The Real Story Behind The Horror Movie 'The Conjuring'

By Rachel Zalucki · 1,150 words

The real story of The Conjuring is scarier than the movies. It's about the Perron family and the evil at Enfield. In 2013, The Conjuring came out and everyone loved it. Critics said it seemed so real, like a family in Rhode Island really went through it. Others believed that the director, James Wan, made everything up. However, the real story is about a scary event that occurred to Ed and Lorraine Warren.

Ed Warren served in WWII and used to work as a police officer. He started calling himself a devil expert after he learned all about them on his own. Lorraine, his wife, said she could see scary things and talk to devils. Ed and Lorraine formed the New England Society for Psychic Research in 1952 so that they could help people look for ghosts. After looking into the Amityville ghosts, they became famous.

The movies based on their two most popular stories made them very famous. The stories in these movies are about how Ed and Lorraine helped two families who were having problems with monsters. Even though the movies may make things seem too good to be true, the Warrens say that everything in them is based on real events. Lorraine helped the directors and made sure the stories weren't too dramatic after Ed died in 2006. Still, the events that led to The Conjuring are still very scary and give people chills.

What is the true story of 'The Conjuring'?

Long ago, in 1971, in a big farmhouse in Harrisville, Rhode Island, the Perron family moved in. There were seven of them: Carolyn, Roger, and their five daughters. Strange things began happening as soon as they settled in. Things started out small. The broom would either be gone or being moved by itself, according to Carolyn. It sounded like something was scraping against the kettle in the kitchen when no one was there. Despite having cleaned the kitchen floor, little piles of dirt would keep showing up. There, with the Perron family's scary events, is where the real story of The Conjuring begins.

The girls began to see ghosts in and around the house. All of them were safe, but some of them were very angry. Carolyn apparently looked into the house's history. She found out that it had been owned by the same family for eight generations. Many family members had died in strange or terrible ways. Some children had drowned in a nearby stream, one was murdered, and a few had hung themselves in the attic. That scary ghost was Bathsheba, who was shown in the movie.

Andrea Perron, the oldest girl, said, "The spirit believed she owned the house and didn't like my mom challenging her for that."

Who was Bathsheba Sherman?

Actually, there was a real lady called Bathsheba Sherman who lived on the Perrons' land in the middle of the 1800s. People talked about her being a worshipper of evil spirits, and some said she might have been part of a bad event involving a neighbor's child, but there was never any official investigation. They buried her in a cemetery nearby, in the city center of Harrisville. The Perron family believed it was Bathsheba's ghost causing them trouble.

According to Andrea, the family felt other ghostly beings around too. These spirits smelled really bad, like something decaying, and they would make beds move off the ground. Andrea said her dad felt a cold, awful presence behind him whenever he went into the basement. They usually avoided the cellar, which had a dirt floor, but sometimes the heating system would stop working suddenly, so Roger, Andrea's dad, had to go down to fix it.

For ten years, the Warrens visited the family's house many times to check things out. Once, Lorraine tried to talk to the spirits there using a special ceremony called a seance. While they were doing it, Carolyn Perron got taken over by a spirit. She started speaking in a strange language and even lifted up from her chair while sitting!

Andrea said, 'I felt like I was going to faint. My mother started talking in a strange language with a voice that wasn't hers. Her chair went up in the air, and she got thrown across the room.'

In the movie, Ed does an exorcism instead of a seance, but Lorraine says that's not what they would do. She says it should only be done by Catholic priests.

After the seance, Roger told the Warrens to leave because he was worried about his wife's mind. Andrea says they stayed in the house because they didn't have enough money to move until 1980. After they moved, the strange things stopped happening.

Strange Things That Happened in Enfield

Six years after the Perron family was scared by a monster, another family in Enfield, England started having the same kinds of scary experiences. In August 1977, the Hodgson family began seeing and hearing strange stuff. Janet, who was 11 then, remembered waking up to see her dresser moving across the room she shared with her brother.

Janet said, "We yelled 'Mum! Mum!'" "We were scared, but also curious."

After that, they heard knocking coming from different parts of the house. Janet's mom called the cops because she thought it might be thieves or strangers hiding. When the police officer arrived, he saw a chair move by itself. People from the Daily Mirror who came to write about the spirit in Enfield also had strange experiences. Toys like marbles and Legos flew around the room and got hot when they were touched. Once they were folded, the clothes flew off the tables and all over the room. They heard dogs barking in rooms that weren't occupied, lights flashing, coins popping out of nowhere, and furniture moving without anyone touching it.

One day, the big fireplace in the upstairs room got pulled out of the wall. After that, people from all over came, saying they could talk to ghosts. They wanted to learn about the spooky stuff happening in Enfield. A lot of people thought the kids were lying, especially since one of them said they once made something up. The Warrens had a different view, though.

They quickly believed there was a very scary ghost nearby. Not everyone believed them, though. They thought Ed Warren was inventing scary stories about ghosts. It was said that he was even making things up. In this part of the story, the Warrens didn't try to get rid of the ghost like they would in a movie, which is different from the book. The scary things stopped all of a sudden in 1979, two years after they began their investigation. The family says they didn't do anything to stop them.

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