The Perron Family Haunting

In January 1971, Roger and Carolyn Perron packed up their five daughters and moved from New Jersey to a farmhouse in the Rhode Island countryside.

It was an old house — very old. Parts of it dated to the eighteenth century. It sat on two hundred acres of land on Round Top Road, near the village of Harrisville, surrounded by fields, woods, stone walls and a barn. It had fourteen rooms and a fireplace in almost every one. To a family with five girls, ranging from about five to twelve years old, it seemed like a dream.

The previous owner, an elderly man, gave them a cryptic piece of advice as they closed the sale. “For the sake of your family,” he reportedly told them, “leave the lights on at night.”

They would stay in the house for nearly ten years. Their daughters would later say that from almost the first night, they knew they were not alone.

The Visitors

The oldest Perron daughter, Andrea, later wrote a three-volume memoir about the family’s years in the house, titled House of Darkness House of Light. In it, and in many interviews over the years, she and her sisters and mother described the house as being full of spirits — some gentle, some playful, some terrifying.

They described a presence that smelled of rotting flesh. Beds that shook and levitated. Doors that opened and closed by themselves. A broom that moved on its own. They described the ghosts of children who played with them, and of a man who seemed to have died in the house. They said that every morning around 5:15, the girls’ beds would be shaken, and that a cold voice would call to them.

Some of the spirits seemed friendly. One of the sisters said a ghost would kiss them goodnight. Others were not friendly at all.

Bathsheba

According to the family, the most frightening presence in the house was a woman they came to believe was named Bathsheba Sherman.

Bathsheba Sherman was a real person. She lived in the area in the nineteenth century, married a farmer named Judson Sherman, and died in 1885. She was buried in a small cemetery not far from the house.

According to local stories that the Perrons later heard, she had been suspected of killing an infant in her care, by driving a needle into its head. The story goes that she was never charged, but that her neighbors believed she was a witch who had made a pact with the devil.

Researchers who have looked into Bathsheba’s life say they’ve found no evidence that she ever harmed a child or was accused of witchcraft. The records show only an ordinary woman who lived and died in rural Rhode Island. Her reputation as a murderess appears to have been invented long after her death, and grew enormously after the release of the film based on the Perrons’ story.

Carolyn Perron, however, came to believe that a malevolent female spirit in the house hated her and wanted her gone. She described being slapped, pinched, and stuck with what felt like a needle in her leg.

The Warrens

In the early 1970s, the paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren — Ed a self-described demonologist and Lorraine a clairvoyant — heard about the Perrons and came to the farmhouse.

They spent time with the family, interviewed the daughters, and eventually, along with other investigators, held a séance in the house. According to the Perron daughters’ accounts, the séance went horribly wrong. Their mother, they said, began speaking in a strange voice, then was flung across the room, her chair rising off the floor. Roger Perron, frightened and angry, ordered the Warrens to leave.

Andrea Perron later said that, while she was grateful to the Warrens for trying to help, the séance only made things worse.

The Movie

In 2013, the story of the Perrons and the Warrens was made into a horror film called The Conjuring. It was a massive hit, launching one of the most successful horror franchises in history.

The film took many liberties. It condensed nearly a decade of experiences into a few weeks, added an exorcism that the family says never happened, and turned Bathsheba Sherman into a satanic witch who had sacrificed her own child — an accusation with no basis in the historical record. The Perron family consulted on the film, and Andrea Perron said that, while it was dramatized, its emotional core was true.

After the Perrons

The Perrons stayed in the house until 1980, when financial troubles forced them to sell. They moved to Georgia.

The house passed through several owners. In 1987, a couple named Norma Sutcliffe and Gerry Helfrich bought it. They said they experienced some strange occurrences — footsteps, knocking — but nothing like what the Perrons described. What troubled them more, after the movie came out, were the crowds: fans and ghost hunters who trespassed on the property at all hours, climbed on the porch and tried to break into the house. The couple sued the studio, saying the film had made their lives miserable.

In 2019, the house was bought by a couple of paranormal investigators, who opened it for tours and overnight stays. In 2022, it was sold again for more than a million and a half dollars, to a new owner who continued operating it as a destination for ghost hunters. People who stay there still report knocks, voices, footsteps and the feeling of being watched.

What Was Real?

The Perron story is a hard one to judge. Five daughters and their mother told remarkably consistent accounts over many decades, starting long before there was any movie. They didn’t seem to profit much from their story until it was turned into a film forty years later. They say they lived it.

At the same time, nearly everything we know about what happened in that house comes from the family’s own memories, recorded many years later, and from the Warrens, whose investigations have been criticized as unscientific and sensational.

What I keep coming back to is something Andrea Perron has said in interviews: that the house was not entirely evil. That it was full of spirits, some of whom seemed sad, some of whom seemed lonely, some of whom were simply part of the house’s long history. That living there was frightening, but also extraordinary.

I think that’s what makes the story feel true, whatever it was. Real experiences are rarely as clean as a movie. They’re full of contradictions, of fear and wonder at once.