BURRILLVILLE, R.I. — Norma Sutcliffe says she does not believe that ghosts or spirits haunt her house. But the people trespassing on her property, bothering her neighbors and posting personal information on the Internet are very real.

Sutcliffe owns the 18th-century farmhouse in Burrillville where the alleged hauntings of the hit horror movie “The Conjuring” took place. According to the movie, the house was haunted by malevolent spirits that tormented the owners during the 1970s, the Perron family.

But even after 40 years, the events behind “The Conjuring” still stir up a lot of emotions, along with conflicting versions of what really happened — or didn’t happen.

Now Sutcliffe, and retired journalist Kent Spottswood, are attacking the accuracy of the historic events cited in the movie to explain the hauntings. “There were no murders, no suicides,” Sutcliffe said in a phone interview. “There’s no reason a ghost would exist in this house. … Leave us alone. It’s not real.”

Coming close to tears at least once, she told a packed meeting room of the Burrillville Historical & Preservation Society in Pascoag Wednesday night that “The Conjuring” is ruining her life.

Since the movie came out in July, Sutcliffe said, her property has been inundated with “a torrent” of curiosity seekers who break her fences, trespass on her property and bother her neighbors. (The film was shot in North Carolina, not Rhode Island).

On the Internet, she said, the sense of violation is even worse. Websites have posted private information about her family. Sutcliffe said some people have even written that it would be fun to break into the house.

In the movie, the Perron family is pursued by the evil spirit of a woman named Bathsheba Sherman, who supposedly murdered a baby as a sacrifice to Satan and then hung herself. Ed and Lorraine Warren, famous ghost hunters from Connecticut, are called in to rescue the Perrons.

Bathsheba Sherman was a real person.

But Spottswood said Bathsheba Sherman was neither a Satanist nor a witch, and did not hang herself. He said his research shows that Sherman, born in 1812, died in 1885 of “paralysis,” probably a stroke. “She was a perfectly normal woman,” he said.

Andrea Perron, 55, is the eldest of five daughters of the Perron family. She has self-published two volumes of a trilogy about the hauntings, called “House of Darkness, House of Light.”

In a phone interview from her home in Georgia, Perron said she no longer believes Bathsheba Sherman was the spirit that haunted her family, although in her book she described Sherman as a prime suspect.

“I’m not in dispute with Mrs. Sutcliffe about Bathsheba,” Perron said. “That was the story line of a made-up movie … it was a movie designed to highlight the career of Ed and Lorraine Warren. It was their version of events turned into a Hollywood feature film.”

Ed Warren died in 2006. Lorraine Warren did not respond to email requests for interviews.

According to Perron, it was Lorraine Warren who walked into the Perron home and said, “I sense a malignant presence in the house and her name is Bathsheba.”

Perron said the spirit haunting the house may have been a Mrs. John Arnold, who allegedly hung herself in the barn on the Perron property in the 18th century.

Not so, said Spottswood. There was a Mrs. John Arnold who hung herself, but it was in 1866 and it was in her own home, at least a mile from the Perron property.

Whoever the spirit was, Perron said she saw her, and offered a vivid description: “She was hideous. Her head was hanging off her neck. Her head looked like a desiccated hornet’s nest, covered with cobwebs. She had hollow vacant eyes, thin lips, jagged yellow teeth.”

Perron expressed mixed feelings about the movie.

“It was so distant [from the truth] that it might as well be two stories, with the characters sharing the same names,” she said.

In the movie, Perron said, Ed Warren conducts an exorcism to save the family. In actuality, there was a séance, attended by a medium, a priest, the Warrens and several others.

Perron said the séance went badly wrong — her mother, Carolyn, was levitated and then hurled 20 feet through the air. Her father, Roger, was so angry he punched Ed Warren in the face, “sent him down to the floor,” then threw the Warrens out of the house.

As for the filmmakers, they don’t claim “The Conjuring” is 100 percent accurate. “The film is based on actual events. Dialogue and certain events and characters contained in the film were created for the purposes of dramatization,” reads a line in the credits.

But Perron said the movie got some big things right: the Perron family experienced an “extreme haunting” from 1970 to 1980 at a farmhouse in Harrisville. “Good conquers evil, love conquers fear. They got that right,” she said.

Perron said she once considered Sutcliffe a friend, and is sorry she feels besieged by curiosity seekers and occult fans. On her website (houseofdarknesshouseoflight.com), she urges people not to visit Sutcliffe’s property.

But she also said Sutcliffe has changed her tune about the house since “The Conjuring” was released.

In a YouTube video that Perron said was made in 2012, Sutcliffe and Perron chat amiably about Sutcliffe’s experiences in the house, although they are nothing close to what the Perrons faced. Sutcliffe said she never experienced any fear, but occasionally she or other people in the house thought they heard mysterious voices, or footsteps.

Sutcliffe said she didn’t know Perron would post the video on YouTube, complete with her name, knowing that a movie would come out. She said she never used the words ghosts or spirits, and never took any of the alleged supernatural manifestations in the house seriously.

Perron said Sutcliffe was also on an episode of the Syfy TV show “Ghost Hunters,” which stars Rhode Island plumber Jason Hawes.

“Now she wants all that to disappear,” Perron said. “You can’t change horses in the middle of the stream and not expect to get wet.”

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