Annabelle Doll Handler Dan Rivera’s Nature of Death Revealed
Police do not believe foul play was involved in the death of Dan Rivera, the paranormal researcher who passed away while traveling with the supposedly haunted doll Annabelle.
In a Pennsylvania State Police report released July 16, authorities listed the nature of the incident as "death natural."
Furthermore, the department said "nothing unusual or suspicious was observed" at the hotel room where Rivera's body was found on July 13.
"The decedent was discovered in his hotel room by coworkers," the report stated. "This case is pending autopsy results."
His cause of death has yet to be shared.
Ghost Hunters' Jason Hawes also does not believe emerging conspiracies that Rivera's death is somehow linked to Annabelle, whose spooky backstory serves as the inspiration behind the popular The Conjuring movies.
“Recently the World lost a good man,” Hawes wrote in a July 16 Facebook post. “Dan Rivera was an Army veteran, a father of four, a husband, and someone who truly cared about people. What’s even harder to see right now are the posts blaming his death on things like the Annabelle doll."
Calling the unfounded theories "disgusting," he also encouraged people to stop "attacking places like Ghostly Images of Gettysburg," where Rivera and the New England Society of Psychic Research (NESPR) hosted a viewing of Annabelle shortly before his passing.
"Dan was a family man, a respected paranormal investigator, and he left this world way too soon," Hawes added. "Let’s focus on remembering Dan for who he was."
Likewise, Ghostly Images of Gettysburg manager Christina Rowand is brushing off speculation that Rivera's death is related to the allegedly haunted Raggedy Ann toy, telling Inside Edition in a July 17 interview, "There is a logical reason for this. Dan has handled this doll for decades. Why now? Could it not just be natural causes?"
Rivera had been with the NESPR for more than 10 years when he died. According to the organization, he was a "constant presence" for cofounder Lorraine Warren—who first investigated Annabelle with her demonologist husband Ed Warren in the late '60s and early '70s—before her death in 2019.
"He worked closely with Lorraine Warren and remained by her side even as her health declined, always offering a steady hand and unwavering support," the firm noted in a July 15 statement. "His caring nature and sense of purpose made a deep impact on everyone who had the privilege of knowing him."
The NESPR added that they have no immediate plans to cancel the remaining dates in their national tour of Annabelle, who the Warrens deemed to be "demonically possessed."
"We believe with all our hearts that Dan would have wanted the work to continue," the group added in their statement. "We will carry his spirit with us in everything we do."
Keep reading for public figures sharing their supernatural experiences.
The one where Courteney Cox shares a ghost story.
The Friends star told Howard Stern she had a delivery man ring her doorbell and inform her of an unexpected guest.
"I'd just gotten there," the Scream alum added. "So yeah, I was a little jet-lagged but I wasn't sleeping. I was sitting there, I closed my eyes to try to sleep and all of a sudden I saw these really scary faces—like old faces. I was like, 'OK, stop, stop, you gotta stop.' And then all of a sudden I was like, 'Mom? Dad? Auntie Em?' I don't know. I just kept seeing all these weird things."
After also seeing lights and a plant move, Courteney alerted her longtime love Johnny McDaid.
"I was like, 'Johnny! Wake up! I'm seeing spirits!'" the actress added. "And he had all these waves around him too. And he goes, 'Courteney, you're asleep.' I said, 'No, I just woke you up! How can I be asleep?' He's like, 'Well, I'm asleep. There are no ghosts.' I did see them for sure."Ultimately, Courteney warded them off with a request.Demi Lovato is confident her childhood home in Texas in haunted.
"When I was a little girl, my mom walked into the room and I was talking to something," the singer recalled on a 2013 episode of The Ellen DeGeneres Show. "And my mom was like, 'Who are you talking to?' I was like, 'It's the little girl in the picture frame. Her name is Emily.' And then my little sister ended up doing that when she was around the same age. But this time, she was like, 'It's the girl that lives in the closet.'"
If that example didn't make you feel like you're having a heart attack, this one might. Demi remembered inviting friends over and telling them, "Watch, something will happen." And while pals would initially have their doubts, she said, odd things would then occur—like when her buddy texted someone saying "I think this place is haunted" and the word "definitely" was sent back multiple times."He's like, 'Why'd you send it so many times?'" the Grammy winner recounted. "He goes, 'I didn't send it that many times.'"Still not convinced? Demi has even more proof."My uncle actually was watching TV and all of a sudden this balloon floated down the stairs," she told Ellen DeGeneres. "What balloon floats down, by the way? And then it turns the corner."
While Joey King starred in The Conjuring as a kid, she also had a frightful incident off-camera.
"In the story, when the mom gets possessed, she gets all these bruises on her," the actress explained on a 2020 episode of The Howard Stern Show. "And so during the filming of those particular scenes, I started having a lot of bruises show up on my body in bizarre places, like on my stomach, on my chest, like what?"
Initially, Joey added, the makeup artists thought she was stealing their fake bruises as a prank."They tried to take my real bruises off with rubbing alcohol and oil," The Act alum continued. "I'm like, 'I'm telling you, I'm not lying.'"
Joey then visited her doctor to get some blood tests. "All of a sudden, I'm told that I have this blood-thinning condition called ITP, where basically most of my red platelets drained from my body mysteriously," she shared. "I'd never had a blood problem in the past. I've never had a blood problem since then. No one in my family has that."As a result, Joey noted, she had to go to the hospital twice a day while filming the 2013 horror movie.
"When I came home, my platelets were completely fine," The Kissing Booth star told Howard. "Like, I was back up to the normal numbers and I've never since had a trace of that disorder ever."
Just keep breathin' as you read about Ariana Grande's terrifying incident.
The Grammy winner told Complex about the "ghost/demon experience" she had in Kansas City in 2013. After staying in a haunted castle, Ariana said, "the next night we wanted to go to Stull Cemetery, which is known as one of the seven gates to hell on Earth."
"I felt this sick, overwhelming feeling of negativity over the whole car and we smelled sulfur, which is the sign of a demon, and there was a fly in the car randomly, which is another sign of a demon," she recalled to the outlet. "I was like, 'This is scary, let’s leave.' I rolled down the window before we left and said, 'We apologize. We didn’t mean to disrupt your peace.' Then I took a picture and there are three super distinct faces in the picture—they’re faces of textbook demons."The "Thank U, Next" singer said she deleted the photo after she tried to send the picture to her manager and got a message back that read, "This file can’t be sent, it’s 666 megabytes." Ariana also remembered once seeing a huge black cloud beside her bed."I started crying," she added to Complex. "I was on the phone like, 'What do I do, what do I do?' and they said, 'Tell it to eff off.' I thought, I’m not going to do that. It’s going to upset it, so I’m just going to chill and not feed into it because all it wants is fear. It feeds on fear. I watched it move to the front of my bed and then I fell asleep on the phone. I woke up and it was gone."
Truth be told, Octavia Spencer doesn't seem to mind having a spirit in her house.
"I grew up watching Westerns," she said on a 2021 episode of The Ellen DeGeneres Show. "I bought this house, and it was owned by a guy who did Westerns. So I must have been a fan of his. I think he is my protector. I love him because he kind of sorts out the bad people that shouldn't be there. He runs them out."
And if you're wondering how exactly the ghost runs them out, allow the Oscar winner to explain."If they stay at my place, they don't want to come back," she added. "And that's how I know that they don't belong there. Because if you're a person that belongs there, everybody's like, 'Oh, you're place is so welcoming. It's so great.' And that's how I feel about it."Although, Octavia admitted her ghost can be "shady" if she's gone for a long time, such as by randomly closing doors and turning off the lights. And while this spirit is welcome, the Hidden Figures star made it clear she isn't offering an open invitation.
"I love my ghost," she noted. "I just don't want you bringing your ghost to my house. I don't want anybody's ghost thinking they can be friends with my ghost. 'Cause my ghost can haunt me, but he doesn't haunt me. We have boundaries."
Jennifer Aniston wasn't exactly friends with the ghost she says resided at a house she previously owned in Los Angeles.
"The dishwasher would start to go, or the coffee maker would start to go or the stereo would just turn on at full volume," the Friends star told James Corden on a 2018 episode of The Late Late Show. "And it was terrifying."
So, Jennifer continued, someone suggested she call a specialist to "clear the house" of the spirit."I had someone come over to my house," The Morning Show actress shared. "They had frankincense and they put it in a little dish and sort of start saying all these things. And the first corner that she went to, the dish cracked."
But that wasn't all. Jennifer recalled how a "really, thick, thick, thick 1975 ashtray that was sitting on the table" also cracked and that the specialist asked her to leave so she could talk to the spirit.As for what the spirit said? "He hated my roommate," Jennifer replied, later adding she moved out and never told the roommate. "I feel terrible but I couldn't say, 'It doesn't like you.' I mean that would be terrible."It appears some ghosts can’t be tamed—just ask Miley Cyrus.The singer once spoke about a spirit she said lived in her house.
“I had a friend who a parent had passed away," she explained in a 2020 interview with 102.7KIISFM's JoJo Wright. "And when they did, they know how much I love Elvis [Presley] and gave me all of their Elvis memorabilia."
However, Miley said the memorabilia was destroyed when her Malibu house caught fire in 2018.
In one of the rooms of her L.A. home, the Grammy winner had a photo of her friend's late mom."After that [fire] happened she started visiting my house in L.A," she added. "It was like she kind of went up in this smoke of all this Elvis memorabilia."Miley said it was like the fire "released" her friend's late mom, and she soon got rid of the picture."She smoked cigarettes and I could smell smoke coming from the guest room, which is where the photo is," she said. "My dogs would go insane. When I would be feeling it, my dogs would lose their mind. It actually happened only a couple nights ago, I thought that I, I feel like, saw her sitting on the couch kind of taunting my dogs, which is something she totally would've done. And my dogs were going nuts."You'll want to speed on over to hear Keanu Reeves' ghost story.
The Matrix star once revealed an unexplainable experience he had at his family's New York apartment when he was 6 or 7 years old.
"There's a doorway," Keanu said on a 2014 episode of Jimmy Kimmel Live!. "All of a sudden, we're looking over there and this, like, jacket comes waving through the doorway. Just an empty—there's no head, there's no body, there's no legs. It's just there, and then it disappears."
While the John Wick actor wasn't too freaked out, he said his nanny was.
"I was a little kid, and I was like, 'Well that was interesting,'" he remembered. "And then I looked over at the nanny and she's like this [jaw open]. And I'm like, 'Oh wow, so that was real. Oh, OK. Wow! Cool!'"
Vanessa Hudgens isn't necessarily trying to break free from any spirits.
In fact, the High School Musical alum appears to embrace her ability to connect. "I've accepted the fact that I see things," she said on a 2022 episode of The Kelly Clarkson Show, "and I hear things."
One incident that bops to the top of Vanessa's mind happened with a pull-along duck toy when she was 8 years old."There was one of those on the dining room table," The Princess Switch actress continued, "and I started walking and it just started going alongside me."
Now, Vanessa is trying to learn more."I kind of shut it down for a while because it's scary," she told Kelly Clarkson. "The unknown is scary. But I recently was like, 'No this is a gift and something that I have the ability to do. So, I'm gonna lean into it.' And I recently did my first real paranormal investigation with equipment and everything."
Here's a story about a boy.
Back in 2016, Hugh Grant said one of his sons would often "stare into a corner" of his room.
"Other people started seeing things," the actor, who is a father of five, continued on The Late Late Show. "Other kids would come and say, 'Who's that little boy over there?' Yeah, relations and nannies, completely out of control."
So Hugh decided to take action. "I'm a rational person, well-educated, not an idiot," the Love Actually alum continued. "I find myself ringing a ghostbuster."
He said the ghostbuster than came to the house with some sticks."Her sticks went completely wild in his room," Hugh added. "She said, 'Oh, it's so strong in here. I think I might throw-up.' I think it was all bollocks. Then she burnt about seven pounds of sage and banged a little drum, played an instrument or something and sang. And she said, 'All the spirits are gone.'"But were they? Hugh said he asked his son in the morning if he felt happier last night."He said, 'No, there was a little boy at my window,'" the Notting Hill star added. "So I think we need to move house now. Yeah, too haunted."
The succession of events Brian Cox experienced years ago in Edinburgh will give you the chills.
"I was just trying to go to sleep and suddenly there was this rocking sound," the actor recalled on a 2023 episode of The Jonathan Ross Show, "and the chair started to rock. And it started to rock across the room in front of my bed."
While the chair eventually stopped moving, Brian was still pretty freaked out by what he saw."By this time, I got myself right under the covers," he continued. "Because I thought, 'S--t, this is f--king awful.'"The Succession star managed to get some sleep, but was startled again the next morning.
"The chair was still here," he added, "and the floor was covered in these scratch marks."
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