"Conjured from Thin Air: The Story That Started It All"

 

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.

 

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.

 

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:

 

"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

 

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:

 

"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

 

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:

 

"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

 

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.

 

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.

 

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:

 

"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

 

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:

 

"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

 

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.

 

"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

 

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:

 

"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

 

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