Annabelle has a face you don’t forget.

Once you’ve seen the doll’s striking features in horror films like The Conjuring and Annabelle, it’s hard to erase from memory.

She’s your quintessential nightmare. And she’s now returning, just like a bad dream, in the new thriller, Annabelle Comes Home.

But while you may think that the doll is based on a fictional tale, the story of Annabelle actually has a terrifying true story behind it.

And although her face in real life may appear more benign than the movies depict, the account is even scarier than the movies tell.

Watch the trailer for Annabelle Comes Home below. Post continues after video. 

It starts very innocently, when a mother purchased a Raggedy Ann Doll in an antique store as a birthday present for her daughter, Donna, in 1970.

The woman’s 28-year-old daughter was a nurse, who lived in a small apartment with her roommate Angie. Donna liked the present, and added the doll to her bed atop her pillows.

Within days, Donna and Angie noticed the doll had moved. It was only slight, they remember, but it was enough to evoke a slight sense of uneasiness.

As time went on, the roommates observed the doll’s movements were becoming even more pronounced.

When they would come home, it would be in an entirely different room to the one they last remembered it being in.

At first, the doll would just move, but then it began to leave messages too.

Donna and Angie would find pieces of paper, being held by the yarn-haired toy, that would read “Help Us”. They described the handwriting to be not unlike that of a small child’s.

It was when Donna noticed blood drops on the doll’s hands and chest that they decided to seek professional advice from a medium.

The medium informed Donna and Angie of Annabelle Higgins, who previously lived on the property before she was found dead at the age of seven.

Annabelle, the medium explained, had found comfort in the two girls. Feeling empathy for the young girl who died, Donna gave Annabelle permission to reside in the doll.

However things took a turn for the worst when Angie's fiancee, Lou, claimed the doll was evil after it attacked him in the middle of the night.

According to Lou, the doll climbed up his leg before strangling him. When he awoke, he knew it was no dream and that Annabelle was evil.

That was just his first terrifying encounter. Another time, Lou recalled entering a darkened room where the doll was being kept when he felt something attack him. When he switched the light on, his stomach was covered in bloody scratches and the doll was on the floor.

This time, Donna contacted Ed and Lorraine Warren, who were famous paranormal investigators. They quickly realised the doll was not possessed as suggested by the medium.

They concluded the doll was an "inhumane demonic spirit" who was trying to possess a human host, and have recounted the story on their website.

The Warrens took the doll with them, and it now resides in the "the artifact room" at Warren's Occult Museum in Monroe. The doll is now in a secure glass cabinet emblazoned with a sinister warning sign.

That room, which houses a number of other haunted items that the Warrens investigated, is the subject of the new film, Annabelle Comes Home.

For more on this topic:

• Possessed dolls, demons and haunted houses: Inside the life of the infamous Lorraine Warren.