I have the same thing going on in my game. Gavin Richards and another elder sim who isn't an original townie both were put into houses in Willow Creek. Both of them didn't have traits or an aspiration. Also, my family tree is like that, where the dead sims appear alive. I am having a couple other issues, and I wonder if it's related to whatever is going on. First of all, sometimes when I get the notice that a ghost is going to get culled, it comes up so many times in the news feed, probably 20 times, the same message. Also, when the town was dead, and I was moving in families from the bin, many of the house I was unable to buy furnished, and I was using the freerealestate cheat. Almost every single house in Windenberg was like that, and that was where I started, so the game put a lot of sims from the bin in that town. So, I noticed that any household that had been previously lived in, the game would not let me put a family in with it being furnished. I have a hunch that it is because of tombstones on the lot.