GoFundMe Fundraiser To Replace Bathsheba Sherman's Headstone Reaches its Goal

This blog post is more of an update of sorts concerning my efforts to help the Burrillville Historical Society raise funds to replace Bathsheba Sherman's headstone. 

As of yesterday, February 10, 2023, we have now reached and surpassed our goal!!

I want to thank everyone that was involved in donating towards this cause and I want to list everyone by name at the bottom of this list. I cannot begin to thank everyone enough for this generosity of contributing to and in some cases just sharing the link. With everyone's help we have reached that goal and now Bathsheba will get the headstone she so deserves, so that she can now rest in peace alongside her family, as she had always done before the nightmare of vandalism plagued her poor stone, because of "The Conjuring."

I am not one to shy away from speaking my mind, even if it ruffles a few feathers, and I won't be tiptoeing around this either. Plain and simple, the film "The Conjuring" brought a lot of attention to Burrillville, the Old Arnold Estate on Roundtop Road but especially to the grave of Bathsheba Sherman located at the Riverside Cemetery in Harrisville. In turn, that bad publicity influenced others to deface and vandalize Bathsheba's final resting place because they believed the lies perpetuated in the movie. In turn television shows, YouTube & TikTok videos, blogs and countless other means of social media posts then began to spread like wildfire continuing to share this false history concerning Bathsheba, only further sullying her reputation and defaming her character posthumously. 

But we cannot lay all the blame on the movie or social media posts, we have to go all the way back to the people who first started the erroneous rumors concerning Bathsheba. Who were those people?  Well, someone plucked Bathsheba's name out of thin air and attached it to this sinister entity that the Perron's claimed was terrorizing them at their home. But who was the one who started it all? 

Whether you want to lay blame on the Perron family or the Warrens is not for me to say.  I cannot point the finger at one person and say for certain which one it was who started it. Did Lorraine Warren come up with the name while strolling by the cemetery? Or was it Carolyn who saw the name on a walk one day? We will never know, because we were not there. 

Bathsheba had nothing to do with the house in any way, and like I have proven in my blogs and my book, "Stories of the Forgotten: Infamous, Famous & Unremembered," Bathsheba was never accused of any wrongdoing in her lifetime. She was not a witch, not a murderer, not a bad person. She did not hang herself on the property either, as the film portrays. Like I mentioned, the people who created the movie got their information from somewhere, and those people are to blame for the slander done to Bathsheba over the years. That is a fact. 

But one thing is for certain, there was no Mr. McKeachern and there were no rumors about Bathsheba prior to Earl Kenyon's passing, which was when the house was later sold to the Perron family.  You do the math. It's just plain common sense. The stories started AFTER Mr. Kenyon's death and subsequent selling of the Arnold farmhouse in the 1970's.

The unfortunate thing in all of this is that those people who continued to perpetuate the false narrative surrounding Bathsheba did nothing to right these wrongs over all of these years. They could have made an attempt to do so, they could have even started a fundraiser like I did, to help replace her headstone years ago. Still, nothing was done. 

As I stated in a previous blog, I had reached out to many people in "paranormal celebrity" circles in the past 2 years, and only a handful responded and only a very few donated, but those who did I am forever grateful for that. 

When I was first interested in helping Betty at the historical society I wanted to see if any groups such as the Masons, Odd Fellows and the Eagle or Boy Scouts would be interested in donating their time to restore her headstone. I reached out to all of those groups and never got a response. I reached out to a few stone workers asking if they would be willing to help with the stonework for her headstone and again, I received no reply.  The GoFundMe proved to be the only means to draw enough attention and response to promote this effort.

I am glad to announce that we have now reached our goal and the headstone will be replaced once and for all. The biggest donation that helped us meet the mark was made by the new owner of the Richardson-Arnold house on Roundtop Road, Jacqueline Nunez. Her very generous donation helped us reach and surpass the amount needed to fulfill this goal. I reached out to her yesterday and thanked her personally for doing that. She also made a post on Facebook to reiterate that Bathsheba had nothing to do with the house, she was NOT a witch and was NOT a murderer and for people to leave her grave alone. That was very much appreciated as well.

For the record, although I do not agree with Richardson-Arnold house (a.k.a. The Conjuring House) being a tourist attraction for ghost tours, I do appreciate Mrs. Nunez's help in righting a wrong that was done to Bathsheba. As one of my friends pointed out yesterday, "Just think, this whole time the Warrens Legacy Foundation, NESPR, Tony Spera or any of the Perrons could have done what she just did, but they chose not to."  And that is absolutely right. So, I truly appreciate the donation that Jacqueline made yesterday. 

Just think, out of all the people who have made a fortune off of this "Conjuring" franchise, be it through the film, books or televisions programs related to the home, out of all those people, only one person, who by the way is only recently affiliated with this property, chose to get involved. That speaks volumes about who is sincerely interested in setting the record straight, and who may "talk the talk," but their actions (or lack thereof) proved the opposite. Jacqueline's actions showed she actually cared enough about the situation to help us, help Bathsheba.

I have been promoting this fundraiser all over the internet since 2021, I have reached out to countless people within the paranormal field and in reality it was just regular people who took the time to donate and share to help Bathsheba. It wasn't a bunch of paranormal celebrities, it was just regular people who read about what happened and wanted to help any way that they could. And for that I am forever grateful.

I hope that moving forward this begins the new chapter, with the tide turning in favor of spreading the truth about Bathsheba far and wide, so that she will no longer be portrayed in a bad light. She was a decent human being and deserves to be respected in death, as she was in life. She deserves that much and so much more. 

Thank you to all who helped us make this happen!  -- J'aime Rubio, Author & Historian

Also: A BIG THANK YOU to Sandy Seoane at NRINOW News: 

https://nrinow.news/2021/11/04/historian-looks-to-repair-final-resting-place-of-burrillville-woman-defamed-by-conjuring-story/

and THANK YOU to  Bella Pelletiere at The Valley Breeze:

https://www.valleybreeze.com/news/historians-wanting-to-honor-bathsheba-sherman-raise-funds-to-repair-headstone/article_60381b78-a657-11ed-9282-ab63cb3d5841.html?fbclid=IwAR3-X7BR21Al-Wq_H-fAsnf4efD74Wzub20c9nSf01Lyry9RnIblT8LnIOI

(Copyright 2/11/2023, www.jaimerubiowriter.com)

Photo Credit: Kent Spottswood