BURRILLVILLE, R.I. (WPRI) — The star of the hit TV show “Ghost Hunters” is seeking help from police, saying he’s been harassed by the owner of the home featured in the film “The Conjuring.”
Jason Hawes, who starred in the paranormal investigations series “Ghost Hunters,” filed a police report last week with the West Greenwich Police Department. Hawes told police he’s received several threatening and harassing text messages from Jacqueline Nuñez, who owns “The Conjuring” house.
The Burrillville farmhouse — also known as the Old Arnold Estate — has been an international draw for paranormal enthusiasts ever since it was made famous by the 2013 supernatural horror movie “The Conjuring.”
“Some of these text messages were just extremely vile,” Hawes told Nexstar’s WPRI. “She claimed I was there trying to do an assassination plot.”
Hawes, whose daughter worked at the house for nearly two years, said he started getting harassed online and via text messages after Nuñez made claims last month that he was trespassing on the property.
According to a police report, Nuñez posted surveillance video on social media, showing what appeared to be a man leaving the property in a truck, and she wrote that it “looked like Jason Hawes!”
Hawes said it’s been disproven that the man was him. He claims Nuñez then started sending him several text messages, including one that stated, “You will someday be prosecuted for your slander and numerous murder attempts on my life.”
“I am told that you know of the assassination attempt on me,” she texted, according to the police report. “I will never be defeated or destroyed by any [expletive] paranormal person, now or at any time in the future.”
Nuñez, who didn’t respond to several requests for comment regarding Hawes’ accusations, has been at the center of a number of controversies.
Former employee Brian Dansereau last month filed a complaint with the state seeking $9,000 in unpaid wages. Dansereau was fired earlier this year after Nuñez said the spirit of the home’s 19th-century owner, John Arnold, claimed he’d been stealing.
“It does not matter whether you believe in the paranormal or not,” Nuñez said in a statement last month. “I and every person is entitled to experiences that bring understanding and meaning to our lives, including being informed or warned about wicked actors and actions. As far as Brian goes my experience with him devolved quickly, culminating in his at-will employment termination.”
Dansereau last week filed a lawsuit in R.I. Superior Court, accusing Nuñez of wage theft, defamation and harassment. Similar to Hawes, Dansereau said the owner has been harassing him online and via text message.
“I hope you get ruined, arrested and prosecuted for the rest of your life,” Nuñez wrote in one text reviewed by the station.
Separately, former employees Cody Desbiens and Santori Hawes also reported having lost thousands of dollars in personal items during a barn fire on the property last December. The couple said Nuñez initially told them they’d be reimbursed, but she then refused to pay.
“In the back of our mind, we knew that we weren’t going to get that money,” said Santori Hawes, who is Jason Hawes’ daughter.
The couple said their personal items were inside the barn at the time because it was being retrofitted into a paranormal museum that was meant for visitors of the home.
Nuñez, who’s owned the home since 2022, pushed back at the time. She blamed the couple for hiring a “painting hobbyist who failed to read the instructions for how to dispose of soiled highly combustible rags properly.”
The owner also warned she’d be suing the couple “for their recklessness and negligence.”
Jason Hawes said he’s since heard directly from the man shown in Nuñez’s surveillance video, saying he’d been a guest at the house, which offers overnight stays. Hawes relayed that information to police, and said the man has also reached out to Nuñez directly.
Hawes said he wanted to file the police report to document what’s been happening and to ask law enforcement to keep Nuñez away from him and his family. West Greenwich police said they had reached out to Nuñez, but they hadn’t heard back as of Thursday morning.
“I wanted to take this to the police department just to cover myself and protect my family,” Hawes said, adding that he’s also speaking out publicly because he wants to stick up for all past, present and future employees and guests.
“I have lawyers, I have the ability to defend myself, and she’s since backed off from those threats with me,” he said. “But she’s still doing it with other people.”
