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Astonishing Legends

The True Story behind the Conjuring Part 1

Astonishing Legends

Scott Philbrook

History, Society & Culture

4.69.8K Ratings

🗓️ 13 June 2021

⏱️ 160 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Whether you're a fan of horror films or not, you've probably heard of the 2013 motion picture, "The Conjuring." This film, starring Vera Farmiga and Patrick Wilson, struck such a chord with viewers that it spawned a franchise of related films like The Conjuring sequels, The Nun, Annabelle, and The Curse of La Llorona. But the initial movie was inspired by real-life events, the roughly decade-long hauntings of the Perron family that started the moment they moved into the Arnold Estate in 1970, now called "The Farm on Round Top Road" in Harrisville, Rhode Island. The colonial farmhouse, built circa 1736, would be home to 9 generations of families, including the Perrons. It seems some of the residents would never be able to leave, and some new and terrifying entities would make an unwelcome appearance during the Perron occupancy. While a few of the spirits were viciously malevolent, some were benevolent, and Andrea Perron, the eldest daughter, comprehensively chronicled the entire experience in a three-volume set of books titled House of Darkness House of Light: The True Story. While Andrea loved the cinematic adaptation of her family's story in the film, she also realizes that a movie has its own set of rules for narrative compression. Its purpose is to entertain efficiently, and therefore was only "one percent of one percent of what actually happened at the farm." Also, the famous paranormal investigative couple, Ed and Lorraine Warren were only a lesser element to the overall story. So what were some of the more frightening yet fascinating occurrences that happened to the Perrons at clearly one of the most active haunted houses still in existence that most of us have never heard? Join us tonight for part one of our examination of the true story behind "The Conjuring."

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Transcript

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0:00.0

Here at Estonishing Legends, our show is rooted in many types of stories, but one of the anchors

0:07.2

of our ever-expanding archive of shows would have to be hauntings.

0:11.3

In the paranormal world, the term haunting has come to encompass many things, from polter

0:17.0

geists to skinwalkers to possessions.

0:20.9

Perhaps people use it a little too quickly, and as a result, they oversimplify a complex

0:27.2

variety of events. This, in turn, might be making it harder for us mortals to figure out

0:33.9

what's going on in these cases.

0:36.6

Are we trying too hard to put disparate things in the same box together so we can comprehend

0:41.8

them better?

0:43.3

And when we do that, are we turning our backs on the entropy of the universe?

0:48.6

It's hard to say because right now, we don't know.

0:53.2

But whatever the proper term for a chain of events like these, tonight we dive into

0:58.0

one of the most famous hauntings of recent memory, a legend that is just weeks away from

1:03.7

the 50th anniversary of when it all began.

1:07.5

It's inspired an entire franchise of eight movies, the Conjuring series, one of which

1:13.2

was released just five days before we recorded this show.

1:18.6

When a legend moves through time, getting told and retold again, often with embellishments

1:24.1

and changes, the story at the root of it sometimes gets lost.

1:28.8

But, as we like to say, invariably, something happened that made this story into a legend.

1:37.0

In this case, it was a haunting that while possibly active for almost a century prior,

1:43.0

became particularly agitated when the Perrone family, seeking a simpler life in a change

1:47.6

of scenery, moved into an idyllic rural farmhouse in Harrisville, Rhode Island in 1971.

...

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