The “Conjuring House” in Burrillville, Rhode Island, known for it’s haunted ties, was set to hit the auction block on Halloween, following a nightmare year for homeowner, Jacqueline Nuñez.
But the auction, held by JJManning Auctioneers, was canceled just weeks before the event.
The auction was what’s known as a mortgagee’s foreclosure auction and comes after Nuñez defaulted on the terms of the mortgage. But on Wednesday, the company in charge of her mortgage, Needham Bank, sold her underlying mortgage loan “and no longer has an interest in The Conjuring House property,” the auction house explained.
Justin Manning, president of Yarmouth-based JJ Manning Auctioneers, told the Boston Globe that he does not know who bought the loan.
“Whatever the group is that bought it will have to complete the foreclosure themselves,” Manning told the newspaper.
Interested buyers
There have been many people interested in buying the famous 3,000-square-foot home.
The home is dubbed the “Conjuring House” in reference to the 2013 film “The Conjuring,” which is based on events that took place at the home in the 1970s. In the decade-plus since the first film, another seven movies in the franchise have been released, most recently on Friday.
It is located on about 8.5 acres of land in Burrillville. The “antique farmhouse … has become famous for historical paranormal sightings and activity,” the auction listing reads.
The property was set to go to auction on Oct. 31 at 11 a.m., with a $25,000 deposit due on the day of the auction and 10% of the purchase price due within two business days.
Overall, there have been about 90 people from nine states and the United Kingdom who had requested updates on the auction, the Boston Globe reported.
Jason Hawes, a former Ghost Hunters Paranormal Investigator, had been raising money on GoFundMe to attempt to buy the house.
It had raised more than $67,000 when he paused the donations due to the canceled auction.
“I’ve paused all donations to the GoFundMe page until we find out what’s going on with the auction for the Conjuring House,” he wrote on Facebook.
The eldest daughter of the family who once lived in the “Conjuring House” and was featured in the first movie, Andrea Perron, recently called on Hawes to buy the house in a Boston 25 article.
“He is a man of honor, integrity and authenticity and has made significant strides in the field of the paranormal,” Perron told the news station.
Earlier this year, YouTuber Elton Castee spoke to Burrillville Town Manager Michael Wood about the possibility of buying the Conjuring House with comedian Matt Rife, the Providence Journal reported.
“If you know me, you know I’m obsessed with the paranormal and all things haunted,” Rife wrote on Instagram.
And in August, the two had announced they were now the owners of the Ed and Lorraine Warren home and occult museum in Connecticut.
In an Instagram video, Rife said he and Castee now owned the home and museum and, as a result, became the “legal guardians” of hundreds of haunted artifacts and items at the home and museum, including Annabelle the doll. A rep for Rife told People Magazine the purchase was “legit.”
Perron, however, told the Globe she was glad the auction was cancelled because she had been “terrified that [the property] would fall into greedy, irresponsible hands.”
“I was afraid it would be far too difficult to see the place on Earth I love the most go up on the auction block like some inanimate object when the farm is so much more,” she wrote.
Previous troubles at the ‘Conjuring House’
Even before the property went up for auction, Nuñez ran into several issues while owning the home.
Last November, town leaders in Burrillville opted not to renew the home’s business license, citing in part Nuñez’s “erratic” behavior, The Providence Journal reported.
Nuñez, a Boston real estate developer, bought The Conjuring House — also known as the Burrillville farmhouse — in 2022. She purchased the home with the stipulation from the house’s previous owner that whoever owns it cannot live in it year-round “because the energy is so powerful,” Nuñez told The Boston Globe that year.
On Oct. 28, Nuñez was arrested in connection with a police pursuit and driving under the influence of alcohol, WJAR-TV reported. After the pursuit, police noticed an “overwhelming odor of alcohol” on her breath and saw her eyes were glassy and bloodshot.
“I had a couple drinks and I live in The Conjuring House,” Nuñez told police, according to WJAR-TV. She asked if people were normally handcuffed for drinking a few Manhattans and laughed during a sobriety test.
“Why are there multiple officers pulling up behind me because I had a couple of drinks?” Nuñez asked police, the news station wrote.
She was charged with driving under the influence of liquor and eluding law enforcement in a high-speed pursuit and was released on $2,000 personal recognizance, WPRI 12 reported.
Months later, a judge issued a bench warrant for Nuñez after she failed to show up for court, the station reported.
She defended her conduct in an interview with the station, saying “I haven’t done anything,” she said. “I’ve just been running my business.”
“Ghost Hunters” star Jason Hawes has accused Nuñez of sending him accusatory and threatening text messages, according to an incident report filed with the West Greenwich Police Department in Rhode Island.
Hawes told police that these texts were unprovoked, and told WPRI 12 that Nuñez had “backed off from those threats with me.”
“Some of these text messages were just extremely vile,” Hawes told the news station. “She claimed I was there trying to do an assassination plot.”
Former employees also voiced issues with Nuñez. She told two employees that they owed her money for a fire that burned a barn on the property in December 2023, WPRI 12 reported. Those two employees said they paid to renovate the barn and Nuñez did not fulfill her promise to pay them back, first blaming the fire on spontaneously combusted materials before claiming they set it.
Another employee told the news station that Nuñez claimed the ghost of the house’s original owner from the 1880s said the employee stole about $3,000.
“She said, ‘John Arnold told me you’ve been stealing money out of the cash box for the past two months,’” former employee Brian Dansereau told the news station. “I literally stopped and I had to correct her like, ‘John Arnold, one of the original owners?’”
Before the page shut down, Nuñez used The Conjuring House Facebook page to post claims that she is the princess of Saudi Arabia and that Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Meta, has “incited hate on his page” towards Nuñez, among other things.
“I know that many of you do not understand why I am making various posts,” she wrote on Aug. 18. “I am part of an International Team that is doing a special mission that triggered events, when I bought [’The Conjuring’ house]. It will be a great thing, once completed.”
Reporter Charlie McKenna contributed to this reporting.