![]() ![]() The Beginning (… or the end?)īefore we got off the trolley, Ace told us to take it all in - take in the people, take in the trees, take in the laundry (just kidding), take in every single thing that we see at Pioneer Park next to Grant Elementary School. Smoking and alcoholic beverages are strictly for the birds. Keep your arms and legs inside so you don’t fall out the window, especially the rear window. Standing may cause vertigo - don’t do it. The tour resumes its trip back to Old Town, traveling almost two miles west to El Campo Santo Cemetery on San Diego Avenue, finishing the tour at the Whaley House at the corner of Harney Street and San Diego Avenue.Īs we embarked on our first stop, a spot-on imitation of Alfred Hitchcock’s voice was played to explain the rules of the trolley tour. The eerily decorated black trolley bus travels about a mile and a half north of Old Town to Pioneer Park in Mission Hills. The nearly two-hour round-trip experience begins at the Old Town Market courtyard on Twiggs Street. In addition to a hair-raising scary-movie scream - so horrific it would drive you mad … MAD, I tell you - Ace was impressively invested in the many ghost stories he told along the way. But I know what we experienced.Ghosts and Gravestones Trolley Tours live and die by their tour guides, and Rodney Foster - aka “Ace” - led our foray into the dark side in supernatural style. "People are free to believe whatever they want to believe. "Both my mother and I would just as soon swallow our tongue than tell a lie," she says. Perron, who has written her family's story in three self-published books, says she is never surprised when people don't believe their tale. Her chair levitated and she was thrown across the room." "My mother began to speak a language not of this world in a voice not her own. "I thought I was going to pass out," Andrea says. ![]() However, a seance allegedly caused Carolyn Perron to be temporarily possessed, which Andrea claims she secretly watched. The Warrens (Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga in the film) made frequent trips to the house in 1974 to investigate, but Lorraine insists she and her husband would never try an exorcism, which must be performed by a Catholic priest. "He would go downstairs and feel this cold, stinking presence beside him."ĭid the exorcism attempted in the film really take place? Perron says the family stayed away from the dirt-floored cellar, which was a spirit hotspot, except when the house's heating equipment would fail, forcing Roger to make repairs. I think we were supposed to have this experience and share it with the world." When asked why the family endured the spirit invaders, who stunk of rotting flesh and would arrive at 5:15 most mornings to lift beds, Perron says: "I hear that question most every day. "Whoever the spirit was, she perceived herself to be mistress of the house and she resented the competition my mother posed for that position," says Perron. While many spirits in the house were harmless, some, like one called Bathsheba, were angry. Rather than the relatively short, intense haunting depicted in The Conjuring, Perron says her family lived in the 14-room farmhouse from January 1971 until 1980. Why didn't the family just leave the haunted house? Nonetheless, Andrea Perron, the oldest of the five Perron girls, now 54, says the film is "a beautiful tapestry" with "many elements of truth to it, and some moments of fiction." And she and Lorraine say they can explain some of the obvious questions: But there's absolutely no reason to believe there is any legitimacy to them." "The Warrens are good at telling ghost stories," says Novella of the couple who were also involved in the paranormal story that was made into the 1979 film The Amityville Horror."You could do a lot of movies based on the stories they have spun. Neurologist Steven Novella, president of the New England Skeptical Society, who has investigated the Warrens in the past, is far from convinced. "It still affects me to talk about it today." "The things that went on there were just so incredibly frightening," she says, citing her own investigation nearly 40 years ago. ![]() She insists that many of the movie's harrowing moments actually happened. The Conjuring scared up a surprising $41.5 million over the weekend with a haunted farmhouse tale said to be "based on the true story" of ghost hunters Ed and Lorraine Warren.īut how much paranormal truth does the film handle?Ĭonjuring depicts the 18th-century farmhouse in Rhode Island where Roger and Carolyn Perron (Lili Taylor and Ron Livingston) and their five daughters allegedly were terrified and even possessed by spirits.Įd Warren died in 2006, but Lorraine, now 86, was a consultant on the film and remains a paranormal investigator. Watch Video: 'The Conjuring' clip: I know where you're hiding ![]()
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