Is Matt Rife trying to trademark ‘Conjuring House’? What to know

Take a mini tour of the Rhode Island house that inspired the movie ‘The Conjuring’

Jacqueline Nuñez bought the home that inspired the movie, “The Conjuring.” Learn which parts of the home have the most paranormal activity.

• The sale of The Conjuring House to “Ghost Hunters” star Jason Hawes has been delayed by a lawsuit.
• The current owner’s sister filed the suit, questioning the owner’s mental competency to sell the property.
• YouTubers Elton Castee and Matt Rife have also expressed interest in purchasing the famous house.
• A company created by Castee bought the mortgage on the property and has filed to trademark the name “Conjuring House.”

PROVIDENCE – Although lawyers spent several hours on Monday, Dec. 15, trying to resolve whether “Ghost Hunters” star Jason Hawes can move forward with buying the Conjuring House, Superior Court Judge Joseph J. McBurney had to schedule another hearing in the matter for Jan. 7.

Two months ago, lawyers for Hawes, who has been the public face of a GoFundMe effort to raise money to buy the house, and lawyers for Conjuring House owner Jacqueline Nuñez had quietly negotiated a deal on Oct. 10 for Hawes to buy the house on Oct. 30 for $1.3 million. That would have been a day before the house was to be sold at a foreclosure auction.

But a then-mystery buyer, who had bought the mortgage on Oct. 8, was withholding a key piece of information – how much was due on the mortgage, which would have to be paid off as part of the sale. So the sale was postponed until Dec. 5, but that same day, Nuñez’s older sister, Elizabeth Greenhalgh, filed the lawsuit to block the sale, arguing that Nuñez was not mentally competent to sell the property.

The sale was then postponed until Friday, Dec. 19, before the judge continued the matter to next month.

Did someone offer Nuñez $4 million for the Conjuring House?

Besides revealing how close Hawes was to closing on a purchase of the Conjuring House, filings in the suit divulged Hawes’ assertion that a YouTuber named Joshua Yozura had gone to Nuñez’s residence to talk to her about selling.

In a brief arguing against the blocking of his purchase, Hawes said that Yozura, who has appeared in podcasts with comedian Matt Rife and fellow YouTuber Elton Castee, had tried to offer Nuñez $4 million to cancel the deal with Hawes and sell the property to a company started by Castee.

Rife and Castee have repeatedly publicly expressed an interest in buying the house.

Nuñez could not be reached immediately for comment about Rife and Castee’s interest in buying, but she has told The Providence Journal in the past, “Tell them I’m never selling to them.”

Rife, Castee look to trademark ‘Conjuring House’ name

About a week and a half after the auction was canceled because a company created by Castee had bought the mortgage, another company created by Castee filed with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to trademark the phrase “Conjuring House.”

In August, Rife announced on Instagram that he and Castee had bought the former home of the late Ed and Lorraine Warren in Monroe, Connecticut. The Warrens, the lead characters in the 2013 movie “The Conjuring,” investigated what’s now called the Conjuring House in the 1970s. Town records in Monroe show that the Warrens’ house was bought by Haunted Homes LLC, a company formed by Castee, according to Connecticut incorporation records.

On Oct. 8, as the house was scheduled for a foreclosure auction, a company formed by Castee called Summit & Stone, with the same Manhattan address as Haunted Homes, bought the debt on The Conjuring House. Rife’s publicist has told The Providence Journal that the comedian is not involved in that transaction. Owning the debt does not mean that Summit & Stone owns the house, merely that owner Nuñez now must pay her mortgage to Castee’s company.

On Oct. 17, Haunted Homes filed with the trademark office to protect the phrase “Conjuring House,” saying that Haunted Homes would be “conducting guided ghost tours … of a historical site, a haunted house, a museum of the occult” and providing “museum services, namely, exhibiting to the public a historical site.”

In its application, Haunted Homes says it first used the phrase “Conjuring House” on Oct. 1, 2013, or earlier, and that it first used the phrase in business on Oct. 1, 2015, or earlier. “The Conjuring” movie was released July 19, 2013.

Shortly after Nuñez bought the property in May 2022, she changed the name of the business from The Farm At Round Top to The Conjuring House, and actively used that name until at least December 2024, when the town closed the business. Its town business license referenced both the name Bale Fire, the corporate name under which Nuñez bought the real estate, and the name The Conjuring House.