Recently, a friend of
mine in Rhode Island was walking through a local cemetery when she stopped to take
a photograph and send it to me. It was Bathsheba Sherman's headstone. It was
clean, cared for, and surrounded by her family. That is where she belongs; Not
in a horror movie, not in a ghost story. In the cemetery, with her people, as a
real woman who lived and died like anyone else.
The historic Riverside Cemetery — where
the truth endures, long after the myths have faded.
Courtesy of Elise Giammarco Carlson
Right now, there is a lot
of noise surrounding the so-called "Conjuring House" in Harrisville,
Rhode Island. There are legal disputes, media stories, and plenty of
people still trying to make money from the legend. But Bathsheba Sherman's
grave is still there, quiet and real, while people continue arguing over a
story that should never have began in the first place.
That image matters to me
because I have spent years trying to correct this story. It has not been easy
work, and it has not always been pleasant. But I have kept saying the same
thing: the stories told by the Perron family is not supported by the historical
record, and a real woman's name was used in a way that is unfair and
false.
A lot of the drama around
that property today comes from the false history built around it. The disputes,
the headlines, the tourists, and the public fascination all trace back to a
story that was never backed up by documented facts. That is not a side issue.
That is the point.
So let us start with the facts.
Who was Bathsheba Sherman? What was actually claimed about her? When did those
claims first appear? And where does the evidence lead? The answer is not
hidden. It is in the record, if people are willing to look at it.
The Name They Plucked from a Cemetery
Let me be as plain as I know how to be: Bathsheba Sherman
had absolutely nothing to do with the farmhouse on Round Top Road. She was not
a witch, she was not a murderer, she was not a Satanist. She was never accused
of being any of those things — not in a court of law, not in a newspaper, not
in a town record, not in any document that has ever been located in any archive
in the state of Rhode Island.
She was a woman who lived,
died, and was buried with her family. Then, sometime around August of 1973,
someone took her name — either from a cemetery stone or an old newspaper
clipping — and attached it to a ghost story. That is really what happened.
The idea appears to have originated with Carolyn Perron,
the matriarch of the family that purchased the farmhouse, and
with Lorraine Warren, the self-described clairvoyant who became deeply
entangled with the Perrons' story. It was then amplified, dramatized, and
ultimately monetized by Andrea Perron, the eldest daughter, who spent decades
transforming a childhood memory into a trilogy of books and a Hollywood
blockbuster.
"The real victim of this entire saga is not the Perron
family. The real victim is Bathsheba Sherman."
I want you to hold onto that. Because in the years since The
Conjuring was released in 2013, Bathsheba's name has been spoken millions
of times in theaters, on podcasts, on YouTube channels, in articles and blogs,
and in the breathless whisper of paranormal enthusiasts who have never once
stopped to ask: where is the evidence? She has been called a witch, a
child killer, a handmaiden of Lucifer — before a global audience that had no
reason to question any of it, because it was presented as based on a true
story.
She deserved better than this. She still deserves better.
And the work of saying so — clearly, publicly, and with the documentation to
back it up — is not optional. It is necessary.
The Spark That Started a Wildfire
The blame for this begins
with Carolyn Perron and Lorraine Warren. Both made claims about Bathsheba
Sherman, and neither appears to have done the basic historical research needed before
making those claims. Because of that, a false story spread. It damaged a real
woman's reputation and helped make money for people who had no rightful claim
to her name.
Here is what the documented record actually shows:
There are no stories about Bathsheba
Sherman, and no accusations against
her, in any record before August
of 1973. Not one. I have looked. Other researchers
have looked. The absence of evidence is not a small problem for this story. It
is the problem.
Carolyn Perron claimed that she did research and found
historical records about Bathsheba. Those records do not exist. Whatever
Carolyn believed she found, it has never been produced, never been verified,
and never been corroborated by any independent historical source. You cannot
find what was never there.
Lorraine Warren claimed something even more dramatic:
that she stepped across the threshold of the Harrisville farmhouse and
psychically sensed the name "Bathsheba." This story has been repeated
as gospel in paranormal circles for decades. But here is what the timeline
actually reveals: a woman named Donna, from a group called P.I.R.O.
(Parapsychology Investigation Research Organization), had already name-dropped
"Bathsheba" to Lorraine Warren before Lorraine ever set foot in that
house — having gotten the name from Carolyn Perron in the first place. Lorraine
did not psychically conjure a name from the ether. She was told the name, and
she repeated it. That is a very different thing.
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A Note on the Tabloid Record
A
sensationalist tabloid article, published approximately between 1981 and 1985
and written by Tony Spera, described "Carol and Ronald Barron" — a
thinly veiled stand-in for the Perron family — being terrorized by a ghost.
At that point in the story's evolution, the entity described was headless.
Not bent-necked. Not hollow-eyed. Not jagged-toothed. Headless.
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That same tabloid piece contained what appears to be the
earliest written attribution of a specific supernatural act to the entity later
identified as Bathsheba. The passage, attributed to "Ed" — presumably
Ed Warren — read as follows:
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"A 98 year old woman who
practiced black witchcraft had lived there. In her earlier years, she had
murdered her own child — by driving a nail through her head — as a gift to
Lucifer!"
— Attributed to Ed Warren,
published in a sensationalist tabloid, circa 1981–1985
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Let me be clear about this.
That quote came from a supermarket tabloid. It was not a court record. It was
not a town record. It was not a reliable newspaper account. It was a
sensational story printed in the same kind of publication that ran stories
about bat-children and alien abductions.
This matters because the
story kept changing. First it was a headless ghost, then it was a woman with
her head hanging to one side, then it became a bent-necked figure. Later, it
turned into a full horror-movie image with hollow black eyes, jagged yellow
teeth, wild hair, cobwebs, child sacrifice, Satanic devotion, and a 98-year-old
body dragging itself through a farmhouse in Rhode Island.
That is not how reliable
evidence works. When a story gets more dramatic every time it is retold, that
is a warning sign. It shows how memory, suggestion, and myth-making can pile on
top of each other until people start treating the later version as fact. It is
not proof of a haunting. It is the opposite of proof.
From Conjecture to the Bank
Andrea Perron took what her
mother and the Warrens had conjured — their assumptions, their interpretations,
their speculations — and she ran with them, all the way to the publishing house,
all the way to the movie set, and all the way to the bank.
She published three volumes
about her family's experience at the farmhouse, long after the family had left
and long after the story had been repeated, shaped, and reshaped. I am not
saying this to be cruel. I am saying it because it matters. Andrea had a
responsibility to check the facts, and she did not do that in the way this
story required.
As an author who has published six historical
non-fiction books, I can tell you that research is the most important part of
the work. You do not get to publish claims you cannot prove. You do not get to
name a real person as a witch, a murderer, and a Satanist without a single
piece of documented evidence to support it. And when researchers present you
with documented facts that disprove your characterizations — as happened with
Andrea — you do not get to simply double down and walk away.
Andrea's public record has
serious contradictions. They are not small mistakes.
In a 2013 interview for San Antonio Living
(Channel 4), Andrea described what happened on the day the Perron family moved
into the farmhouse. She said that within approximately five minutes of arriving
— almost before they knew anything about the house at all — she encountered an
oddly dressed man in the dining room and greeted him politely. Yet when Andrea
appeared on the program Paranormal Witness (Season 4, Episode 10, aired
October 28, 2015), she told a different version entirely: no encounter on
moving day. Instead, she described seeing a reflection in the glass while
washing dishes — a scene placed considerably later in their tenancy. These are
not two sides of the same memory. They are two different stories.
On the subject of the film itself, Andrea first claimed
that The Conjuring had "toned down" the real events — implying
the truth was even more harrowing than what appeared on screen. She later
reversed course and acknowledged the film was exaggerated. The reversal,
conveniently, came while she was still actively promoting her books as the
"true story."
Perhaps the most remarkable document I possess is an
email Andrea sent to me in 2016, submitted through my website at
jaimerubiowriter.com. In it, she wrote:
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"The Conjuring and the
Warren files did a huge disservice to Bathsheba's memory and I had no control
over how she was represented and vilified in the film but I will always
defend her because I do not believe she was guilty of what she has been accused
of by Lorraine Warren."
— Andrea Perron, personal email
to J'aime Rubio, 2016
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I want you to read that again. And then I want you to
consider that in Andrea's own published books — the ones she authored, the ones
she controlled, the ones she signed her name to — Bathsheba Sherman is
demonized repeatedly. She is blamed for the alleged hauntings. She is described
as "lusting" after Roger Perron, Andrea's own father. She is the
villain of the entire narrative. Andrea wrote those words. No one forced her
hand.
That contradiction matters.
What Andrea told me privately does not match what she published publicly, and
that is central to this whole story.
There is also the matter of description. Andrea has
recounted her mother Carolyn's first encounter with the entity in
extraordinary, cinematic detail:
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"It floated. It didn't have
any feet...hollow black sockets...jagged yellow teeth...sprigs of hair like
wild sprigs of hair...covered in cobwebs."
— Andrea Perron, as quoted in
her public accounts of the Harrisville farmhouse
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Compare this to what was actually published in 1977, in
the North Smithfield-Burrillville Observer — the earliest known printed account
of this story. That article described, simply, "an apparition of an old
woman with head hanging to one side" who said: "Get out, get out,
or I'll drive you out with death and gloom."
That first account was
simple. It did not include hollow eyes, jagged teeth, wild hair, or cobwebs.
Those details came later. When a story becomes more detailed and more
frightening over time, that does not make it more reliable. It usually means
the story has been changed.
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On the Question of Memory and Responsibility
I
do not doubt that the Perron children experienced something unusual in that
house — children are sensitive, imaginative, and deeply affected by their
parents' anxiety and belief. But experiencing something unusual is not the
same as experiencing what Andrea has described. And publishing those
descriptions as documented fact, naming a real woman as their source, without
a single piece of corroborating historical evidence — that is where
experience ends and responsibility begins. At this point, I doubt Andrea even
knows where her memories end and her fabrications begin.
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What Pam Kenyon Cardin Actually Witnessed
I need to pause here and speak about someone who mattered
a great deal to me, and whose testimony has never received the platform it
deserved: Pam Kenyon Cardin.
This piece is dedicated, in part, to Pam's family — may
they rest in peace. Pam was a direct blood descendant of the family that owned
the farmhouse before the Perrons. She was an adult on the day the
Perrons arrived. She remembered it clearly — not because it was supernatural,
but because it was chaotic, inconvenient, and deeply disruptive to her family
in the middle of a New England winter.
What Pam remembered contradicts
several important parts of the Perron story. That is why her testimony matters.
Andrea Perron has stated that her family purchased the
farmhouse in December of 1970 and moved in during the first week of January
1971. Public deed records tell a different story. The property was sold to
Carolyn Perron, Roger Perron, and Cora Perron in January of 1972 — a full year
later than Andrea stated. This is not a minor discrepancy. It is a verifiable,
documented fact that calls into question the reliability of the timeline Andrea
has presented as truth.
Pam remembered moving day vividly. Here is what she told
me, in her own words:
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"Perron had somehow gotten
use of a moving van and we had to pack up my grandfather and move him all in
one day...I have no idea why everything had to be done the way it was."
— Pam Kenyon Cardin, as
documented by J'aime Rubio
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The Perrons arrived before
her grandfather was fully moved out. That meant Pam's family had to pack him up
and relocate him quickly, in winter, with very little notice. It was stressful.
It was rushed. It was not paranormal.
If Andrea or her sisters saw an "oddly dressed
man" in the dining room that day, the most likely explanation is that they
saw Earl Kenyon Jr. — Pam's father — who would have been present
helping with the move. An middle aged gentleman, perhaps dressed in practical New
England working clothes, in a house that was mid-transition between families.
Not a ghost.
Then there is the matter of what Roger Perron reportedly
said about the former owner's parting words. According to Roger, the previous
owner told him: "Do your family a favor, keep the lights on at
night." A chilling warning, if true. Except that Pam flatly stated it
was not true. Her grandfather was a practical New England man. He had lived in
that farmhouse without incident for over 47 years. He did not believe in hauntings.
If he said anything about lights — and Pam doubted even that — it was because
an elderly man navigating dark stairs at night needed to be careful. That is
not the supernatural. That is common sense.
And the famous lightning incident — described in the
tabloid article as a "beam of psychic light shooting down the
chimney"? It was lightning. A real electrical storm. Real lightning struck
the chimney, traveled into the house, and caused real physical damage. Sarah
Butterworth Kenyon sealed all of the chimneys after that event — also, for
practical reasons, because of chimney swifts. Terrifying to witness?
Absolutely. Supernatural? Not even slightly.
I have thought often about what it meant to Pam to watch
her family's home — a place of ordinary, lived life — be turned into a haunted
house brand. Her grandfather's name attached to ghost lore. Her family's
history swallowed by someone else's profitable fiction. Pam spoke to me with
clarity and without drama, and that clarity deserves to be on the record.
Pam's testimony matters
because she was there. She had no reason to dress the story up.
This blog exists, in part, because her voice deserves to be remembered.
The Owner They Never Told the Truth To
There is one more witness who
has been overlooked: Norma Sutcliffe. She owned the farmhouse during the years
when the Perron story was turning into a worldwide franchise. I corresponded
with Norma personally, and her account is important because it is practical,
steady, and based on what she actually saw. She also wrote about her years in the
house in her 2020 book The Old Brooke
Farm.
In a 2016 Ocean State Paracon interview, Nancy Perron —
one of Andrea's younger sisters — described a visit she and her sister Cindy
made to the farmhouse after the family had moved out. According to Nancy, the
visit was a supernatural event: a pressure engulfed them, spirits touched their
hair and faces, voices said, "Oh my God, it's you! You're back!" —
and Norma herself, Nancy claimed, confirmed that paranormal activity was taking
place in the home.
Norma's recollection of that visit is considerably more
mundane. It was the late 1980s — approximately a year after Norma had first met
Andrea and Carolyn. Two women knocked on her door. They were enthusiastic and
warm. They were, by all accounts, delighted to see the house. As Norma
described it to me:
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"Oh my God! This is so
beautiful! If you are going to sell it, please, we want to buy it back!"
— Nancy Perron, as quoted by
Norma Sutcliffe in personal correspondence with J'aime Rubio
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There was no paranormal
activity. The visit was brief, friendly, and ordinary. Nancy left her phone
number because she wanted to be contacted if the house ever went up for sale.
That was it.
When Norma had first met the Perrons — Carolyn and Andrea
— the claims were, as Norma put it, considerably more mundane than they would
later become. Carolyn spoke of one thing: hearing trumpeting sounds in the
cellar. No demonic possession, no Satanic witch terrorizing the family, no
entity with hollow eye sockets and jagged yellow teeth, just trumpeting in the
cellar. The story, in its earliest telling to the woman who actually owned the
house, was nothing like the story that would eventually appear on movie screens
around the world.
But the detail that Norma shared with me that I find most
quietly devastating is this: after the Perron family moved to Georgia, Nancy —
one of the daughters — stayed behind at the farmhouse alone for an entire
year.
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"Nancy didn't want to go.
She wanted to stay in the house. Now, if the house had been haunted, one
would presume that Nancy's parents would have vetoed this. Instead, they
moved to Georgia, and they allowed Nancy to stay in the house for a year."
— Norma Sutcliffe, personal
correspondence with J'aime Rubio
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After Nancy finally moved
out, she allowed a friend — a single mother with a newborn baby — to stay at
the farmhouse for a time. Think about that. A newborn baby was allowed to stay in
a house that, according to the later story, had tried to kill members of the
Perron family. If they truly believed that, why would they allow it?
The answer, of course, is that the story we have been
sold does not match the choices the Perrons themselves actually made.
Norma also told me something crucial about the name
"Bathsheba." It was not until fifteen years after the Perrons left
the farmhouse that Andrea called Norma and first told her the story about
Bathsheba Sherman.
The question Norma found herself sitting with after Nancy
and her sister left that day in the late 1980s was the right one:
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"If this house was
supposedly so evil, and it tormented the family so badly when the Perrons
lived there, why on earth would these two young ladies show up one day and say how much they love the house? How much they enjoyed their childhoods
there? And that they wanted to buy the house if they could in the
future?"
— Norma Sutcliffe, personal
correspondence with J'aime Rubio
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It does not make sense. And
when a story falls apart under ordinary facts, that needs to be said plainly.
A Billion-Dollar Franchise Built on Slander
I want to talk about scale,
because this is not just a local argument about an old farmhouse in Rhode
Island. This story went far beyond that. The Conjuring franchise has grossed over a billion
dollars at the global box office. It has spawned sequels, prequels, spin-offs,
and a merchandising universe. It has made Bathsheba Sherman's name recognizable
to millions of people worldwide — people who encountered it in a darkened
theater, in a trailer, in a headline, on a podcast, and who walked away
believing they had learned something true about a real woman from
nineteenth-century Rhode Island.
They did not learn the
truth. They learned a profitable story. Bathsheba Sherman, the real woman buried
with her family in Rhode Island, received nothing from that story except a
lasting association with child murder, Satanic ritual, and witchcraft.
I also want to address a specific claim that has
circulated in the paranormal narrative and that deserves to be met with direct
clarity. On the program Paranormal Witness, Carolyn Perron described
reading a "medical report" that allegedly confirmed a baby had been
found with a needle embedded in its skull — attributed to Bathsheba Sherman as
an act of Satanic murder.
There was no baby. There
was no death. There was no medical report. I have searched. Other researchers
have searched. No such document exists in any archive, hospital record, town
record, or court document in Rhode Island. Either Carolyn was lying or she
imagined it. I do not say that lightly, but those are the only two
possibilities when someone makes a claim this serious and no evidence exists
anywhere.
The same applies to the broader canvas of alleged tragedy
attributed to the property. There are no records of the suicides, drownings, or
murders said to have occurred there. There is no record of any figure named Mr.
McKeachern or McEachern in Burrillville who could plausibly have been the local
historian Carolyn cited as a source for her claims. There are no accusations
against Bathsheba Sherman in any court of law, any newspaper, any town meeting
record, or any document of her era. None.
That is why the story had
to lean on tabloids, psychic claims, and memories that kept changing. The
archive does not support it. The records show something much
simpler: Bathsheba Sherman lived an ordinary life, died, and should have been left
in peace.
The only reason that
property is still surrounded by conflict is because a false history was built
around it. That false history has hurt real people, most of all Bathsheba Sherman, who has no descendants left to
defend her name and no legal way to answer what has been done to her
reputation.
That is why this work matters. That is why I keep doing
it.
Standing Strong and Dignified
I come back, at the end of all of this, to that
photograph of Bathsheba Sherman's new headstone surrounded by her family. That is the truth of where she is, no matter how much
noise has been made in her name.
She deserved better than what was done to her. She
deserved the ordinary dignity of a woman who lived her life and was remembered
by those who actually knew her — not the grotesque caricature of a hook-nosed,
hollow-eyed, child-murdering Satanic witch that a franchise built its mythology
upon. She deserved to rest without having her name spoken as a punchline, a
scare, a marketing hook, a brand.
She still deserves better. And the work of saying so —
clearly, publicly, persistently — is not glamorous work. It does not come with
a box office gross or a publishing advance. It comes with pushback from people
who have a financial interest in the myth, with accusations of spoiling
something beloved, with the particular frustration of watching documented facts
be dismissed because the fiction is more entertaining.
But it is necessary work. And I am grateful that I have
not had to do it alone.
I am grateful to Pam Kenyon
Cardin. She spoke to me clearly and without drama. She had a direct family
connection to that farmhouse, and that gave her testimony weight. She was there.
She knew what she saw. She told the truth as she remembered it. The least I can
do is make sure that truth is on the record.
I am grateful to Norma Sutcliffe, who lived for years in
a house that had been turned into a haunted brand before she ever moved in, who
extended patience and good faith to people who did not always extend the same
to her, and who still found the words to describe what she actually witnessed —
as opposed to what she was told to have witnessed. Her book, The Old Brooke
Farm, deserves to be read by everyone who has ever watched The Conjuring
and believed it. There are many others who have joined in the good fight to share the truth that deserve to be remembered such as Ken
I want to say one more
thing plainly: history belongs to the record. Not to a profitable story, not to
a tabloid, not to a psychic impression and certainly not to an embellished memoir or a
Hollywood script. The record is not perfect, but it is the best thing we have when
we are talking about people who can no longer speak for themselves. When we ignore
it because a better story is more entertaining, we do real harm.
Bathsheba Sherman cannot
defend herself. She cannot file a lawsuit, call a press conference, or correct
the record herself. She can only rest where she has always rested — in a Rhode
Island cemetery, with her family — while someone else stands up and says what
should have been said years ago: this
woman was not what they said she was. She was real, and she deserved better.
I am willing to say it, I
have been saying it for years, and I will keep saying it for as long as it
needs to be said. The truth does not need a franchise.
It does not need a sequel. It just needs to be told. —
J'aime Rubio (Copyright 2026) www.jaimerubiowriter.com deconstructingtheconjuring.blogspot.com
