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The Conjuring, directed by James Wan, is one of the best horror films of the 21st century. It looks amazing, it plays on the audience’s worst fears, and it is based on a true story. But how true is it? There are a lot of films that say they are based on a true story just to get in an extra scare, but those claims rarely add up to anything more than a disclaimer on a movie poster.
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Lots of horror films say they're based on a true story to get in an extra scare
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But those claims rarely add up to anything more than a disclaimer on a movie poster
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One family, however, claimed that in the 1970s, they lived the tale told in James Wan's 2013 film The Conjuring
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Family members were thrown out of their beds, kissed by ghosts in the night, and preyed upon by the spirit of a witch
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So, today, we're going to take a deep dive into how the true story behind The Conjuring is even creepier than the movie
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In 1971, Roger and Carolyn Perrin, along with their five daughters, April, Cindy, Christine, Nancy, and Andrea
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moved into their new house, located in Harrisville, Rhode Island. If you've seen The Conjuring, you already have an idea of where this is going
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But the most curious thing that happened to them didn't have anything to do with ghosts
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Rather, it was a piece of advice given to them by their neighbors. For the sake of your family, leave the lights on at night
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It wasn't long after receiving that fateful piece of advice that the Perrins encountered their first paranormal entity
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As with all hauntings and long-term paranormal experiences, the terrifying events of the real-life conjuring began as strange occurrences that barely registered as paranormal activity
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Things moved. There were weird noises. It was nothing out of the ordinary for an old house
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According to Cynthia Perrin, there were a lot of small things happening that no one talked about until it was too late
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Unfortunately, the serenity of a b haunting wouldn't last for long. After moving into their dream home, the Perrins almost immediately realized that they were living with what they believed to have been an entire set of ghost roommates
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At the onset of the haunting, the Perrin children felt that most of the entities that walked their halls were benevolent, if not benign
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The children even claimed that the initial entities occasionally acted as babysitters
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Some nights, the ghosts would even tuck them in and kiss their foreheads
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Both Cynthia and Andrea Perrin remember the ghost who tucked them in
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They even remember the way she smelled. According to Cynthia, when they first moved into the house for the first two months
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there was a ghost woman that came and kissed her every night on the forehead
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At first, she thought it was her mother, but something was off
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As her sister Andrea put it, Mom smelled like ivory soap, and this spirit smelled like flowers and fruit
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After learning to live with their friendly ghosts, the Perrin family made a go of it on their new farm
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However, it didn't take long for more malevolent forces to begin creeping into their little slice of a somewhat spooky heaven
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The Perrin girls claimed that they were attacked in the barn by unseen entities
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and that on one evening a series of voices began to speak to them about the bodies in their walls Andrea claims that her sister Cindy climbed into bed with her one night to tell her about the harrowing news a disembodied voice had delivered
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According to Cindy, the ghosts told her, there are seven dead soldiers buried in the wall
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While the girls were dealing with something reaching out to them from beyond the grave
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a different series of events began that foreshadowed the terror to come
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They claim that at 5.15 in the morning, the smell of rotting flesh would waft through the house
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tossing everyone out of bed one by one. Andrea claims that around this time
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that the girls were visited by a male ghost that tortured them so badly
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that she refuses to give any concrete details. Let's just say there was a very bad male spirit in the home
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with five little girls. Given the implication, you'd think the family would pack up and leave
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at that very moment, even if they didn't have anywhere else to go. But astonishingly, they decided to stick it out
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While the entire Perrin family had paranormal encounters throughout their time living in the house
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Carolyn Perrin, the matriarch of the family, seems to have been the most sensitive to the spirits inhabiting the home
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In an interview with the Providence Journal, she claimed that she knew something was wrong
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when a woman in gray appeared next to her bed moaning, Get out, get out. I'll drive you out with death and gloom
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That's a not-too-subtle hint. Maybe they should take it. I would. The woman in the gray dress could have been the ghost of a woman named Bathsheba Thayer
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who is the witch believed to have done most of the haunting in this case. That being said, she could have also been a poltergeist created as a portent of things
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to come, or one of the many ghosts who dwelled within the home. Ghostbusters notwithstanding, this isn't exactly a science
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Andrea Perrin, the eldest daughter, later said, Whoever the spirit was, she perceived herself to be mistress of the house, and she resented
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the competition my mother posed for that position. Again, you'd think the whole death and gloom thing would send the family running
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But like a good horror film, the answer would be no. The Perrins alleged that Bathsheba Thayer's attacks began as harmless poltergeist activity
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They were pinched, poked, and prodded by a seemingly invisible force. But then, things escalated
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The Perrins believed Thayer wanted them to leave. Pretty obvious. Remember the get out, get out thing
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They also think Thayer tried to get what she wanted by torturing Carolyn
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When physically assaulting Carolyn didn't work, the parents claimed that Thayer inhabited Carolyn's body to better horrify them
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That sounds like an effective strategy. Possessing Carolyn gave Thayer the power to cause the mother and her family intense bodily harm
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and it left Carolyn feeling weak and emotionally drained. One of the strangest parts of this story isn't the Grey Witch that haunted the family
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or the Broom Ghost that was known to sweep up the kitchen whenever no one was around It how the story came to the attention of Ed and Lorraine Warren the paranormal investigators who helped turn the Amityville haunting into a household name Most accounts of the subject claim that the family reached out to the Warrens
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But according to Andrea Perrin, a family friend went to see the Warrens
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while they were giving a talk in Putnam, Connecticut. Cynthia Perrin backs up this claim
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saying in an interview that a family friend named Barbara went to the Warrens' lecture
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and then told the family about the couple. After Carolyn allegedly became possessed with the spirit affair
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the Perrins got in touch with Ed and Lorraine Warren. The couple came to investigate, and Lorraine Warren claimed that she sensed a dark presence in the house from moment one
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According to the Perrins, the Warrens cleansed the home and conducted a seance with Carolyn in the family's basement
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Unfortunately, the seance did not go as planned and made things much worse
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The Warrens visited the Perrins family intermittently over the course of the next decade
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but they were never able to fix anything. Lorraine never publicly discussed what happened during the seance
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but she does claim what happened in the basement disturbed her to the core
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Andrea Perrin corroborates Lorraine's story. She claims that she snuck into the basement to see the seance firsthand
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and was never able to look at her mother the same way again
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According to Andrea, her mother began to speak a language not of this world in a voice not of her own
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Her chair levitated, and she was thrown across the room. So, eight-year-old spoiler alert, if you saw The Conjuring movie, then you probably remember a series of escalating games of hide-and-clap
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where one person is blindfolded while the rest of the girls playing run off to hide
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In these scenes, the mother is consistently taunted by a pair of ghostly clapping hands belonging to Bathsheba Thayer
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The hide-and-clap scenes are super spooky, but it turns out that the real story is much more harrowing
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Cynthia Perrin claims that one day while the girls were playing hide-and-seek on the farm
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she hid in a pine box without any kind of lock, latch, or ventilation
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After no one came to find her, Cynthia decided to find a new hiding place
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She later told an interviewer that when she tried to get out, the box wouldn't open
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She started to panic and began pushing at the lid. She kicked and screamed, but no one heard her
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Luckily, 20 minutes later, her sister Nancy came along and simply opened the box for her
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Paranormal or crappy old box? We'll let you decide. According to the Parent family, they're still being haunted by Bathsheba Thayer
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During the filming of The Conjuring, the entire family was invited to the set
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Initially, they were all going to go. But at the last minute, Carolyn got cold feet and changed her mind
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She claimed that she didn't want to make the trip. But it's also not hard to imagine there was some trepidation on her part to dig up the past
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Andrea Parent claims that while the family was being interviewed a rogue wind swept them over knocking down cameras lights and anything that surrounded them Meteorology notwithstanding they all agreed it was Bathsheba curse
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When they returned to their hotels that evening, the kids learned their mother had fallen and broken her hip at the exact time
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that the eerie wind swept over them. When the family made it to their mother's hospital room
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they claimed that she sat up and said, Bathsheba's curse. She does not want to be exposed
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According to Andrea Perrin, everyone who has lived in the house that we know of has experienced the haunting
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Some have left screaming and running for their lives. She claims the man they sold it to started a restoration project
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but left screaming without his car, without his tools, and without his clothing
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However, according to the current owner, Norma Sutcliffe, the house isn't as haunted as you might have heard
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Sutcliffe only claims to have seen and heard people talking in other rooms
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footsteps when no one is home, and a strange blue light shooting around a room
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Yeah, Norma, that's still not normal. Get out. After The Conjuring was released, Sutcliffe became so unhappy with all the attention surrounding
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her home, she attempted to disprove the Perrin family's story. The demonic antagonist of The Conjuring is a witch named Bathsheba Thayer, born Bathsheba Sherman
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The Perrin family claims the spirit of this woman haunted them for nearly a decade, possessed
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their mother, and even followed them onto the set of a film. But was Thayer really a witch
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or is she just the victim of bad press? The film posits that Thayer sacrificed her baby to Satan
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before hanging herself in order to become a malevolent spirit within the Rhode Island farmhouse
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However, it turns out that Bathsheba was just a normal woman who was married and had four children
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Three of them did die at a young age, but this was the 19th century, so it wasn't that unusual
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In 1885, Bathsheba passed away from a stroke and was buried next to her first husband and three children
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Finally, one of the biggest questions most people have about the haunting of the parent family
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is, why would you just not leave? I have that question. It's a reasonable question
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According to them, the answer is money. It simply wasn't financially possible for the family to leave
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The haunting was happening during the end of the Nixon administration, all the way
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through the Carter administration. The economy was terrible. And no matter how good your friends are
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no one has a room to house five teenage girls and their mother and father. Aside from that, Andrea Perrin notes that the property value on their 200-acre farm was
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devaluing by the day, and the family would have been destitute if they had just walked away
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In 1980, the Perrin family was finally able to sell the house, and as soon as the paperwork was
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signed, they made a beeline for Georgia and never looked back. As to whether this is a convincing
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reason to stay in a house with ghosts that take control of your body and abuse your daughters
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well, like with every other aspect of this story, you'll just have to decide what you believe
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for yourself