Andrea Perron Her Haunting Story Inspired Film The Conjuring

Author of House of Darkness House of Light: The True Story

Her story inspired the film The Conjuring

February 15th 11pm Eastern listen live or free on our archives at your own leisure

With hosts Jeffery Pritchett and WHAM and Stephanie Bennetti

My name is Andrea Perron. I am the eldest daughter of Roger & Carolyn Perron. I have four sisters: Nancy, Christine, Cynthia and April. My birthdate: October 10, 1958…the only one of five siblings to be born in Rhode Island. I was just two months old when my parents bought our first home in Willimantic, Connecticut, where all my sisters came into the world.

A burgeoning family required more space so we bought a larger home in Cumberland, R.I. when I was six. Living in a suburb of Providence proved disquieting. After six years my mother decided her girls required a place in the country in which to grow and thrive. In June of 1970 she found a glorious farm, then she and my father moved mountains to buy what was known as the old Arnold Estate; two-hundred acres of land with a big barn and a farmhouse; plenty of space to spread out and explore Nature. It was the perfect place to raise a family, according to the owner, though he failed to disclose a crucial element of the experience he endured as an occupant.

The day we moved in, he told my father: “…leave the lights on at night.” A rather cryptic message. Thus began an incredible odyssey; a supernatural excursion through dimensions of time and space as the history of its characters from the ages began to reveal themselves to seven mortals who could not conceive of and never anticipated such events transpiring in our lives. For almost a decade our family lived among the dead. There we came to understand that we are not alone and there is something beyond mortal existence. I graduated from high school in 1976 and attended Chatham College in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Graduating in 1980 with an interdisciplinary degree in Philosophy and English, it was during my senior year when my mother announced the sale of the farm was pending. I was heart broken. In spite of the trials, it was “home” and I loved it. Returning to Rhode Island, we were there only a few weeks before relocating to Georgia; long enough to pack and say goodbye. It was over. Though we abandoned our place in the country, it never left us. Memory is powerful.

I’ve spent my life since engaging in a variety of endeavors. Georgia did not suit me. After seven years I went home to R.I. Though I have always been a writer, I have likewise explored my own creative abilities. As a professional singer, songwriter, musician and actor, my time has been full of adventures and interesting characters. For more than twenty years I was a cast member with The Theatre Company of Rhode Island, performing on the stage of The Assembly Theater, the historic centerpiece of Harrisville. For the last ten years I lived in R.I. I was employed as a youth counselor at Harmony Hill School in Chepachet and lived in the village of Harmony, in a quaint cottage on Waterman Lake, also known as paradise on a pond. In 2007 I began writing the manuscript which has now evolved into the trilogy “House of Darkness House of Light” and relocated (again) to Georgia to be with my family while embarking on such a major project involving all of them as well. It has proved to be quite an excursion in its own right, spawning some nightmares while exhuming our memories of the dead. Often painful, it has been a healing process as well, as each revisited a past impacting our present, clearly mapping the future of a family. There was no escaping unscathed, though we thought we has successfully done so at the time.

This is a story whose time has come. Many have spoken or written about fragments of the story for decades. Now is the time to tell the whole truth about what happened in a house alive with death as we lived an illuminating decade of life. It is a tale worth telling because it is true. Time has come because we are ready to disclose our secrets and the world is ready to receive them.