‘The Conjuring’ House Coming to Your TV and Radio This Weekend

One of America's most notorious haunted houses is right in our own collective backyard, and it will be prominently featured this weekend on both television and radio.

The Harrisville, Rhode Island farmhouse that served as the inspiration for the hit horror film The Conjuring has become the stuff of legend in recent years. The story of the Perron family and the terror they endured living in that farmhouse provided the basis for the film, although as always, Hollywood took some liberties with the story. But the truth is even scarier than what was shown in the movie, as viewers of a popular paranormal television series will soon find out.

Friday night, seasoned paranormal investigators Amy Bruni (a former SouthCoast resident) and Adam Berry (a Cape Cod resident) will investigate the farmhouse in the second episode of the fourth season of their hit Travel Channel series Kindred Spirits, appropriately titled "Hell House." It airs at 9 p.m. Eastern.

Since the beginning, Kindred Spirits has been different from other "ghost shows" on television with its human side to paranormal activity. Amy and Adam focus on helping the living who are dealing with the dead just as much as they help the spirits who are responsible for the haunts. This is especially important in the case of The Conjuring house.

The Perrons moved out of the house in 1980, and Andrea Perron self-published the first of her three-part book series House of Darkness, House of Light about her family's experiences in 2011. The Conjuring followed in 2013, becoming one of the most successful horror films of all time, bringing in $319 million against a budget of $20 million and spawning an entire franchise loosely based on the work of the Warrens.

For the first time since the family moved from the house almost 40 years ago, Kindred Spirits will bring the Perron clan – Andrea, her father Roger, and her sisters Christine, Cynthia and Nancy – back to the Harrisville farmhouse. Amy and Adam, along with newly-named regular cast member and psychic medium Chip Coffey, are seeking to help the Perrons get closure as well as figure out why the paranormal activity has ramped up at an alarming rate for the new owners of the farmhouse, Corey and Jen Heinzen.

The Heinzens, paranormal investigators from Maine, purchased the house from Norma Sutcliffe for $439,000 in June of 2019. Sutcliffe had long been at odds with the Perrons over the true history of the house, and also sued the producers of The Conjuring upon the film's release after crowds of thrillseekers began appearing on her property. In recent years, she spoke out against the idea of the 1839 farmhouse being haunted, despite the fact that she herself was featured talking about the hauntings in a 2005 episode of the television show Ghost Hunters in which the house was investigated.

Without giving too much away, Amy, Adam and Chip seek to have paranormal experiences and capture evidence in the farmhouse that may relate directly back to what the Perrons endured.

Then on Saturday night at 10 p.m., Amy and Adam will join WBSM's Spooky Southcoast radio program to talk about their investigation of The Conjuring farmhouse, and discuss the fourth season of Kindred Spirits.

Later in the show, paranormal researcher Kenny Biddle will share his research into the backstory of the farmhouse, which has been a contentious issue among the Perrons and Sutcliffe. Much of it centers around the historical figure Bathsheba Sherman, who has been maligned through much of the legend surrounding The Conjuring farmhouse.

Back in the 1970s, while investigating the house, Lorraine Warren told the mother, Carolyn Perron, that it was Bathsheba that was haunting the house. In the movie, Bathsheba is portrayed as a former owner of the Perron property that was accused of being a witch and hanged from one of its trees. In the years since the film was released, Sherman's name has been besmirched and her gravestone vandalized on multiple occasions.

In truth, Sherman was a respected member of the local community and lived next door to the property, and died as an old woman in 1885.

In fact, this episode of Kindred Spirits purposely did not even address Bathsheba Sherman, with Bruni telling Den of Geek that "it's really important for the world to know, and for us to get the word out, that Bathsheba had nothing to do with that house...You won't even hear the name Bathsheba during our investigation because she had nothing to do with that house."

Tune in to Spooky Southcoast Saturday night at 10 p.m. on WBSM 1420 AM, on the WBSM app or watch the show and join in the chat room with the live Spooky TV YouTube stream from the Spooky Studio.

And check out more creepy pics of the Harrisville farmhouse from Acushnet's Frank C. Grace on the Trig Photography Facebook page.