Case File: The True Haunting Behind The Conjuring
Twelve Years After The Conjuring, the Truth Is Still Stranger Than Fiction
Author’s Note
Dear reader, this is a long one. For those reading via email, it may exceed the permitted email length, so please click the link to read in full. It will be worth it, I promise. With the 12th anniversary of The Conjuring just passed, we felt it was the right moment to revisit the real story that inspired it. One far longer, darker, and more complex than Hollywood ever showed.
The Perron family’s experiences are so many and so varied that I can only hope to do them justice within the character limits of Substack. There is so much more to this story, and I highly recommend picking up the extraordinary books written by the eldest Perron child, Andrea. House of Darkness, House of Light, Volumes 1–3, are deeply compelling and full of first-hand insight, with stories of unnerving and horrifying encounters, unnatural phenomena, and spiritual trials that defy logic. But what truly shines through is the love this family had for one another and for their home, even after all they endured.
I am humbled by Andrea’s work. What you are about to read is not a substitute for it. This is my attempt to honour her family’s story and the legacy of the haunting that shaped their lives forever.
Case No.: 71RI-1970-RI
Classification: Haunting – Malevolent Spirit Activity
Location: The Old Arnold Estate, Harrisville, Rhode Island, USA
Date of Incident: 1970 – 1980
Filed by: Perron Family, Investigated by Ed and Lorraine Warren
Status: Closed – Phenomena Documented, Explanation Inconclusive
Incident Summary
In January 1971, the Perron family moved into a historic farmhouse in Harrisville, Rhode Island. It was meant to be their forever home. Instead, it became the site of a ten-year ordeal that would leave deep scars on every member of the family. What started as subtle disturbances grew into one of the most disturbing and complex hauntings ever reported in modern America.
The case reached global attention in 2013 with the release of The Conjuring, a Hollywood film based on the Warrens’ involvement. Now, twelve years later, we thought it fitting to revisit the real story, the one Andrea Perron spent years documenting in her trilogy House of Darkness House of Light. The books paint a very different picture to the film. One that is slower, stranger, and still unresolved.
Phenomena Overview
The Perrons reported a wide range of paranormal activity over their time in the house. What began as small disturbances steadily became more intense.
Cold Spots and Temperature Drops: Certain rooms stayed freezing cold even in the height of summer. These sudden shifts in temperature often came just before something happened.
Moving Objects and Poltergeist Activity: Brooms vanished. Objects launched across the room. Doors opened or slammed shut on their own.
Disembodied Voices and Eerie Sounds: The family heard whispering, weeping, and footsteps at night when no one else was awake.
Apparitions and Shadow Figures: Some spirits showed themselves clearly. One daughter saw a ghostly boy. Another spoke of a woman in grey. Others made their presence known in more subtle, unnerving ways.
Interactions with Visitors: Guests often felt uneasy and left shaken. Some refused to ever return. Even the family pets avoided certain areas.
Electromagnetic Disturbances and Equipment Malfunctions: Though the era lacked today’s tools, investigators noted failing batteries and odd fluctuations in energy.
Spiritual Oppression and Physical Attacks: Carolyn Perron took the brunt of it. She suffered bruises, scratches, and frightening encounters that happened late at night when no one else could see.
Investigation Overview
Initial Encounters and Documentation: The family stayed quiet at first. They did not want to be laughed at. But over time, the events became too serious to ignore. Andrea began writing things down.
Visit from the Warrens (1974): Ed and Lorraine Warren visited the house after hearing of the disturbances. Lorraine, a psychic medium, claimed a dark presence was at work. She proposed a séance to make contact.
The Séance Incident: Carolyn Perron was the focus of the session. Andrea claims her mother began to speak in another voice and was thrown across the room. After that night, Roger Perron demanded the Warrens leave and never come back.
Ongoing Activity: Whatever happened during the séance, it did not stop the haunting. The family remained in the house until 1980.
Post-Investigation Accounts: Years later, Andrea Perron began work on a trilogy that would document everything in detail, from the quiet beginnings to the violent crescendo.
Investigation and Evidence
Eyewitness Testimonies: Every member of the Perron family experienced activity. Each had their own account, and their stories remained consistent for decades.
Séance Documentation: No formal exorcism was ever performed, but the séance became one of the most significant moments in the case.
Physical Marks: Carolyn’s injuries were real. Bruises, small puncture wounds, and sudden fainting episodes were linked to periods of intense activity.
Psychological Impact: The children suffered long-term effects. They carried anxiety and trauma into adulthood. Some had nightmares long after the haunting ended.
Literary Evidence: Andrea’s trilogy remains one of the most complete personal accounts of a haunting ever published.
Press Coverage and Public Reaction
Hollywood Adaptation (2013): The Conjuring introduced the Perrons’ story to millions. The film used the Warrens’ involvement as its focus and condensed years of haunting into a single dramatic arc.
Andrea Perron’s Response: Andrea was kind about the film. She said it was a beautiful story and admired the craftsmanship. But she also said it was not quite true. What her family lived through did not happen over a weekend. It took ten years. The film got the shape of the thing, but not the texture.
Public Fascination: Since the film’s release, the house has become a popular site for investigators and tourists. It still draws attention today, and new stories continue to emerge.
The Perron Family
Before the house, before the horror, there was just the Perron family. A tight-knit, loving household of seven: two parents and five daughters. Each one brought something unique to the fold, and together, they shared a warmth that would carry them through what was to come.
Roger Perron was the father, a man of quiet strength and practical sensibilities. A hard worker devoted to his family, he travelled frequently for his job as a sales representative, often away from home during the week. Roger was the kind of man who fixed broken things, held strong opinions, and loved his girls deeply, even if he didn’t always know how to say it out loud.
Carolyn Perron, the mother, was the heart of the home. Sensitive, intuitive, and deeply nurturing, Carolyn had a creative soul and a quiet resolve. She had a particular fondness for history, art, and the natural world, and poured her energy into making a happy, beautiful home for her children. She was the one who first found the Harrisville farmhouse.
The eldest of the children was Andrea, 12 years old at the time of the move. Bright, reflective, and observant, Andrea was already writing and journaling even then. She had a protective streak toward her younger sisters and a strong bond with her mother. It would be Andrea, years later, who would go on to tell the family’s story in her own words.
Next came Nancy, 10 years old. Independent and athletic, Nancy had a fierce spirit and a keen sense of justice. She was adventurous and brave, often the first to speak up or stand her ground.
Christine, 9, was spirited and curious, with a playful energy and a sharp wit. She often teamed up with Nancy, the pair forming a lively duo. Christine was known for her humour and perceptiveness.
Cynthia, or Cindy, was 7. Sensitive and imaginative, Cindy had a rich inner world. She could be shy, but also had a strong emotional intelligence that belied her young age. She was a thinker and a dreamer.
The youngest was April, just 5 years old when the family moved. Sweet, gentle, and affectionate, April had a special tenderness that the whole family cherished. She often played alone or with her imaginary friends and animals, and she adored her mother above all.
Together, they were a family with deep love for one another. They weren’t wealthy, but they had love and laughter, and they faced the world hand in hand. When Carolyn found the old farmhouse, it felt like the promise of a new chapter, a place where the Perrons could grow, thrive, and write the next part of their story.
At least, that was the hope.
The Move
Before the move, the family lived in a more suburban setting where life had been far from easy. Roger worked long hours and spent more time on the road than he did at home. Carolyn had become isolated, raising five girls on her own most days while juggling the pressures of keeping the household together. The stress was beginning to show. The house felt small. The walls too close. And the people around them weren't always kind.
There had been a series of problems with neighbours. Unspoken tensions turned to outright hostilities. Accusations flew. Children came home crying. Carolyn often felt watched or judged, and it wasn’t long before their once-quiet street became a place she dreaded. The family felt like they were no longer welcome. It was not one incident that drove them out, but a slow erosion of peace. A growing sense that they didn’t belong there anymore.
They brought their dog with them, a loyal companion who had been part of the family through thick and thin. Her life had ended just before the move, the result of a sudden accident. It was a painful loss for the family, especially the children, who had grown up with her at their side. Her name had been Bathsheba, a name chosen purely because it sounded old-fashioned and poetic, long before they ever knew what it might come to mean. In time, that name would return to them in ways they never could have imagined. Looking back, the choice felt chilling. Almost prophetic.
Carolyn Perron had found the house on her own. Roger was away on a work trip when she first laid eyes on the listing. It had been buried in the back pages of the local paper, easy to miss. The photograph was grainy, but there was something about it that pulled at her. She couldn’t explain it. The property looked tired, the price was low, and they could barely afford it. But she couldn’t let it go. Something about the house felt meant.
On a warm summer day, she took the girls to see it. The drive out was long and winding, the roads lined with trees that filtered the sunlight into golden shafts. When they arrived, the house stood waiting in the middle of an open field, framed by tall grass and the distant shape of a weathered barn. The air smelled of grass and river stones. A brook ran behind the property, its steady trickle the only sound.
The girls explored like they had been let loose into a storybook. They played tag in the barn, climbed the fence lines, splashed in the shallows of the brook. Carolyn sat and watched them, listening to their laughter echo across the property. In that moment, they looked happier than she had seen them in a long time. Carefree. Light. For a brief spell, everything heavy lifted.
She walked through the house slowly. The floorboards creaked beneath her, and the air inside smelled like ash and time. It felt settled. Not perfect. Not easy. But solid. Real. She made an offer that day. She didn’t ask Roger. She just knew. Whatever it took, they were meant to be there.
When they first visited the Old Arnold Estate as a full family, it felt like stepping into another world. The long, tree-lined drive opened onto a wide clearing, where the house sat weathered and waiting. It had a weight to it, but not in an oppressive way. Carolyn felt it immediately, something ancient and rooted. The air smelled like wood smoke and old stone. Sunlight broke through the trees and lit up the wide plank floors as they walked from room to room.
The girls were wide-eyed. They ran ahead, calling dibs on bedrooms and discovering hidden cupboards and narrow staircases. Roger walked the land in silence, quietly counting the possibilities. Carolyn stood at the hearth and felt, for the first time in months, a kind of stillness. Something about the house spoke to her. It felt lived in, but not broken. It was the kind of place that held stories. She wanted to be part of them.
The house was old. It had stood since before the American Revolution, built sometime in the 1730s. Weathered wood. Sagging beams. The kind of house that told you it had seen things. But the Perrons weren’t afraid of history. They welcomed it. They were a family that believed in second chances. And that house, for all its age and silence, looked like it had been waiting for them.
When they found out the price, it almost seemed too good to be true. Fourteen rooms. Acres of land. Privacy. Quiet. It was everything they had been craving, wrapped in the bones of an old farmhouse tucked far from the noise of the world.
In January of 1971, Roger and Carolyn Perron packed up their life and left everything familiar behind. With their five daughters, they moved into a cold, ageing farmhouse tucked into the woods of Harrisville, Rhode Island. To an outsider, it might have looked like an adventure, a charming escape to the countryside. But for the Perrons, it was a retreat. A step back from the world. A chance to start over.
They arrived in winter. The snow made the house look peaceful. Quiet. Blanketed. But something in the bones of that house had already stirred. They didn’t know it yet, but the very ground they stood on was thick with stories. Not all of them wanted to be left alone.
Even on moving day, there were signs. As boxes were brought inside and the girls explored the upper floor, two of them stopped cold at the sight of a man standing in one of the rooms. He did not speak. He did not move. And he was gone within seconds. They called for their mother, but when she arrived, the room was empty.
Later that same afternoon, a neighbour or perhaps one of the previous owners came by to check on the arrival. They did not stay long. But as they turned to leave, they paused in the doorway and said something that would stick with the family for years.
"For the sake of your family, leave the lights on at night."
It was said plainly, without drama. As if it were advice about the well pump or the drafty windows. But it hit Carolyn with a chill she couldn’t explain. At the time, she wrote it off as an old rural superstition. Something practical. But deep down, she already knew better.
Innocent Beginnings
In the first few weeks, life at the Old Arnold Estate felt strangely calm. The snow outside muted everything, and the rooms were quiet except for the creaks of the old boards and the wind slipping through the windows. The family had expected a period of adjustment, but instead, it felt oddly peaceful. Carolyn kept the fireplace going and unpacked the house slowly, room by room. Roger spent his days catching up on repair work. The girls explored, played, and helped where they could.
Still, little things began to stand out. A broom Carolyn had left propped against the wall would go missing, only to reappear in another room altogether. Tools vanished from where Roger had laid them down. Carolyn would find books she hadn’t touched lying open in places she hadn’t been. At first, she assumed it was the children. But they denied it every time.
There were cold spots too. Odd temperature drops in rooms that should have been warm. Sometimes they would walk through the parlour and feel as if they had stepped into an icebox. Other times, they would enter a room and feel watched. It wasn’t a threatening feeling, at least not yet. Just a sense that someone else was there.
The girls began to speak about the house as if it were shared with someone else. April, the youngest, said she had made a friend who lived behind the walls. One of the older girls spoke of a boy she sometimes saw standing at the edge of the room, watching them with curiosity. Another said she saw a woman in grey in the hallway, just standing quietly before slipping away.
Carolyn listened but didn’t scold them. She didn’t want to feed their imaginations, but she didn’t want to frighten them either. If the spirits were real, they didn’t seem angry. The family began to refer to them with names. They became part of the background, like the creaky stairs or the moaning pipes.
Not every spirit felt cold. Not every glance from the shadows felt cruel. Some, the girls said, just seemed lonely.
One afternoon, while working in the dining room, Roger uncovered something that gave the family hope. Behind a panel that had been nailed in place, he found an old sealed fireplace, its brickwork still intact but long forgotten. They had been battling the brutal chill of a New England winter, and the discovery of another hearth seemed like a blessing. Carolyn was thrilled. She imagined the warmth it could bring to that part of the house, where the cold seemed to settle in deepest. For a brief time, it was a project full of promise.
A few weeks earlier, Mr. Kenyon had come to visit. He’d walked the property with Roger and shared stories about its history, cellar holes, old wells, even rumours of the Underground Railroad. Over coffee in the kitchen, he’d leaned in and said, “The house makes some rather unusual noises, even after the wind dies down.” Then, almost casually, he added, “Swallows in the chimney,” and gave Carolyn a quick wink. At the time it struck her as odd, more poetic than practical. But now, standing near the newly exposed hearth and listening to the faint sounds that stirred inside, she wondered if that had been more than just an offhand comment.
The sense of excitement faded. There was no mention of the fireplace in the house’s paperwork, no reason for it to have been sealed off. As they worked around it, Carolyn noticed the room felt colder than the others, even with the main hearth burning nearby. And at night, faint noises started to come from within the wall. Scratching. Shuffling. A soft, irregular knock. She began to avoid standing too close to it after dark. Whatever the fireplace had once been, it no longer felt forgotten. It felt hidden. As if someone, long ago, had tried to close something in.
Carolyn tried to dismiss the sounds, repeating Mr. Kenyon’s phrase to herself as reassurance. But night after night, the noises persisted. No birds. No wings. No sign of nesting. Just the slow, dragging sounds that made her skin crawl. The chill clung to that part of the house, no matter how high they stoked the fire.
Eventually, the words lost their comfort. Swallows don't scratch. They don't knock and they don't open locked basement doors. "Swallows in the chimney, my ass," she thought. "He should have told us the truth"
First Strange Occurrences
Over time, the tone of the house began to shift. The temperature would plummet in certain rooms, even in summer. The smell of rotting flesh would flood the air without explanation. Carolyn, in particular, became the focus of increasingly aggressive activity. She was pinched, slapped, or prodded by invisible hands. Bedsheets were pulled off in the night. Loud bangs echoed through the house. Disembodied voices whispered from the dark. There were even times when the family claimed to hear cries coming from the walls.
The broom continued to vanish and reappear in strange places, always seeming to move when no one was watching. Roger's tools were still going missing. And the sealed fireplace only deepened the family’s discomfort. The sounds that stirred inside it grew bolder, more frequent. Carolyn had begun avoiding the dining room after dusk.
More than once, the children reported seeing someone standing in the hallway or near the stairs, a man they didn’t recognise. When Carolyn pressed them, the girls grew quiet. There was something about the way he just watched, they said. Like he was waiting.
Then there was the message. An odd, unsettling warning passed along by Mrs. Pettigrew, the neighbour across the way. She had come to drop off a pie, smiling politely but saying little until she noticed Carolyn rubbing a fresh red mark on her wrist. The coat hanger had flown off the hook with no warning. Mrs. Pettigrew had paled. "The Kenyons kept all the lights on. All night. Every night," she said quietly. "For the sake of your family, leave the lights on at night."
It was around this time that the basement became a growing source of fear. The door leading down to it would not stay closed. Time and again, the family would tie it shut or wedge it tightly with furniture, only to find it open again. More than once, Roger tied it off with cord. Later, he went as far as to barricade it entirely with a heavy table. Still, the latch would lift and the door would open. Sometimes in front of them.
None of the children liked going near it. Cindy said she heard something moving below the stairs, pacing in slow, deliberate steps. Christine refused to even look at the doorway by the end of that winter. April had started sleeping with the light on, and Nancy said she dreamt of something crawling up from beneath the house.
Their nights were no easier. The girls often spoke of being woken by footsteps in their rooms or the sensation of someone tugging at their blankets. Cindy said she sometimes awoke to the feeling of being watched, only to find nothing there. Andrea described waking to a sharp tug at her hair that left her scalp stinging. Nancy and Christine heard whispering from the corners of their room but could never make out the words. One night, April screamed so loudly that it sent Roger running up the stairs. She insisted a woman had been leaning over her bed.
Much of this happened while Roger was away for work. His travel was frequent, and his time at home unpredictable. That left Carolyn and the five girls alone to endure the worst of the disturbances. Carolyn tried to remain composed, but she was exhausted. The pressure of trying to make sense of what was happening without frightening her children wore her down. She kept most of it from Roger at first, knowing he would dismiss it. And he did.
Roger was a practical man. When he was home, he did notice the cold spots and the strange behaviour of the doors. But he never let himself dwell on it. Any time Carolyn pressed the issue, he would retreat behind logic, brushing it off as imagination or coincidence. Still, she could see it in his eyes. He was unsettled too. He just refused to let it show.
As the activity escalated, Carolyn’s frustration grew. What had once been quiet concern turned into desperation. She needed Roger to believe her. She needed someone to help carry the weight of what was happening. But every time he dismissed her, it drove a wedge between them. Carolyn was being tormented in their own home, and the man she loved wouldn’t acknowledge it. That hurt more than the slaps or the whispers. Her fear turned into anger.
It would be a long time before Roger admitted the truth, even to himself. But the house was patient. And eventually, it would show him too.
They were too scared to speak much about it, but the feeling grew stronger with each passing week. Something was wrong with the basement. Something was wrong with the nights. And no matter what they did to keep it all shut away, the house kept opening it back up.
The Perrons never felt alone. Eventually, they stopped pretending they were.
History of the Property
Carolyn Perron dug into the local history of the Old Arnold Estate, spending long hours at the Harrisville library and speaking to local historians and elders. What she uncovered left her shaken. The property’s past was soaked in tragedy. Multiple generations of the Arnold family had lived and died on that land, and not all had passed peacefully.
One woman, Susan Arnold, believed to be the real identity behind the legend of "Mrs. John Arnold," was reported to have taken her own life by hanging in 1866. Though Carolyn had heard stories that this woman had hanged herself in the barn at the age of ninety-three, historical records indicate she was fifty and died elsewhere. Still, the story lingered. Carolyn recalled the barn’s oppressive atmosphere. A scythe that once fell from a beam and narrowly missed her shoulder seemed to echo the same morbid history. It felt too specific to be coincidence.
The deeper she dug, the darker the history became. Local records and accounts pointed to a long line of sorrow:
Two suicides by hanging: One of them was Susan Arnold, whose death by hanging carried a lasting imprint. Another unnamed resident also took their own life by the same means, a haunting pattern that left Carolyn disturbed by the recurring method of death. Hanging, she felt, was not just tragic but symbolic of deep-rooted despair.
One suicide by poison: The records referenced a young woman who had taken poison, possibly laudanum, after being rejected by a suitor. Her death had been quiet, but the whispers around it remained persistent in local memory. Carolyn noted how the house sometimes felt soaked in sorrow that was not her own.
Two drownings: One was a child, lost to the pond in the woods behind the estate. The other was a farmhand found face down in a nearby brook after a storm. Both deaths were accidental, but the sense of sadness around the water lingered. Andrea later wrote that she could never quite enjoy the brook without a chill crawling up her spine.
Four men who froze to death on the property: Farmhands or passers-by, caught in brutal New England winters. Some were said to have died within feet of the house, unable to reach shelter. The Perrons experienced some of the coldest rooms they had ever known, even in midsummer. Carolyn wondered if the house remembered.
An eleven-year-old girl reportedly murdered, though this occurred offsite: The child, whose name has been lost to time, was believed to have been attacked nearby and dragged into a shallow grave off the property’s boundary. The legend often became conflated with the house’s story, as if the trauma of the region gathered and clung to the farmhouse.
The house was not just haunted, it was a patch of land that had witnessed centuries of misfortune, grief, and death. It began to feel to Carolyn like the very soil was steeped in pain, and that whatever remained there was feeding on it.
The Old Arnold Estate was built in the 1730s and, as of today, is nearly three hundred years old. Over the centuries, the land and later the building have weathered the King Philip’s War (1675–1678), the French and Indian War (1754–1763), the American Revolutionary War (1775–1783), the War of 1812 (1812–1815), and the Civil War (1861–1865). It has probably housed soldiers or served as a waystation for travelers, possibly even part of the Underground Railroad. The foundations of the house and its barn stood witness to a changing nation, but its ground remained stained by the unchanging weight of sorrow. Carolyn often reflected that so much death over so long a time had to leave something behind.
Then came the stories of Bathsheba Sherman.
She had lived nearby and is buried in the Harrisville Cemetery. But in the Perron household, she became something more than history. Andrea Perron wrote of Bathsheba not as a historical figure, but as a looming presence. The woman became legend in the farmhouse, and that legend bled into the family's daily life. Bathsheba was not a ghost to Andrea, not in the traditional sense. She was a force, territorial and cruel. She was blamed for the pinches, the bruises, the unexplained lash marks on Carolyn’s body. She was the entity that seemed to resent Carolyn’s role as matriarch, attempting to drive her out, or worse.
Local folklore cast Bathsheba as a woman who had murdered her infant child in a ritual offering to the devil. She was said to have lived in isolation, feared by townsfolk, and buried under suspicion. Andrea acknowledged that this version of Bathsheba might not have matched the historical records, but it didn't matter. What was in that house was not a product of paperwork. It was personal. It was intelligent. And it hated.
Yes, Bathsheba had been a real woman. They knew where she was buried. But in the Perron household, her name took on a second life. It became the mask for something older and more violent. Carolyn no longer needed proof of who Bathsheba had been in life. What mattered was the presence that had made itself known to her. It had chosen her, and it was relentless.
Andrea believed the house was a portal, a crossroads for many spirits. Bathsheba was simply the most aggressive among them. Some spirits had names. Others did not. But Bathsheba became the symbol, the face of whatever darkness had rooted itself into the house.
Andrea would later say, "We gave her the name Bathsheba, but that thing wore many faces. And my mother wore the bruises to prove it."
Carolyn's Ordeal
As the disturbances escalated inside the Old Arnold Estate, Carolyn Perron began to bear the brunt of something deeply malevolent. Her experiences went beyond the flickering lights and slamming doors that plagued the rest of the family. What Carolyn endured was personal, targeted, and increasingly violent.
She described feeling sharp, stabbing pains as though being pierced by invisible knitting needles. These episodes would come without warning and leave behind physical marks: scratches, bruises, and small puncture wounds with no discernible cause. On more than one occasion, Carolyn reported sudden burns appearing on her skin, as if seared by something unseen. She would awaken drenched in sweat, her energy sapped, as though something had drained her vitality in the night.
But the worst moments went far beyond physical pain. Carolyn recounted terrifying episodes in which she would lose time, falling into sudden trances or waking from sleep with no memory of the hours before. She experienced episodes of depression and fear so deep that she could not rise from bed. Her sense of reality began to fray.
One of the most disturbing encounters she ever shared involved an apparition unlike anything she had seen before: a grotesque entity hovering at the edge of her vision with a distorted, unnatural face that Andrea later described as "a moving mass… a beehive of countless moving parts." Though this detail is often debated and sometimes confused with more fictionalised accounts, Andrea herself confirmed that Carolyn described a face she could not look at directly without panic, its contours writhing like a living hive.
Carolyn also spoke of being assaulted in the night, pinned to the bed by an unseen force. Sometimes she was slapped, pushed, or felt as if icy fingers ran up her legs and arms. There were nights she refused to sleep at all. Her daughters remembered hearing her weep in the next room, or whisper prayers aloud in the dark.
Whatever was in the house seemed to focus its energy on Carolyn. Whether because she was the matriarch, the emotional centre of the home, or simply the most sensitive to its presence, something had chosen her. And it was relentless. It was not content to scare her. It wanted to break her.
One unforgettable moment happened late one winter’s night as Carolyn sat quietly in front of the fireplace, wrapped in her quilted dressing gown. She had just thrown on the last log of the evening when she heard laughter behind her. Turning around, she was startled to see the dining room aglow, not with their usual electric lights, but with the flickering warmth of oil lamps and candles. The space was transformed. Two men sat at a wooden table that had not been there moments earlier. A woman stood near the hearth, cooking in a fireplace that had long been sealed, closed up for over a century. Two or three children laughed and ran about, the mother calling for them to sit down.
Carolyn watched, frozen, as they used pewter steins and old utensils, that she late found out through research, were not used past the 1700s due to the dangers associated with the lead content of pewter. The entire room was alive with a different era. Then, one of the men at the table turned, locking eyes with her. He nudged the man beside him and pointed directly at Carolyn. That was when it struck her: she was the ghost to them. In that moment of eerie recognition, she realised the house was not merely haunted. It was a portal, a place where time thinned, where the past could glimpse the future, and the present could walk among the dead.
Andrea would later write that the haunting wasn’t a single event, but a campaign. A wearing down of the mind and soul. Carolyn’s strength, patience, and sanity were pushed to their limits. The house, it seemed, had found its favourite target.
Experiences of the Perron Children
While Carolyn bore the brunt of the most aggressive spiritual attacks, the Perron children each experienced their own share of the strange and unsettling.
At first, the girls spoke of “friendly spirits.” They gave them names, told their mother about the boy they saw wandering through the upstairs hallway, and described a woman in grey who simply watched them as they played. These early encounters felt more eerie than frightening. The girls treated the apparitions almost like imaginary friends. But over time, those innocent observations gave way to something darker.
Doors would creak open at night and close again with no one near. Cold spots would form around their beds, and no number of blankets could drive the chill away. The girls began waking with bruises and scratches they couldn’t explain. Andrea, the eldest, often heard whispers in her room that would rise in volume until they became incoherent murmurs, as if several voices were speaking at once just beneath her ear.
Cindy was terrified of the bedroom closet. She claimed things came out of it at night and that she would sometimes hear her toys moving behind the closed door. Christine once screamed in the night when she saw a shadowy figure crouched beside her bed. When Roger ran in, there was nothing there. But she was shaking and refused to sleep in that room for weeks.
April, the youngest, spent hours speaking to someone only she could see. She called him Oliver. She said he was kind but sad. Andrea later reflected that April’s interactions with Oliver may have been more complex than they realised at the time. What appeared to be innocent conversations may have been something else entirely.
One of the girls also told Carolyn about a woman who would sit beside her bed at night and gently kiss her on the cheek. At first, it was comforting. She thought of her as a guardian or maternal spirit. But over time, the feeling changed. The room would grow cold when the woman appeared. Her presence became more solemn, more intrusive, and eventually, the girl stopped speaking about it altogether.
There were more terrifying moments too.
Cindy was once locked inside a wooden storage trunk during a game of hide and seek. She had climbed in to hide and pulled the lid down herself, but when she tried to get out, it wouldn't move. The lid wasn't latched, but something seemed to hold it firmly shut from the outside. She screamed and pounded her fists on the inside, her cries muffled by the thick wooden walls. It was several minutes before the rest of the family found her. They tried to lift the lid but it wouldn't budge. Panic set in as Cindy's screams began to weaken. With no latch and no visible obstruction, the trunk refused to open. Then, suddenly and inexplicably, the lid released. Cindy was pale, gasping for air, and drenched in sweat. The family was horrified. The fear wasn't just from the possibility of suffocation, but from the absolute certainty that something intelligent had held that trunk closed.
Christine told her mother she had passed directly through something cold and invisible in the hallway. She had been running late for the school bus and ran back inside to grab something she had forgotten. As she sprinted through the hallway, she suddenly felt as though she had stepped into a wall of ice. Her body went numb and her breath caught in her throat. She collapsed onto the floor, dazed and shaking. Within hours she developed a high fever, nausea, and chills. The illness lingered for days, but no medical cause could be found. From that day on, she refused to walk down that hallway alone.
The "hot closet" was one of the most feared places in the house. Built around the old chimney shaft, it radiated intense, unnatural heat even in the dead of winter. Several of the girls said they heard scratching sounds from inside and voices when they stood near it. Cindy believed something lived in there and begged to have her bed moved away from the wall that bordered it.
These moments marked a turning point. They were no longer simply being watched or whispered to. They were being harmed.
Perhaps the most unsettling element of the children’s experiences was their consistency. The stories they told never wavered. The figures appeared in the same places. The sensations were the same. Even as the girls grew older, their memories remained intact. There was no gradual fading, no second-guessing what had happened. Whatever had been there with them, it left an imprint.
And yet, in the earliest months, the children often found it easier to talk about the spirits than their parents did. They were less afraid to speak aloud what everyone already suspected. The house was not just old. It was inhabited. And it wanted to be known.
Roger's Turning Point
Roger Perron did not enter the farmhouse as a believer. Like many fathers, he approached the unknown with a practical mindset and a strong sense of duty. At first, he dismissed the incidents as overactive imagination, natural house noises, or the side effects of a stressful move. While Carolyn and the children bore the brunt of the activity, Roger kept his focus on work and providing for the family. But the house had other plans.
Over time, his resolve began to erode. He could not ignore the physical evidence: the cold drafts with no source, doors opening despite being tied shut, the sounds of footsteps in empty rooms, and his wife’s declining health. The moment flies began to infest the home in the dead of winter, Roger was deeply disturbed.
It began gradually. Flies would appear suddenly in sealed rooms, clinging to windows and walls in thick clusters. Roger would hunt them down with a fly swatter, pacing from room to room in an obsessive routine. He killed them by the hundreds, yet they always returned. It made no sense. The house had no livestock or garbage buildup, and the season made the infestation even more confounding. They called pest control, but no source was ever found. The exterminator left with more questions than answers.
Roger’s frustration mounted. He would stalk through the house at night, hunting them, muttering under his breath. The buzzing became unbearable. No matter how many he killed, they came back. Andrea would later recall this period as one of the earliest signs that something in the house was asserting itself. Even Lorraine Warren would describe such infestations as a manifestation, a spiritual symptom rather than a natural one.
But the real turning point came when Carolyn broke down and revealed the full extent of her torment. She had been keeping some of it to herself to avoid upsetting the children or further straining their already tense marriage. She told him everything: the voices, the bruises, the oppressive presence that seemed to follow her from room to room. She described the pain she felt as if needles were being jabbed into her skin, the weight of the air pressing on her chest, and the figure she once awoke to in their bedroom, lying beside her in the dark.
Roger could see it plainly: his wife was terrified, exhausted, and unraveling under the weight of something he could no longer deny. In that quiet moment in the kitchen, with Carolyn clinging to a cup of coffee and her last thread of patience, Roger finally admitted it.
“I believe you,” he said.
It was not an exorcism or a ghostly sighting that changed his mind. It was the look in his wife’s eyes and the conviction in her voice. Roger’s admission did not come easily, but once spoken, it opened a new chapter in the Perron family's struggle. They were no longer divided in belief. They were united against whatever it was that had claimed their home.
The Spiritual Crescendo
As the years passed, the atmosphere in the Old Arnold Estate grew increasingly hostile. What had begun as subtle unease evolved into a waking nightmare. Lights flickered for no reason, regardless of the wiring work Roger attempted. Objects would be hurled across rooms, often narrowly missing someone. There were times Carolyn would simply lose hours, slipping into sudden exhaustion or trancelike states. She grew pale, thinner, often ill. She began to feel she was not alone, even in her own mind. The house was no longer just active, it was predatory.
One night, Carolyn awoke to find a presence beside her in bed. She couldn’t move, couldn’t speak, but felt it breathing. It vanished the moment she could scream. At other times, she would feel hands on her back or legs, as though something unseen was crawling into bed with her. She began to dread nightfall.
The girls were struggling too. They avoided sleeping alone. Cynthia and April began sharing a bed out of fear, while Christine sometimes slept on the floor beside Andrea. At night, they heard whispering voices just beyond the walls. Doors creaked open slowly, deliberately, without anyone on the other side. Shadows moved across the ceiling. The tapping, scratching, and distant cries never stopped. One by one, the children began to speak of "the others," as they called them, spirits that seemed to be watching, sometimes even trying to speak.
The pets refused to go into certain rooms, and when they were forced to, they howled and clawed at the door until let out. The cellar was especially dreadful. No matter how many times Roger tied and barricaded the cellar door, it would creak open again. They began stacking furniture in front of it. Still, the door would somehow shift in the night. Carolyn believed something was trying to come through.
Roger, often away for work, missed the brunt of this. And when he was home, his instinct was to dismiss what he could not explain. He hated the feeling of helplessness and rejected the idea of spirits outright. But over time, even he could not ignore how Carolyn was changing. He became withdrawn, at war with himself. To acknowledge the truth was to admit he had failed to protect his family. And so, he denied.
But Carolyn’s frustration turned to rage. She needed to be believed. The bruises on her body, the disorientation, the smells of rotting flesh that only she seemed to notice, it was driving her to the edge. The house was no longer simply haunted. It was orchestrating a breakdown, slowly dismantling her.
That is when Ed and Lorraine Warren arrived.
The Séance and Fallout
The Séance and Fallout
Andrea Perron, desperate for answers and overwhelmed by the escalating attacks on her mother, began searching for someone who could help. At the time, she had never heard of Ed and Lorraine Warren. A local contact who knew of the Warrens’ growing reputation as demonologists and paranormal investigators suggested she reach out. Andrea was initially skeptical, unsure if anyone could truly understand what her family was enduring. But the situation in the farmhouse had grown dire. Carolyn’s health and sanity seemed to be deteriorating under the weight of the constant harassment.
When Carolyn learned the Warrens were willing to visit, she agreed without consulting Roger, who was away on an extended work trip for eight to ten days. With no way to reach him, she made the decision alone. Roger returned expecting a quiet evening with his family, a chance to watch the Red Sox and enjoy a peaceful dinner. Instead, he was told that paranormal investigators were on their way. Roger was furious. He felt betrayed. He demanded that Carolyn cancel the visit, but by then it was too late. The Warrens were already en route, and without cellphones, there was no way to stop them.
When the Warrens arrived, it wasn’t just Ed and Lorraine. They brought a priest, a medium named Mary Pastorella, an audio technician, and a full camera crew. Roger’s frustration boiled over. To him, it felt more like a circus than a solution. When Lorraine told him they needed to conduct a séance, Roger adamantly refused. Lorraine replied, “If you really love your wife, you will let us do this.”
The séance took place in 1974 in the dining room of the farmhouse. Everyone gathered around the heavy oak table. The lights were dimmed. Candles flickered. A tense silence hung in the air. Those present included the Warrens, Mary Pastorella, Carolyn, the priest, and members of the audio and camera crew. They held hands as Mary began to speak in Latin, attempting to reach the spirit responsible for the torment.
Without warning, Carolyn threw her head back and howled like a wild animal. The sound was raw and unnatural. The priest broke the circle in panic and fled to the far side of the room, visibly shaking. Mary Pastorella collapsed, unconscious. Then the oak table began to rise, levitating off the ground before crashing back down with such force that deep gouges remain in the floor to this day.
Carolyn, still seated in a solid thirty-pound wooden chair, began to levitate. Her body contorted inward, folding in on itself in a way that defied anatomy. She spoke in an unearthly language, the voice not her own. Those watching feared her bones would snap. Then, as if thrown by invisible hands, the chair shot across the room, hurling Carolyn some twenty feet before slamming her headfirst into the floor.
The impact was horrifying. The crack of her skull against the floor echoed through the house. Her children thought they had just watched their mother die.
In that moment, Roger Perron lost all control. He punched Ed Warren, breaking his nose, and physically forced the group out of the house. When the crew returned to the basement to collect their gear, they found their cameras, previously mounted on tripods, completely destroyed. Thousands of dollars of equipment were left behind, abandoned in pieces. The Warrens left the farmhouse without knowing if Carolyn had survived.
The séance did not banish the spirit. If anything, it had made things worse. The haunting continued, and the family remained in the house for six more years, until they finally left in 1980. The memory of that night never left them.
Lingering Effects After Moving
Even after leaving the house in 1980, the Perron family remained marked by their years in the Old Arnold Estate. Carolyn never fully recovered from the spiritual trauma. The daughters carried memories of fear, confusion, and helplessness well into adulthood. Andrea Perron would spend decades trying to understand what had happened, eventually chronicling their experiences in her trilogy House of Darkness, House of Light.
The hauntings had ended, but the damage lingered.
One of the most haunting experiences for Carolyn occurred late one winter’s night. She was sitting alone by the fireplace, wrapped in her quilted dressing gown, having just thrown on the last log of the evening, when she heard children laughing behind her. Turning around, she was stunned to see the dining room fully illuminated, not by the electric fixtures of her own time, but by the soft glow of oil lamps and candles. A table had appeared that wasn’t there before. Two men sat at it, while a woman bustled at a hearth that had been sealed for over a century. Children ran laughing through the room, and the mother shouted for them to take their seats. Carolyn noticed they were drinking from pewter steins, long obsolete since the 1700s.
Then, one of the men turned his head and looked directly at her. He nudged the man beside him, pointing straight at Carolyn. That was when she realised: she was the ghost to them. In that moment, Carolyn came to believe they were living not just in a haunted house, but in a kind of portal, a place where the past and present bled into each other, and both sides could see.
Many of the Perron children had either moved out or gone off to college by the time Roger and Carolyn decided to sell the house. When they heard the news, the children were devastated. Despite all they had endured within those walls, the farmhouse was still their home. It was where they had grown up, shared countless memories, and, in a strange way, bonded through the adversity. The land held part of their story, their identity. Letting it go felt like losing a piece of themselves.
Even though many of the children had long since left the house physically, emotionally they remained tethered to it. Learning of the sale stirred a deep grief. It was not just a house they were leaving behind, but the place where they had learned to endure, to survive, and to love one another through the darkest of nights.
Carolyn, too, struggled. The decision to leave wasn’t easy. But after nearly a decade of torment, she knew it was time. Time to try to heal. Time to reclaim whatever was left of their peace.
Though the family finally left the house, the house never quite left them.
Hollywood Calls
In 2013, Warner Bros. released The Conjuring, directed by James Wan. It was based loosely on the Warrens’ notes from the Perron investigation. The film was a box office success and helped launch a new era of paranormal cinema, giving rise to a sprawling cinematic universe of hauntings and demonic encounters.
Andrea Perron, the eldest of the Perron children, was gracious in her response. She praised the storytelling, calling it a beautiful and compelling film. But she also made it clear: that is not really how it happened.
In interviews and writings, Andrea explained that the truth was messier, slower, and in many ways more terrifying. There was no neatly packaged conclusion. No definitive exorcism that cast out a single malevolent force. What the Perrons endured was not a two-hour possession story, it was a nearly ten-year-long unraveling of their sense of safety, sanity, and family unity.
She spoke of the spirits as layered and varied, each one with its own story, personality, and energy. Some were playful, some mournful, and some openly hostile. What the family faced was not a singular haunting, but a spiritual ecosystem. And rather than one climactic battle between good and evil, there was a daily wear and tear, a slow erosion of the will, of faith, and sometimes of the body itself.
Andrea made clear that while The Conjuring was entertaining, it only scratched the surface of what really happened inside the Old Arnold Estate. Her trilogy, House of Darkness, House of Light, was her attempt to tell the full story. It is not just a paranormal account, it is a memoir of love, fear, survival, and the unexplainable bonds between the living and the dead.
The contrast between the books and the film is stark. The Conjuring compresses years of complex experiences into a single dramatic event. It turns a long haunting into a singular possession. The movie ends in triumph, but Andrea’s books do not offer easy resolution. They speak to a lingering presence, a life reshaped by trauma, and a family that endured without closure. What Hollywood captured was the horror. What Andrea wrote was the truth.
Convergence Zone: A Major Topic The Movie didn’t cover
Amid the overwhelming tales of spirits, shadow figures, poltergeist activity, and ghostly apparitions, the Old Arnold Estate also became the setting for something that even the Perrons struggled to make sense of. These were not just classic haunting phenomena. Some events stood outside the bounds of what most people would even consider part of a haunting at all.
Andrea Perron herself has hinted at this in interviews and in her books. Though the house was deeply rooted in death and spiritual activity, there were incidents that bore the markings of something else entirely, something more cosmic or alien in nature.
Lights in the sky. Orbs that moved with intelligence. Beams of concentrated light that appeared indoors without a source. Strange humming sounds that vibrated through walls and bodies but left no trace. Even time itself seemed to stretch and bend on occasion.
One of the most notable claims involved a moment of missing time. Andrea recalled instances where hours seemed to vanish, where the clock would jump ahead inexplicably. She described one moment when she and her sisters were outside, saw something unusual in the sky, and then couldn’t account for the time that passed. These were not frequent events, but when they happened, they were deeply unsettling.
There was also a deeply strange and unnerving moment involving the family's pony. One of the Perron sisters went outside to tend to the animal and described seeing it frozen in place, staring into the sky, seemingly paralysed by something unseen. As she approached it, she was overwhelmed by a sensation of dizziness and nausea, coupled with an unnatural silence that fell over the surrounding woods. She later described the experience as if time itself had been momentarily suspended. The pony eventually returned to normal, but the event was never forgotten. Andrea would later say it was one of many incidents that made her question whether something even more inexplicable than ghosts had been present.
Then there was the windstorm incident with Cynthia. With Roger away and Carolyn out shopping with two of the children, Cindy was left alone on a stormy afternoon. One of the horses threatened to escape after a board came loose from the corral. Panicked, Cindy raced out to fix it but struggled in the brutal wind, unable to hold the heavy plank in place alone. Despite screaming for help and receiving none from her sister inside the house, the other end of the plank suddenly lifted and held itself in place, suspended in midair by something unseen. She thanked whatever was helping her and completed the task. The board never shifted. The horses were saved. When Carolyn returned and Cindy recounted the story, she insisted: "I wasn’t alone." Something had come to her aid. Something invisible.
Andrea has openly considered whether the house sat on a kind of energetic portal, something that not only allowed spirits to linger, but perhaps allowed phenomena from other dimensions to bleed through. She didn’t insist the events were definitively alien, only that they felt beyond the usual framework of ghosts and demons.
It’s a reminder that true high strangeness doesn’t always fit into neat boxes. The Perron family lived through a spectrum of unexplained experiences. And though spirits dominated their lives at the Old Arnold Estate, they were not the only forces at play.
In the words of Andrea herself: "There were things that happened in that house that had nothing to do with ghosts. And those are the things that still keep me up at night."
Convergence Zones: The Places Where All Paranormal Roads Meet
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Andrea’s Decision to Write the Trilogy
Determined to set the record straight, Andrea wrote House of Darkness House of Light, a three-volume memoir chronicling her family’s ordeal. The books are long, reflective, and deeply personal. They do not offer tidy answers or Hollywood endings. Instead, they document every remembered detail, the good, the strange, and the horrifying.
Where the film told a story of good versus evil, Andrea’s books speak more to co-existence, endurance, and the complexity of spiritual experience. The house, she argues, was a crossroads for many spirits, some trapped, some wandering, some hostile. but more importantly, the books show love.
The House, Post Perron Family
After the Perron family moved out of the Old Arnold Estate in 1980, the house passed through several owners. Some tried to live in peace. Others acknowledged that whatever had haunted the Perrons had never fully left. The families that came and went often did not speak publicly about their time there, but whispers of unease and private accounts of strange activity continued to circulate in the local community.
In the years that followed, the property served various purposes. One of the most unusual periods came when it was briefly used as a daycare. Parents and staff later recounted eerie stories from that time. Children reportedly spoke of playing with invisible friends and seeing a "crooked-neck lady" watching them. What startled the adults most was the consistency with which different children described the same figure, a woman with a broken or twisted neck who would stand silently in the shadows.
Even decades later, a crude drawing remained in the basement, scrawled on the wall or a piece of old furniture. It depicted a stick-figure woman with a long, sharply angled neck, almost bent backward. No one knew which child had drawn it. But it echoed something chilling: the tragic history of the house included at least two suicides by hanging, both of which occurred on or near the property. The children could not have known this.
Over the years, ownership changed hands several times. Some families attempted to downplay or dismiss the house's reputation. Others sold quietly and quickly. Each family left behind more stories: strange dreams, footsteps in empty rooms, inexplicable mood shifts, or illnesses that seemed to vanish after leaving the house. One owner allegedly refused to sleep upstairs, choosing instead to stay on the ground floor for reasons they never fully explained.
Other visitors and owners over the years have described cold spots, shadow figures, slamming doors, and an oppressive atmosphere. Paranormal investigators have returned to the site many times, some capturing unexplained voices, movement, or interference with equipment.
In more recent years, the house entered a new phase as a hub of paranormal tourism. Ownership shifted toward those who embraced the haunted legacy of the Old Arnold Estate. The house began offering overnight stays, guided tours, and livestreamed investigations. Countless paranormal YouTubers and investigators have documented their experiences there, often reporting strange encounters, equipment malfunctions, and unexplained audio. These videos have reached millions of viewers, adding to the estate’s notoriety and turning it into a high-profile destination for seekers of the supernatural.
Despite the decades that have passed, the Old Arnold Estate remains active in the eyes of many. Its reputation has grown, and in recent years it has become a destination for paranormal tourism and investigations. Ownership has shifted toward those who have leaned into its haunted legacy, offering overnight stays, guided tours, and livestreamed investigations. Paranormal enthusiasts from all over the world now travel to Harrisville for a chance to experience the estate for themselves. For some, the house has become a pilgrimage site. A place to confront the unknown.
Andrea Perron and Her Story
Andrea Perron, the eldest daughter of Roger and Carolyn Perron, has become the voice and chronicler of her family’s extraordinary experiences in the Old Arnold Estate. While the Hollywood version of events condensed and fictionalised many aspects, Andrea chose a different path. Through her trilogy, House of Darkness, House of Light, she has spent years piecing together the full, unvarnished story of what her family endured.
Her books are not just a retelling of frightening encounters. They are meditations on memory, family, trauma, and the boundaries of reality itself. They blend diary entries, philosophical reflections, and deeply emotional recollections to paint a rich and often harrowing portrait of life inside a house that defied explanation.
Andrea's voice is clear and empathetic. She does not sensationalise, nor does she rush to explain. Her writing respects the mystery while honouring the deeply human experience of living in a place where the past and present seemed to overlap. Readers will find themselves moved not just by the terrifying moments, but by the love that held the Perron family together.
If you have been intrigued by the case file presented here, we wholeheartedly encourage you to explore Andrea Perron’s books. House of Darkness, House of Light: Volumes 1–3 are available online, and we will include a direct link to them at the end of this article.
They are immersive, unsettling, and at times breathtaking. More than anything, they remind us that the real story is always more complex, and more human, than any film can portray.
House of Darkness House of Light: The True Story: Volume 1
House of Darkness House of Light: The True Story: Volume 2
House of Darkness House of Light: The True Story: Volume 3