The tabloids went wild with the story, interviewing several family members who had suffered fires and who had owned the painting. Within six months The Sun had started a cursed painting campaign telling its readers to pass the painting to someone else, hang the boy painting next to a girl painting, or send the print to the newspaper who would perform a mass bonfire burning—all of which would lift the dreaded curse. After a BBC investigation into the paintings, it was revealed that they were covered in a fire repellent varnish. Was this the reason for their unblemished record with fires or were their more sinister forces at work?

Some time after this the girls would come home to find hand-written notes written in a crude child’s writing. The message read: ‘Help Us’. Who was writing the notes? And where was the old-looking parchment the messages were written on coming from? But the girls couldn’t analyze for too long because within a few days more strange occurrences happened, namely blood started to appear on the doll, from nowhere. The girls called for a séance, where they were acquainted with a spirit girl called Annabelle Higgins—a seven year girl who had been found murdered on the plot of land the apartment the girls lived in was built on.

Annabelle ‘moved’ into the doll so she could have some female company and once they heard Annabelle’s story the girls agreed that that spirit could stay in the doll and in the apartment… A bad decision—for one of their close friends at least, Lou. Lou had told the girls over and over again to ditch the doll and the dislike was clearly a two-way street. One evening when Lou was in Angie’s bedroom he was attacked by an unseen force. The attack left him with seven claw marks on his chest. Enter, paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren.

After looking into the case, Ed and Lorraine Warren concluded that the doll was not possessed by a spirit girl but by a malevolent spirit who wanted to eventually posses a human host. According to the Warrens, the ‘demonic spirit’ had manipulated and preyed on the girls’ emotional weaknesses, currying favor with them and lying in wait, until eventually it would have tried to possess them. The Warrens removed Annabelle from the apartment and to this day it remains in the Warren Occult Museum in Moodus, Connecticut. Annabelle still moves around on the odd occasion and, it is said, even growls at visitors.

there was nothing I could believe

When I got out of bed

there was no one I could see

When I went out of my room

there was no family

When I turned around

there were ghosts around me

When I tried to run

they didn’t let me

Then I woke up 

and I realized it was a dream

Regards Advaith

Roll no : 1

~regards P.Srikar Reddy 7E

                        - Kushal 7E, 19