Free Your Mind: The Perron Family

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One of my favorite scene!
Have you watch 'The Conjuring'?

Yep, It's based on the true case files of the Warrens. The real-life couple, Ed and Lorraine Warren, were American paranormal investigators that founded the New England Society for Psychic Research in 1952.

And follows paranormal investigators who come to the assistance of the Perron family, who are experiencing increasingly disturbing events in their farmhouse in Harrisville, Rhode Island in 1971.

Ed & Lorraine Warren

Ed Warren died in 2006, but Lorraine, now 86, was a consultant on the film and remains a paranormal investigator. She insists that many of the movie's harrowing moments actually happened.

Ed and Lorraine Warren had been investigating paranormal activity since the early 1950’s. During their decades-long careers, they investigated over 4,000 hauntings, including the well-known Amityville Haunting where they were recognized as the first psychic investigators to step onto the scene. The 2013 film, The Conjuring, was based on their terrifying investigation of the Perron family and their haunted farmhouse in Harrisville, Rhode Island. Known variously as the “Harrisville Haunting” or the “Perron Family Haunting”, the Warrens would say that their investigation of the Perron family’s haunting was their “most intense, compelling, disturbing and significant investigation” of their careers. Roger Perron, his wife Carolyn, and their five children Andrea (Annie), Nancy, Christine, Cindy, and April endured a decade of torture from the spirits that occupied their country home.

The Perron Family

In 1971, Roger and Carolyn Perron moved into a colonial farmhouse in Harrisville, R.I., with their five daughters, and quickly began experiencing what they described as both haunting and spiritual possessions. They invited the Warrens to the farmhouse to investigate. Over the nine years they lived in the house, the Perrons described spirits, both harmless and angry, that "stunk of rotting flesh" and routinely arrived at 5:15 a.m. to levitate their beds.

The Harrisville, Perron haunted house.

Seeking to move the children to a quieter home life in the country, Roger and Carolyn Perron purchased their dream home in the winter of 1970. The Old Arnold Estate was 200 acres in size and one of the original plantations in the area surveyed by colonist John Smith in 1680 and deeded to Roger Williams for the formation of the state of Rhode Island. Located at 1677 Round Top Road in Harrisville, Rhode Island, the 14-room “lovely, charming” country home was built in 1736 on a beautiful plot of land with plenty of room for their five children, all girls, to roam about and play. Nancy and Christine Perron shared one room, Cindy and April another, and Andrea had a room all to herself – except on nights when, as Andrea put it, the sisters “came crawling into bed with her, trembling and crying in terror”.

The Perron family began to notice something was amiss from the first day they stepped into their lovely new home. Later it would be learned that eight generations of families had lived, and died, in the Old Arnold Estate including Mrs. John Arnold who at the age of 93, hung herself from the rafters of the barn. Other unfortunate losses of life on the estate included several suicides (hangings, poisonings), the rape and unsolved murder of eleven-year-old girl Prudence Arnold (later presumed to have been murdered by a farm hand), two sudden drownings in the creek located near the house, and four men who mysteriously froze to death on the land. It did not take long before the Perrons’ understood why the previous seller advised them on the day that they moved into the house, “leave the lights on at night.”

The most horrid ghost in the home targeted Mrs. Perron specifically. Known as Bathsheba, the entity was thought to have been the ghost of Bathsheba Sherman, a practicing Satanist and witch who had lived in the home in the early 19th century and died there after hanging herself from a tree behind the barn. The Perrons’ were not a religious family. Weak in faith, it was theorized to be a primary factor for the particularly violent and active nature of Bathsheba’s treatment of the Perron family. Credence to this theory is strengthened when it was learned that the only previous resident not to report any odd occurrences was a local minister. Lorraine Warren explained was this was important:

“You only have your faith as your protection. I always had my faith. God protecting me allowed me to do this. At that particular time, the Perrons’ did not have religion – and it was very dangerous.”

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