Carolyn’s description of the strange events in her bedroom that night is a textbook example of a waking dream accompanied by sleep paralysis. During such dreams, the subject has partial or total awareness while in a dream state. These states often occur during the twilight period as they are dozing off or waking up. In this instance, Carolyn was falling asleep. The events during these dreams are often described as having extreme clarity and bright, vivid colors. They are commonly accompanied by sleep paralysis, because the body is still in sleep mode.41 If the content of the dream is harrowing, such as one’s house being on fire, then being unable to move can be a terrifying experience. It is common for preoccupations to be reflected in the content of the dream; in this instance, Mrs. Perron had been concerned over the possibility of a fire just prior to retiring. Sleep researchers are increasingly realizing that many reported encounters with the paranormal are actually dreams. Paul Davies writes that because some dreams appear “real, it is quite possible for someone to remember one as a real experience, and report it as such.”42
Carolyn had another waking dream in which, stirring from sleep and “sensing a presence,” she opened her eyes and saw the figure of a grotesque-looking woman hovering over her. As with her earlier experience with the “fire,” she was unable to move, while perceiving intense, brilliant images. “The image of it leapt through her eyes into her mind, impaling her memory with a spectral wonder so vivid and compelling, it had to be processed in tiny patterns and fragments . . . slicing into her consciousness . . . bombarding the senses.”43 As the repulsive figure moved closer, she was unable to move or speak. Desperate, Carolyn said she was able to kick Roger, who lay next to her asleep. She then “jerked Roger’s head severely back and forth.” When there was no response, she thought he was dead. Soon after, the entity suddenly vanished into the night. She eventually awoke to realize that Roger was unharmed. It is probable that she had never forcefully shoved his head back and forth—it had happened in her dream. But to Mrs. Perron, it had really happened, reinforcing her belief that the house was haunted—a belief that she conveyed to her daughters.44 Let’s compare this incident to the experience of a medical student in the state of Pennsylvania:
I was lying on my back just kinda looking up. And the door slammed, and I . . . opened my eyes. I was awake. Everything was light in the room. . . . I couldn’t move. . . . [T]his grayish, brownish murky presence was there. And it kind of swept down over the bed and I was terrified! . . . I felt this pressing down all over me. I couldn’t breathe. . . . I was helpless . . . I was really scared . . . This was evil! . . . I struggled to move and get out. . . . [Later] the whole thing just kind of dissipated away.45
He emphasized the reality of the scene, saying, “This thing was there!” The nebulous presence floating from above; the bright, vivid detail; the inability to move; the sense of evil; the difficulty breathing—this account parallels Carolyn Perron’s experiences and many others in the annals of folklore.
Carolyn was quick to use these “encounters” to reinforce her belief that spirits of the dead inhabited their house, influencing her daughters to view their world as inhabited by an array of spirits. As a result, their different anomalous experiences reinforced their belief that the farmhouse was haunted. Waking dreams seem to have run in the family. One does not have to be in bed to have one. Clearly Cindy was experiencing them. On the first day of her summer vacation, the eight-year-old was playing with toys on her bedroom floor, alone, when “many hours passed without her recognizing it.” Then she saw the figure her mother had told the children about and that Cindy had later seen “in a dream.”46 Suddenly, the bedroom was “awash in a soft glow”:
Directly before her eyes an entity of substance slowly approached, floating above the surface of a bedroom floor. Horrified, the eight-year-old could not move, could not breathe the putrid air. . . . Appearing as some form of a solid mist, Cindy identified the apparition as a woman by her garb. She had no features, only a grayish oval mass. . . . She drifted across the room, arms outstretched, extended toward the terrified child. . . . It positioned itself directly in front of her then began leaning in toward her; closer and closer she came. The air pressure was stifling, pushing on her from every direction.47
Cindy suddenly regained her ability to move and bolted from the room. As the girls discussed these and other “encounters” with one another, it is easy to see how they came to believe that the house was haunted by a variety of entities.
Cindy also experienced similar dreams. Early one morning at 3:00 a.m., she became aware of a “dark presence” in the room, hovering just inches above her sister Andrea. The “black, vaporous apparition” reminded her of a storm cloud. It appeared to be fusing with Andrea’s body. As she propped herself up for a better look, the entity suddenly shifted and began moving toward her. It enveloped her, knocking her to the floor. Curiously, her screams could not be heard by anyone. She found it difficult to move and difficult to breathe. The force eventually left the room, leaving Cindy so traumatized that she wet herself and ended up sleeping the rest of the night on a sofa. Cindy said that she kept this encounter secret for over two decades.48
Cindy also exhibited many of the traits associated with a fantasy-prone personality, and once she whispered to her mother, “Mom, there’s a whole bunch of people eating in our dining room.”49 On another occasion, Cindy saw several “little ghosts”—“native children”—playing in a nearby pine grove.50 The family’s isolation certainly would have encouraged their visions of strange entities, as such environments force children who spend much time alone to develop their imaginations. Did the supernaturally inclined Cindy really have her hair “knotted” by a spirit? Was she “dragged to the floor” by a mysterious force, as she claimed? On another occasion—a humid August day—while playing hide-and-seek with her sisters, she crawled inside a wooden box with no latches or locks, later claiming to have been trapped inside, unable to budge the lid. Christine and Nancy opened the lid with ease, while Cindy protested adamantly that she had indeed been trapped and was suffocating when her sisters rescued her. It is more plausible that Cindy was play-acting or immersed in her imagination.51 Cindy said that when she was under attack by the spirits, it was like being inside a bubble. She told Andrea that during these encounters, “you cannot be heard” and “no one can hear you.” A more likely explanation is that Cindy was immersed in her own inner fantasy world.52
Poltergeists
Poltergeist phenomena were common at the farmhouse, such as the time when Andrea set up after-school classes with herself as teacher, using an old, oak-framed, slate blackboard. She tells us that “some scoundrel spirits from the Netherworld did not appreciate having to attend school and would play nasty tricks.” The chalkboard was repeatedly smeared, often erased, and eventually smashed. Though Andrea believed it was the girls’ “favorite pastime,” it is likely that one of them secretly resented the extra “school” time their big sister was subjecting them to. Andrea writes the following:
As one of the most active rooms in the house, the kitchen attracted someone, maybe more than one spirit. The telephone was frequently tampered with, as were several appliances. Antique bottles were routinely arranged and rearranged, moved from open shelves to windowsills then back again; someone had a flair for interior design! A pile of dirt left on the floor, the broom propped beside it, leaning against a chair; a message received then ignored. Household provisions spilled and splashed about the premises, chairs pulled out from beneath children; hair pulling was always a less-than-gentle reminder of their omnipresence. And the flies!53
Investigators will need more convincing evidence than the recollections of schoolgirls, thirty to forty years late, in order to conclude that there were real poltergeists.
Poltergeist activity was also common in the horse barn, where curry combs and other horse paraphernalia would go missing, only to turn up in another part of the barn. Often an object would suddenly vanish, only to be found in its original
spot minutes later. Andrea writes that the bridle that always “hung on the same peg on the nearest wall to the stall, would suddenly vanish, only to be found later on the opposite side of the barn.” She dismisses the possibility of practical joking by her sisters and concludes that the mysterious happenings were the result of “supernatural shenanigans.”54 On one occasion, Nancy went to the barn to check on the horses, and she said she was overcome by an “unnatural cold” and fell to the ground. At about the same time, the horse, Pineridge, reared up in fright. It was assumed that a supernatural force had frightened the horse. Nancy said later, “Something grabbed me from behind and dragged me to the floor!”55
As with most classic poltergeist outbreaks, strange incidents centered on one person more than any other: in this case, Cindy. On numerous occasions she reported being tormented after entering the kitchen. Several times she claimed that the refrigerator door would suddenly begin to open and shut, flapping wildly back and forth as food “would fly out all over the place.” Andrea wrote, “[F]or some reason, Cindy was the one most frequently subjected to the cruel and unusual behavior, a particular stunt occurring in her presence on a fairly regular basis. It seemed to be a deliberate act, initiated with some forethought and malice.”56 Curiously, it was observed that Cindy’s strange encounters with the so-called haunted fridge “almost always occurred just prior to Roger’s return home.”57 Such tactics may have been the ploy of a young girl seeking the attention of an absentee father, trying to get him to remain at home more and to stop taking long business trips.
Not only did Cindy have a strange influence on the family fridge, but on her bed as well. Over several years, she claimed that her bed would levitate and vibrate. The saga began one evening while she was alone, sitting on the mattress and doing homework. Suddenly, she said, it lifted into the air, shaking with such intensity that she feared she would be thrown to the floor. Clinging to the bedpost, she pleaded for the force to stop, repeating aloud the prayer that Lorraine Warren had advised her to say in an emergency: “In the name of Jesus Christ, go back to where you came from!” It had no effect, and the “attack” continued:
The bed came alive. It vibrated furiously, tipping side to side. Then it began banging down onto the floor with such a force, it shook the entire structure; one strike after another. Steam escaped from Cynthia’s mouth with each panicked shriek; the room became unbearably frigid. Books were bouncing off the walls as papers and pens flew imprecise patterns, trapped within a spiraling shaft of stench; a whirlwind as circling projectiles crashed into this child, over and over again; punishment time!
Oddly, despite her screams and the ruckus, no one downstairs heard the clamor from above. Is it possible that Cindy had made up the story for attention? There is another possibility: she had entered a trance-like state that psychiatrists refer to as dissociation, and the episode was a figment of her imagination. Andrea wrote that Cindy later told her that “time itself seemed virtually suspended whenever they occurred.” The aftermath of this episode is equally confusing: “a sudden drop ending with a bang finally silenced her screaming and stilled the bed.” The perception of time seeming to stand still is a classic feature of altered states of consciousness. The sudden “bang,” ending with the bed supposedly dropping to the floor, may have been her snapping out of it.58 There is something distinctly odd about the claims of the levitating and vibrating bed: no one ever witnessed it. Had Cindy trashed her room in order to get attention by walking downstairs and venting at her mother and sisters for not coming to her aid? The story gets stranger and more improbable: when it came time to sleep, she refused an offer to sleep with her mother and instead steeled herself and retired for the night in her own bed! These actions stretch credulity. Her explanation? “Nothing and no one is going to scare me away from my room. I waited a long time to have it and I won’t give it up for anything . . . or to anyone . . . not even for one night.”59 So let’s get this straight: a young girl had a terrifying experience during which her bed levitated, she was left bruised and bloodied with scrapes and cuts, and her room is in a shambles, as a mysterious force has scattered her belongings. Her reaction? She scolds her mother and sisters for not hearing her screams, and then she proceeds to sleep in the same bed—declining an offer to sleep elsewhere. During the ordeal she was described as “traumatized,” “frantic,” and “crying hysterically”—a young girl who was “out of her mind with terror.”60 Her actions are incongruent with her claims.
The incident with the vibrating bed was not a one-off; it occurred over and over, according to Cindy. To prove her story, all she would have had to do was to keep a camera under her pillow and take snapshots when the bed levitated. Given that this was supposedly a routine occurrence, how come no one else was able to see it and snap photos? To accept that this happened on a regular basis, traumatizing Cindy on each occasion—yet she continued to sleep in the bed—is beyond belief. Andrea writes, “The same scenario played out again and again over the course of the next four years but Cynthia held her ground then held onto her bed knobs for dear life. Every time the bed levitated it would shake violently. She would cling to the headboard or grab onto its spindles; something sturdy enough to keep her from being flung off the mattress.” How could anyone remain in the house when such dramatic encounters were happening, let alone sleep in the same bed?61
On another occasion, Cindy claimed that as she entered the kitchen, she saw a broom sweeping the floor—by itself. “With flair and rhythm, the broom swished and sashayed around the room, as if dancing in the arms of another, then abruptly fell onto the floor,” Andrea recounted the story as later told to her by Cindy. Cindy was just nine at the time of the first incident.62 Again, if there were so many supernatural encounters, as claimed by the Perrons, and they were occurring on a daily basis, then why didn’t anyone manage to take a single photo of a levitating bed, a self-sweeping broom, or a fridge that flapped its doors and expelled food? The most likely answer is that it is because these events never happened. Either they were figments of the imaginations of frightened, impressionable people in an isolated farmhouse, or they were a series of pranks. Based on the accounts written by Andrea Perron, the answer is most likely a combination of both, with Cindy responsible for much of the poltergeist activity. An equally appropriate title for this chapter would have been “The Family That Scared Itself—With a Little Help From Cindy.”
Over time, the cellar became another focus of strange events, and when family members entered it, there was an expectation of paranormal happenings. One evening while the family was watching a movie on TV, loud noises similar to a trumpet being sounded during a fox hunt rang out from below. Andrea described the scene when Roger went down to investigate: “Huddled beside each other in the middle of a parlor, frantic females shivered and shuddered with anxious anticipation, awaiting father’s return.” The woodshed door was found ripped off its hinges, twenty feet away. Carolyn immediately took the incident to be “an act of war” and a blatant “intimidation tactic” by an unholy entity in the house.63
Witches and Demons
Even when the best evidence warrants a mundane explanation, Andrea still invokes the supernatural. For instance, her father was once angry about something and “touched a handle on the pot of meatballs” cooking in the kitchen, whereupon “it flew off the stove and hit the floor,” splattering him with sauce. Andrea insists she “saw that pot of meatballs go flying off the surface of the stove without the assistance of her furious father.” She wondered if the “Kitchen Witch”—a historic local figure named Bathsheba Sherman with whom the Perrons were obsessed—was actually responsible.64
According to Andrea, Bathsheba was the most frightful spirit in the house. She had supposedly been charged with the murder of a child, but her case was dismissed. Carolyn claims that she researched the local history and found that there were rumors of Bathsheba having been a witch who sacrificed an infant to the Devil.65 Born Bathsheba Thayer in 1812, she married Judson Sherman in
1844. Mrs. Warren told the Perrons that Bathsheba was “the lone demonic presence in their house.”66 In reading Andrea’s book, one could get the impression that Lorraine Warren had used her psychic powers to divine this. Yet Carolyn previously had told the Warrens about Bathsheba. Andrea says that her mother let the Warrens have her notebook—which was filled with “meticulous notes” about the strange goings-on at the farmstead, including details on Bathsheba and sketches of frightening entities—but it was never returned.67
After the Warrens became involved in the case, something curious happened. The farmstead was besieged with curiosity seekers, from ghost hunters to Devil worshippers. It turned out that the Warrens had been giving public lectures on the “haunting” and divulging the names of both the town and the farmhouse. Carolyn was horrified when she learned the news and felt a deep sense of betrayal because of the hassles her family was forced to endure with this invasion of privacy.68 Andrea wrote that vehicles “slowed to a crawl” in the vicinity of Round Top Road as thrill-seekers sought to identify the house from the landscape. Excited by the prospect of seeing a “haunted house,” the Warrens’ seminars inspired people to make the pilgrimage. “Individuals would simply show up at the door, sometimes in small groups, wanting to meet the family, to ask questions and see the house.”69 The situation angered Carolyn, who confronted Lorraine over the breach of confidence. At first, Lorraine “claimed to be unaware she’d mentioned the town or the names involved,” but she later confessed to speaking about the family and the house during a speaking trip.70
American Hauntings: The True Stories behind Hollywood's Scariest Movies—from The Exorcist to The Conjuring: The True Stories behind Hollywood’s Scariest Movies—from The Exorcist to The Conjuring Page 10