Regular Episode
#078 – DEMONS, GHOSTS AND GARY INDIANA
Karen is the author of 📚 Haunting America 💵 and 📚 God Bless America 💵, both of which cover paranormal belief, haunted locations, exorcism, and related American folk religion — making her an ideal guide through this particular thicket.
🏚️ The Ammons Case: What Was Claimed
In November 2011, LaToya Ammons, her mother Rosa Campbell, and Ammons’s three children moved into a rental property in Gary, Indiana. Within weeks, the family reported a cascade of strange occurrences: large horse flies appearing in winter, shadowy apparitions, wet footprints on the floor, a daughter found floating unconscious in her bedroom, children speaking in “demonic voices,” and — most sensationally — a nine-year-old boy reportedly walking backward up a wall to the ceiling, flipping over his grandmother, and landing on his feet.
The family consulted multiple churches, two psychics (who reportedly counted approximately 200 demons in the home), and pursued a mixed toolkit of remedies: anointing the home with oil, cleaning with ammonia, smudging with sage, salt circles, and building an altar in the basement. The grandmother, Rosa Campbell, reportedly believed she was supernaturally protected from the evil herself.
👁️ The Witnesses and Their Credibility
The story gained unusual traction in part because of its seemingly credible witnesses. Valerie Washington, a Department of Child Services family case manager, and registered nurse Willie Lee Walker both claimed to have witnessed the wall-walking incident — and both were, by their own accounts, believers in demons and spirits. Dr. Jeffrey Onyuku, the family physician, initially described the mother as suffering from hallucinations and delusions in his medical notes, but later reported witnessing disturbing behavior from the boys at his office, prompting a 911 call.
Two psychologists — Joel Schwartz and Stacey Wright — evaluated the family and concluded the children appeared to be acting out the mother’s expectations, with stories that changed on re-interview. Blake and Karen note that Washington and Walker were primed by prior belief, that communal reinforcement within the family created a strong feedback loop, and that eyewitness memory — especially under stress and with supernatural expectations already established — is notoriously unreliable.
🧱 The Wall-Walking: Parkour or Paranormal?
Blake and Karen spend time on the most dramatic claim: the boy’s backward walk up the wall. Blake points to a thread on Metabunk where users posted YouTube videos of children performing similar acrobatic feats — wall-running, backflips off furniture — that could easily be misremembered or misperceived as something supernatural, especially by observers already primed for a demonic event. Karen notes that the children’s stories changed across interviews, and raises the possibility that the children had absorbed cultural scripts about possession from films and television.
The skeptical framing here isn’t simply “the kid was faking it” — it’s that confabulation, motivated perception, and performance for a believing audience can produce dramatic witness testimony without any supernatural cause.
📸 The Ghost Photo and the EVPs
When Gary police officers — drawn by “professional curiosity” — visited the home and photographed it, they reported seeing ghostly images in the pictures. Mick West at Metabunk analyzed the image and raised the possibility it was produced by an Android camera app; Blake is less certain it was deliberate but agrees it’s more likely pareidolia, a reflection, or a curtain artifact than anything paranormal. Either way, a hoax is more plausible than a ghost.
The EVP recorded by police, reportedly saying “hay” (or “hey”), gets similarly short shrift. Blake and his partner Matthew were able to reproduce near-identical sounds by brushing a phone against clothing. Blake and Karen agree that EVPs are undermined by the standard paranormal-radio practice of telling listeners what to hear before playing the recording — a textbook priming effect that guarantees the audience will perceive the suggested phrase.
✝️ Father Maginot and the Exorcisms
Catholic priest Father Michael Maginot entered the case after hearing about the wall-walking incident. He conducted a four-hour interview with LaToya Ammons and Rosa Campbell — notably never meeting the children — and concluded the home was demonically infested. He subsequently performed three exorcisms, the final one conducted in Latin in June 2012, along with auxiliary rituals including writing demons’ names on paper and burning them.
Karen raises a pointed procedural question: standard Catholic practice requires psychiatric evaluation and episcopal authorization before an exorcism is performed. The speed and informality of Maginot’s process suggests he may not have followed proper channels. Karen also observes that LaToya’s convulsions during the Latin portions of the ritual looked less like genuine involuntary response and more like learned performance — she heard an unfamiliar language, identified it as the “magical” cue, and acted accordingly. Blake compares the dynamic to the scripted performances associated with televangelist exorcist Bob Larson.
📰 The Media, the Movie Deal, and What Comes Next
The original Indianapolis Star story was written by journalist Marissa Kwiatkowski after approximately six months of interviews and document requests. She obtained DCS intake reports, police reports, and direct interviews with most of the principals — but declined, in subsequent interviews, to say whether she believed the events occurred. Blake and Karen credit the thoroughness of her document trail while noting that the piece presents supernatural explanations on equal footing with natural ones, and that credulous outlets (including the Daily Mail) amplified only the paranormal framing.
Ghost Adventures host Zach Bagans purchased the Gary property for over $35,000, virtually guaranteeing a televised investigation. Blake and Karen observe that the story follows a well-worn trajectory — compelling anecdotes, “credible” witnesses, media saturation, then a book deal, then a film — and point to Amityville as the prototype. They express genuine concern about the three children, who were raised in an environment of intense supernatural belief, had their stories shift under questioning, and are now publicly associated with a story that shows every sign of following them into adulthood.
Blake closes the episode with a sober note: around the same time this case was making headlines, real exorcism-related deaths were being reported — a Virginia man killed his daughter in November 2011, and a Maryland mother killed two children in January 2014. The Gary case may be colorful paranormal entertainment; the broader belief system it reflects has a body count.
📚 Further Reading
– 📚 Haunting America 💵 by Karen Stollznow
– 📚 God Bless America 💵 by Karen Stollznow
🔗 Related Links
– Demonic possession (Wikipedia)
– Catholic Exorcism rites and protocols
– Pareidolia
– Electronic Voice Phenomenon (EVP)
– The Amityville Horror
– Metabunk — Mick West’s analysis of the ghost photo
– Folie à deux / shared delusional disorder
– Confabulation and memory distortion
Note: ads inserted into the distributed audio alter the timestamps in unpredictable ways, so timing references in these notes are approximate.
IN THIS EPISODE of MonsterTalk, Blake and Karen talk about how skeptics evaluate the Gary Indiana Demon case.
Items of Interest
- Original News Story (Indiana Star)
- Indiana DCS Report (Initial Report)
- Additional DCS (Intake Officer Report)
- DCS Report on taking custody of children
- Excerpt from Police Report on the home investigation
- Additional Police Report excerpt
- Some of the other outlets that have covered the story
- Metabunk’s Mike West analyzes the police “ghost/demon” photo
- Karen’s book Haunting America
- Karen’s book God Bless America on Amazon
Music
- Monstertalk Theme: Monster by Peach Stealing Monkeys
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