Facts Behind The Conjuring: Where is the Perron Family Now?

Kapanlagi.com - The film The Conjuring has successfully scared audiences for more than a decade since its release. However, it turns out that the story behind this horror film is not entirely fictional as many might imagine.

First released in theaters in 2013, The Conjuring instantly became a huge hit, grossing over $320 million (around IDR 5 billion) at the worldwide box office. The film stars Lili Taylor and Ron Livingston as Roger and Carolyn Perron, a couple trying to protect their children from evil spirits in their new home.

In desperation, the Perron family seeks help from famous paranormal investigators, Ed and Lorraine Warren (played by Vera Farmiga and Patrick Wilson). This couple reveals that the spirit of a witch named Bathsheba Sherman is the one haunting the Perron family.

The popularity of The Conjuring has made Ed and Lorraine Warren household names, turning the farmhouse in Rhode Island, where the events allegedly took place, into a bustling tourist destination. In 2022, the house even sold for a staggering $1.5 million (around IDR 23 million), thanks to the fame of the film.

Although The Conjuring is based on the real experiences of the Perron family, most of the story in the film is actually exaggerated. According to Andrea Perron, the daughter of the Perron family, only about five percent of the film truly depicts reality. "Although The Conjuring is an extraordinary film, about 95 percent of it is fiction and only five percent is true," Andrea revealed in her interview with Global News in 2021.

1. Who is the Perron Family?

youtube.com

Roger and Carolyn are the parents of their five daughters: Andrea, Nancy, Christine, Cindy, and April. At that time, Roger worked as a traveling jewelry salesman, which often meant he was not at home. According to Andrea, this may be the reason why her father was not often disturbed by the spirits in the house and initially refused to believe that their home was haunted.

"He didn’t experience the scary things we did, and when he came home tired, the last thing he wanted to hear was my mom saying, 'Roger, I think we have a ghost in the house,'" Andrea said in her interview with Global News.

However, over time, Andrea revealed that Roger eventually admitted that he did not want to believe his wife's stories because he did not want to imagine that he had placed his family in a dangerous situation after buying the house.

2. Is the movie 'THE CONJURING' real?

instagram.com/theconjuring

The film The Conjuring is loosely inspired by a true story. In reality, Roger and Carolyn Perron moved to a farmhouse in Rhode Island in 1971 with their five daughters: Andrea, Nancy, Christine, Cindy, and April. Although it appears in the film to have happened over a short period, the Perron family actually lived in the house until 1980.

Andrea, the most vocal member of the family, wrote a book titled House of Darkness: House of Light in 2011, which became one of the inspirations for the film The Conjuring. “We all experienced encounters with spirits,” Andrea said in an interview with Global News in 2021. "Some experiences were unpleasant, but there were also friendly and communicative ones. Ranging from neutral, kind-hearted to creepy, the spirits were like humans, with various personalities."

The Perron family (especially Carolyn and her children) often saw apparitions, heard strange noises, and smelled foul odors. The peak of their experiences was when they conducted a frightening séance with the help of paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren. The Warrens learned about this case from other paranormal researchers and offered to help investigate it.

Although it appears in the film as a scene of an exorcism, in real life, the Warrens helped guide the Perron parents through a séance to communicate with the entity that was disturbing Carolyn and her daughter. Andrea, who quietly watched the séance, told USA Today in 2013 that her mother began speaking in a strange language and her voice changed, even her chair floated and she was thrown across the room. Finally, the Perron family decided to move out of the house in 1980 after Carolyn told her husband that she could not endure another winter in that house.

3. Who are Ed and Lorraine?

youtube.com

Ed and Lorraine Warren were a married couple famous as paranormal investigators and demonologists from the 1970s to the 1990s. In addition to helping the Perron family in Rhode Island, they were also involved in several other well-known horror cases, such as the haunted house in Amityville, New York, the Enfield Poltergeist case (which inspired the film The Conjuring 2 despite criticism that the role of the Warren family was exaggerated in the film), and even the court case of Arne Cheyenne Johnson, which they claimed involved possession. As of 2019, Lorraine was still managing a paranormal museum filled with artifacts from their investigations, including the infamous creepy doll Annabelle.

Lorraine once revealed in an interview with Warner Bros. that she began to realize her paranormal abilities since she was a child. "Since I was about 7 years old, I remember being able to see lights around people," she said. "That's when I started to realize that I was communicating."

However, the Warren family's career was also not free from doubt and skepticism. Many of the cases they handled were considered to lack strong evidence and were often accused of being exaggerated stories or even mere hoaxes.

Ed Warren passed away in 2006 at the age of 79, while Lorraine Warren died in 2019 at the age of 92. Nevertheless, the legend of their paranormal investigations lives on in the hearts of horror story enthusiasts.

4. What is the current condition of the Perron family?

youtube.com

Andrea is still very active in the supernatural world and since the release of The Conjuring, she has frequently appeared on various paranormal shows such as Ghost Adventures (2019) and Mysteries Decoded (2019). Andrea seems to be truly immersing herself in this mysterious world!

In 2021, Andrea along with her sister Nancy and father Roger returned to their old house in Rhode Island for an interactive live-stream event. They tried to communicate again with the spirits that once haunted them. Meanwhile, their siblings, Cindy and Christine, along with their mother, Carolyn, joined the livestream from their respective homes.

Although the Perron family occasionally appears in special events or documentaries related to their experiences in that haunted house, most of them now choose to live lives away from the public spotlight.

(kpl/bma)