1736 Farmhouse of the Perron Family Hauntings
1677 Round Top Road, Harrisville, RI 02830
Age
18+ (formerly)
Cost
$$$
Public tours, paranormal investigations, and overnight stays were suspended after Burrillville revoked the property's entertainment license in November 2024. The property is scheduled for foreclosure auction on Halloween 2025.
Access
Limited Access
Rural farmhouse property, gravel drive, stone walls, surrounding wooded acreage
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1736 · Colonial New England Farmstead · Perron Family Case (1971-1980) · Warren Investigation Archive · Conjuring Film Franchise
The Old Arnold Estate is a center-chimney colonial farmhouse built in 1736 on what is now Round Top Road in the village of Harrisville, within the town of Burrillville, Rhode Island. The property remained in the Arnold family for multiple generations across the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and passed through several subsequent owners before the Perron family purchased it in 1970.
Roger and Carolyn Perron and their five daughters lived in the house from January 1971 through June 1980. Carolyn Perron published a three-volume memoir, House of Darkness House of Light, that documents the family's experiences. The accounts brought the Perron family into contact with paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren of Monroe, Connecticut, whose subsequent investigation of the property contributed to the Warren Occult Museum archive.
The 2013 film The Conjuring, directed by James Wan and starring Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga, drew on the Warren case files concerning the Perron family. The film's commercial success generated sustained public interest in the property, which had been privately owned and held closed to public access throughout the Perron tenure and the decades that followed.
The house changed hands again in 2019 and was purchased by Boston developer Jacqueline Nuñez in 2022. Nuñez opened a commercial paranormal program including daytime tours, guided investigations, and overnight bookings. Within a year, disputes with former staff, legal filings, and concerns from town officials about permitting and safety compliance produced significant friction with the surrounding community.
On November 20, 2024, the Burrillville Town Council voted not to renew the property's entertainment license, citing missing paperwork and unapproved uses. The tour program ended on November 30. Ticket revenue ceased, and the mortgage went into default in early 2025. The property is scheduled for foreclosure auction on Halloween 2025. Public access at the time of this writing is limited to roadside view; visitors should not enter the property.
Sources
Carolyn Perron's published account describes a sustained pattern of phenomena across the family's nine-year tenancy, with reports concentrated in the home's earliest months and the cellar spaces. Documented experiences include the figure of a woman in nineteenth-century dress observed in the upstairs bedrooms, doors opening and closing without apparent cause, beds shaken during the early morning hours, and the displacement of household objects between rooms.
The family's accounts identified the principal figure as a previous resident named Bathsheba Sherman. Subsequent historical research on Sherman has produced a contested record; she was a real nineteenth-century resident of the surrounding area, but specific claims about her practices attached to the property by the Perron narrative are not independently documented. The story should be treated as the Perron family's experiential account rather than as verified Sherman biography.
The Warrens' 1973 investigation of the property is among the cases preserved in their files. The Warren investigation produced the Annabelle and Amityville cases as well; the Perron case became the central source material for the 2013 Conjuring film. The film significantly altered specific events and chronology while preserving the broad outlines of the Warren report.
During the Nuñez tour program from 2022 through 2024, visiting paranormal investigators reported phantom voices in the cellar, equipment battery drain, photographs containing shapes interpreted as figures, and EVP recordings cited in tour-program promotional material. The investigation findings published during that period are not independently peer-reviewed and should be treated as marketing material rather than as research output.
With the property currently in foreclosure status, no active investigation program is operating. The future of public access depends on the November 2025 auction outcome and subsequent ownership decisions.
Notable Entities
Media Appearances
View the 1736 colonial farmhouse from Round Top Road. The previous tour program (daytime tours, overnight investigations, and ticketed events) was suspended in November 2024 after the Burrillville Town Council revoked the property's entertainment license. The property is scheduled for foreclosure auction on Halloween 2025; visitors should not enter the property or trespass on the surrounding land.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
Providence, RI
The Edward Dexter House is a Federal-style wood-frame mansion built 1795-1797 originally at the corner of George and Prospect Streets. In 1860 the house was sawed in half and moved in two sections to its current location at 72 Waterman Street. It has been owned by the Rhode Island School of Design and used variously as administrative space and student housing.
Providence, RI
The Samuel B. Mumford House is a Federal-style 1825 private residence with a monitor-on-hip roof and Gothic-colonette-framed entrance. It was originally located at 66 College Street and moved to 65 Prospect Street in the late 1950s when Brown University expanded onto its former lot. H.P. Lovecraft lived here from May 1933 until shortly before his death in March 1937.
Providence, RI
Built between 1783 and 1794 and originally known as the John Reynolds House, 88 Benefit Street was rented from 1816 by Anna Power, mother of poet Sarah Helen Whitman (1803-1878). It is best known as the site of Whitman's 1848 courtship with Edgar Allan Poe, including the rose-garden meeting that inspired Poe's second poem titled 'To Helen.' The house has been owned by the Episcopal Diocese of Rhode Island since 1959 and remains a private residence.