This story began in 1961 when 28-year-old auto mechanic Bill Adams moved to Detroit, USA, with his wife Lillian and their five children.
Money was tight, so they rented an inexpensive house on Martin Street and prepared to settle down, unaware of the nightmare that awaited them.
Later, this story made it into all the local newspapers, and what inhabited their home was dubbed “Michigan’s most terrifying ghost.”
Almost immediately, the Adamses felt that the back bedroom was different from the other rooms in the house. They felt uncomfortable in it, and no one wanted to sleep there.
As a result, this room mostly remained empty, and only the head of the family, who worked the night shift at the Cadillac factory, slept there during the day because he didn’t mind where to rest, as long as the noise of five playing children didn’t bother him.
But instead of rest, he now woke up even more exhausted, as he began to have terrible nightmares that made him scream upon waking. He couldn’t remember exactly what he dreamt, but he claimed there were “horrible things” and often couldn’t tell if it was just a nightmare or real, as the dreams seemed so vivid.
In August 1961, a family from Atlanta came to visit Bill’s grandmother, and they were accommodated in that very back bedroom. On the first night, the grandmother was awakened by frightening sounds, as if someone was scratching heavily at the walls, trying to get inside the house. She never spent another night in that room.
After this, the family finally suspected that something was indeed wrong with the room and decided to conduct an experiment by locking a dog inside for the night. The poor dog nearly went insane, howling and whimpering, only calming down when released.
A year passed during which the Adamses tried to live a normal life, keeping the room locked and nobody sleeping there. But in October 1962, Bill’s cousin Shirley Patterson came to visit. He had nowhere else to stay but in that back bedroom, and oddly enough, the Adamses didn’t mention anything to him about the strange occurrences at night. Perhaps they thought something would change over the year or that surely Shirley wouldn’t be affected by any supernatural force, who knows. However, as soon as Shirley lay down in bed, he was immediately attacked.
“I went to bed around 11:30 on Saturday night, right after Bill left for work. I spent only a couple of minutes lying in bed facing the wall when something flipped me over. Don’t ask me to describe the feeling. All I remember is being flipped over, and then I saw someone standing at the bedroom door.
At first, I thought it was Lillian, but then a chill ran down my spine. It was a woman with long hair, standing with her back to me, staring into the kitchen.”
Shirley screamed loudly and jumped out of bed, and at that moment, all the lights in the house went out. Shirley ran to the kitchen, where he collided with Bill’s wife, who had rushed out of her bedroom. The lights came back on immediately.
Then from the room Shirley had just left, there came a soul-chilling cry, and from there emanated a suffocating stench so intense that both Shirley and Lillian were nearly sickened by it.
That night, neither of them slept, and when Bill returned from work in the morning, they told him everything. They called the police (for the third time since moving there), and the police thoroughly searched the house. But they found no intruders, and the source of the horrible smell was not found either.
Bill had always been a skeptic; he never believed in ghosts and stubbornly refused to believe that something supernatural was happening in the back bedroom. So, he decided deliberately to sleep there again.
He lay down in bed, ready to fall asleep when he heard footsteps in the room. Opening his eyes, he saw a horrifying face staring at him, just inches from his own.
“It was the most horrifying thing I’ve ever seen. The eyes were looking past me, the mouth moved as if to speak, but only a hissing sound came out – and then there was a terrible stench.”
In panic, Bill leaped out of the room, in such shock that he grabbed his head and began pulling out tufts of hair. The terrible stench poured out of the open door and quickly filled the entire house.
The Adamses couldn’t take it anymore. They quickly gathered their children, took only the essentials, and left the house, even losing the rent for November, which they had already paid. At first, they moved in with Lillian’s parents, and then they rented another house.
After that, the “Witch-Hissing House” was rented out many times, but previous tenants didn’t report any strange occurrences. In 1973, journalists visited the then resident of the house, a Mrs. Willis, who said she slept peacefully in the back bedroom.
Some speculated that the Adamses made it all up to get back at the landlord, who had threatened to evict them several times due to arrears. Others believed that one of their children or neighboring children frightened the Adamses.
However, Mrs. Willis did recount that during her time living in the house, she did experience one unexplainable incident. Once, when she and her daughter-in-law were in the living room, they heard a terrible crash in the kitchen, as if a cupboard full of dishes had fallen and shattered.
But when they rushed to the kitchen, everything was intact. All the dishes were neatly stored in the cupboard, and they never found the source of the crash.
