# The Conjuring House: a 1736 farmhouse in Burrillville, Rhode Island is genuinely, paranormally haunted

**No verdict.** The Perron family really did report a decade of frightening experiences in this real 1736 farmhouse, and the house, the films, and the ownership saga are all documented. But the claim we rate, that the place is genuinely paranormally active, rests on anecdote with no controlled test or physical evidence. It cannot be proven, and it has not been disproven. The separate 'Bathsheba Sherman was a child-killing witch' story is not merely untested but false: a defamation of a real woman the record clears.

Category: Unexplained Phenomena · Era: 1970s · First circulated: The Perron family's account circulated locally through the 1970s and reached a mass audience with Andrea Perron's 2011 book trilogy House of Darkness House of Light and the 2013 film The Conjuring · Believed by: A large popular audience built by the billion-dollar Conjuring film franchise, paranormal-tourism guests, and ghost-hunting media; treated as unverified anecdote by historians, folklorists, and skeptics, who have separately and firmly debunked the 'witch' legend attached to it
URL: https://theconspiratory.com/theory/conjuring-house

## Summary
At 1677 Round Top Road in Burrillville, Rhode Island stands a 14-room farmhouse built around 1736, long known locally as the Arnold Estate. In the early 1970s the Perron family, Roger and Carolyn and their five daughters, moved in and, over most of the decade, reported a mounting series of unexplained experiences: cold spots, foul smells, moving objects, and figures they took for spirits. Their story became a 2011 memoir by daughter Andrea Perron and then the 2013 blockbuster The Conjuring, which launched a horror franchise and turned the address into one of the most searched haunted houses in America. This file keeps two things apart. On the record: the house exists, the Perrons reported these experiences, self-styled demonologists Ed and Lorraine Warren investigated, the films were made, and a turbulent 2021 to 2026 ownership saga ended in a June 2026 sale. The claim it rates, that the farmhouse is genuinely paranormally active, is anecdotal and untested; it is unproven. A third element, the tale that the house is cursed by 'Bathsheba Sherman,' a witch who sacrificed a child, is false, and this file reports it as a debunked defamation of a real woman rather than repeating it as fact.

## The claim
That the farmhouse at 1677 Round Top Road in Burrillville, Rhode Island is genuinely, paranormally haunted: that the disturbances the Perron family reported in the 1970s, and the experiences visitors report today, are caused by spirits or a supernatural agency rather than by suggestion, mundane causes, or invention, and that the case proves the house is truly active.

## Origin and timeline
- 1736: A farmhouse is built on Round Top Road in what is now Burrillville, Rhode Island, in the village historically called Harrisville. Known locally for generations as the Arnold Estate, it is a modest 14-room colonial that will pass through many owners over the next three centuries.
- 1812–1885: Bathsheba Thayer Sherman lives in the Harrisville area during the 19th century. In the historical record she is an ordinary local woman: married, a mother, an active member of the Baptist church. She dies in 1885 at 72 after a stroke, is eulogized and buried in consecrated ground. No trial, charge, or record of witchcraft or any crime is attached to her name in her lifetime.
- 1971: The Perron family, Roger and Carolyn with daughters Andrea, Nancy, Christine, Cindy, and April, move into the farmhouse (accounts give late 1970 or January 1971). Over the following years they report a growing series of experiences they cannot explain, from cold spots and smells to moving objects and apparitions.
- 1973: Self-described demonologists Ed and Lorraine Warren, later famous for the Amityville and Enfield cases, investigate the house. The Warrens hold a seance during which, by their and the Perrons' account, Carolyn Perron falls into a trance. The Warrens would call it one of their most significant cases; skeptics note the Warrens were showmen, not scientists.
- 1980: The Perron family leaves the farmhouse after roughly a decade. The story survives locally and in paranormal circles but is largely unknown to the wider public for the next thirty years.
- 2011: Andrea Perron publishes the first volume of House of Darkness House of Light, a memoir trilogy recounting the family's years in the house. It brings the account to print for the first time in full and sets the stage for its screen adaptation.
- 2013: The Conjuring, directed by James Wan and dramatizing the Warrens' investigation of the Perron haunting, is released and becomes a global box-office hit, spawning a franchise that grosses over two billion dollars. The film cements the 'Bathsheba the witch' storyline in popular memory, a version historians say the record does not support.
- 2019–2022: Paranormal enthusiast Cory Heinzen buys the house in 2019 for under 440,000 dollars and opens it to investigators; it is listed in 2021 for 1.2 million dollars as 'one of the most well-known haunted houses in the United States,' and sells in 2022 to Jacqueline Nunez's Bale Fire LLC for about 1.525 million dollars, which runs paid tours and overnight stays.
- 2024–2025: Burrillville's town council declines to renew the property's entertainment license amid complaints, and the tour business closes. The mortgage falls into arrears; in 2025 a Halloween foreclosure auction is announced, then cancelled after YouTuber Elton Castee buys the note, while Ghost Hunters star Jason Hawes mounts a competing bid for the property.
- 2026-06-15: The farmhouse sells for about 1.3 million dollars, with Jason Hawes recorded as the new owner via a warranty deed filed transferring the property from Jacqueline Nunez. The sale closes the most chaotic chapter in the house's modern ownership history.

## The evidence, claim by claim
- Claim: The Perron family lived through a decade of frightening, unexplained experiences and described them consistently for years, which shows the house is genuinely haunted.
  Evidence: The Perrons' accounts are real, detailed, and by every indication sincerely believed; that is not in dispute. What they are not is verified. The experiences were never recorded by instruments, never observed under controlled conditions, and were set down at length only decades later, in a 2011 memoir and a 2013 film shaped for drama. Sincere testimony about an old, isolated house establishes that the family was frightened and puzzled. It does not establish a supernatural cause, and a long, vivid anecdote is still an anecdote.
- Claim: The house is haunted by Bathsheba Sherman, a witch who sacrificed her own child and cursed anyone who took her land.
  Evidence: This is false, and it defames a real woman. The historical Bathsheba Sherman (born Thayer, 1812 to 1885) was never tried, charged, or convicted of witchcraft, infanticide, or any crime. Genealogists and folklorists find no contemporary allegation against her; she was an active churchgoer, was eulogized, was buried in consecrated ground, and died of a stroke at 72. Researchers trace the 'witch' story to the Warren and Perron accounts and the 2013 film, not to any 19th-century source. The Conspiratory reports this legend as a debunked slander of a real dead person. We do not assert it, and neither should anyone else.
- Claim: Ed and Lorraine Warren, renowned paranormal investigators, called this one of their most significant cases, and their involvement gives it authority.
  Evidence: The Warrens did investigate the house, and that fact is documented. But their imprimatur is fame, not verification. The Warrens were self-described demonologists and showmen, not scientists, and their signature cases, Amityville above all, have drawn repeated skeptical scrutiny and outright fraud allegations. An endorsement from investigators whose method was belief cannot certify a haunting; it can only make one famous, which is exactly what happened here.
- Claim: Paranormal investigators and paying guests keep capturing cold spots, electronic voice phenomena, and apparitions at the house today, so the activity is ongoing and real.
  Evidence: The 'evidence' gathered on ghost tours, EVP recordings, EMF spikes, orbs, cold spots, has ordinary explanations: radio and electrical interference, drafts in a 290-year-old house, dust and insects in a camera flash, and pareidolia, the mind's habit of finding faces and voices in noise. It is also collected in the worst possible conditions for a real test: at night, by people who paid to be scared and primed to expect spirits. A skeptic who toured the house for Skeptical Inquirer reported finding suggestion and atmosphere, not anomalies.
- Claim: The house is genuinely old, isolated, and marked by real tragedy and death over the centuries, which explains the concentration of paranormal activity.
  Evidence: That a farmhouse standing since 1736 has seen deaths over its long history is unremarkable; the same is true of nearly every centuries-old home, few of which are called haunted. Age, isolation, cold rooms, and creaking timbers reliably produce the sensations people label a haunting, which is why old dark houses, not new bright ones, anchor these stories. The house's real history supplies mood and plausibility. It does not supply a ghost.

## Why people believe it
- The family was sincere and sympathetic. The Perrons were, by all accounts, genuinely frightened parents and children, not hoaxers courting fame; they stayed nearly a decade and told a consistent story. When ordinary, believable people describe something they cannot explain, the account carries a weight a made-up ghost story never could, and dismissing it can feel like calling them liars.
- The Warren name lent borrowed authority. Ed and Lorraine Warren arrived as celebrated investigators of Amityville and other cases, and their involvement made the house feel officially, seriously haunted. For many, an expert saying so settles the matter, even when the expertise is self-declared and the track record contested.
- A blockbuster turned it into shared memory. The Conjuring and its franchise grossed billions and put the farmhouse in front of hundreds of millions of viewers, each retelling smoothing the ambiguities and sharpening the scares. A story you have seen dramatized on a big screen feels known and confirmed, and the movie's certainty overwrites the messiness of the real reports.
- The house itself does the work. A remote 1736 farmhouse with low ceilings, wide plank floors, cold rooms, and a genuinely long history is an almost perfect stage for fear. The setting generates the very sensations that get labeled paranormal, so a night there can feel like evidence to the person experiencing it.
- A named villain gives the fear a face. 'Bathsheba the witch' turns a vague unease into a story with a character, a motive, and a curse, which is far more gripping and memorable than random noises. That the villain is a fabrication does not weaken the story's grip; a concrete antagonist is exactly what makes a haunting spread.

## Open questions
- No contemporaneous, controlled investigation of the house was ever made, and none can be made now. The original 1970s reports cannot be tested, replayed, or measured, so a residue of genuinely unexplained personal experience survives, which is a reason to withhold a verdict rather than to grant one.
- The specific origins of individual phenomena the Perrons described, particular sounds, movements, and figures, cannot be reconstructed decades later from memory, memoir, and film. Whether each had a mundane cause that went unrecorded is unrecoverable, not resolved.
- Why old, isolated houses so reliably generate these reports is a real and only partly settled question. Skeptics read it as environment, suggestion, and the human pattern-seeking mind; believers read it as something more, and the case does not decide between them.
- How much the modern tour-and-film economy has overwritten whatever the original account was is unclear. After a blockbuster and years of paid ghost hunts, it is hard to separate what the Perrons reported from what the franchise later told everyone they should expect to feel there.

## Latest developments
- 2026-07-27T03:00Z: The farmhouse sold in mid-June 2026 for about 1.3 million dollars, with Ghost Hunters star Jason Hawes recorded as the new owner after a warranty deed transferred the property from Jacqueline Nunez. The sale ends a chaotic stretch that ran from a shuttered tour business and a lapsed entertainment license through a cancelled Halloween 2025 foreclosure auction and a bidding contest for the note. (source: https://www.bostonglobe.com/2026/07/13/metro/conjuring-house-owner-jason-hawes-legal-issues-ri/)

## Sources
- 'Conjuring' home being sold for $1.2 million as one of 'most well-known haunted houses', NBC News (2021): https://www.nbcnews.com/pop-culture/pop-culture-news/conjuring-home-being-sold-1-2-million-one-most-well-n1280067
- Meet The Real-Life Bathsheba Sherman, The 'Witch' From The Conjuring, All That's Interesting: https://allthatsinteresting.com/bathsheba-sherman
- Bathsheba Sherman: Evil Witch or Innocent Victim? The Story Behind The Conjuring's Villain, New England Folklore (2020): http://newenglandfolklore.blogspot.com/2020/04/bathsheba-sherman-evil-witch-or.html
- A Skeptic Visits the Conjuring House, Skeptical Inquirer: https://skepticalinquirer.org/exclusive/a-skeptic-visits-the-conjuring-house/
- The Conjuring House Has Resumed Tours, Rhode Island Monthly: https://www.rimonthly.com/conjuring-house/
- 'The Conjuring' house mortgage sold, frightening prospective buyers, The Brown Daily Herald (2025): https://www.browndailyherald.com/article/2025/10/the-conjuring-house-mortgage-sold-frightening-prospective-buyers
- YouTuber buys mortgage of 'The Conjuring' house amid competition to acquire property, WPRI 12 (Target 12) (2025): https://www.wpri.com/target-12/youtuber-buys-mortgage-of-the-conjuring-house-amid-competition-to-acquire-property/
- 'Ghost Hunters' star listed as owner of R.I.'s 'Conjuring' house, The Boston Globe (2026): https://www.bostonglobe.com/2026/07/13/metro/conjuring-house-owner-jason-hawes-legal-issues-ri/

Rated by The Conspiratory, a neutral, sourced encyclopedia of conspiracy theories. Full page: https://theconspiratory.com/theory/conjuring-house