The Ammons Haunting Case

Debate Room
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Skeptical analysis[edit]

Physician Geoffrey Onyeukwu had been skeptical of the entire incident and failed to witness any paranormal incidents. In his medical notes he wrote, “delusions of ghost in home” and “hallucinations”.[5] Ammons’ children had a history of “irregular school attendance”, with a complaint filed against Ammons in 2009. In 2012, she blamed her children’s continued irregular attendance on the purported demonic activities.[4]

According to skeptical investigator Joe Nickell, police chief Charles Austin was “an admitted believer in the supernatural, including ghosts”. Nickell reported that the photo published by the Indianapolis Star and captioned “Photo by Hammond Police” was, according to the Hammond police chief, not an official photo and was not taken by Hammond police authorities. Nickell also interviewed a number of witnesses and concluded that there were a number of non-supernatural explanations for the claimed supernatural events.[4]

Landlord Charles Reed stated he had never experienced any supernatural events at the house. His prior tenants also claimed to never have such experiences. At the time, Ammons was behind on lease and used the claimed paranormal activities to avoid payments. The tenant who moved in after Ammons had not noticed any paranormal events, either. Reed believed the events were a hoax.[4]

The children were interviewed by psychologists, and several professionals concluded “the children were acting deceptively and in accordance with their mother’s beliefs”. Tracy Wright, a psychologist, noted that the youngest son “acted possessed” whenever he was challenged or was asked “questions that he did not wish to answer”.[4]

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GASP! Donald O’Connor was possessed? I should have known since he made all those movies with that demonic talking mule.

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:joy: :rofl: :joy: You obviously haven’t worked with some of the cops I knew during my twenty years on patrol. :rofl: :joy: :rofl:

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@Spider Howdy! (And welcome to the AR, by the way.) Supernatural… Paranormal… yadda-yadda-yadda… I confess I do find those topics fun and interesting to think about in an amusingly curious sort of way. Just fun for speculation, you might say. I actually rather enjoy chit-chatting about such possibilities. After all, we do have to admit there are still many odd things/happenings in this world of ours we are not able to fully explain… yet. So, in the meantime, why not have a bit of cheap fun by speculating? Perfectly okay, and sometimes rather entertaining. No harm, no foul. The problem, however, is when a person starts allowing lack of explanations to dictate their overall behavior and adversely influence major decisions.

It may interest you to know I have experienced a few “bizarre” incidents of my own that I cannot fully explain. Here in my own home, as a matter of fact. You see, my wife and I live in the house she inherited from her parents. And BOTH of her parents died in this house within a couple of years of each other. I was actually here with her and holding her dad’s hand as he took his final breath. (My wife is Pagan, by the way, and she believes in “spirits” and such.) Anyway, ever since we have been living here, there have been several little odd events I PERSONALLY WITNESSED that had me scratching my head and thinking, “Well, THAT was interesting.” To this day, I honestly have no complete explanation for the things I saw with my own eyes. But while my wife fully believes they were her parents and/or other deceased relatives making their presence known, I personally believe they were simply really cool things that left me puzzled and speculating. Nothing more. Nothing less. Even more interesting, though, is the fact I cannot recall a single other time in my life in which I encountered such odd happenings. It’s only over the last nine or ten years since I lived here in this house that I have encountered such odd anomalies. Does that mean I think my house is “haunted”? There are some who might say it is, but for me it is simply interesting and sometimes amusing. And even IF there were somehow “spirits of the dead” roaming around our humble abode, so what? Other than causing a bit of a startled jump now and then, they do no harm. Hell, even if they ARE really here, I’m actually okay with it and totally comfortable with the possibility. After all, who WOULDN’T want a ghost as a permanent houseguest? :blush:

(Edit to ask, “Who you gonna call?”)

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Lucky for you, they don’t know how to work that iPhone, or that face you make while doing the dirty would be all over YouTube.

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I’ve worked in healthcare for over 30 years, and an idea occurs to me: If ghosts exist and are–somehow–associated with the place where they died . . . then an average hospital would be like a Love Canal of spirits and ghosts.

As an example, I worked at a large hospital in South Florida that has been in existence for over 60 years.

A “back of the envelope” calculation (which is not rigorous, but still useful) tells me that–perhaps–as many as 40,000 (and most likely more) people have died within its doors . . . as this hospital serviced a large retirement area, and included many Hospice patients whom are terminally ill.

I’ve spent the night at the hospital on many occasions (during a hurricane, for example), and never experienced anything supernatural . . . but let us ignore this objection, because maybe I’m not “wired” to perceive such things. After all, there are people who are color blind, some people are tone-deaf, and other people do not have the genes to perceive certain tastes like bitter almond.

Well . . . South Florida is a melting pot, and I worked closely with people from Haiti, Trinidad, Jamiaca, and so forth whom practice Vodun (which we also call Voodoo), Santeria, etc. whom take the spirit world for granted. I’ve also worked with many people whom were ministers, priests, and so on . . . and never heard any mention of anything supernatural.

On one occasion (during a hurricane sleepover), a few people were even playing with a Ouiji board to entertain themselves in the creepy atmosphere of the circumstances, and nothing particularly interesting happened.

Also, please note that dogs have a reputation (for whatever reason) for being sensitive to spirits and other supernatural circumstances. As an example, it has even been discovered that dogs can sense when someone has cancer or when someone is going to have a seizure. Please see below:

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://www.roswellpark.org/cancertalk/202008/can-dogs-smell-cancer&ved=2ahUKEwijyNjX7_yBAxXrkmoFHQSoBwYQFnoECEYQAQ&usg=AOvVaw1L29qwW8joxi780a-B1GZk

I have had (and worked with) dogs my whole life, and we had therapy dogs in and out of the hospital all of the time, and I believe that I would have picked up on them perceiving anything supernatural . . . as I absolutely love dogs, and I tend to pay very close attention to them (to the exclusion of all else) when I’m around them.

Of course none of this means that spirits and ghosts don’t exist, as my observations are not rigorous. Also, perhaps an overwhelming number of ghosts in a small space cancel each other out in some way like tastes competing with each other in a recepie if you put in too much (or a wrong combination) of a certain spice or seasoning.

Or, perhaps, with so many ghosts in such a small space it becomes possible for them to interract with each other and form the ghost equivalent of relationships, and they lose interest in interracting with the living.

Still . . . if we follow Occam’s Razor, the simplest explanation is that there are no ghosts . . . although I’m still open-minded, as people do seem to report paranormal experiences–with some consistancy and regularity–at that legendary ghost factory in Europe called Auschwitz.

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NO! The simple explanation is that all those damn priests and clergy that visit the hospital are carting off the spirits for their gods. After all the more spirits a god has the more powerful they become. There is a reason the priests and hang out in hospitals waiting for people to die. They don’t want you to know about the spirit world, and they sure don’t want you to know what happened to the spirit of your poor old grandma.

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I can’t be alone in seeing the irony in ghost preferring innately creepy and secluded places can I? Places where people’s vivid imaginations are far more likely to run riot. I mean how often are ghosts reported in crowded shopping centres at midday on a sunny summer’s day? Oddly enough they have this in common with alien abductions, aliens who seem obsessed with lonely cowboys with mental health issues, in the wilds of Montana.

I agree with keeping an open mind, which means claims for ghosts get the same credence as any other claim that can’t be accurately defined, or objectively evidenced.

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I actually find aliens to be about a million times more credible than ghosts.

In fact, an idea that I’ve played with resolves a lot criticisms about supposed alien encounters . . . namely that aliens are human descendants from the far future. Please consider:

  1. A typical alien is the “alien grey” that is athropomorphic despite the idea that the odds against a vaguely human form evolving elsewhere in the Universe are probably very, very low. Their shape may have the same relationship with us in the way that a dog’s shape is similar to a wolf.
  2. If aliens are time-traveling humans from the future, then they have historical records that they can refer to in order to avoid situations where they can be documented or captured . . . which is why they appear in out of the way places where only ranchers from Montana see them.
  3. They may be motivation for them to visit, as I would travel back in time (if I could) to get specimens of extinct animals and plants to resurrect everything that we’ve destroyed. Maybe they wish to restore their biosphere.

This idea explains everything . . . or alien visitations are just bullshit.

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Well, the absolute farthest I’d be prepared to go would be that we know life is possible, as we have objective evidence it exists on at least one planet. Farther than that I will need to be convinced. Paradoxically I don’t know that ghosts are possible, and am not aware of any objective evidence they are.

I assume you mean what we typically imagine aliens would look like, in popular science fiction and the like, if so then yes, there’s a type, and yes we tend to athropormise what we imagine they might look like.

I’m inclined to disbelieve the claims, again as with any other claim, there is just no objective evidence to support them. Though imaginative claims and scenarios abound of course.

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As do I. Have you ever looked into the notions of early life after the Big Bang?

The theory goes that a short time after the Big Bang the universe was in a much more dense and warm state than it is now. Now by short time they are saying half a billion years or so. Claiming that at this time water could have been in a liquid state throughout most of the universe. If water was abundant and by this time some stars had already formed, grown, and died creating the elements necessary to spark life. I find it plausible.

I’m not a scientist, and I haven’t looked into it much in depth, but on the surface it sounds plausible to me. If anything it seems like there are more windows of opportunity for life than first thought. I’ll try to look up some articles later on when I get some free time.

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Yes, animals (dogs in particular, for some reason) are indeed said to be more sensitive to “paranormal beings” and such. Matter of fact, one of our three indoor cats exhibits such behavior. We even had a shih tzu pup a few years ago that seemed very sensitive to “oddities” in our home. Examples…

The cat: We have what we call the “ancestor room”. It is the room off our kitchen where my wife has many pictures of her ancestors, and it contains a multitude of antique items handed down through the generations. During certain times throughout the year (October in particular), he will sometimes go in that room and start meowing and “wailing” like crazy for no apparent reason. At the same time, he gets all “twitchy” and acts overly paranoid when anywhere near that room. The other two cats most often just sit and watch him like he has lost his mind. Either me or my wife sometimes have to call him over to us to pet him and calm him down. Other times my wife might say something toward the room like, “Hey, y’all leave him alone. Stop bothering him.” And shortly thereafter he calms down and goes back to “normal.” (Well, normal for him, at least. He can be a strange kitty sometimes. :sweat_smile:) Anyway, it is something I have always found interesting, and I most often just chuckle to myself whenever he starts acting up like that.

The pup: We got him only a few months after my wife’s dad (Buddy) died, and I would take him down to the basement with me now and then while I did some work. Well, the little guy was naturally a bit nervous down there the first couple of times due to it being new surroundings. Perfectly normal, right? So after two or three trips down there he finally started getting more comfortable and confident. However, one evening I had him with me and all was well… initially. He was hanging around me and basically just sitting and watching what I was doing. Then, without warning, he quickly turned toward a corner of the room and started barking… then he started whimpering… he would stand up and then sit down, very indecisive and nervous, all the while whimpering and yipping while looking back and forth from me to the corner. Like he was saying, “Do you see that? Do something about it. It is scaring me.” I observed this for a few seconds, and scanned the corner carefully to make sure there weren’t any critters hanging out there. Then I calmly and half laughingly said, “Buddy, leave the little guy alone. I know you don’t mean to scare him, but he doesn’t really know you.” And with that, the pup calmed down and went back to acting normal and more relaxed. I thought it was fascinating. Still do, actually. :smiling_face: Oh, and then there was a time a few months later when we had another interesting experience with him. We kept his food and water in the living room at the bottom of the stairs. One day I put his food down for him as usual and told him to go eat. He started toward his bowl and then immediately stopped, looked toward the stairs, and started whimpering and backing away. I was behind him, and my wife was way off to the side. Both she and I started encouraging him to go eat. He would take a cautious step or two forward, but then quickly retreat as if something was blocking his way to the food bowl. All the while whimpering and nervously looking back and forth from the stairs to me and to my wife. Finally, my wife said, “Daddy, leave him alone and let him eat.” After a few seconds pause, the pup gradually calmed down and eased over to his food bowl and started eating. I couldn’t help but laugh at the whole thing. Again, it was fascinating to me.

So, basically, while I am certainly skeptical of such things people call “supernatural” and/or “paranormal”, I freely admit there are definitely things in our world “science” still cannot fully explain… yet. Until such time, however, I simply consider such events as being amusingly interesting. Hell, even a bit fun sometimes. Meanwhile, I am fully aware there are likely many plausible reasons for the animals’ behaviors I just described. Perhaps an “animal psychologist” could even provide a few helpful suggestions. Either way, I still think it’s kinda cool and entertaining to witness such things. Then again, I suppose I’m kinda warped like that. :crazy_face:

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HEY! :angry: How the hell would YOU know what kind of face I ma-… Oh, uh, damn… Uh, disregard… Just, uh, forget I said anything…

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Dogs can most certainly sense things that people can not. There is no reason at all to even imagine those things that dogs may sense are ghosts. Can you fathom the immense number of possibilities one would need to eliminate before being able to cite the enigmatic entity known as “Ghost” as a possibility?

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The dog we had when I was a kid was a blacksmith as well…

Stick a poker up his arse, and he’d make a bolt for the door. :face_with_raised_eyebrow: :wink:

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Totally agree. Like I said, there are many possibilities for the behavior. A few I can speculate, but I’m sure there are animal behavioral experts out there who could offer even more insight and possibilities. No biggie. I suppose one of the main reasons I “enjoy” experiencing such incidents now is because they no longer bother me or make me uncomfortable the way they did during most of my life. Religious baggage can be a real bitch. Now, if I could just find a way to eat butterbeans and cornbread without it causing me to have severe flatulence problems… :thinking:

(Edit to make pottery with Patrick Swayze.)

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flatulence? Who cares. Shit on the floor in the living room and no one is going to notice your flatulence. (Blame it on the dog!) Not only do you get to enjoy your butterbeans, but you get a free show as well.

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Stop making me take the blame!

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Welcome…Well, one would assume that the most qualified person(s) to answer that question would be the claimant(s). Making some wild-assed, unevidenced claim carries with it a burden of proof, as does any claim.

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Eyewitness Testimony Fails:
They saw something, what they reported to have seen is in no way reliable. If you believe their eyewitness testimony you must believe Bigfoot, Alien Abductions, All conspiracy theories, Skin Walkers. Alien bases on the moon, all religious claims, and more. All of these are supported by the exact same level of evidence. There is a reason we do not rely on eyewitness testimony.

" The truth is, eyewitness testimony is extremely unreliable. According to the Innocence Project, an organization that fights to overturn wrongful convictions using DNA evidence, eyewitness misidentification played a role in nearly 70% of the convictions that have been overturned by post-conviction DNA evidence."

Not even courts rely on eyewitness testimony. any longer. Not without safeguards.

How: “Group Think. Social Pressure, Social Conditioning, and more.”