Right now, a supposedly haunted doll—which untold people believe is evil incarnate and causes injury and death to people who come in contact with it—is traveling through the United States. In fact, you can pay $50 to stand in front of the doll. Thousands of people already have. This fall, the writer Kyle MacNeill dug into the legend of the doll and found a story that's even weirder than the one ghost hunters believe. You can read it below. Happy Halloween! – Michael Sebastian, editor-in-chief Plus: |
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She's become a pop-culture icon, a star in the Conjuring film universe, helping to generate billions of dollars. But the doll that inspired the movies is now wreaking havoc on the very family of ghost hunters that discovered her. |
Annabelle is sitting bolt upright in the back of her tour van, gliding down Interstate 80 toward Rock Island, Illinois, a town perched on the Mississippi River. In a few hours, Annabelle will lead a meet and greet with fans from across the Midwest. The event follows headline shows in Maine, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Louisiana. Her strawberry-lace hair falls onto her floral dress; her saucer-plate eyes stare straight ahead. A smile is etched on her face. She is always smiling. Annabelle is not a pop star. In fact, she's not even human. Annabelle is a three-foot-high, tattered Raggedy Ann doll, obtained and quarantined by American paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren. In the 1970s, she enjoyed a modest amount of fame, which was eclipsed forty years later when she became a key character in theConjuring universe. Since 2013, the movies have spawned nine sequels, including Annabelle, Annabelle: Creation, and Annabelle Comes Home. They've earned more than $2.8 billion, making them the highest-grossing horror franchise of all time. The Conjuring: Last Rites, released in September of this year, has already taken in close to half a billion dollars on its own. |
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Tensions are heating up between Kathryn Bigelow and the Department of Defense. The director Point Break, The Hurt Locker, and Zero Dark Thirty has released a new thriller, A House of Dynamite. The film explores an utterly hypothetical scenario—in this case, a missile attack on United States soil—in hyperrealistic terms. But the movie's toughest critic thus far isn't on Rotten Tomatoes. It's the DOD. On October 10, A House of Dynamite released on Netflix, where it is currently the number-one film on the platform in the U.S. (according to Netflix's homepage). |
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We were new to town and still getting to know our neighbors a few years ago when my wife told me: "You've got to meet Diane's husband Allan. He's the first zombie in history to say, 'Braaaiiiiinnns....!'" That's how I was introduced to Allan Trautman, a lifelong actor and puppeteer who is best known as the cranium-munching fiend "Tarman" from the 1985 comedy-horror cult-classic Return of the Living Dead. Or at least, he would be known for it if more people realized there was a real guy inside that oily, oozing bundle of rags and bones. I knew the creature, of course, and it was astounding to me that this iconic monster performer lived nearby in the perpetually sunny suburb of Santa Clarita, California. |
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 What the hell happened in politics this week? Esquire's legendary blogger Charlie P. Pierce has answers |
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Releasing months-old videos from Florida saying they're from Chicago? Our government used to employ a better class of liar. Brilliant. By this standard, the administration could put out still photos of the Haymarket Riot and claim that it was really a No Kings march in Montana. Meanwhile, what's left of the White House responded with yet another chorus of "How Great We Art." |
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There aren't many American Cold War villains as stone evil as Sidney Gottlieb, the CIA chemist who oversaw the crimes and depredations of the Company's MKUltra program. The folks at the National Security Archive have released the transcripts of Gottlieb's testimony to the Church committee, and they are every bit as bad as the country has tried so hard not to recall. |
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Actually, there's some work to be done there. I give one Justice Todd Eddins of the state supreme court. Back at the end of September, Eddins and his colleagues decided to take a bite out of the Nine Wise Souls in D.C. |
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We were very nice to Jack Smith here in the shebeen on Monday. Then The Washington Pos dropped a saga, and everybody at the bar dropped their heads sadly and stared at a stop two feet beyond their folded hands. |
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At the time, jurisdictions all over the country already had plans in place to reassert white supremacy at the polls. They were just waiting for the carefully manufactured conservative majority on the Supreme Court to begin vivisecting the Voting Rights Act. |
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