Beware: Connecticut’s Museum of the Occult May Kill You
In Connecticut, a real-life ghostbusters couple, the Warrens, built a museum below their house to display the haunted artifacts from their many cases. At night, things get weird.
Tired of the classical sculptures, impressionist paintings, and chipped ancient relics you stroll past at your local art museum? Perhaps you’d like to gawk at a haunted Raggedy Ann doll in a glass case that might try to kill you instead.
Underneath the Connecticut home of one of the country’s most prominent experts on supernatural hauntings, through a so-called haunted passageway, is a room dubbed the “Museum of the Occult.” The museum calls itself not just the only museum of its kind but, redundantly, also the oldest, boasting it has “the largest array of haunted artifacts and items that have been used in occult practices throughout the world.” The family-owned establishment is filled from floor to ceiling with creepy voodoo dolls, satanic altars, mummies, magic mirrors, shadow books, and a very prominently displayed rag doll under a cross with bold letters issuing a warning on the glass case: “Positively Do Not Open.”
This is the museum’s centerpiece. Named Annabelle, the doll is said to be haunted by the spirit of a young girl. Fans of the 2013 horror film The Conjuring may be familiar with the doll, which plays a central role. Though it was exorcised and is now caged, it apparently still moves about and growls at visitors.