A planned Halloween auction for the famed “Conjuring” horror series house was cancelled after a mystery buyer purchased the property weeks in advance.
The 8.5 acre property in Harrisville, RI was supposed to hit the market for a single-day auction on Oct. 31, eliciting interest from wealthy celebrities and paranormal fanatics including comedian Matt Rife and YouTuber Elton Castee.
On Wednesday, though, auctioneer Justin Manning, with JJ Manning Auctioneers, announced that the sale was off.
Manning told Realtor.com that Needham Bank, which held the mortgage for the foreclosed home, “concluded a sale at the underlying mortgage loan,” but didn’t specify who purchased it.
The most recent owner, Jaqueline Nuñez, purchased the home for $1.5 million in 2022. She ran it as a tourist attraction but was quickly swamped with controversy after a worker alleged he was terminated because the spirit of the first owner told Nuñez he’d been stealing.
Shortly after, other staff started to come forward with more mistreatment allegations against Nuñez. In 2024, the Burrillville Town Council decided not to renew her entertainment license for the property, which put a strain on her connection to the community.
This summer, Nuñez defaulted on her mortgage payments, which left the window open for an auction.
The sprawling 19th-century farmhouse became a tourist hotspot as fans of “The Conjuring” franchise shelled out thousands of dollars for overnight stays in hopes of discovering the truth behind the supposed haunts.
Manning himself fully buys into the tales and admitted that he was fearful of even entering the home — but was exhilarated to auction it off.
“I was joking with the attorney that, instead of wearing a suit, maybe I would dress up as Count Dracula. But I want to keep it professional, [so] I’ll probably just stick with the suit,” he told the outlet.
The property went a whole century without incident until the Perron family took up residence in 1971. Andrea Perron, who was just a young girl when they first moved in, recounted numerous paranormal incidents in her book “House of Darkness: House of Light.”
Perron insisted that her family encountered a spectrum of spirits with varied intentions. At a certain point, they even called on paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren to perform a seance.
“My mother began to speak a language not of this world in a voice not her own. Her chair levitated and she was thrown across the room,” Perron described in a 2013 interview.
The first “Conjuring” movie, released in 2013, is based on the Perron family’s experiences during the nine years they lived in the haunted house — albeit a wildly dramatized version with far more gore.
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