Chapter Four - The Perron Family Haunting

CHAPTER FOUR

The Perron Family Haunting

IN JANUARY OF 1971, Roger and Carolyn Perron moved into a sprawling 14-room farmhouse in Harrisville, Rhode Island, with their five daughters.

It was called the Arnold Estate.
It dated back to 1736.
And almost immediately, something was wrong.

This wasn’t horror-movie wrong.
Not at first.
It was just weird.

Brooms went missing or moved on their own.
Clocks stopped at exactly 3:07 AM.
Doors creaked open slowly, then slammed shut.
Voices whispered in the dark.
Cold spots would drop the room temperature 20 degrees in seconds.

And then came the smells.
Burning flesh.
Rotting meat.
Sulfur.

Carolyn began waking up with bruises she couldn’t explain.
The youngest daughter, April, spoke to a spirit named “Oliver.”
And the other girls saw full-bodied apparitions. Some harmless, some terrifying.

The worst spirit of all?

Bathsheba.

According to local lore, Bathsheba Sherman was a witch who lived on the property in the 1800s.
She was rumored to have sacrificed an infant to the Devil and hung herself from a tree in the backyard.

There’s no historical proof she committed these crimes.
But she did exist.
And she was related to the Arnold family, who originally owned the land.

The Perrons believed Bathsheba’s spirit still haunted the property.

Carolyn, especially, felt targeted.
The spirit would appear in corners, beside beds, even overhead as she slept. Snarling in a twisted, half-animal face.

She said it wanted her gone.

Word of the haunting reached Ed and Lorraine, who visited the Perron home multiple times in 1974.

Lorraine claimed to immediately sense a malevolent presence.
She identified Bathsheba by name through her psychic impressions.
Ed began investigating the land’s history, confirming multiple deaths on the property over centuries.

Suicides.
Hangings.
Poisonings.
A child murdered in a well.

They believed the Perron home wasn’t just haunted.
It was cursed.

This part didn’t make it into the movie.

Instead of performing an exorcism (which required church approval), the Warrens led a séance in the Perron home.

According to the family, the session triggered a violent spiritual attack.

Carolyn became possessed. Screaming, speaking in tongues, and levitating.
Roger Perron, terrified, punched Ed Warren and kicked them out of the house.

They never returned.

The Perrons stayed in the home for ten years.
They said the spirits never left.
But eventually… they quieted down.

Decades later, Andrea Perron, the eldest daughter, wrote a trilogy called House of Darkness, House of Light chronicling the events.

She stands by it all.
Every bruise.
Every voice.
Every shadow on the stairs.

The Conjuring (2013) is based loosely on the Perron case, but it takes huge creative liberties.

Bathsheba never possessed Carolyn in the way the film depicts
The exorcism scene never happened
The Warrens were only involved for a short time
The happy ending? Entirely fictional

But the terror?
The cold spots, the dark figures, the sense that something was always watching?

That was real.