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Homeowner disputes history of 'Conjuring' house


Homeowner disputes history of 'Conjuring' house
Homeowner disputes history of 'Conjuring' house
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The family that currently lives in the Harrisville house depicted in "The Conjuring" says the movie has made their lives a living nightmare.

Producers said last summer's film is based on the true story of the Perron family's haunted experiences decades ago.

Andrea Perron, who has written three books about the torment she says her family went through, with numerous ghosts, for over a decade starting in the 1970s, says the movie "The Conjuring" is a fictionalized account, but true in spirit, as to what really happened in that Harrisville house.

"Our story stands on its own merits and was well documented prior to the release of the truthful memoir or the fictionalized movie," Perron said.

While taping my first story about Perron's book, with the movie in pre-production, Norma Sutcliffe told me about some of what she and her husband experienced after buying the house in the 1980s.

"We were standing here and the door began to bang," she demonstrated during an interview in February 2012.

But now, after the movie hit the big screen, Sutcliffe has backtracked.

"Our lives have been devastated by the release of this movie. The movie industry and all involved never bothered to consider the consequences to us," Sutcliffe now says.

Sutcliffe has posted an hour-long YouTube rebuttal, challenging the history that led to the movie and that turned their lives upside down.

"We began to witness cars arriving up front day after day, pointing out the house," Sutcliffe says in the video, "driving down our driveway to take photos."

The movie has fractured the nearly 30-year friendship between Perron and Sutcliffe. But after many attempts, Sutcliffe wouldn't sit down with NBC 10 for an interview.

Perron said she's sad this is happening.

"There are an awful lot of people in the paranormal community who are writing to me and saying, 'Andrea, you know as well as we do, you cannot live in a haunted house, deny the spirits that you dwell with and expect that there will not be any retribution,'" Perron said.

"We will never feel safe or secure again. We have forever lost our sense of peace and privacy. And as long as we live here we will never feel that peace and for anyone else in the future," Sutcliffe said.

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