There aren’t many hauntings more serious.
The manifestations were intense, as we described back more than a decade ago in this “Special Report.”
A priest who helped the family (a mother, two sons, seven and nine, a daughter, twelve, and a grandmother) and performed excorcisms, Father Michael Maginot, witnessed it for himself on his first visit to this home in Gary, Indiana, when the lights in the bathroom mysteriously flickered every time he spoke about the haunting and the window blinds swayed though there was no breeze.
There was the shadowy figure who would leave muddy footprints. The priest saw this himself. We ponder such things, this month of the great Archangel Michael.
Father Maginot said he sprinkled blessed salt under the stairs, which seemed to be a focal point. A black “monster-like” form was seen by the children.
At one point, the three children lapsed into states whereby one would utter satantic-like chants and then pass out, followed by the next child continuing the same chant and passing out, followed by the third, in perfect unnerving sequence.
The chants were in a strange deep voice and seemed to involve numbers.
During a visit to the doctor’s office, the seven-year-old—according to an official report from the Department of Child Services—was lifted by unseen forces and thrown against a wall.
He was rushed to Methodist Hospital in Gary.
When the caseworker, Valerie Washington, spoke to the family at the hospital, the boy’s eyes rolled back and he bared his teeth, growling.
It was at the hospital, in front of Washington and nurse Willie Lee Walker, that the other son, nine years old, who was holding his grandmother’s hand, suddenly had a strange grin and “walked up the wall, flipped over her, and stood there. There’s no way he could’ve have done that.”
He had “glided” backwards up the wall. It wasn’t a running, acrobatic jump.
The family was the Ammons (mother LaToya, the two sons, and a daughter), who were severely affected by something in the little house they began renting in 2011.
Father Maginot, who was granted permission from his bishop to exorcise LaToya, said there were many things about the basement that led one to believe it had occultic baggage—that it was the locus for a curse, that it was what the priest called a “portal.”
In the basement, which was poured concrete, was a portion about four by three feet under the stairs (particularly the third and fourth steps) where the concrete had been broken.
When police dug there, they found panties, a political shirt pin, a plastic shoehorn that looked as if it had been purposefully broken in half, a lid for a small cooking pan, socks with the bottoms cut off below the ankles, and heavy metal objects that looked like a weight for a drapery cord, as the Indianapolis Star so ably put it.
Bizarre.
But here’s the catch, the conundrum:
Just before moving into the “haunted” (or possessed) house), LaToya had had a relationship with a man she had just learned was married, according to Father Maginot, and was trying to distance herself from him.
This was the beginning of strangeness.
When the boyfriend’s wife found out about the affair between her husband and LaToya, says the priest, she called LaToya and made a rather ominous remark to the effect that “you will regret ever messing with my husband.”
The question: was that the threat of a curse?
Was the wife involved in anything occultic?
Was the boyfriend?
This is asked because of things that occurred even before moving into the house.
When LaToya was with him, bed sheets had mysteriously slipped off her feet, objects suddenly went missing (including a pair of her Air Jordan sneakers), as did certain family photographs, and he had requested LaToya’s underwear as sort of a souvenir of their relationship (excuse the explicit detail, but in light of what was found in the basement, it may play into the picture).
Soon after, LaToya (now knowing he was a married man) fled, renting the home on Carolina Street and not wanting him to enter.
Just about right off, horseflies had appeared inside the screened front porch of the home, though it was winter, and despite constant efforts to kill them, kept returning. There were footsteps lumbering up from the basement. There was a door from the basement that LaToya and her mother, Rosa Campbell, would hear creaking open (though no one was there).
According to Father Maginot, things in the house (which had included shadows and unexplained wet boot prints in the living room) moved of their own accord, the children were yanked off a couch, and the daughter levitated from her bed in full view of a friend who was sleeping over.
Police reported eerie exudations of oil in the home and trouble with electronic gear after visiting the home.
One veteran homicide reporter refused to stay in the home in the dark.
Father Maginot himself seemed well-protected, though he too encountered strange events in his life. More on that shortly.
The Ammons had much electrical phenomena at the house — static on the phone, strange disruptions in the television. So did others.
But what was the source—a “portal” in the home or the “curse” leveled by the boyfriend’s wife or both? Was it a coincidence that panties and those strange objects would be found? How did that all occur and figure in?
The boyfriend had not been allowed to visit the house, so seemed unlikely to have dug up the basement and planted the object.
Besides, those who investigated said the dirt seemed to have been disturbed decades before.
Eventually, after the exorcisms, the family fled the house, which the owner eventually sold to famed television ghost-hunter Zak Bagans for a television special.
Bagans and his crew were so negatively affected (including hospitalizations) that in the end, they had the house destroyed.
In an interview about strange happenings in filming the movie, ‘The Deliverance,’ BOSSIP reports the following, “It seems his [director, Lee Daniels] efforts may have been for naught. Like he’s done in every one of his films, Daniels also cast his sister in The Deliverance as his “good luck charm.” the director told BOSSIP in an exclusive interview that this also seemed to backfire with an eerie twist.
“My sister came down with cancer. She was in the cancer scene with Glenn [Close]. I put her in the chemo scene. She plays the girl making fun of Glenn. I put her in all my movies and literally like two days later she was diagnosed with lung cancer. My dog died. Then there was something that flew in Andra’s face, in her eye in the middle of shooting. It was a little scary. That’s why we prayed. I called the Apostle in on Day One, but even with that, we’re conjuring up spirits when we’re dealing with the truth and that’s a dangerous playground,” Daniels revealed to BOSSIP.”‘
