Annabelle at the Warrens' museum

The real Annabelle is not the porcelain doll of the films but an ordinary Raggedy Ann of the kind sold by the million in the 1960s. Her history is known solely from the accounts of Ed and Lorraine Warren, who took the doll in 1970 and put it in a glass case in their occult museum in Monroe, Connecticut. There is no independent confirmation of any episode. The museum has been closed to visitors since 2019, but the doll remains one of the most recognisable objects in American popular occultism.

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The Edinburgh Vaults

Nineteen arches of the South Bridge, built out from within in 1788 as workshops and storage. Within thirty years damp made them unusable and the poor moved in — no light, no drainage, no ventilation. Burke and Hare are thought to have worked here, selling bodies to anatomists. The vaults were filled in and only reopened in the 1980s; tours run through them now, and visitors' accounts are strikingly consistent.