Bathsheba Sherman

"She murdered that little baby. She drove a needle into his skull and killed it."

- Carolyn Perron

"I was mistress here before you came, and mistress here I'll be anew. I'll drive you out with fiery brooms. I'll drive you mad with death and gloom."

- Bathsheba to Carolyn Perron

"If you don't leave, you'll join us, because you'll too be dead."

- Bathsheba to Carolyn Perron

Bathsheba Sherman (née Thayer) was born in Rhode Island in 1812. She married fellow Rhode Islander Judson Sherman (one year her senior) in Thompson, Connecticut on March 10, 1844. The two were married by Vernon Stiles, a local Justice of the Peace.

Bathsheba filled the role of housewife while her husband Judson worked as a farmer on their land. Fairly well-off, Bathsheba and Judson had a son, Herbert L. Sherman, born when Bathsheba was approximately 37 years of age in March of 1849. It is possible that they had three other children as well, all of whom did not survive past the age of seven, though no census records could be found to confirm these reports. The family also usually took in a boarder, most likely to help them on the farm.

There is no hard evidence to support that Bathsheba Sherman was really a witch, only legend and local folklore. Having lived on a neighboring farm in the 1800s, suspicion grew when an infant mysteriously died in her care. When the baby was examined, it was determined that the mortal wound was caused by a large sewing needle that had been impaled at the base of the child's skull. Though the townspeople believed that Bathsheba sacrificed the infant as an offering to the devil, due to insufficient evidence a court found that she was innocent of any wrongdoing. Despite her name being cleared legally, the public was not convinced.

In her book House of Darkness House of Light, Andrea Perron describes her mother Carolyn talking to a man who she refers to as "Mr. McKeachern." Supposedly a bit of a local historian, Mr. McKeachern told Carolyn that Bathsheba treated the help badly and that she starved and beat her Sherman Farm staff.

The suspected witch Bathsheba Sherman died as an old woman on May 25, 1885, roughly four years after her husband Judson Sherman's death in 1881. Bathsheba lived to see her son Herbert, a farmer like his father, marry his fiancée Anna in 1881. Various articles online will have you believe that her body "literally turned to stone" when she died, or that Bathsheba died from "a bizarre form of paralysis" that puzzled and frightened doctors. Their basis is never more than legend and local folklore.

The Perron family's connection to the spirit of Bathsheba Sherman came at the suggestion of paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren. The mother, Carolyn Perron, told Ed and Lorraine about an incident that had happened a few years earlier. She said that she had been lying on the sofa and all of the sudden felt a piercing type of pain in her calf and then the muscle began to spasm. Upon examination, she noticed a puddle of blood at the point of impact. She checked for bees or anything else that could have caused the puncture in her leg but found nothing. In her daughter's book, Andrea Perron describes the wound as a "perfectly concentric circle" ... "as if a large sewing needle had impaled her skin."

When Carolyn told Ed and Lorraine Warren this story in conjunction with the tale of Bathsheba Sherman, who had been suspected of killing an infant with a knitting needle (see above), Lorraine suggested that Bathsheba Sherman could have taken the needle with her to the afterlife and used it to stab Carolyn in the calf. From that point on, Lorraine Warren referred to the demonic presence in the Perron house as "Bathsheba."