Call it “Paranormal Activity Part X”… except this one really is based on “real-life” events. A film inspired by the story of Gary, Indiana-based Latoya Ammons who, in 2011, claimed that her children were being attacked and possessed by demons, has been in development for a couple years, since it was first announced.
Pre-bankruptcy Relativity Media was the studio behind it, but whether it’s still a project we can expect in the future isn’t public information at this time.
Last year, Zak Bagans, the face of Travel Channel’s hit show “Ghost Adventures,” filmed an episode at “The Demon House” as it was called, which is the Gary, Indiana home of Latoya Ammons, whose exorcism went viral in 2014.
The mother of 3 told police that she witnessed her children walking up walls, levitating and speaking in different voices. She further claimed that she once found her seven-year-old son inside a closet talking to another boy only he could see. When she asked what they were talking about, Ammons claimed that he told her the unseen presence was describing what it felt like to be killed. The young boy was also reportedly thrown by a “malevolent spirit” out of a bathroom, and her 12-year-old daughter required stitches to her head after an attack.
When two psychics later visited the terrified mother, they told her there were more than 200 demons haunting the house.
Even official reports from a 2012 document on paranormal activity within the house supported Ammons’ claims, as psychologists stated on-the-record that they witnessed her 9 year-old speak in “different voices” and walk “up the wall backwards.”
After visiting the house and interviewing Ms Ammons, the local police chief himself admitted that he was a “believer,” according to the Indianapolis Star.
State documents filed by the Department of Children Services detailed further strange events at the house, which were said to have been witnessed by medical experts and people outside the family.
Naturally, as you’d expect in this kind of situation, there were skeptics.
The family would eventually move out of their house. The Gary home would eventually be demolished. Zak Bagans, host and executive producer of “Ghost Adventures” on the Travel Channel, had the purported “demon house” destroyed. “Something was inside that house that had the ability to do things that I have never seen before — things that others carrying the highest forms of credibility couldn’t explain either,” he told the Indianapolis Star. “There was something there that was very dark yet highly intelligent and powerful.”
Apparently, the story was a hot property in Hollywood, with Relativity winning a bidding war to acquire Ammons’ life rights, in 2014.
Soon after that, it was announced that Lee Daniels had signed up to direct the horror film. No ETA was given however. Daniels has since become even busier, with “Empire,” the upcoming “Star,” and the Richard Pryor biopic he’s attached to direct, which Mike Epps is attached to star in. So “The Demon House” may no longer be on his to-do list. It’s not listed on his IMDBPro page.
The “haunted house,” “child possession” movie sub genres are quite overdone, thanks in part to the recent rash of qualifying titles. From the “Paranormal Activity” franchise (which seems endless), to “The Conjuring” (which spawned its first sequel, as well as a spin-off), “Insidious 1” & “2,” to all the films that start with “The Exorcism of…,” and many more.
They’re so overdone that they have become fodder for movie spoofs (for example, see Marlon Wayans’ “Haunted House” – itself becoming a franchise).
Maybe the *freshness* to be found in Latoya Ammons’ story is that black people are the central characters and it could be adapted as serious horror, as opposed to the horror comedies we typically get – this is assuming Relativity (or whoever eventually makes the film) doesn’t do anything funny, like, you know, make the characters in the film adaptation white.
Watch a report on Ammons’ story below:
