The case of Latoya Ammons began like so many haunting stories do, with a family looking for a safe place to live. In 2011, Ammons moved with her children and mother into a modest rental home in Gary, Indiana. What followed over the next two years became one of the most heavily documented modern haunting cases in the United States, involving police officers, medical professionals, Child Protective Services, and a Catholic priest who later became an eyewitness to events he struggled to explain. Among the strangest elements was a series of voicemails captured on Ammons’s phone, recordings filled with soft crying, breathy whispers, and distorted wails that seemed to come from nowhere, appearing even when her phone was turned off or sitting untouched on a table.
Before the recordings began, the disturbances inside the home had already reached a level that unnerved visitors. Ammons reported footsteps pacing through empty rooms, wet bootprints materializing across the floors, and shadows that moved on their own. Her children described being pushed or dragged by unseen hands. The youngest boy was once found unconscious in a closet, his body limp, as if he had been placed there carefully rather than having fallen. When Ammons called for help, medical staff and CPS workers were skeptical, until they saw things occur right in front of them.
On one documented visit, a family case manager and a nurse witnessed Ammons’s nine-year-old son slide backward across the floor as though pulled by an invisible force. In another instance, a police officer on scene later described a strange oily liquid dripping down the home’s blinds, reforming even after being cleaned repeatedly. His official report noted that he had “no working explanation” for what he saw. Even more disquieting was the photograph taken by a municipal officer of a window where no one was standing, a bleary, humanlike figure appeared in the glass when the image was reviewed.
It was around this same period that Ammons’s phone began receiving the voicemails. The messages, some only a few seconds long, carried the sound of a woman sobbing, her breathing uneven and echoing as if in a confined space. Others resembled a child crying softly into the microphone. Each time, the call logs showed no originating number. Priests later examined the recordings themselves, noting that the audio did not match typical electronic interference, static, or misdialed connections. The crying voices seemed close, intimate, and disturbingly aware of the listener. Several police officers who reviewed the recordings described them as “unsettling” and unlike anything they had heard in similar investigations.
Father Michael Maginot, the priest assigned to the case by the Diocese of Gary, soon became a key figure in the investigation. On his first visit to the home, he observed objects shifting without being touched. During one prayer session, he later reported that the house itself seemed to respond, lights flickered, and a nearby bottle swayed across a tabletop without any detectable airflow. Maginot eventually conducted multiple blessings inside the house, and the Diocese authorized a formal exorcism for Ammons. Throughout this period, the unexplained voicemails continued, arriving at irregular hours and often after moments of heightened activity within the home.
Child Protective Services ultimately removed the children from the residence temporarily, citing the alarming events witnessed by their own staff. During a supervised visit at a medical facility, a nurse observed one of the boys climb backward up a wall, an incident corroborated by multiple workers present. Once outside the home, the children’s behavior slowly stabilized, and the strange phone calls abruptly stopped. This led investigators to consider the home itself as the source of the disturbances rather than the family members.
When the family finally moved away, the house received a quiet but firm recommendation: no future tenants. The city of Gary eventually took possession of the property, boarding it up and limiting access. Years later, paranormal groups who entered reported strange readings and brief bursts of unexplained audio, but none matched the original intensity described by officials. The voicemails, however, remain one of the most eerie components of the case, evidence that left even seasoned investigators uneasy. They were not screams, nor shouts, nor easily dismissed distortions. They were weeping, soft and deliberate, arriving without a number, without a caller, and without any explanation that satisfied the people charged with protecting the family.
Sources & Further Reading:
– Indianapolis Star, original investigative series by Marisa Kwiatkowski.
– Gary, Indiana Police Department case notes and officer reports (2012–2013).
– Diocese of Gary statements and interviews regarding the authorized exorcism.
– Indiana Department of Child Services official visit documentation.
– Audio analysis discussions referenced in the Indianapolis Star’s extended multimedia coverage.
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