Paranormal investigator Dan Rivera dies while on tour with haunted 'Annabelle' doll

The lore of the haunted Annabelle doll has claimed another victim after paranormal investigator Dan Rivera, a US Army veteran aged 54, died suddenly in Gettysburg, PA while on tour with the doll. He was found in his hotel room and the cause of death has not yet been revealed.

Rivera, who leaves behind a wife and four children, was part of the "Devils on the Run Tour" with the New England Society for Psychic Research, for which he was the lead investigator. Firefighters and medics were called to his hotel room Sunday night and attempted CPR. 

The tour stop in Gettysburg was sold out for its three-day run. It was hosted by Ghostly Image of Gettysburg Tours. 

Rivera was a featured paranormal investigator for "Most Haunted Places" on the Travel Channel. He was also a producer for the Netflix show "28 Days Haunted," among others.

"I have so many amazing memories with this guy. Just as recently as two months ago, we traveled around the country and introduced a whole new generation to Ed and Lorraine Warren’s legacy," said friend and paranormal investigator Ryan Buell.

The legend of Annabelle the doll, a Raggedy Ann doll, began in the 1970s. The doll, which originally belonged to a nursing student in Connecticut, has been said to have moved on its own, followed people around, stabbed a police officer, and caused a car crash.

The doll, which was loaned to the tour from the now-closed Ed and Lorraine Warren's Occult Museum, was suspected in 1970 of leaving messages on paper for the 28-year-old nursing student named Diane and her roommate, as well as moving on its own. 

Diane would put the doll on her bed and would come back to find that it had changed positions, such as crossing its legs, or laying on its side when she had put it upright. Notes on parchment paper were found on the floor with the words "help me, help us" on them. The paper that was on the floor was not paper that the women had in their home.

The roommates said that the doll appeared to be leaking blood and would be found in rooms where they hadn't left it. A male friend woke up from a nap in the home and found the doll staring at him, feeling like he was being strangled. There were scratch wounds on his upper body.

The women turned to a medium and held a seance, a process that revealed the doll was inhabited by long-dead 6-year-old Annabelle Higgins, who had been living on the land prior to the apartments' construction. 

When the Warrens got involved, they "came to the immediate conclusion that the doll itself was not in fact possessed but manipulated by an inhuman presence," and that "the spirit was not looking to stay attached to the doll, it was looking to possess a human host."

Lorraine Warren spoke about Annabelle in 2014 in Connecticut to a sold-out crowd, saying that the doll was demonic. The Warrens kept the doll in a locked box in their Occult Museum. Warren said that the doll was inhabited by an "inhuman spirit." Observers of the doll are told not to touch the glass.

One person who did touch the glass was reported to have died in a motorcycle crash shortly after leaving the museum. "Never take things like this lightly," Warren said, "thinking it's a joke." In discussing the contents of the museum, she told the audience, "that doll is what I'd be most frightened of."