I watched The Conjuring
Movie and saw that it was based on a true story that happened in Harrisville
Rhode Island, so I decided to go check out the old farm house.
'The
Conjuring' IS based on a 'true story'
The
real Perron family lived in the farmhouse for approximately ten years. Located
in the small country town of Harrisville, Rhode Island, Roger Perron and his
wife Carolyn purchased the home in the winter of 1970.
The
most haunting spirit in the movie is that of suspected witch Bathsheba Sherman.
Born Bathsheba Thayer in Rhode Island in 1812, she married fellow Rhode
Islander Judson Sherman (one year her senior) in Thompson, Connecticut on March
10, 1844.
There
is no hard evidence to support that Bathsheba Sherman was really a witch, only
legend and local folklore. Having lived on a neighboring farm in the 1800s,
suspicion grew when an infant mysteriously died in her care. When the baby was
examined, it was determined that the mortal wound was caused by a large sewing
needle that had been impaled at the base of the child's skull.
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Bathsheba
Sherman died as an old woman on May 25, 1885, roughly four years after her
husband Judson Sherman's death in 1881. Bathsheba lived to see her son Herbert,
a farmer like his father, marry his fiancée Anna in 1881. The grave site of
Bathsheba Sherman is located in the historic cemetery across the street from
the fire station and rotary in downtown Harrisville, Rhode Island (near the
start of Sherman Farm Road).
The
family's connection to the spirit of Bathsheba Sherman came at the suggestion
of paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren. The mother, Carolyn Perron,
told Ed and Lorraine about an incident that had happened a few years earlier.
She said that she had been lying on the sofa and all of the sudden felt a piercing
type of pain in her calf and then the muscle began to spasm. Upon examination,
she noticed a puddle of blood at the point of impact. She checked for bees or
anything else that could have caused the puncture in her leg but found nothing.
In her daughter's book, Andrea Perron describes the wound as a "perfectly
concentric circle" ... "as if a large sewing needle had impaled her
skin."
"Eight
generations of one extended family lived and died in that house prior to our
arrival," says Andrea Perron, adding, "Some of them never left."
The Black Book of Burrillville, the town's former public records book, reveals
that over the course of its existence the property had been host to two
suicides by hanging, one suicide by poison, the rape and murder of eleven-year-old
Prudence Arnold by a farmhand, two drownings, and the passing of four men who
froze to death, in addition to other tragic losses of life.
WATCH NOW! THE CONJURING HD TRAILER
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