parish.

Okay.

And Ed was fixated on it.

Quoting from the demonologist, quote, it was Michael the archangel who drove Satan from

heaven and is the patron saint of the exorcist, unquote.

So it was like granddad made this window, donated this stained glass window of the most

bad-ass of all the angels and Ed's like, I'm going to be that angel here on earth fighting

demons or at least that's what we're, we're told, um, uh, Frank, the cop dad reportedly

never missed mass a day in his life.

So naturally Ed went to Catholic school and says he paid attention to his spiritual education

despite how much he hated dressing up for church, which is maybe the one time me and

Ed are on the same page.

Okay.

First of all, how do you never miss mass?

I have literally just missed days of my life.

They're just gone now.

This guy was serious about going to church.

Um, because he says in Catholic school, you learned about the devil, demons and spirits

as a matter of fact, and he was trying to figure out all this ghost shit and psychic

crap that was going on in his life.

So Catholic school was literally teaching him cause you know, in Catholic school, there's

no separation between the secular and the religious.

It's just all part of your education and that demons are, you know, and spirits are

a very real thing.

Um, so he told the story about a recurring, uh, having recurring dreams of a nun visiting

him and not the mean nun from the movies.

I was about to say, is this where the nun came from?

I don't think so because, uh, so when he described these dreams to his father, uh, his father

said, no, that was, um, that was my late, that was my sister, your aunt Ed, um, a nun

who apparently had painful health issues and had died before he was born.

Um, so Ed tells the author of the demonologist quote during one of my dreams, wow, whatever

that can, where did that accent come from?

I got to get, I was doing my Ed all this time.

I got to get back to my Pepperidge farm accent.

There we go.

Quote during one of my dreams, she told me something that took on meaning only when I

grew up.

Edward, she said, you will tell many priests the road to go down, but you will never yourself

be a priest.

Well, I'm not a priest today, but I do work closely with them.

And two to those who have been assigned to work in the area of demonology and exorcism

unquote.

So the demonologist also tells us that Lorraine Rita Moran grew up only three blocks away

from Ed.

She was a smart girl who just happened to be clairvoyant, just by happenstance.

She says as a child that she didn't realize that not everyone has six senses or the ability

to see through time.

So one experience happened.

How do you see through time?

Well, I'm sure about to find out.

So for example, it was Arbor Day and they're, they plant a tree, you know, as you do on

Arbor Day quote, just as soon as they put the sapling in the ground, I saw it as a fully

grown tree.

I looked up into its massive branches filled with leaves blowing in the wind with no idea

I was experiencing second sight.

The nun standing beside me prodded my arm and said in her usual stern way, Ms. Moran,

are you looking up at why are you looking up into the sky?

I told her I was just looking into the tree.

Are you seeing into the future?

She asked me just as sternly.

Yes, I admitted.

I guess I am unquote, you know, that's where everyone leaps to, you know, which this witchcraft

earned her swift Catholic punishment where she was forced to sit and pray all weekend.

So from that point forward, she kept her superpowers to herself.

That's okay.

I was, I was about to say, isn't, that's not even what they said on Devil's Road.

Yeah.

Well, don't expect, don't expect consistency in the drawings.

Okay.

All right.

Well, it changes over time and I could give you five different versions of just about

any of this.

So I'm mostly drawing from the demonologist here for, as the sort of accepted canon.

Okay.

So that's the first.

I mean, I, I know like a smidgen about this, it could fill a thimble.

And I still know that, wait a minute, that that's already, I can, that's horseshit.

The stories shift and become different altered to depending on the audience and the context

and everything.

So, um, so auras have nothing to do with, okay, whatever.

Well, she, she also say that she could see people's auras that she could see, like, that

was, I didn't, I didn't quote that part of it, but that was another thing she said she

could see and just didn't realize that not everybody could do that.

That wasn't one thing she said, but of course, and they also told that in the nuns told her

to never say that again.

Yeah.

Cause you know, that's, and that was the, that was the last time she ever told anyone

until, you know, then she did a lot.

So you knew these two were going to get together eventually seeing as how they were neighbors,

less than a year apart in age, who attended the same school and went to the same church

destiny.

These two weirdos, we're going to run into each other.

Um, the story of their first meeting is actually romanticized in the conjuring three.

So you haven't seen that one yet, but literally the meeting when he was working as an usher

in a movie theater, a very romanticized versions.

So in the movie it says that they met and then after, uh, after she got out of the movie,

he was walking with her home, they got caught in a rainstorm and they ran under a gazebo

and then they, and they kissed for the first time, you know, taking shelter from the rain

is 16 year olds.

I want to say I heard that.

So I can't tell you where except, so that's the movie version and then to spoil the very

end of the movie.

I didn't even see the conjuring three.

So, okay.

So just spoiler into the conjuring three.

It even ends with a Patrick Wilson's version of ed buys Lorraine a gazebo so they can make

out in their backyard.

That's, that's the end of the movies.

I didn't mean to ruin it all for you.

The gazebo ending.

But uh, however, the real life Lorraine tells us, I know, but w but that's the movie version

way to hear how romantic Lorraine tells it.

She says at 16 she had zero interest in boys until a friend introduced her to a hyperactive

theater usher according.

This is from the blog on the new England society for paranormal research website quote.

When she saw edge, she thought to herself, gee, what a nice looking young man.

She later related how spiffy he looked with his sharply creased pants and perfectly coiffed

hair.

She recalled and he smelled like Noxzema.

He smelled like a bunch of zits smelled like Noxzema just like like a nasty little teenage

boy.

Uh, so, um, after the girls, after the girls, you know, for the record, I've had teenage

boys.

They do not smell nice.

They smell the opposite of nice.

Have you, if I want to chaperone, give them jars of Noxzema.

I chaperoned a middle school field trip once and the bus ride almost knocked me out.

It was horrible.

Yeah.

My high school girlfriend made me shave using Noxzema instead of shaving cream.

For some reason.

She was all about Noxzema.

Never understood that.

So I don't know that smelling like Noxzema was a turnoff.

Apparently Lorraine was all about it, but she was like, she was 16 and never seen it.

Never stood near a boy before.

So you know, um, after the girls saw their movie, Ed offered to buy them all a Coke at

a local soda joint.

Um, the first two girls got their sodas for a nickel each, but Lorraine ordered an ice

cream float that said Ed back an entire dime quote.

I always knew that she was a gold digger.

Ed would be quoted later.

What the fuck?

These romantic people.

Am I right?

It's so romantic.

Afterward, Ed walked the girl's gold digger.

She's a gold digger.

She fucking sent him back 10 goddamn cents in, you know, the 1940s.

Oh, okay.

We're just gonna, we're just gonna continue on because we have no choice.

I would like to end the story here.

It's like, good night folks.

Yeah.

They left all of this out of the conjuring three ended up in the cutting room floor.

For some reason afterward, Ed walked the girls home because there's three of them one at

a time and then Lorraine for the last, but being good Catholic kids, she reminded him

it wasn't appropriate for Ed to walk her to the door.

So he ran across the street so she can go the rest of the way alone.

And apparently she had another one of her psychic visions because she says that as Ed

crossed the street, suddenly she could see him as he would one day be a full grown hulky.

She's wait a minute.

So she saw what he would become and she was like, I want that.

Well, she, well, she saw the future.

She knew she had no choice.

That night she wrote in her diary quote, today I met the man I am going to marry unquote.

And then she tried to drown herself in the bathtub.

The sorry conjuring fans, the real life Ed and Lorraine didn't make out in a gazebo or

even hold hands.

This is uptight Catholic romance.

So we were in, so I guess I were in the early 1940s and as you might remember, America was,

you know, dealing with some shit.

The whole world was dealing with some shit.

It was not just us.

It was a whole world war as a matter of fact.

So the Nesper website claims that Ed tried to enlist in the Marine Corps at 16 by lying

about his age, but failed.

And if you seen the pictures of him, you can imagine like, no, no, no, Steve Rogers.

You're not, you're not joining right now, buddy.

So, but then it says, he volunteered to join the Navy the day of his 17th birthday.

Now I went online and found Ed's draft card and that tells a slightly different story.

That's where I found out about his last name being Minie was actually looking that up.

So like millions of other teenage boys, he got forcibly recruited and there's no shame

in that, but of course he has to make it seem like he just, he was such a hero fight some

Nazis and you know, fight the Japanese.

So if you go to the Nesper website, they'll find one of their blog entries titled I'm

going to die out here.

It says that on February 5th, the ship was quote somewhere in the North Atlantic unquote.

Then randomly in the middle of the ocean, an oil tanker collided with their ship.

The spring Hill causing a fireball.

They were ordered to abandon ship jumping into quote icy shark infested waters of the

unforgiving sea unquote.

So it was scary.

It was in the middle of this freezing cold water surrounded by fire that Ed fucking Warren

showed up as a former lifeguard.

He quote by default was an exceptionally adept swimmer.

That's some bullshit.

Okay, because it was expert lifeguard training.

The blog tells us that Ed saw another guy struggling in the water.

So using all of his skills, he assisted the fellow sailor quote.

And so with the young sailor in tow, Ed began swimming, but to where as Ed swam, he realized

the flames were everywhere and closing in to the left flames.

Same thing to the right and the center and behind.

He was surrounded by fire and to make matters worse, he witnessed sailors being attacked

by sharks.

They didn't, they'd been in the water for like three minutes and sharks are just like

leaping out of the water and just biting people in half.

It's amazing.

That's fucking great.

I mean, it's so amazing.

Okay.

It's just, I was about to say, where are they?

But just somewhere getting back to the quote, they're just somewhere in the ocean and dying

right in front of him.

If the sharks didn't get him, surely the flames would and the icy cold sea, Oh, how cold the

water was.

It would be terrible to freeze to death in a fiery pool while being eaten by sharks.

He had never felt cold like that before.

He began to pray, Holy Mary, mother of God, please, please save me.

I don't want to die.

Not here.

Not now.

Unquote as if the mother of God was truly listening.

Ed saw directly in front of them the flames part an opening through the opening, a lifeboat

with two sailors aboard navigated its way through the small opening.

Ed's prayers were answered.

Thank you, mother Mary.

Thank you for answering my prayers.

Unquote.

Okay.

I'm glad that he was the only one that was worthy of survival for his act of heroism.

Ed was granted survivors leave quote.

He used the time to rush home to Lorraine, having just enough time to be with her a few

hours before having to return to duty.

Unquote.

Now other versions say that he married her in that and then had that quickie.

That's what they said.

They said that he married her.

They had one night.

That's what other versions of the story say.

This one just said be with her or whatever.

Well then, well yeah, he married her and then she got pregnant that night.

Well, that's what they said there, but the daughter wasn't born for several years later.

Okay.

So that's bullshit.

Unless she had a miscarriage or something like that because they only have one kid and

she was not born until a few years later.

Okay.

That is not how that was represented.

Well, that's the thing.

There's some inconsistency there, but we at least we know how old Judy Spirit is.

Like she's a person who's alive like right now.

So now far be it from me, Bambi, to double check an American hero's war story as described

in this amazing blog entry on a half-assed website that looks like it was like from 2003.

But you know, when two ships crash into each other and explode, usually people write that

shit down.

Yeah.

So here I found an article titled death toll now 19 in ship explosion from February 7th,

1945.

A issue of the New York Times, slightly reputable paper.

It breaks down this very serious real accident quote the Panamanian tanker Pan Cleo had licensed

New York Sandy Howe pilot aboard when she rammed American tanker spring Hill and upper

New York Bay specifically, she was anchored a thousand yards off Stapleton, Staten Island

at 8 57 AM Monday, the impact is alleged to have touched off the explosion that all but

destroyed the spring Hill and two thirds of her 120,000 drums of high octane gasoline

in the most spectacular fire scene in the Harbor and many years unquote sound serious.

Yeah.

It was very serious.

And so the explosion definitely happened and there's no way of knowing whether Ed really

heroically saved some of the guy's life through his amazing lifeguard skills.

And I guess if you want to be super generous, technically being anchored right off Staten

Island is technically somewhere in the Atlantic.

I was about to say he was still in the U S I don't believe the waters were either super

icy or shark infested and people were being like bitten in half.

The reason why boats crashed into each other, because this was war time and they were in

New York Harbor and they were so literally, um, there was a third boat so close that some

of the flaming gasoline splashed and burned some of these other sailors.

That's why it was so crowded.

It wasn't just like they're in the middle of the ocean and one boat just accidentally

drunkenly rammed into the other one.

So yeah, this horrible, but of course, the Nespur,

uh, website has to change it to make it seem way more dramatic.

I mean, it's like, it's dramatic enough.

He really was on that boat and had to jump in the water, you know, like he was a fucking

teenage boy.

So it's like, but even if he's, I mean, even if they wanted to say, yeah, and he helped

one of his fellow sailors out, of course, there's no one ever to corroborate that.

No dude, no name of, you know, it's just, yeah, she saved a random guy and fine, whatever.

I'll even give him the benefit of the doubt, but still the way it was written in that website

really mischaracterized it and there were no fucking sharks.

Fuck you.

All right.

There might have been little sharks, fish.

There were maybe some fish, uh, either way, Ed and Lorraine got married while he was still

in the Navy.

Uh, according to Lorraine, their daughter Judy was six months old before Ed came back

from the war.

And I do know from this other story I heard at the end of that documentary, um, that yeah,

he was, he was stationed in Japan post-war, um, when his daughter Judy was born.

So times were tough for the young couple in post-war America, uh, Ed enrolled in Perry

art school, uh, which was affiliated with, um, Yale actually.

So it was an art school extension of Yale, I guess he was using some kind of GI benefits.

It was very fancy, fancy art school.

So Lorraine tells of their early plans to become landscaped artists, but they found

an interesting angle quote, we needed a subject to paint a good subject, something people

could relate to.

Well, haunted houses proved to be that subject.

Ed would find a haunted house written up in the newspapers or get a lead on one from

the locals in town.

Then we'd drive up to the side in our old Chevy.

Ed would do up a complete sketch of the house and grounds.

All the while, of course, the owner of the place would be peeking out the window, wondering

what the heck was going on.

We were just kids then.

So one of us would knock on the door, show them the sketch of the house, then offer it

in exchange for information about the haunting.

If the story was engrossing enough, we'd paint up the house for a collection, then sell it

later at an art show.

Unquote.

Okay, that wasn't even from the documentary, because that's not what they said.

This is sort of their start is described in the most flattering terms possible.

They're posterior years for young families.

So like other descriptions kind of leave the impression that Ed had a hard time holding

down a traditional job and he had done this art thing.

So he kind of doubled down in his hobby slash obsession with the paranormal.

So this weird couple would show up on the sidewalk in front of a house and then be drawing

somebody's house.

And when they came out going, what the fuck are you doing?

We're drawing your haunted house.

Can you tell us about the haunting?

And they were like, Oh, thank God, we thought you were going to rob us.

The Nesper website reports the couple set up pop up stands in tourist areas all over

New England to sell Ed's paintings.

Tony Spira, the guy Mary Doe, the Warren's daughter Judy keeps some of the art in the

barn still hosting the sign Ed Warren's barn door studio and art school.

And they're fine.

Some are gothic and atmospheric.

Others are just like middle of the road American landscapes and houses.

One is a cute picture of a witch flying her room through the moonlight with cartoony bats

flying around.

So I'm going to, I'm going to show you real quick.

You can just react to less.

What do you think of what you're seeing?

You know, Ed's okay.

I mean, it's, it's a nice little drawing of a house.

Yeah, they're fine.

The kind of art you would just want to see on somebody's wall, but not think a lot about

doomed to fail.

Oh, that's just some pop up.

Okay.

I mean, you just take a look at a few of the paintings and if you have any reaction, it's

just, okay.

It's a picture of a house.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, yeah.

Oh, this one looks like a haunted house.

Yeah.

There are a few that have the more scary little elements, little gothy.

It's literally, it's like, if you were going to have a mind's eye picture of a haunted

house, this is what it would look like.

It's so generic.

Okay.

Yeah.

That was the, uh, the Ed Warren art that got everything started.

Okay.

Well, I mean, he's not a bad artist.

All right.

He's fine.

It's certainly not going to be making himself rich with those paintings.

No, I mean, he's nothing, you know, unusual or spectacular either.

Right.

It was really just this weird obsession he had that, that made them stand out.

Uh, Lorraine reports that she was skeptical at first because she grew up with zero paranormal

experiences except her mutant powers, but didn't see ghosts or anything like that.

She later said, quote, I was a little wary of the people with whom we spoke.

I thought they were kind of suffering from overactive imaginations or we're just making

things up to get attention.

In fact, some of the people told us stuff that sounded completely outlandish back then.

Unquote.

Okey-dokey.

Uh, it's interesting that Lorraine describes her transition from skepticism to belief is

like a gradual process because you'd think that like if this shit's real, like there'd

be some dramatic, like anything, like you'd see in any of these movies or the stuff they

talk about, like stuff flying across the room or yeah, but I mean, but she just said there

over time I got into it, you know, although I have to say is someone who has witnessed

some weird shit and stills like, I would be more like willfully disbelieving as opposed

to someone who's like, would be considered a skeptic, but yeah.

I not an open-minded skeptic.

I've actually seen some really weird shit and I'm like, no, there has to be an explanation

for it even if I don't know what that explanation is.

So I can see that being like you witness a bunch of little shit and it kind of wears

you down over time or had wore her down over and wore her down over time.

He just brow beat her until she was like fine.

So they spent like five or so years just wandering around the country, drawing people's houses

and collecting all these spooky stories.

And it was during this time Lorraine developed her superpowers that led her see beyond the

veil of time.

Okie dokie.

The demonologist, the book claims that over the course of years, Ed's influence quote

cause Lorraine's clairvoyance to develop significantly.

Later in the 1970s, Lorraine was tested at UCLA where her clairvoyance was judged as

being far above average.

That's hilarious because you know what?

Now they've even attributed her bullshit superpower to Ed.

It's really all him.

It's just because he fine tuned her gift because she had the raw power, he had the knowledge.

Even her pretend superpower is really just because of a man.

Naturally.

I love this story already.

From the 1940s through the 1960s, the Warren's transition from hobo artists slowly towards

something resembling a little more what you'd saw in the Conjuring movies.

They founded the New England Society of Paranormal Research, NESPR, who we quote from quite a

bit on their modern website, and I say modern, it looks like 20 years old.

The couple collected strange stories and artifacts and build themselves out as experts on ghosts

and demons.

As interest in the occult grew in the 1960s, so did the opportunities to monetize.

I'm sure they did.

Basically, they collected all these stories and they were like, okay, now how can we bullshit

these people?

In the 40s and 50s, people didn't have much time for this nonsense, but the 60s was the

beginning of interest in this sort of thing and suddenly they were just a little bit ahead

of their time, but eventually culture caught up with them.

Defenders of Ed and Lorraine will be quick to point out that they never charge anyone

for investigation.

They only charge for hard expenses like gasoline, hotel, and food and stuff like that.

Going all the way back to the early years-

But if you're a hobo with nowhere to go-

Yeah, and remember at the beginning, they started this by bribing people with art just

to get in and get the stories because, again, this is about Ed being obsessed.

Over time, they built up this reputation as experts on the occult and spirits and demonology.

People started to know, oh yeah, those are those guys who know all about the ghost stories,

so reporters would call them.

Eventually they managed to, I think it started in the 1970, I think, is when they started

getting gigs lecturing at colleges.

If they eventually become expert witnesses for the police, I'm just going to start throwing

things.

We're going to talk about some of that.

Oh, good.

But not yet.

Now I do need some more weed, fucking assholes.

This is also ... So they were giving paid lectures at colleges and tours of their occult

history museum, which is featured.

If you saw the movie The Conjuring, then you know that was that creepy side room where

they lock away all of the stuff, including the creepy doll that we're going to be talking

about.

The creepy doll.

Yeah, we'll get into that.

Oh, we're-

We'll get into that.

In a few minutes, we're getting into that.

So except in the movies, it's this place they lock away dangerous artifacts and they don't

want anybody to go in.

In real life, they charged money and let anybody the fuck in that he wanted to get in.

In fact, it's still possible to go there now.

It used to reside in the basement, but has since been moved into a building that resembles

a large shed in the backyard.

Because of zoning laws and legal troubles, they can no longer just give paid tours to

anybody, but they'll do ... There's these groups.

You can go in through groups.

It's technically private, but if you want to, you can still arrange to get in.

And then you can just go meet Annabelle for yourself.

So right now, it's mainly just film crews that make scary videos to keep the legend

alive and stuff like that.

And if you want to go in, they will douse your hands with holy water first.

It is a rule.

So American pop culture has been very good to the Warrens, because from the 1960s through

the 80s, interest and belief in the dark and supernatural forces coincided with the

books, movies, and television.

So the 60s gave us Rosemary's Baby, and then the late 60s is when the novel version of

The Exorcist hit the best sellers list.

And then, of course, years later in the 1970s, the movie came.

And so on and so forth forever.

And literally, so it's this weird thing, it fed into the belief, just like belief in aliens

coincided with a lot of these goofy sci-fi movies from the 50s.

So there's this weird feedback loop of culture and belief.

Oh, people.

You know, technology evolves, but people do not.

People, we are dumb and easily fooled.

And then once we're fooled, we refuse to believe that we've been fooled.

See, here's the hilarity.

It's like a lot of Christians don't believe in evolution.

It's like, well, I'm starting to not believe in evolution either, because I don't think

we've evolved.

I think we're still just monkeys.

Seriously.

So everything we just talked about, this has been setting the table.

It's time for the main course.

So let's talk about Ed and Lorraine's most celebrated and terrifying cases, many of which

have been made into books, TV specials, and now a multi-billion dollar film franchise.

Now, if Ed were still around, he would warn us that even thinking about these things too

much is inviting dark forces into our lives and endangering our very souls.

But for our podcast audience...

He doesn't want you to think about it too much, except for when you're listening to

his podcast, his radio show.

The fact that he would never shut the fuck up about any of this stuff ever, but don't

think about it too much.

So we're risking not only our souls, but our podcast audiences as well.

So go to hell people, literally, with us, because we're going to talk about it.

I say, fuck Ed Warren.

Jump in the hand basket, y'all, we're going for a ride.

Let's talk shit about everyone's favorite creepy doll, Annabelle.

You mean Raggedy Ann?

Yeah.

So that's what we're about to get into.

Dun, dun, dun.

So I don't need to tell anybody who Annabelle is at this point.

She's the most famous of the creepy dolls out there.

She's more creepy than Robert the doll down in Florida.

I want to go visit Robert the doll, just because why the fuck not?

Unless at least Florida is better to go than...

It's Florida.

You know, you don't want to go to Massachusetts.

I mean...

Connecticut.

I mean, it sounds fine, I guess, but I mean, Florida has beaches and...

However...

So let's see.

Yeah.

It's one of those weird things.

Robert the doll looks sort of genuinely creepy.

He looks sort of like Jared Kushner.

I was about to say, isn't Robert the doll in the keys?

So it's not even just Florida.

It's a really fucking awesome part of Florida.

So however, we're not talking about Robert the doll.

We're talking about Annabelle.

And if you were to Google that name, the first image it'll pop up in your feed is like this

Victorian doll with a frankly upsetting porcelain smiles and eyes that are just a bit too wide.

However...

And if you saw The Conjuring, she was an important B-plot of that movie.

They introduced the entire movie with Annabelle, and then she pops up in the middle as this

threat, just so they can tease the three fucking movies they've made since then.

So yeah, we've had three Annabelle movies.

She's racked up this huge body count in the cinematic universe at this point.

And in fact, it's like, I guess, through the second movie, even tied to the Manson murders.

I didn't see the Annabelle movies, but...

Yeah, I haven't either.

I literally saw some of the names of the characters, and they're all fucking Manson

murders like Tex Watson and...

Oh wow.

Okay.

Interesting.

So I guess I'll have to see at that point.

I've heard that Annabelle 2 is actually good, and that Annabelle 3 is at least entertaining.

Like the Chucky movies?

I heard the first Annabelle sucked, and the second one was really good.

Kind of like the original Ouija sucked, but Ouija 2 was actually a really good horror

movie.

It's like the Chucky movies.

It's like the first one was scary, and then after that they got more comical.

But someone could say...

They went from scary to more entertaining.

And in the movie versions, all the Warrens can do is just lock the doll away, because

if you destroyed, it would only release the demon and be even worse.

So just keeping Annabelle all locked away is the safest and best thing you can do.

So...

Convenient plot point.

You have already spoiled what the real Annabelle looks like.

She is, in fact, a Raggedy Ann doll.

Yeah, see, and in my head, she's locked in a cabinet, not being able to commit crimes,

but somewhere out there, Andy is trying to take your soul.

Yes, Andy-belle.

So yeah, this is a doll literally made of pillow stuffing and cloth with yarn for hair.

And she has like a little yarn smile.

A little placid yarn smile, and whether you believe in her or not, you can understand

why they redesigned her for the movies, because she is not frightening to look at, even remotely.

No, actually, it's very funny, because I was talking to my son about the Annabelle, and

he actually has like, dolls are creepy, which is funny, because I collect dolls.

And so, but yeah, he has this inherent dolls are creepy.

So you got mom's old creepy dolls.

I do.

In fact, Aaron won't even let me put her in the attic.

She has to be displayed at all times.

She changes hats with the season.

Yeah, and now she's finally appropriate for Halloween.

Well, she started out as a prop in my haunted tea party.

In Bray haunted house.

Now she's convinced you to keep her out.

And she has she's convinced what they do.

And you know what, mom had never named her and now I have so so Millie sits in my living

room.

Millie the doll.

So we'll let you know if Millie starts killing animals and people or, or one Millie has never

harmed anything or anyone.

She just sits there and she looks pretty.

I like her.

All right.

So yeah, they made.

Yeah, they made they made movie Annabelle scary.

Even people who like my son who thought that, like doll into creepy dolls.

Yeah, dolls are creepy inherently looked at the raggedy and it was just like, what the

fuck?

I'd be like taking one of our old Cabbage Patch kids and telling us that was haunted.

Trevor is coming for us.

All right.

So the year was 1968 Bambi.

And according to the demonologist, once again, this book I've been quoting an Episcopal

priest called the Warren's to check in in a situation where two young women had contacted

a spirit that had physically attacked someone and Lorraine came with a tape recorder to

document the interview, which is transcribed in the book.

So the here's the thing, the names are different.

The book, the demonologist gives the names that I'm going to use here, but then every

other interview and thing you'll find uses other names.

So I say Deidre, apparently the real name is Donna.

Okay.

But either way, so, so nobody really knows.

Well, I think that it's just like this for whatever reason, when it came to Annabelle,

um, they changed the names and we'll talk about that in a second.

So Annabelle was given to a nurse named Deidre, the name and the demonologist as a birthday

gift.

She's like 28 years old.

Who the fuck is a raggedy and all to a 28 year old woman?

Well, she's like moved into an apartment.

It was like a little housewarming gift to her daughter.

I'm going to give my daughter this doll.

And apparently her daughter liked to sleep with big pillowy dolls.

It's kind of like you can sleep with a side pillow.

That's what she would use Annabelle for.

Um, and this is before she was Annabelle's just raggedy and dolphin apparently supposedly

from a secondhand store.

So this is like a used old raggedy and doll according to the story.

Um, like from the thrift store, a thrift store raggedy and doll smells like an ashtray and

armpits.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Great present mom.

Thanks.

Well, except this is what the story says.

And then over the next year, they would just notice little weird things going on.

So at first they would just see the doll shifted positions from when they left and their doll

was alone all day.

The legs would be crossed or uncrossed or the arms would be different or the doll would

whatever.

Just some little things.

And then suddenly the doll would be in a different side of the room or in another room entirely.

And it just got more, it escalated the doll moving around while they were gone, but just

but always perfectly still.

And then like odd poses, they said at one point they saw the doll kneeling in a doorway.

You can't even get raggedy and to kneel.

So like the moment she, they picked her up, like they could never get her to do it again.

She was like weirdly kneeling in position.

Then it started leaving notes and they actually did that in the conjuring too.

They showed that she writing crayon little, those will just be pencil notes on scraps

of parchment paper.

And they're like, we don't even have parchment paper.

And the notes would say things like help us.

Okay.

How did the dog get the parchment paper?

How did raggedy and with no fingers pick up her hands like a little pillow, at least Annabelle,

they showed it where she could sort of almost hold a crayon, but writing and couldn't even

do that.

But so they see these little notes.

And so Dietrich and her roommate, Laura ruled out someone punking them.

So they were like, they thought maybe someone was sneaking in and fucking with them.

So they did things like taping the doors and doing stuff, the rugs to kind of catch anybody

coming in and out of their place.

Nope.

No one's coming in and out Annabelle, which once again is just so far, still just raggedy

and is just doing this.

So this was about six weeks into this, the more intense shit going on related to the

doll.

Okay.

All right.

So this is where six weeks into the doll, moving around and writing notes and weird

shit.

So then they decided to call it contact a psychic medium.

And this person comes in and they hold a seance to try to commune with whatever ghost is messing

with this doll.

And they learned that a little girl had died on the property, a seven year old girl named

Annabelle Higgins.

So she's from the time before the apartments were even built.

So she's this confused little ghost, apparently wandering around.

And so she, the doll and these younger women were the first people she got attached to.

She said she was the one moving things around.

And so speaking through the medium, Annabelle Higgins asked for permission to stay with

the girls, well, young women and move into the doll.

And so Deidre and Laura said yes, and gave permission, let them go into the doll.

Okay.

And this is why you can never trust a psychic medium because you know what could go wrong

from here?

Well, we're about to find out Deidre's fiance, Cal claimed the doll gave him recurring nightmares.

He told one harrowing story about how he had like a third person nightmare.

So he's literally looking at his own body, laying there on the couch while he's taking

a nap and he's just standing there like an astral form or whatever looking at it.

And then he sees Annabelle crawling up his paralyzed body and then her little hands going

on his neck.

And he's like, he's seeing himself thrash as Annabelle's strangling him.

And then he wakes up in a cold sweat.

How does a pillow strangle you once again?

I mean, if she would have smothered his hands and mouth, I could at least she doesn't have

any fucking fingers.

She doesn't have enough bone structure.

So this doesn't matter.

It was a dream anyway.

So this is super strong dream Annabelle.

Okay.

Yeah.

Well it's also like, okay, so it's so strangling someone's like in the movies, not in like

real life because strangling someone in real life is actually hard.

Well even he's admitting this is just a nightmare and he wakes up, but it's still, he blames

the doll.

The doll's giving him these scary dreams.

Another time he heard noises late at night and he heard a strange, like strange noises

in the other room.

And then he just finds the raggedy Ann doll just in the corner.

So he went to take a look at the doll and then suddenly felt something behind him.

And when he turned around and didn't see anything, he suddenly screamed and bloody claw marks

appeared in his chest soaking through his shirt, four down, three across.

But magically the cuts healed quickly and left no scars.

Oh, okay.

Well there you go.

Magic.

So everything's fine.

Enough story.

Yeah.

Nightmares and quick healing cuts.

Okay.

His t-shirt was ruined.

You need to throw it out.

Okay.

So nightmares and basically more nightmares.

Cool.

Ed determined that Annabelle Higgins was an invention that the entity now inside the doll

was never human to begin with.

It was instead a demonic spirit.

So Ed called in a priest who performed an exorcism blessing on each room in the apartment

to banish the negative mojo and the Warrens put the doll in the car.

So on the way home, their car started to stall on all the curves and they almost crashed.

So Ed sprinkled Annabelle with holy water.

So she'd knocked that shit off until they got home from the demonologist again, quote

for the next few days, Ed sat the doll in a chair next to his desk.

The doll levitated a number of times in the beginning, then seemed to fall inert.

During the ensuing weeks, however, it began showing up in various rooms of the house.

When the Warrens were away and had the doll locked up in the outer office building, they

would often return to find it sitting comfortably upstairs in Ed's easy chair when they opened

the main front door.

It also turned out that Annabelle came with a friend, a black cat that would occasionally

materialize beside the doll.

The cat would stalk once around the floor, taking particular notice of books and other

objects in Ed's office, then return to the doll's side and dematerialize from the head

down, unquote.

So Raggedy Ann was friends with the just cat?

Yeah.

Okay.

All right.

I mean, it doesn't sound like any more bullshit than the other bullshit, so let's just keep

going.

We got dematerializing cats.

I mean, if the bullshit is getting deep in here, should I get a shovel?

It seems that Annabelle hates priests.

Growling sounds were heard when one visited the Warrens' weird basement.

Another disrespected the doll and tossed it onto a chair.

On the way home, the padre's brakes failed and he was almost killed in an accident.

Which also, by the way, seems to be like if you take the Warrens' version of Annabelle,

that seems to be her primary way of killing people is car accidents.

Wow.

I mean, that demon knows a lot about cars.

If that wasn't dramatic enough, a year later, they were having a party and a priest went

to chat with Lorraine in a side room where Annabelle was hanging out, because this is

back before they locked her away.

How many priest parties do they have?

They are super Catholics.

They are constantly hanging out with priests.

I mean, all they do is like hang out with priests and get and almost drive off cliffs

or whatever.

So Annabelle wasn't locked away at this point.

She's just hanging around the house.

She's just chilling.

So Lorraine goes to have a conversation with this priest in the side room.

And suddenly a wall decoration, which was described as a seven inch boar tusk necklace.

It just explodes.

And shards of this necklace just fly all over the priest and Lorraine.

A boar tusk necklace.

I mean, boar tusks are pretty long.

So they have this necklace.

Like at a beach?

Did they make beads?

That's what it said.

Was it just a large tusk?

It was just a, I don't know, it was just a necklace and the necklace exploded.

And then a guest with a camera ran in and snapped a picture and that supposedly shows

two beams of light that are coming straight from above Raggedy Ann's head pointed at the

priest in this picture that the Warrens haven't shown anybody and is not available to see.

But the author, the author tells us all about it.

There was evidence, but it's mysteriously disappeared.

I'll tell you this.

There's a lot of times I'll describe these pictures or recordings like these interviews

and stuff.

Even though they're supposedly transcriptions or descriptions of something people are looking

at, they won't just show you or let us hear it.

All the best evidence is just locked away.

It's too good.

It's just too good to show us.

Another time Lorraine had to ease you into this.

Another time Lorraine had to move Annabelle because it was creeping out a contractor who

was doing some work in the house.

He was like, lady, can you get this creepy doll?

It's just staring at me.

So after hitting the sightless glassy eyes, well, it's not, it's her felt well, no Raggedy

Ann had buttons for her button eyes.

So Lorraine hits her, her, the doll and her hands with holy water.

She picks it up and that's when the Warrens tabby cat Marcy went bananas and started wailing

and demanding to be led outside.

The moment Lorraine picked Annabelle up when she didn't want to be handled.

The Warren son-in-law Tony Spirit says Ed built the special case for Annabelle in the

late 1970s, apparently just completely sick of the dolls bullshit.

It was, it was stained with holy water and holy oil, like the, in the wood stain itself.

Just mixed it in there into the varnish.

I mean, that's a way to do it.

Yeah.

And had a prayer inscribed by a priest inside the case.

Ed hand the letter to sign that reads warning, positively do not open.

Just outside of Annabelle's case to this very day.

Yeah.

I loved how it was like a Curio case in the movie, but it's really a coffee table, tiny

little box built themselves, little glass coffee table.

Tony also said that one, uh, the one time a college student tapped on Annabelle's glass

and talk shit about the doll and then died in a motorcycle accident on the way home because

once again, you fuck with Annabelle, she will fuck with your ride.

Okay.

And again, no names, no details, no accident reports or anything.

And even then people get in fucking car accidents.

Like the fact that people who took a tour and then somebody gets a girl and a car accident

dies.

Yeah.

It's not a, that wouldn't, that wouldn't be rock solid even if they did give us a name,

but they won't even do that because supposedly the guy's girlfriend survived and she a hundred

percent believes it's Annabelle or at least so they say, she can't open that door into

her own mind because then it can psychically hurt you.

So I, how does that even, whatever.

So all that, that's the official version of Annabelle.

That's the, that's the one they want us to believe in.

Honestly though, it's her, it's her accomplice, Andy.

He's getting under there with his, with his little, his little hands, you he's, he's handy

with a wrench.

No one's looking for Andy.

No one's looking for Annabelle's just like, I'm right here.

Let's put on our skeptic hats for just a minute here.

Here's a problem with most of the Warren's case files, whether you believe in any of

it or not, there's like real people involved.

Like you said, you watched a whole documentary that had people giving interviews and talking

about it, or at least pictures of them.

You know, did you notice how, when they talked about Annabelle at the end, well, you didn't

until you saw the internet, but they do, they don't, weirdly enough, none of the, none of

that.

The Amityville horror was the one they really wanted to focus on.

Well, that's the most famous of all the things even, and we're going to get into where that

goes coming up in part two, but, um, but the, every other story we'll cover has like verifiable

human beings attached to it, except for the Warren's version of events.

There is literally no one to corroborate anything about where Annabelle came from in the first

place, all compelling evidence, including tape recorded interviews and photographs are

all mentioned in these texts and on the websites and shit have never been made available to

anyone.

So, well, that's the thing.

If it's, it was like bought at a thrift store.

This is the late 1960s or a 28 year old girl there for all those years, certainly someone

involved in this crazy story could have come forward and said, yeah, I was the original

owner of Annabelle, or they could have just given the names and say like, every other

person has a name.

These people have had two different versions of their name and just vague, vague shit.

And so, but it gets worse.

So let's keep going here.

The specifics of the story have also changed and shifted around like different versions

of who threw Annabelle and then got into a car accident are different depending on when

you hear the story, blah, blah, blah.

And we'll give them credit, say human memories, flawed, but let's just look elsewhere.

One other issue I have is while Ed, Lorraine and Tony Spira speak of Annabelle as if she's

the most dangerous thing they've ever encountered, they've spent years showing the doll off to

anyone who would pay them to take a museum tour.

Now that the museum is closed to the public, Tony brings the doll out for paranormal festivals

and even took the doll to Las Vegas a few years ago.

Nice.

Did it gamble?

I don't know.

Was it a hot winter?

So while I was writing the script for this very episode, I just stumbled onto a charity

live stream happening for the YouTube channel overnight.

So these are like guys who they do overnights and big famous haunted locations.

Okay.

And they were doing a multi-day live stream where they were in the Warren's occult museum.

One guy's literally in a metal chair sitting right next to Annabelle.

And I was writing the script and I just saw it and I kept it live for a while while I

was writing this, just watching these, these, these chuckleheads just goofing around there

at this point, they've been doing this for days or stand up all night.

They're punch drunk.

One guy at one point was air humping right in front of Annabelle's case.

So if Annabelle isn't and everyone seems okay.

But even though these guys, I think these guys are goofballs, they were, um, raising

money for a worthy charity, trying to raise, uh, $666,000 towards feeding people, which,

and they were halfway there.

So you know what?

Fine.

I, I'll, I'll let it go.

It's fine.

Plus if Annabelle and Annabelle is apparently in support too, cause she's not killing any

of these people.

Yeah, no, apparently, you know what, maybe she liked being tri-humped.

Okay.

That's probably the most action Annabelle's gotten in a while.

Um, so if Annabelle isn't actually a demonic doll, where did they come up with the idea?

One theory lets us blame Rod Serling.

So depending on the specific source, Annabelle pops up in the late sixties or the year 1970.

And I'm going to say actually probably 1970 for reasons I'm about to tell you.

According to the website history versus Hollywood quote, given the style of the real doll, it

was most likely purchased new since that particular raggedy Ann doll with the calico dress does

not predate the 1970s unquote.

So even though they say that it's this old thrift store doll, the dress sewed right onto

her says someone actually Lorraine went to the fucking store and bought a raggedy Ann

doll brand new because that style didn't exist before 1970.

So again, this don't even match the year on their own official version of 1968.

So either way, it was November 1st on 1963 when a memorably creepy episode of the Twilight

Zone aired.

The talking Tina doll.

This episode is titled living doll.

It tells the story of a jerk stepfather played by Telly Savalas who becomes angry when his

wife buys a doll named talky Tina for her daughter.

And so it's like, they don't really make it clear.

They show that like he's the stepfather he'd married this single mother and you don't know.

He may just be shooting blanks or maybe he's having like true sexual dysfunction, but he's

very insecure about the fact he can't have children with his wife and all he stuck with

is his stepdaughter.

So he's being a real asshole to both of them in this episode.

So the doll begins giving a stepdad creepy and threatening messages as the story goes

on.

Uh, he becomes more increasingly unhinged throughout this episode.

So first he tries to throw the doll away and then he tries to destroy it and the dolls

like like has powers at this point where he tries to melt its face off with a blowtorch

and can't, he tries to squeeze its head with a vice and I don't like you very much indeed.

So literally at the end when he literally is like he was about, he drove, his wife was

about to move out cause he's gone completely crazy and you don't know all the way up to

this point in the episode, you're not sure if the doll is really doing it or that he's

just crazy cause it's always just him alone having these experiences with the doll.

So in the end he gives the doll back to the little girl, but then he goes to bed and he

wakes up in the middle of night, here's a weird noise and he runs out and then trips

over the doll at the top of the stairs, rolls down the stairs, breaks his neck and literally

dies.

The lights fades from his eyes where he's staring into talky Tina's eyes and then mom

finds a, you know, husband and the doll at the bottom of the stairs.

She picks up the doll who says, my name is talky Tina and you'd better be nice to me.

And so it was like a very cool, you know, creepy episode of the Twilight Zone.

Now granted, have you ever actually heard the original like talking doll, the Edison

talking doll?

Well, yeah, there's the Edison talking doll that at this point Chaddy Cathy was the popular

one.

Yeah, Chaddy Cathy.

That was from the sixties, but however, like the original one, the Edison one, you could

understand how people would have thought that is the creepiest fucking thing I've ever heard.

I mean, that's probably where the entire like haunted doll came from.

Just because that thing was fucking haunted doll stories going back, but this is this

sort of idea, but here's the kicker Bambi.

You know, the mom there holding the doll at the end of the episode, her name was Annabelle.

Well there you go.

So yeah, it's like, they're not even going to, they're not even trying, not even trying

too hard.

Why try?

So like a few years later, they're like, let's just buy a raggedy in doll.

I mean, allegedly Jamie's in Jamie's opinion, this is all complete bullshit based on what

I've just said, but you're never going to guess what there was just too much Ed and

Lorraine to cram into a single episode, no matter how much I wanted to.

So now that we've ruined Annabelle, we're going to ruin The Conjuring, all of its sequels,

the Amityville horror, Haunting in Connecticut, and even some more movies and books and shit.

And maybe take a hard look at Ed and Lorraine's perfect marriage.

All that and bad jokes in part two.

Oh, okay.

Coming up.

Thank you.

If you're listening and sticking with us, we appreciate it.

We've been gone for a while, but we're going to try to at least be back semi-regularly.

We're not holding ourselves to quite as tight a schedule anymore.

Fingers crossed.

I got my charity this week.

I was laughing at the guys having the sleepover with Annabelle, but I do think it's awesome

that they're raising money for Feeding America.

So in solidarity with these goofballs, these ghost bros, I'm going to recommend the same.

Feeding America is the largest hunger relief organization in the United States.

They're a nationwide network of food banks, food pantries, and community-based organizations

and the largest one in the country.

So they work to end hunger and provide food to millions of people every year.

You can learn more and support their work at feedingamerica.org.

And I have picked what I'd consider to be the scariest thing happening here in the United

States.

And that's police wanting to train in urban warfare.

So my charity for now until we stop it is...

Stop Cop City.

StopCopCity.org is the organization, but it's the Atlanta police...

Well, if you look up, there's the Atlanta Solidarity Network.

There's a number of...

If you literally just look up the Stop Cop City movement, you will see a number of charities

and bail funds and other things to support the protest movement that is trying to prevent

a huge area of forest from being raised.

So a giant urban training center, so militarized police from all over the country and even

the world will come here just to make the police even worse than they are now.

So that sucks.

Yeah.

I'm all about it.

Police are scary and we should not train them to terrorize us.

So stop that.

Less haunted houses if cops were shooting less people.

Yeah.

For reals.

And yeah, once again, remembering Ed Warren's dad, look up 40% of all cops.

We'll talk to you later.

See you in part two.

All right.

Bye.

See ya.