13. Bathsheba Thayer Probably Wasn’t the Ghost Haunting the Family
The idea that the most malevolent of the spirits at the house, the one torturing and even possessing Carolyn Perron, was the ghost of Bathsheba Thayer came from Lorraine Warren. Carolyn had a perfectly concentric wound on her leg that mysteriously appeared about the time that the Warrens began to investigate the haunting. Lorraine saw it and immediately presumed that it was made by Bathsheba Thayer, who was accused of stabbing an infant in the back of the neck as a means of sacrificing the child to Satan. Lorraine claimed that Bathsheba took the knitting needles to her grave and used them in hauntings.
Lorraine’s story is based almost entirely on assumption and circumstantial evidence. The people were unable to prove that Bathsheba actually did stab a child with a knitting needle, so it is entirely possible that that crime never even transpired. In fact, there is no historical evidence that such a trial even took place. Additionally, the ghost never claimed to be the spirit of Bathsheba Thayer. If there indeed was an evil spirit haunting the family – and the family insists that there was – it may have been an unknown entity that was not associated with another person’s ghost.