As more Conjuring movies are added to the franchise, keeping track of things can get
confusing, especially since they jump around chronologically.
Luckily, we’ve figured out when everything takes place.
From freaky nuns to haunted houses, here's the entire Conjuring Universe story explained.
Chronologically speaking, The Conjuring Universe all starts with The Nun.
The film takes place in 1952, at the Abbey of St. Carta in Romania, where Father Burke
and a novitiate, Sister Irene, are investigating the death of one of the abbey's nuns.
They discover the nuns have been spending most of their time praying in shifts to keep
a nun-shaped evil entity from hitchhiking its way out into the real world on a human
host.
As it turns out, the abbey was originally built by a duke during the Middle Ages who
was more interested in demon worship than Catholicism.
He managed to raise the demon Valak but was stopped by a group of Christian knights who
were able to seal Valak for a while.
With the help of a local man named Frenchie, Father Burke and Sister Irene seem to finally
banish Valak back to Hell.
But as it happens, Valak manages to hitch a supernatural ride out of town on Frenchie's
back.
The story of Annabelle starts in 1943 with Annabelle: Creation, when a dollmaker named
Samuel Mullins and his wife Esther lose their seven-year-old daughter, Annabelle, in a freak
car accident.
About 12 years later, the Mullins open their doors to a group of orphaned girls and the
nun tasked with their care.
When one of the orphans stumbles upon a porcelain doll in a locked bedroom, she unwittingly
releases a demon that wreaks havoc on the house and its inhabitants.
It's soon revealed that the Mullins had been tricked into letting a demon take possession
of one of Samuel's dolls, and it's now decided to try and find a human host.
By the end of the ordeal, the demon has succeeded in possessing the unlucky orphan, who escapes
and, now going by the name Annabelle, winds up being adopted by a nice family in Santa
Monica.
There, she grows up, runs away, joins a cult, and then returns to murder her adoptive parents.
As it turns out, the poor adopted parents of Annabelle live next door to John and Mia
Form, the main protagonists of 2014's Annabelle.
John has given his wife Mia an antique porcelain doll as a gift for their unborn child.
But after Annabelle and her boyfriend kill her parents, they move on to the Form residence,
where Annabelle immediately takes a liking to Mia's antique doll.
"I like your dolls."
When the human Annabelle dies, the demon hops into the doll.
Terror sets in as the newly demonic doll decides to torment the Form family.
Willing to trade her own soul to save her newborn daughter, Mia tries to jump out of
her window with the doll.
Luckily, John and Mia's friend Evelyn arrive in time to stop her, and Evelyn sacrifices
herself to save the family.
In the end, an unsuspecting woman buys the doll from a toyshop as a gift for her daughter,
a nurse.
In The Conjuring, we revisit that nurse who is now at the mercy of the demon spirit trapped
inside the toy.
So the Warrens take the doll off the nurse's hands and move on to their next case.
In 1971, the Warrens are teaching a class on demonology at Massachusetts Western University.
During the lecture, they play footage of a possessed man named Maurice, who Ed explains
killed himself after attempting to shoot his wife.
Maurice is Frenchie, the nice guy who spent some time in Romania in the '50s and came
home with a demon nun as a souvenir.
One of the attendees at the Warrens' demonology lecture is Carolyn Perron, whose family has
recently moved into a Rhode Island farmhouse.
Unfortunately, they're now being tormented by a malevolent, clap-happy spirit.
After some digging, the Warrens discover the house was built on land that once belonged
to a witch named Bathsheba.
Unfortunately, that discovery comes a little late.
Bathsheba has already set her sights on Carolyn, and the now-possessed mother brings her kids
back to the house to kill them.
The Warrens show up just in time, and the curse of Bathsheba is lifted, finally leaving
the Perrons with a livable farmhouse.
When Ed and Lorraine Warren are needed on an overnight investigation, they hire a girl
named Mary Ellen to stay over and keep an eye on their daughter, Judy.
Unfortunately, Mary Ellen's friend Daniela drops by the house uninvited.
She finds a way into the Warrens' artifact room, disturbs Annabelle, and unleashes every
ghost and demon the Warrens have trapped in their basement.
The girls spend the night essentially playing hide and seek with a bunch of possessed objects
before Annabelle is returned to her case once and for all.
In 1973, Anna Tate-Garcia is a social worker who gets mixed up with La Llorona when she
takes the sons of a woman named Patricia Alvarez to the police, unwittingly allowing the titular
spirit access to kill them.
As a result, Anna's own children are targeted by the spirit, so Anna seeks help from Father
Perez, the priest from Annabelle who obviously has some experience with evil beings.
He tells her about a former priest named Rafael Olvera who can banish the entity.
One banished spirit later, and Anna and her children are safe, although she keeps the
necklace that once belonged to the wailing woman.
In a deleted scene, it's revealed that she hands the necklace over to Rafael.
"What are you going to do with this?"
"I know a couple on the east coast who look after things like this."
Valak makes its return in 1976 during The Conjuring 2, the film that sees Ed and Lorraine
Warren seemingly defeat the spirit for good.
Beginning in 1976, the Warrens are investigating the infamous Amityville murders, and Lorraine
has a vision where she comes face to face with Valak and a vision of her husband's death.
Lorraine continues to see visions of the demon nun, even as the pair travel to Enfield, England,
where the Hodgson family has been experiencing paranormal activity.
When it appears as though the entire haunting is a hoax put on by the family to gain fame,
the Warrens pack up their things to leave.
But Lorraine soon realizes that Valak has been behind the entire thing, and they return
to the house in a last ditch effort to save the family.
Ed almost falls to his death in the process, leaving Lorraine to go head to head with Valak
herself.
She succeeds in banishing the demon by using its name and pulls Ed to safety.
"You are Valak.
The Defiler.
The profane.
The marquis of snakes."
The day is saved, and everything seems to be going smoothly...at least until the next
film in the franchise gets released.
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