Nestled in Monroe, Connecticut, you’ll find the Warren Occult Museum. It’s an intriguing attraction for horror movie fans and those obsessed with the paranormal. The Warrens Occult Museum is one of the oldest museums of its kind. The Warrens collected memorabilia throughout their investigations. They wanted to lock away these items that contained evil spirits to protect the public. This world-renowned museum has attracted hundreds of thousands of visitors from across the world. The museum is actually in the basement of their residence in Monroe, Conn., and not a separate building in town. Inch for inch, their museum houses the largest array of obscure and haunted artifacts. Items used in extremely dangerous occult activities and diabolical practices around the world. To touch one of these items would be the opposite of touching something holy, something blessed. Both have since passed away, Ed in 2006 and Lorraine in 2019, but their memories live on in the Warren Occult Museum.
The Shadow Doll
Unlike other dolls whose appearance is innocent and beautiful, the Shadow doll has a gloomy and unpleasant look, as the purpose of its existence, since it was created during a ritual for diabolical purposes. The Shadow Doll is a nightmarish object that makes even Chucky look like something you’d want to cuddle. The shadow doll is made up of human bones and the teeth and nails are from animals. The creators didn’t make her as a gift but to take her photographs and send them to the people they wanted to harm.
According to the victims, anyone who could see shadow doll’s picture, a curse would soon fall on them. At first, when people used to receive the photo, they would laugh it off thinking it was a joke, but once it was night, they wished to never have slept on. The doll would appear into the victim’s dreams. The nightmare would be so terrifying that the person’s heart would stop forever or other harm would come to them.
It is not known how Shadow doll came into their hands, but a seller of ancient things sold the doll to some collectors who were affected from the first day they walked through the door of their house with her.
That day, the couple had nightmares where the doll appeared and once they woke up, they were full of scratches. The second night the same thing happened again, but this time, there weren’t just scratches, but some marks like claws. After that, they decided to call the Warrens to take over the doll.
It is said that the magic in the doll is so powerful that if she is destroyed, the spirits that were summoned during her creation will follow after those who did it, bringing misfortune and fear.
A Real Human Skull used for Black Magic
There are multiple real human skulls, said to be 8 in all, that make up part of the Warren Museum collection. Used in various rituals and rites, each skull has its own story of which I could not find details of.
The Haunted Pearl Necklace of Death
The Pearls of Death are notoriously one of the most dangerous items in the Warrens’ museum. The Pearls of Death are a cursed necklace that is said to strangle those who wear them, with their former owner complaining of being choked while wearing them, they had to be torn off a woman’s neck to save her. The pearls currently rest in the Warrens’ shelves. I could not find much more information on them than that.
The Conjuring Mirror
Despite being called the Conjuring Mirror, the artifact actually has nothing to do with The Conjuring movies. Instead, the mirror gets its name from the fact that it was used to summon, or conjure, spirits. This form of wizardry is called ‘crystalmancy’ and there is a long history of mirrors being used as gateways for the dead to return to the world of the living. Mirrors are not the only thing that can be used for this type of work. Stones, crystals, and metals are all able to be used in crystalmancy. This is also deemed a “dangerous object”.
A Brick from Borley Rectory
The Warrens’ Occult Museum holds some of the utmost haunted and cursed objects in the world, many of which were commandeered by the Warrens from their travels to haunted locations from across the globe.
This location is considered the ‘most haunted’ houses in the UK. Built in 1862, it was the house of the rector for Borley, but it was damaged by fire in 1939 and then demolished in 1944. In 1929, the Daily Mirror printed a report by Harry Price, a paranormal researcher. Reported sightings mentioned the sound of footsteps, seeing a ghostly nun and a phantom coach driving by.
Cursed Photographs
The Warren Museum also claims to have several cursed photographs in their possession among the other accursed objects in the museum. There aren’t specific stories available behind these photos as they’re not featured items and makes fans wonder if digital versions of these photos can be cursed as well.
The Toy Monkey
This toy monkey actually appeared in The Conjuring Universe, with the toy getting its biggest appearance to date in the spin-off movie Annabelle Comes Home. It is said that the monkey is possessed by a demon and enjoys stalking its victims before eventually murdering them. It’s a cute, novel concept, but it evokes a scary figure with its facial expression upon closer inspection, making a case for it being the scariest in the bunch.
Ed Warren tells the reporter he shows the room in The Conjuring: “Everything you see in here is either haunted, cursed, or been used in some kind of ritualistic practice. Nothing is a toy. Not even the toy monkey. Don’t touch it!”
The Toy Monkey is a minor antagonist in The Conjuring franchise, first appearing as a supporting antagonist in the 2019 film Annabelle Comes Home. It is a musical toy monkey that holds an accordion possessed by a demon, ghost, or dark spirit.
The White Lady of Union Cemetery
This is just a representation of the actual white lady but still a spooky image that resembles a global belief of a weeping woman or woman in white. Union Cemetery is a cemetery located near Stepney Road in Easton, Connecticut. The site dates back to the 1700s. According to ghost hunters, it is one of the “most haunted” cemeteries in the entire United States. Ed and Lorraine Warren have written a book about the cemetery entitled Graveyard. There are believed to be many spirits in the graveyard—including soldiers and giggling children—but the most famous haunts at Union Cemetery are the “White Lady” and “Red Eyes.”
Like other White Lady ghost stories, Union Cemetery’s ghost is described as wearing a white “diaphanous white nightgown or a wedding dress and has her head and face concealed with a white bonnet”. The haunting of Union Cemetery drew the attention of famed demonologists Ed and Lorraine Warren who visited the cemetery on several occasions and compiled their findings into a 1992 book, Graveyard: True Hauntings from an Old New England Cemetery. Ed Warren, who also investigated the Amityville Horror House, reportedly caught the White Lady in photographs and videos. Lorraine Warren told NBC Connecticut in 2008 that the video evidence is so valuable she kept it locked away at their Occult Museum in Monroe.
Nobody is quite sure who the White Lady is. According to Damned Connecticut, some think she could be the ghost of a woman who died in childbirth and is still searching for her baby. Others speculate it’s the ghost of a woman who murdered her husband. The White Lady could also be the ghost of a murder victim who was dumped in a sinkhole near the cemetery. No matter her origin, she is often sighted on Route 59, which runs along the cemetery’s eastern boundary.
The Perron Family Music Box
The first Conjuring film, which kicked off the franchise and was released back in 2013, introduced audiences to the Warrens, a couple who are hired by the Perron family to look into assorted creepy happenings at their new farmhouse in Rhode Island.
Of course, what follows in the film – hauntings, exorcisms and all the rest of it – seems far-fetched, to say the least, but the Warrens would probably tell you that barely a detail is inaccurate. Lorraine (who acted as a consultant on the film and passed away aged 92 in 2019) did exactly that, telling USA Today that “The things that went on there were just so incredibly frightening. It still affects me to talk about it today.”
In The Conjuring as the investigators, they tried to help them rid their home of a demon called Bathsheba Sherman, a witch, and Satanist, who hung herself on a tree on the estate in the 19th century. In the real-life case, the Warrens were unable to help, in the film they were successful.
The real Perron family did (and still do) believe that their house was haunted, and they did call in the Warrens to make things better. In the days after moving to the house in 1971, the family said they immediately noticed something was wrong – although it was mainly small things to begin with, and there is no suggestion that their dog really was killed in the early days after the move, as the film suggests.
Bathsheba, the evil spirit that the Perrons and the Warrens insisted had set up residence in the house. Bathsheba Sherman was a real woman, born in Rhode Island in 1812, but of course there is no evidence that suggests she actually was a real witch – aside from various references in local legends. Apparently, an infant had once died in her care, and many villagers believed that Bathsheba had sacrificed the child as an offering to the devil – although she was officially cleared of any wrongdoing. The real Bathsheba passed away in 1885 at the age of 73, according to official records – and her buried body still lies at the Harrisville Cemetery in Rhode Island.
One other aspect of the film that we know to definitely be fiction is the exorcism that Ed Warren carries out on his daughter after she allegedly becomes possessed by Bathsheba – the real-life Warrens were very clear that they did not carry out any exorcisms as they were not catholic priests and therefore did not have the authority to do so.
In real life, the Perrons actually kicked the Warrens out of their house after one of the daughters had secretly watched a seance and the father Roger became increasingly concerned for the welfare of the family. According to Andrea, the daughter in question, “I thought I was going to pass out. My mother began to speak a language not of this world in a voice not her own. Her chair levitated and she was thrown across the room.” After this incident, the family continued to live in the farmhouse for a further nine years – apparently continuing to come across paranormal activity until they eventually moved out.
to this day the Perrons are convinced that the house was haunted. Andrea is quoted as saying about Bathsheba, “Whoever the spirit was, she perceived herself to be mistress of the house and she resented the competition my mother posed for that position.” Lorraine said “The Perron house was an extremely old house. Now certain families can move into these houses where phenomena have taken place and it doesn’t affect them, other families can move in and hell breaks loose there are laws of attraction and that family could move out, another family could move in and nothing happens.”
One of the spookiest elements of the movie was the music box, which was always threatening a scare whenever it appeared onscreen. The box itself is safely tucked away in the Warrens’ museum and has since become synonymous with the films.
Sources:
Official Ed and Lorraine Warren Channel Via youtube.com
Roadtrippers.com
Atlas Obscura.com
https://www.travelchannel.com/interests/haunted/articles/haunted-easton-cemetery
https://screenrant.com/the-conjuring-creepiest-items-occult-museum/
https://mundoseriex.com/paranormal/story-shadow-doll-warrens-occult-museum/
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