'The Conjuring' IS based on a 'true story'…our story. However, the film is not based on my trilogy 'House of Darkness House of Light'. It is, instead, based upon the case files of Ed & Lorraine Warren. ... There are liberties taken and a few discrepancies but overall, it is what it claims to be — based on a true story, believe it or not. -Andrea Perron (in a Letter to Horror-Movies.ca, June 2013)
The above is an excerpt from a letter Andrea Perron wrote to a website called Horror-Movies.ca in June of 2013, and seems to tell us what we saw in the film was factual.
Interestingly though, another resident of the same house says otherwise…
For months after the movie’s release, Norma Sutcliffe, the current owner of The Conjuring house, endured a constant stream of trespassers and gawkers. At some point she decided to fight back and spent months researching the history of her home. With help from a journalist, she scoured local historical records of things as cut and dried as land ownership and as open to interpretation as local folklore. In the end, she presented a wealth of information to the regional historical society that appears to disprove both the movie and Andrea Perron's story.
In the end she states, “The movie The Conjuring is complete fiction”.
The basics of the Perron case are as follows:
In 1970 Andrea Perron, her parents and four sisters moved into a large farmhouse in Harrisville, RI, and shortly thereafter began to experience a barrage of paranormal activity initially ranging from voices in unoccupied rooms to banging on the walls. Over time the activity became more intense, eventually culminating in physical attacks on Carolyn Perron and her daughters.
Steven Novella, the president of the New England Skeptical Society, told USA Today that "there is absolutely no reason to believe there is any legitimacy" to the Warrens' reports on the Perron haunting—or, for that matter, to any of the Warrens' cases.
"The Warrens are good at telling ghost stories, you could do a lot of movies based on the stories they have spun. But there's absolutely no reason to believe there is any legitimacy to them."
HARD FACTS:
About the “Witch who haunts the property”, Bathsheba Sherman:
Bathsheba Sherman died in her own home of a stroke in 1885, she didn’t hang herself in the barn on the property. There are many articles about her death and funeral, and there’s no mention of any kind of notorious past. The funeral/burial were conducted by A.H. Granger (pastor of the First Baptist Church of Providence). He was well known and highly respected and it’s very unlikely he would have presided over the funeral of an alleged witch.
About the murder of Prudence Arnold:
According the Perrons and Warrens, one of the supposed occurrences that lead to the paranormal activity at the farm was the murder of Prudence Arnold that took place on the property when it was owned by Dexter Richardson. This is fiction.
Mrs. Sutcliffe believes Andrea added that to her book in order to make it logical that Prudence Arnold was murdered in the farmhouse since after being orphaned by Eber and Charlotte Arnold, Prudence was adopted by Dexter’s son Anan.
Dexter Richardson never owned or lived on the property. The reality is that Prudence was murdered in Dexter Richardson’s house in Uxbridge, MA (This is beyond dispute since the Dexter Richardson House on South St. in Uxbridge is registered with the National Registry of Historic Places). MANY witnesses went to the scene, saw the body and knew what happened.
Another supposed suicide on the property, is that of Susan Arnold (Mrs. John Arnold). However it’s well documented that she hung herself in 1866 at age 50 in her own home, not at the Harrisville farm.
Andrea Perron says that the Kenyon family, who sold the Perrons the house in 1970 didn’t tell them the house was haunted, and this is a true statement. In fact Mr. Kenyon never told the Perrons about the haunting because according to he and his family nothing paranormal ever happened in that house for the 200+ years the farm had been in their family.
Something that’s either brazen or foolish is that Andrea has claimed publicly that she was attacked by the entity (Bathsheba) in the house’s basement while her father was looking at the furnace and that this attack took place in front of a reporter and Mrs. Sutcliffe, and that Mrs. Sutcliffe appeared shocked when Andrea was thrown across the room. However Mrs. Sutcliffe claims that she never saw any such attack. The reporter in question left the room and wasn’t seen again that day.
When Mrs. Sutcliffe contacted Andrea Perron about the video in which she told the story, Andrea immediately took the video down.
Several years later the reporter who was present at the time contacted Mrs. Sutcliffe on Facebook and told her the following;
“I never wrote any story about that day because I felt as though a fraud was being perpetuated and I wanted no part of it, nor did I believe any of it.”
One of the producers of the film, Tony DeRosa Grund (Newline Cinema) has told a story in which he was speaking to Carolyn and Andrea Perron at the Sutcliffe home, and could hear dishes and other things smashing in the background because the Perron’s return to the house caused a spiritual upheaval.
But Carolyn Perron has never been to the Sutcliffe home.
I could go on but rather than do so I’ve attached a link to Mrs. Sutcliffe’s video here. I warn you that it’s very long, but if you’re truly interested in the case all of the information you might want is here.
Enjoy…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2dg2Ufavj8