To be honest, I don’t really like horror movies, but Love to be scared.

These features served me well in 2021 when I learned about the house that inspired the hit series. Magic (last installment, Satan Made Me Do Thiscurrently available) can be booked for overnight stays. The property is famous for the hauntings of the Perron family and some spooky incidents in the 1970s involving paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren.

Luckily, I have two close girlfriends who are just as curious as I am: sisters Liz Beedle and Emily Penke. Our friends and family now tell us “Ghost Mothers” and we routinely investigate reportedly haunted places together and share them on social media. It’s a Mother’s Night Out like no other (we all met through our kids’ school) and path More fun than book club.

So we decided to travel to Rhode Island that year and fight the problems. Magic the house now known as Farm on Round Top Road. We flew into Providence and drove just over 30 minutes to Harrisville. Winding country roads brought us to the former clapboard Colonial, owned (at the time) by Cory and Jennifer Heinzen, who purchased the property in 2019. The couple greeted us at the door and showed us around.

It was always their plan to open the house for overnight investigations. “This is a once-in-a-lifetime thing,” Cory explains of the purchase. Originally from Maine, the duo has also been involved in the paranormal community for years and makes a point of explaining the truth through the dramatization of films.

Cory informs us that no violent deaths have been recorded at the home. Bathsheba Sherman, the witch in the movie, was just a neighbor in the 1800s. As grateful as we were for this information, it didn’t make us any less fearful of the evening ahead.

“When we bought it, we knew we wanted to share it with other people,” adds Jennifer, noting that they had no negative experiences. “Why do we keep a place like this to ourselves?”

Built in 1836, the house itself is a rustic farmhouse with the occasional Ouija board and Raggedy Ann doll. Past paranormal incidents have included books spontaneously falling off shelves in the library, and shadow figures were frequently seen in the upstairs bedroom where one of Perron’s daughters was frequently attacked by an unseen force. The Heinzen family stays in the annex of the house during all nightly reservations. Nothing about us argues with them.

We started our investigation in the library around 23:00 and turned off all the lights. Within minutes, a nearby motion detector was triggered repeatedly for no apparent reason. There were also loud squeaks coming from the living room, as if someone was passing by.

We sat upstairs in the bedroom where the attacks took place. Again the motion detector tripped and we saw a ball of light in a corner with no apparent source. Shadows seemed to be closing in on us, and our terror drove us all to collapse on the bed. What can I say? Three grown women snuggling together makes everything a lot less scary.

There was a lesson in the basement that showed how difficult it is to navigate in the dark. All your senses are amplified and every little noise causes fear. And don’t get us started on how many snakeskins are hanging from the foundation, leaving them lying where their former occupants threw them (which caused a whole new level of fear, especially for Emily). While standing in a room next to an old well, a table somehow slid against Liz’s leg, even though no one was near her.

We returned to the library early in the morning. I had taken a few books from one of the shelves, and as soon as I placed them, one of them fell and hit the floor hard. We can’t say for sure what caused this, but I’m OCD enough to know that I pushed them all against the back wall, even aligning them at the top, because I didn’t want them to look uncomfortable.

Saying it was around 4:30 at night we all went upstairs to “sleep”. I must admit that I covered my head completely with my sleeping bag. Entire scenes from the movie were running through my mind and there was no way I could look outside to see who or what was standing there.

When daylight finally began to illuminate the room, I was completely relieved. And we were a little proud that we made it through the night without leaving early or even sleeping in our rental car.

As always, when we finish an investigation, we shout (loudly!) to all souls. Negative They were allowed to follow us home. On the way back to our hotel, we all agreed that the house was “scary gorgeous.” And it’s worth every scary minute.