In Rhode Island, there is a house that held only the horrors you would hear in movies. But this one, you would have only wished it was fiction. Chilling story about an unsuspecting family from a small town in Harrisville, Rhode Island had something unremarkable happen, James Wan heard about this case and wanted to make a movie based on it. That movie became “The Conjuring.”
“The Conjuring” is a horror story based on real life events. Directed by James Wan, The Conjuring features Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga, real-life paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren. In the beginning it starts with the Perron family moving, taking their five daughters with them. They experience paranormal activity that causes them to hire Ed and Lorraine Warren, based on the real story. Lorraine Warren exercises Carolyn Perron (Lili Taylor). Running out of time, Ed, Lorraine, and Brad (John Brotherton) ties Carolyn to a chair and Ed attempts the exorcism himself. Carolyn escapes and attempts to kill April (Kyla Deaver) ; Lorraine is able to call to her by reminding her of a family memory, allowing Ed to complete the exorcism and condemn Bathsheba back to Hell.
In 1971, the Perron family moved into a 14-room farmhouse in Harrisville, RI. At first the spiritual encounters would be barely anything, Carolyn would notice brooms moving on their own or completely disappearing. She would often hear the sound of scraping against the kettle in the kitchen when no one was in there. She’d find small piles of dirt in the center of a newly-cleaned kitchen floor.
Several of the children had drowned in a nearby creek, one was murdered, and a few of them hanged themselves in the attic. The spirit that was depicted in the film, Bathsheba, was the worst of them all. “Whoever the spirit was, she perceived herself to be mistress of the house and she resented the competition my mother posed for that position,” said Andrea Perron, the oldest of the five girls. There was actually a real person named Bathsheba Sherman who lived in the Perrons house in the mid-1800s. She was rumored to have been a Satanist, and there was evidence that she had been involved in the death of a neighbor’s child, though no trial ever took place. She was buried in a nearby Baptist cemetery in downtown Harrisville.
Andrea noted, the family experienced other spirits as well that smelled like rotting flesh and would cause beds to rise off the floor. She claims her father would enter the basement and feel a “cold, stinking presence behind him.” They often stayed away from the dirt-floored cellar, but the heating equipment would often fail mysteriously, causing Roger to venture down. Over the ten years that the family lived in the house, the Warrens made multiple trips to investigate. At one point, Lorraine conducted a séance to attempt to contact the spirits that were possessing the family. During the séance, Carolyn Perron became possessed, speaking in tongues and rising from the ground in her chair. “I thought I was going to pass out,” Andrea said. “My mother began to speak a language not of this world in a voice not her own. Her chair was levitated and she was thrown across the room.”
Though the movie version of events culminates with Ed performing an exorcism rather than a séance, Lorraine insists that she and her husband would never attempt one, as they must be performed by Catholic priests.
After the séance, Roger kicked the Warrens out, worried about his wife’s mental stability. According to Andrea, the family continued to live in the house due to financial instability until they were able to move in 1980, at which point the spirits were silenced, and the haunting ceased.
