I’m going to preface this by saying I enjoy paranormal investigation and am always eager to see and hear findings. I want to be shown the proof. However, to my dismay, the first episode of the final season of Buzzfeed Unsolved: Supernatural kicked off with an investigation of the Harrisville Farmhouse, more commonly known now as The Conjuring House.
The alleged story behind the house has been perpetuated for years by paranormal “investigators” like Zak Bagans who simply piggy-back off of the false claims by the Warrens and Perrons and popularized by the Conjuring movie franchise.
With many terrible deaths alleged to have occurred in the house, it does set the location up to be a spooky adventure. And, if you did what everyone else apparently has done- which is take the Warrens and Perron’s information at face value, I’m sure you enjoyed the new episode.
However, any digging into the history of the house shows that not only did many of these deaths occur elsewhere, but at least one was made up entirely for scare factor.
I’m not going to list out everything here, but you can watch a video by Norma Sutcliffe, the owner of the house following the Perrons (who sold it in 2019 following years of constant trespassing and harassment), where she details the historical inaccuracies in the Warren’s and Perron’s claims. I have also linked an article from Kenny Biddle, who worked with Norma to correct the history of the house and the Arnold family.
https://skepticalinquirer.org/exclusive/correcting-the-conjuring-house-history/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jeYNGzOIog0
The video is about an hour long. The article by Biddle presents the same information with sources listed.
What I wanted to touch on was the perpetuated rumor that Bathsheba Sherman was a witch who not only sacrificed a baby, but also drowned her own children and subsequently hung herself.
I’m going to pull a paragraph from the article above:
“In fact, Bathsheba Sherman was born to Ephraim Thayer and Hannah Taft, making her a Thayer—not an Arnold. She married Judson Sherman and moved from the Thayer farm to the Sherman farm where she lived out the rest of her days. They had four children: Julia (1845–1847), Edward Francis (1847–1848), Herbert (1850–1903), and George (1853–1856); none of their deaths were listed in the Black Book of Burrillville, and none were suspicious. Bathsheba died on May 25, 1885, of sudden paralysis, which likely meant a stroke. Her husband, Judson, died in 1881 and, again, nothing suspicious about his death is noted. Bathsheba married Benjamin Greene a year later but remained on the Sherman farm. Upon her death, Bathsheba was laid to rest in the Riverside Cemetery (now Harrisville cemetery), next to her first husband. Her funeral services were officiated by Rev. A.H. Granger, pastor of the Fourth Baptist Church of Providence. Bathsheba never lived or worked on the Arnold estate (farmhouse), nor was she associated with the Arnold family.“ (Biddle)
Frankly, I just find it terribly cruel to continue peddling the lie of Bathsheba the witch. The investigation at the Conjuring house was poorly researched, if its history was looked into at all. To know Ryan wasted his “one demonic location per season” on this location is very unfortunate.
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