The Signal: The Conjuring House Lawsuits Are "A Mess," Says the Judge Who'd Know

Three weeks running, we’ve watched the same small circle of names tangle over one famous farmhouse — and this week a Rhode Island judge said out loud what we’ve been circling around in italics: something about this deal doesn’t add up. Alongside that, a 150-year-old Michigan mansion reopens its doors, a Cleveland convention brings the community together this weekend, and an honest look at where AI is (and isn’t) actually helping in the field. Every claim below is sourced — links at the bottom so you can read the original reporting yourself.

The Conjuring House: Even the Judge Thinks It’s a Mess

We’ve been tracking the fight over the Burrillville, Rhode Island farmhouse — the one that inspired The Conjuring — since our first post, and it just got a rare bit of on-the-record candor. At a September 3 hearing, Rhode Island Superior Court Judge Melissa Darigan reviewed the tangle of overlapping lawsuits tied to the property and told the parties bluntly: “Something does not smell right,” and called the litigation “a mess,” according to the Boston Globe. She’s now pushing to consolidate the related cases under a single judge so someone can actually sort out who has what rights.

For anyone just catching up: original owner Jacqueline Nuñez defaulted on her mortgage; YouTuber Elton Castee’s company, Summit & Stone LLC, bought that loan from Needham Bank; and Ghost Hunters’ Jason Hawes filed a warranty deed in June claiming he’d struck a purchase deal with Nuñez back in December. None of that has been verified by any court. What’s actually on the docket now includes Needham Bank suing over its own mistakenly discharged mortgage, Summit & Stone accusing Hawes of fraud, and — as of this August — Nuñez’s sister Elizabeth Greenhalgh dropping the guardianship petition that kicked this whole legal spiral off in the first place. Judge Darigan’s read on it: nobody can move forward until the basic question of who owns what actually gets answered.

We keep coming back to this story not because it’s the spookiest thing in the news, but because it’s a useful reminder that “haunted” and “well-run” aren’t the same claim. A property with this much cultural weight attracts investors, and investors bring lawyers — the ghosts, whatever they are, are the least complicated part of this house right now.

Michigan’s Bruce Mansion Reopens Its Doors

Away from the courtroom, a genuinely charming haunted-location story: the Bruce Mansion near Brown City, Michigan — a 150-year-old Second Empire home built in 1876 by Scottish immigrant John G. Bruce, one of the few structures to survive the devastating 1881 Thumb Fire — has reopened to public tours after years off-limits. Visitors can book 90-minute self-guided daytime tours for $19, or full overnight investigations (9 p.m. to 6 a.m.) for $100. Past investigators have reported unexplained voices, footsteps, and shadowy figures inside the house, though — as with most local legends — the specifics (like stories about a mysterious former owner) remain more folklore than documented fact.

We like these stories precisely because they’re small. Not every haunted house needs a movie franchise or a celebrity buyer attached to be worth a night of real investigation — sometimes it’s just a well-preserved 19th-century farmhouse that survived a fire and has a reputation nobody’s fully chased down yet.

On the Calendar: Cleveland ParaCon, September 11–12

If you’re anywhere near Ohio this week, Cleveland ParaCon returns to the historic 5th Street Arcade this Friday and Saturday, with free admission for shopping and vendor browsing plus after-hours ghost hunts both nights. The speaker lineup includes demonologist Father Bob Bailey (Paranormal State), Ghost Adventures-featured investigator Karlo Zuzic, author Sam Baltrusis, and paranormal equipment builder Jeff Fent, alongside psychic mediums and tarot readers. It’s a good snapshot of how much of this community’s work happens off-camera, in convention centers and historic arcades, not on television.

What’s in the Kit Bag: AI Enters the EVP Booth, Carefully

No single new product this week, just a trend worth naming honestly: more independent investigators are experimenting with AI-assisted tools for Electronic Voice Phenomena work — apps that use machine learning to flag potential voices in ambient recordings instead of relying purely on an investigator’s trained ear. The pitch is straightforward pattern-matching at scale. The pushback is just as straightforward: skeptics like Benjamin Radford, writing in Skeptical Inquirer, have argued that AI filters can deepen the illusion of intent behind ordinary noise rather than clarify it — an algorithmic version of the same pareidolia that makes static sound like whispers to a tired ear at 2 a.m.

Worth saying plainly, the same way we did with full-spectrum cameras and the K2: a tool that helps you sort through more data faster is not the same thing as a tool that makes the data more meaningful. AI-flagged audio deserves the exact same skepticism as anything else in the kit bag — maybe more, since it’s newer and less understood by the people using it.

Our read this week: the biggest paranormal story right now barely involves anything paranormal — it’s contract law, mortgage assignments, and a judge losing patience with everyone in the room. Meanwhile, the actual work of the field keeps happening in the background: a mansion reopening its doors, a convention hall in Cleveland, and investigators arguing honestly about whether their newest tool actually helps. That’s the split we’re going to keep tracking.

Got a location, a case, or a strange find of your own? Send it our way — we go where the evidence points.

Sources

• Boston Globe — “R.I. judge says ‘Conjuring’ house lawsuits are ‘a mess’”
• Boston Globe — “‘Ghost Hunters’ star listed as owner of R.I.’s ‘Conjuring’ house”
• Thumbwind — “Spooky Bruce Mansion Tours Return, Opening 150-Year-Old Thumb Landmark to Visitors”
• Cleveland ParaCon — official event site
• Medium/Kittie Paranormal — “When AI Meets the Paranormal: The New Toolkit of Ghost Hunters”