On this month's Morbid Page:
The movie The Conjuring: What was real and what was not real?
Director James Wan was "adamant" that the first The Conjuring movie stay "as close to the true story as possible." Likewise, screenwriters Chad and Carey W. Hayes strove to accurately represent the events. But did they?
Let's start with the real house vs. the movie house:
This is the real Conjuring House (above) where the actual events took place. It sits at 1677 Round Top Road, also known as state Route 96 in Rhode Island. It is a quarter-mile from the Massachusetts state line at Uxbridge. It is a 26.2-mile drive from downtown Providence and 60 miles from Boston. Parts of it has a second floor, and it has a rustic interior and exterior.
The house is also known as the Old Arnold Estate, and has a rich history. The house was built in 1736 and has survived many conflicts, including King Philip's War, the Revolutionary War, and the Civil War.
This is not the real Conjuring House (above), but this is the one used in the movie. The farmhouse scenes in the 2013 horror movie The Conjuring were filmed at 405 Canetuck Road in Currie, North Carolina.
Inside the "real" Conjuring House on Round Top Road:
The Perron family were the ones who lived in the Conjuring House during the hauntings. Who were they?
In January 1971, the Perron family moved into a 14-room farmhouse in Harrisville, Rhode Island, where Carolyn, Roger, and their five daughters began to notice strange things happening almost immediately after they moved in. It started small. According to Carolyn, she would notice that the broom went missing, or seemed to move from place to place on its own. She would hear the sound of something 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. The girls began to notice spirits around the house, though for the most part, they were harmless. There were a few, however, that the children believed were angry.
Carolyn researched the history of the home and allegedly discovered that it had been in the same family for eight generations and that many of them had died under mysterious or horrible circumstances. Carolyn claimed that several of the children had drowned in a nearby creek, one was murdered, and a few of them hanged themselves in the attic.
Carolyn has been quoted to say that the reason why they didn't just move out was that the family could not afford to.
Who lived in the house after the Perrons?
Norma Sutcliffe owned the house from 1987 until she sold it to the Heinzens in 2019. In an email conversation, Sutcliffe said, “I never said I believed in ghosts but I did remark on some sounds.” (Sutcliffe 2019).
Cory and Jennifer Heinzen
“We had doors opening, footsteps and knocks,” Cory Heinzen, 40, said after he and his wife Jennifer bought the Conjuring House in 2019. “I’ve had a hard time staying there by myself. I don’t have the feeling of anything evil, (but) it’s very busy. You can tell there’s a lot of things going on in the house.”
See more HERE
What is the truth about Bathsheba?
Bathsheba Sherman (above) portrayed as a witch at the center of the movie is only loosely based on a real person.
Bathsheba Sherman, the reputed 19th century witch whose malevolent spirit torments the movie family until a climactic battle during an exorcism, is more prominent in the movie, which portrays her as having sacrificed her infant son and then hanging herself from a tree, much to her husband's horror. It is the spirit of Bathsheba Sherman that causes all the mayhem in the movie.
As for the actual historical records, they confirm that a Bathsheba Thayer was born in 1812 and would later marry a farmer named Judson Sherman in Connecticut before birthing a boy named Herbert.
The real-life Bathsheba Sherman did not die by suicide after sacrificing her son. She died in Burrillville in 1885 at age 73. Her son, Herbert Leander Sherman, lived into his 50s.
By all accounts, Bathsheba Thayer had a relatively contented childhood. She would grow into an envied beauty and tie the knot at 32 years old in 1844. Her husband ran a profitable produce business from his 200-acre farm in Harrisville, Rhode Island.
But the community would soon see the newlywed wife as a threat because she had been babysitting her neighbor’s son when the young boy mysteriously died. Local doctors established that the child’s skull had been impaled with a small tool. Despite the fact that Sherman was the last to tend to the boy, the case never went to court — and local women were enraged. That was the start of the legends about her.
With Bathsheba Sherman’s tombstone in downtown Harrisville revealing her date of death as May 25, 1885, her alleged suicide in 1849 appears utterly fabricated.
The exorcism did not happen, but instead it was a séance.
The Warrens
Andrea Perron
The climactic basement exorcism scene did not happen, though Andrea Perron describes a similar scene in her books. Andrea Perron, the oldest daughter, who was a teenager during the events at the house, wrote books on the subject. According to Andrea, a séance, not an exorcism, was held in a first-floor room next to Roger and Carolyn Perron's bedroom headed by Ed and Lorraine Warren.
The séance did not go well, and as chronicled in her book and the Bathsheba: Search for Evil documentary, Andrea Perron’s father kicked the Warrens out for good after that. They returned only one more time to ensure Carolyn Perron had survived the séance. In reality, the Warrens were not as involved with the house as the movie portrayed.
What about Annabelle?
The movie doll
The real doll with Lorraine Warren
The porcelin character makes its first appearance in James Wan's The Conjuring (2013). In the movie, the opening shot of Annabelle’s eyeball is immediately off-putting, and it only grows scarier from there, as we witness a sentient doll terrorizing a couple of young women. It’s a great start to not only The Conjuring, but also the entire “Conjuring” universe. It’s our first glimpse of one of the most popular horror villains of the decade.
According to Wikipedia, the story behind the doll Annabelle is that a student and her roommate became the caretakers of a doll that was supposedly possessed by the spirit of a deceased girl named Annabelle. After the doll began to act in a strange and frightening manner, the Warrens were contacted and pronounced the doll demonically possessed. They then moved the doll to their Occult Museum in Monroe, Connecticut, where it remained in a glass box until the museum closed.
In reality, the real Annabelle was merely a ragdoll and had nothing to do with the Conjuring House at 1677 Round Top Road and was not ever even inside the house.
Who owns the Conjuring House now?
Jacqueline Nuñez
Jacqueline Nuñez, owner of Boston-based WonderGroup, bought the property in 2023 for $1.525 million, which was over the asking price of $1.2 million, according to her spokeswoman, Michelle McGrath.
"It's not going to be turned into a private property," said McGrath. "It's still something that will be open to the public."
McGrath said Nuñez's interest in the property is personal. "She has an interest in the spiritual," McGrath said. "She believes that there's some spiritual activity that happens in the house."
The REAL question: is the Conjuring House haunted? The official Conjuring House website states that you can find out for yourself:
The Old Arnold Estate, located in Harrisville, R.I., is an authentic colonial home, circa 1736, whose paranormal phenomena were made famous by The Conjuring movie in 2013 depicting the hauntings of the Perron Family that lived there in the 1970s. Its paranormal past runs deep, as far back as the 1700’s when the spirits of native tribes remained embedded in the land up through the present day with the many spirits who continue to inhabit and visit the property.
This mystical farmhouse offers visitors an opportunity to engage with authentic paranormal activity and is considered one of the most active paranormal locations in the world. Set on 8.5 acres surrounded by stone walls, open fields, a river, and a forest, visitors come from around the world to observe and connect with the energy here that Andrea Perron describes as “a portal cleverly disguised as a farmhouse.” Since opening to the public in 2019, thousands of visitors have witnessed and engaged with the abundance of supernatural activity present here.
For anyone longing to connect with the other side of existence, the website states that this is the place to do it. The Conjuring House is a historical treasure, with pastoral beauty, providing those who are curious with an experience they will never forget. For some, an experience here can provide the key to understanding that our consciousness survives death and that we can connect with those who have passed before us.
Go HERE