Demon House Documentary Deconstructs The Devil’s Design

The lord of flies has the lease on a house in Gary, Indiana, and he will not be repossessed. Freestyle Digital Media’s upcoming documentary Demon House will explore the mass hysteria that followed an alleged demonic possession that labeled an Indiana home as a “Portal to Hell.” The documentary was directed by paranormal investigator Zak Bagans, the host of Travel Channel’s Ghost Adventures.

Former residents of the “Demon House” Latoya Ammons claimed she and her three children, then aged 7, 9 and 12, experienced supernatural occurrences such as physical contact, possessions, and levitation. Authorities called The Department of Child Services. Capt. Charles Austin, the city’s police chief and a 36-year veteran of the Gary Police Department, is on record saying the claims are credible. Austin initially thought Latoya Ammons and her family made up the story. The events are detailed in nearly 800 pages of official records.

The Ammons’ family moved into a rental house on Carolina Street In November 2011. By December they experienced a swarm of big black flies on their screened-in porch, a calling card for the demon Beelzebub. They heard footsteps climbing the basement stairs and creaking doors.  On March 10, 2012, Ammons’ mother Rosa Campbell witnessed her then-12-year-old granddaughter levitating above her bed, unconscious. The incident was witnessed by a group of the children’s friends.

The Ammons claimed they heard voices, saw wet footprints where no one had walked, and witnessed levitation. Dr. Geoffrey Onyeukwu, the family physician who evaluated Ammons and her three children, diagnosed the incidents as “hallucinations” and “delusions,” at first. But a Department of Child Services report said medical staff at his office witnessed one of the children being lifted and thrown against the wall without anyone touching him.  The report includes accounts that both mother and children complained they were attacked by ghosts and visited by spirits.

The report’s highlight was a note that hospital personnel witnessed one of the sons moonwalking “up the wall backwards” and “flipped over and landed on his feet.”

The Ammons called local churches and were told to clean the home with bleach and ammonia. They were also instructed to draw crosses in oil on every door and window and to pour olive oil on the children’s hands and feet, and smeared oil in the shape of crosses on their foreheads. 

The family reached out to two clairvoyants, who said the home housed 200 demons. The spiritual workers burned sage and sulfur and instructed the Ammons to cover an end table with a white sheet, and place a white candle and statue of Mary, Joseph and Jesus on it. They read Psalm 91 from the Bible. This kept the demons at bay for three days. Then, the family said demons possessed the children.

Rev. Michael Maginot told The O’Reilly Factor he got a call from a hospital chaplain one morning after witnesses say a boy walked up a wall backwards. While he never personally interviewed the children, Maginot he did a four-hour interview with the child’s mother and grandmother. He said the lights would flicker. He went on to perform three exorcisms, two in English, and one in Latin, on the family.

The story of the “Demon House” was first reported by the Indianapolis Star in 2014. The story was picked up by USA Today, Fox News, Huffington Post, and the Daily Mail.

Based on the reports, Bagans “bought the house, sight unseen, over the phone,” according to the official statement. He and his crew then became “the next victims of the most documented case of demonic possession in U.S. history, the ‘house of 200 demons.’”

Bagans took repossession a step further, sealing the Carolina Street house from malevolent spirits altogether.

“I destroyed the house because I do not want anyone to ever live there again,” Bagans told Dread Central. “I saw too many things, and there was something inside the house that affected everyone. The police, clergy, children, my production crew. Everyone.”

But such extreme measures are not necessary, says The Hollywood Witch Marie Bargas. She was one of the last students of deceased exorcist David Jackson. She also studied under Crooked Path Apothecary’s Greg Bismarck, a magician for more than four decades, who worked at Pan Pipes Magickal Marketplace while it was owned by The Craft star and The Sopranos castoff Fairuza Balk.

“Greg and I both agree that the one thing that we see as lacking on TV shows specifically about demons is that once the demons are exorcised they are not imprisoned and therefore have no problem coming back, over and over again,” Bargas says. “This is why some locations and some people are afflicted by demons for years.”

“Demonology is not uncharted territory, but it requires stepping outside of the prejudices of mainstream Christianity to incorporate knowledge available from other cultures that has been preserved for centuries.”

Sometimes the information in the ancient books of knowledge gets lost in the translations. “how could such information be vetted?” Bargas asks. The Hollywood Witch fell prey to bad print herself. She “made the mistake of conjuring a demon by using a book that confused the names of the angels and the demons.” Bargas righted the situation by replacing the demon with a corresponding angel, which restored the balance. She corrected the names with the help of Carroll “Poke” Runyon from the Ordo Templi Astarte, best known as the author of The Book of Solomon’s Magick.

“The prejudice against non-Christian mystery schools, or non-Christian demonology from India, Thailand and Africa, for example, is preventing the American public from being freed from unnecessary demonic possession,” Bargas says.

A course in Demonology 101 should include “The Lesser Key of Solomon,” Bargas says, which “details the process of imprisoning Djinn/Demons in a brass vessel. In India they are imprisoned in underground vaults. Lacking that in the USA, the brass vessel seems like the logical choice, but nowhere on television is the Brass Vessel utilized correctly as far as I have seen.”

The lack of televised coverage may have condemned the property for all eternity,

“Although Bagans destroyed the house, it does not mean that a ley line or an energy vortex, a literal gateway into this dimension has been destroyed,” Bargas warns. “That gate may still exist and it does not require a house or structure to be utilized. The demons may in fact be waiting for another chance. ”

Demon House will hit theaters and VOD and Digital HD on March 16, 2018.