ANNABELLE: CREEPY CONDUIT OR HAUNTED?

Last night I saw the movie Annabelle, the prequel/spin-off to last year's hugely successful supernatural horror film The Conjuring.
I had seen the movie previews and was intrigued with the story after seeing the doll introduced in The Conjuring movie. I had mentioned this unique Annabelle doll in a previous blog about haunted and possessed dolls that was one of my most popular articles with readers.

http://anitajointenzohauntedauthor.blogspot.com/2014/03/haunted-dolls-revisited.html 

For those of you that have not heard of Annabelle,she is a demonic porcelain doll, that played a terrifying supporting role in the 2013 film from director James Wan (now Annabelle's producer), and like the original this movie is another true story based on the case studies of paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren. Yes, the movie is based on a true story but the Annabelle doll in the movie is not the original Annabelle.  In the movie, Director James Wan has redesigned the evil possessed doll Annabelle giving her a much more disturbing appearance for the big screen.

                         

 Movie Annabelle

I have to say the movie was a pleasant surprise as it was very well done and kept up a level of terror and horrific surprises throughout that in one scene in the movie a lady in our audience screamed her head off!  But I found the plot line unbelievable that when the main character in the movie, Mia, receives this (movie created) sinister looking doll from her husband as a gift she is so excited and happy in receiving this (hideous?) thing.  Apparently it's some special long, sought after collectors doll-this is mentioned twice in the movie(yeah, just like "Chucky" was a special collectors doll) Mia has dreamed of owning for a long time.
"SAY WHAT?" That was the reaction from our nervous (screamer) audience lady who voiced her opinion out loud-when Mia opened the box and saw the doll inside. We all laughed at her outburst- it was pretty funny! 
Pretty funny also and hard to believe to any of us watching this movie scene that was a beautiful gift because if my husband gave me something looking like the "Spawn of Satan", I'd throw him out the door along with the creepy doll and file for divorce! 

                        

As a long time doll collector, as Mia obviously was, I would have been excited and overcome with joy if my husband had given me a doll like this for a gift. 

Gorgeous and rare collector's dream doll French Doll by Casimir Bru

FYI: I wonder? Is the director setting up the audience for a prequel to this prequel to find out the true origins and maker of this Annabelle doll? Especially if this movie becomes a huge hit -where can he now go with this story line? And is there such a thing as a prequel + prequel= Freakquel?

If that were the case, the director would be leading everyone down a truly fictional account path and can no longer say his future movie it's based on a true story.  The original Annabelle is a Raggedy Ann doll (her makers The Knickerbocker Toy Company no longer exists)  But if you saw The Conjuring movie, the last scene leaves you wondering?

Getting back to the doll Annabelle, the movie explains that although Annabelle seems to be in the thick and cause of some horrific activity, you learn that she is not really possessed or haunted by a ghost but actually a conduit to demonic attachment. Without her there is no forwarding the demon's agenda to do his evil deeds.

To add to the chilling plot line, I read where director John R. Leonetti (cinematographer of The Conjuring) confirmed that at least two supernatural occurrences happened on the set of the movie. 

"The first [incident] was when we were prepping," says Leonetti. "We went into the apartment where we were shooting, and in the transient window above the living room window. It was a full moon, and there were three fingers drawn through the dust along the window, and our demon has three fingers and three talons. [The markings] were being backlit by the moon. I have a picture! It was sick."

Peter Safran,producer of Annabelle and The Conjuring, confirmed the haunted incidents and offered up the second incident Leonetti hinted at, that was "much worse."
"We shot in this amazing, old apartment building near Korea-town and we had some funky stuff go down," Safran said. "In particular, the first day that the demon was shooting in full makeup, we brought the demon up in the elevator. He walks out and walks around to the green room to where we’re holding the talent, and just as he walks under — a giant glass light fixture all of a sudden falls down on his head of the actor playing the handyman of the building,( the janitor‘s head). And in the script the demon kills the janitor in that hallway. It was totally freaky."
Spoiler Alert:  This scene was cut out from the movie.
                   
                               

Perhaps the goosebumps really start to set in knowing that the real-life Annabelle doll is a large Raggedy Anne doll still intact to this day, sitting behind a glass case in the Warren‘s Occult Museum in Monroe, Connecticut. It has since been exorcised and gets blessed by a priest twice a month. "SAY WHAT?!"

Real Annabelle 

BRITAIN'S USE OF MAGIC AGAINST HITLER

Among some of the most fascinating things I've read recently in several historical books and became subject matter for several of my subsequent blogs on Hitler and the Third Reich's occult practices used during WW II was that Winston Churchill was actually a Druid and Great Britain employed the practices of magic and the occult to counter-attack what Hitler and the Nazis were doing in those same fields.

    Winston Churchill

It is a relatively little know fact that one of Britain’s most celebrated, though far from uncontroversial, statesmen, Winston Churchill, was a Druid. Yes, you read that right! 
In the first decade of the twentieth century the still relatively obscure Churchill dabbled with a number of esoteric organizations most notably the Freemasons and his initiation into Druidic rites appears to have been an outgrowth of this. Although there are different accounts of exactly when and where Churchill became a Mason it seems that he was initiated into the Entered Apprentice degree in 1901 in Studholme Lodge (no. 1591) in London. Churchill subsequently advanced through the Fellow Craft degree and was raised to a Master Mason in March 1902 in Rosemary Lodge (no. 2851).Churchill remained a Mason until 1912.

Magical Battle of Britain

Alongside the aerial battle being fought overhead during the summer and autumn of 1940, there was another battle being fought simultaneously – a magical Battle of Britain.
(We’re talking here about ‘magic’ in the occult sense, rather than ‘magic’ as conjuring or illusion). 
War and Magic have long been regular companions. The legendary King Arthur won his victories with his faithful sorcerer Merlin at his side and his magical sword Excalibur in his hand. 

King Arthur and Excalibur

Merlin

In a historical perspective it seems now that World War II was destined to be fought on many levels. Above and beyond the tried and tested methods of firing some kind of projectile at the enemy, it saw the use of disinformation and the manipulation of psychology reach new heights as a means of waging war. The astrologer Louis de Wohl (1903–1961) was employed by the British Intelligence services, whose staff also included Ian Fleming,(the author and creator of James Bond) to feed disinformation about astrological predictions regarding Hitler directly to the German high command; it has been argued that this is what led to Rudolph Hess’s bizarre flight to Britain in May 1941. Hitler's miscalculations of the "mild" winter in Russia which led to German troops unprepared for one of the most brutal winters in Russian history was directly related to Hitler listening to his "weather and occult scientist" Hanns Horbiger's prediction.


                

The ‘black arts’ of spin, propaganda and disinformation might be one kind of magic, but British occultists were also involved in helping the war effort through even less traditional means. And with Winston Churchill 's blessings.

Psychic Self-Defense

One figure more than any other has come to be associated with the Magical Battle of Britain: magician and writer Dion Fortune. Born Violet Mary Firth in 1890 to a family of Christian Scientists in North Wales, she was subject to visionary experiences from childhood onward, believing herself to be a reincarnated Atlantean priestess and to have psychically channeled both Socrates and Merlin. 

Dion Fortune 1927

Psychic Self-Defense by Dion Fortune is considered the classic instruction manual for protecting yourself from paranormal attack by other humans. 

Dion Fortune was the name she adopted  when she joined the Golden Dawn (a group of magical thinkers) and made 3 Queensborough Terrace, Bayswater, the group’s London ‘HQ’ (the order also owned a property in Glastonbury) and directed her magical war effort from here. Over a period of three years (October 1939–October 1942), she sent a series of weekly (and later, after the tide of the war had turned, monthly) letters to her followers, describing in great detail an escalating series of magical meditations to be performed every Sunday, based on Golden Dawn protection and visualization techniques and centered around the building up of a vortex of powerful psychic imagery from the ‘national spirit’-which Fortune believed resided in Glastonbury, personified by an Excalibur-wielding King Arthur, although encompassing far more. Focusing on the supposed hollow space beneath Glastonbury Tor, the group also visualized Jesus, the Rosicrucian cross, Merlin, the Holy Grail and the Archangel Michael, all united with Arthur in their stand to protect the nation.

                                               Glastonbury Tor

Soon, Fortune was leading magical ritual attacks and ‘astral plane’ battles, with the group visualizing themselves armed with swords and flaming torches pointing towards Germany, entering the headquarters and bedrooms of leading Nazis and performing magical attacks on them in attempts either to ‘curse’ Britain’s enemies or to change their behavior towards good rather than evil. Fortune believed that there were similarly magical forces – much darker ones – at work just across the Channel in occupied Europe. She wasn't sure to what extent Hitler had “an accurate knowledge of technical occultism and how far in military matters, he avails himself of the services of the experts”, but she was in no doubt that the Führer was, in any case, “himself a natural occultist and highly developed medium” (written in one of her a letters dated October 1941).

According to Fortune she and her followers were sending out telepathic messages to heal a nation under fire and interfere with Nazi propaganda, the Germans were also broadcasting their evil ideology through magical means: “We are… dealing with definite occult forces being used telepathically on the group souls of nations, and finding channels of expression through the subconsciousness of susceptible people who lack spiritual principles.”

The Good Fight
The Battle of Britain was won, of course, by the immense courage, determination and skill of the British, Commonwealth and Allied pilots fighting in the summer skies of 1940; it was a victory hugely significant for the unfolding history of World War II and the 20th century.

                               Bombed out section of London

 After the beating sustained on the Russian front, it was inconceivable that the German army could be refreshed and rebuilt enough to mount a seaborne invasion, and the entry of the USA into the war in December 1941 had tipped the balance in the Allies’ favor, permanently.

                 

Allies capture Nazi troops

We know that Fortune’s campaign of meditations really did happen between 1939 and 1942, even if the Once and Future King did not arise from his slumbers under Glastonbury Tor and defeated the Nazi foe with Excalibur. Fortune died soon after the end of hostilities, with some followers believing the physical demands of the psychic efforts she expended in magical attacks on the Nazis drove her to an early grave. Having taught her methods to members of her group for around two decades, she succumbed to late-diagnosed leukemia not long after the war’s end – in 1946, just before her 56th birthday. She is buried in Glastonbury. Her magical order flourishes to this day as the Society of the Inner Light.