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Post by Joanna on May 18, 2015 19:41:06 GMT -5
Teacher Forced to Resign for Showing 'Annabelle the Devil Doll' to StudentsAn elementary school teacher in New Home, Texas (population 334), resigned Tuesday, May 12, in response to sustained complaints from a throng of irate parents because she had shown her third-grade students a six-minute Travel Channel video called Annabelle the Devil Doll. The teacher is Heather Anderson, formerly of New Home Elementary School. Anderson showed the video about the killer demon doll to eight- and nine-year-old students back in March, reports Lubbock NBC affiliate KCBD. At the time, she allegedly asked her students not to tell their parents what had happened.
Anderson’s resignation followed several fiery school board meetings at which a number of parents expressed their outrage over the incident. Angry parents said their children had difficulty sleeping at night after seeing the video and, in one instance, professional counseling was necessary.
The teacher also had her supporters in town. They said Anderson did not intentionally show the terrifying segment about the fiendish, homicidal doll. The accident only occurred, they suggested, because the video automatically played after the one Anderson wanted to show had ended. One weakness of the argument that Anderson’s actions were accidental is that she managed to show the offending doll video to two different groups of students, according to a statement from local school district superintendent Leland Zant. “Annabelle the Devil Doll” is a fairly standard-looking rag doll owned by the proprietors of Warren’s Occult Museum in Monroe, Conn. In the video, museum curator Tony Spera called his collection of “unholy” and “unblessed” occult items “the most haunted location” in the world. Spera insisted, “the most diabolical item” in the museum is “a simple child’s doll named Annabelle” that “has the power to kill.” The story of Annabelle has sort of a Chucky feel. Spera explained the doll’s history dates back to a 1970 incident just a few miles away involving Annabelle’s mysteriously crossing its arms and appearing to scribble notes asking for help.
The owner of the doll, a nursing student, called in a psychic for a séance, the story goes, and the psychic said a dead child had taken control of the doll. The next thing that happened was that Annabelle tried to choke a friend of the nursing student’s in a dream – sort of Freddy Krueger-like. Then, and only then, the students decided to contact the owners of Warren’s Occult Museum, according to Spera.
Lorraine Warren, founder of the museum, said she had reason to believe the spirit possessing the doll was not a dead child, but actually an evil demon. Warren’s husband, Ed, went to retrieve the doll and said it caused the car he was driving to behave erratically – perhaps a bit like the car in Stephen King’s Christine. He then sprinkled Annabelle with some holy water he happened to have on hand and made the sign of the cross. This was enough to calm the doll until he got back to the museum.
“We believe it’s responsible for the death of a young man that came here to the museum,” Spera also matter-of-factly explained. The guy who died, Spera said, was a visitor to the occult museum who unwisely chose to ask Annabelle to demonstrate her powers. “Three hours later this young man was dead,” he claimed. “He died instantly when he hit a tree head-on with his motorcycle.” The curator added that the lesson in the story of Annabelle is that “you do not challenge the demonic.”
Anderson, the Texas teacher, had been suspended by school officials before she resigned.
The story of Annabelle has been the germ for the plots of two movies: Annabelle as well as The Conjuring (“the horrifying true story of Ed and Lorraine Warren, world renowned paranormal investigators”). The Warren’s Occult Museum appears to be permanently closed.
The third-grade classroom incident is somewhat reminiscent of a recent incident at an Ohio public high school involving a substitute Spanish teacher who was convicted on criminal charges after showing The ABC’s of Death, what administrators deemed “a vile, totally inappropriate horror movie,” to students in five classes. Source: Eric Owens, The Daily Caller, May 14, 2015.
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Post by pat on May 18, 2015 21:07:36 GMT -5
I would have let my son watch that video when he was that age. If watching scary things was harmful to children, all everyone who grew up watching Dark Shadows should all be psychologically damaged. Barnabas was always biting women on the throat, men turned into werewolves and killed people, Angelique summoned the devil and put curses on people, there were ghosts all over the place and people were always hanging out in the mausoleum. The parents and the school board overreacted to something they should have ignored.
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Post by steve on May 19, 2015 3:18:34 GMT -5
When I was that age, my brother and sister and I used to stay up late on the weekend to watch horror movies on TV about mummies and vampires and all kinds of scary things. They were scary, but it was fun and it didn't have some profound psychological effect on us. Once my sister wrapped her hand in bandages like a mummy and reached her hand around the door as my brother and I were going to bed and just about scared us to death. We screamed and Mom told us that we weren't going to watch anymore scary movies, but the next weekend, we were glued to the TV watching horror movies again, but after that, we tried to keep our fear to ourselves.
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Post by aprillynn93 on May 19, 2015 13:05:58 GMT -5
For a grade school teacher, it certainly wasn't the smartest thing to do. You just can't do that, especially if you ask the kids not to tell anyone.
I do think she should have been fired for it, however I agree that it shouldn't be a big deal, at least not as big as some of the parents are making it out to be. If handled properly, the kids would be just fine.
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Post by jason on May 19, 2015 15:15:43 GMT -5
For a grade school teacher, it certainly wasn't the smartest thing to do. You just can't do that, especially if you ask the kids not to tell anyone. I do think she should have been fired for it, however I agree that it shouldn't be a big deal, at least not as big as some of the parents are making it out to be. If handled properly, the kids would be just fine. What the heck's wrong with you, April? You think a teacher should be fired just because she didn't stop a Travel Channel video in time to keep the kids from seeing a freaking DOLL?! If she's like most teachers, she started the DVD, left the room or was doing something else and just didn't stop it in time and there's no evidence that she told the brats not to tell anyone. Kids seldom tell the truth. Have you forgotten that the Salem witch trials and Satanic ritual child abuse cases were started by lying children? The fact the doll portion of the video was next on the video is evidence that she's guilty of nothing more than not stopping it in time.
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Post by aprillynn93 on May 19, 2015 15:42:27 GMT -5
The article said it happened in 2 classrooms, so I wonder if it really was an accident.
It's not the subject matter of the movie that I am objecting to, but the way in which she handled it. If it is that she really didn't tell the kids to not tell anyone, then she should make that statement. It does not say she denied making that statement in the article.
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Post by Graveyardbride on May 20, 2015 7:43:00 GMT -5
The article said it happened in 2 classrooms, so I wonder if it really was an accident. It's not the subject matter of the movie that I am objecting to, but the way in which she handled it. If it is that she really didn't tell the kids to not tell anyone, then she should make that statement. It does not say she denied making that statement in the article. Why should it make a difference? Why shouldn't the kids have been allowed to watch it? When I was that age, I was allowed to watch or read anything I chose, no matter how gruesome and I never had any problems. When I was growing up, kids read daily newspapers about murders, rapes, child abductions, etc. and we checked out any books we chose from the town library. I read The Picture of Dorian Gray – the book that sent Oscar Wilde to prison – when I was 12 or 13 and by that time, I'd already read Dracula, Frankensein, Peyton Place, etc. I used to keep a dictionary on the beside table to look up words I didn't know. There were no movie rating systems back then and we used to go to the only movie theater in town and watch all sorts of movies kids wouldn't be allowed to see today. The parents who made a fuss about their kids seeing this video were just looking for something to complain about. I'll bet they're all terrible parents and that most of them are single mothers.
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Post by aprillynn93 on May 20, 2015 12:10:35 GMT -5
I totally agree. I wouldn't have had a problem with my child seeing the clip. However, many people do not feel the same way. There are many very religious and conservative parents. As a public school, unfortunately they have to be cater to those parents. I'm definitely not saying that their attitude about it is right though.
My only problem with this whole thing was how the teacher allegedly handled the situation. If this happened in my kid's classroom, I wouldn't care what the video was about, only that my child was told not to tell anyone about it.
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Post by kitty on May 20, 2015 12:18:03 GMT -5
We read True Detective Magazines when I was a kid. We'd just go to the store and buy them and then pass them around to our friends and no one ever said anything about us being too young. I don't think that censorship started until sometime in the 1970's.
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Post by Kate on May 21, 2015 16:12:37 GMT -5
This is just plain stupid! I agree with whoever said that the parents over-reacted and that they were just looking for something to complain about. I've never heard of any Travel Channel videos being R rated.
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Post by jane on May 26, 2015 15:40:03 GMT -5
I went to the Occult museum back in the 1990s and Ed Warren conducted the tour himself. It was all so silly that I couldn't keep from laughing and Warren kept giving us dirty looks. After the tour was over, he called us aside and ridiculed us for not believing all of his foolishness. When he got testy, the lady that I was with told him that he was a delusional buffoon and we walked away laughing. He stood there giving us a dirty look like he was trying to put the evil eye on us as we drove away.
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