Conjuring Up Real Ghost Stories With Ed And Lorraine Warren
YouTubeThe notorious Perron house, where the Warrens investigated the family’s reports of demons.
James Wan’s 2013 horror film The Conjuring introduced mainstream audiences to the “true story” of paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren and their horrifying experience with the Perron family.
The true ghost story, though, may be even scarier than the film.
According to USA Today, Lorraine Warren consulted on the movie and was adamant that it was true to what happened to her and the Perron family.
“The things that went on there were just so incredibly frightening,” she said. “It still affects me to talk about it today.”
Neurologist Steven Novella, president of the New England Skeptical Society, however, investigated the couple and is convinced they fabricated the whole thing. “The Warrens are good at telling ghost stories,” he simply stated.
Getty ImagesEd and Lorraine Warren are paranormal investigators whose cases have inspired movies such as The Conjuring, The Amityville Horror, and Annabelle.
The Perron’s alleged haunting began in January 1971 when they moved into their new farmhouse, built in 1736, in Harrisville, Rhode Island. Carolyn and Roger Perron and their five daughters began to notice strange occurrences almost immediately.
Oddly enough, they continued to live there for nine years.
Andrea Perron was 12 years old at the time and claimed the film was “a beautiful tapestry” with “many elements of truth to it, and some moments of fiction.” Little did the Perron family know that the 200-acre home was said to have once been inhabited by a woman named Bathsheba Thayer and her four children, three of whom died young.
The town labeled Thayer a satanist who allegedly hanged herself from a tree in the backyard, and the Perrons were allegedly attacked by her spirit. Some of these incidents were harmless. Some claim she never lived there at all.
Other incidents on the property, however, were fairly violent.
The Perron children allegedly played and did chores with some of the spirits. Thayer’s ghost was not as friendly. She purportedly moved furniture to scare the new tenants, appeared fully at times, and as depicted in the film, haunted the family’s matriarch most of all. Carolyn Perron was allegedly pinched and forcefully slapped by Thayer’s ghost.
“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 Warrens were hired to help in 1974, but the Perrons eventually asked them to leave after Carolyn Perron became temporarily possessed. Her daughter allegedly witnessed this first-hand.
“I thought I was going to pass out,” she said. “My mother began to speak a language not of this world in a voice not her own. Her chair levitated and she was thrown across the room. Both my mother and I would just as soon swallow our tongue than tell a lie. People are free to believe whatever they want to believe. But I know what we experienced.”
The so-called “Conjuring House” where the Perron’s experienced the paranormal has recently been bought by two new owners. The fearless couple said they haven’t felt anything “evil” in the house, though it is certainly “busy.”
