FACT CHECK: Did An Exorcism Take Place At This House 10 Years Before It Survived Hurricane Ike?
An image shared on Instagram purportedly shows a house in Texas that withstood Hurricane Ike 10 years after an exorcism took place inside it.
View this post on Instagram
Verdict: Misleading
While the home did withstand Hurricane Ike in 2008, it was not the site of an exorcism in 1998. The house was not built until 2005.
Fact Check:
Hurricane Ike, which made landfall in Texas as a category two storm, killed over 100 people across the Caribbean and U.S. Gulf Coast region in September of 2008, according to the National Hurricane Center. The storm destroyed thousands of homes in the Houston area and damaged over 100,000 more, the city’s NBC-affiliate KPRC 2 reported.
The meme in the Instagram post features a Federal Emergency Management Agency photo of a single house standing amid wreckage caused by Hurricane Ike in Gilchrist, Texas. Text beneath the picture reads, “After Hurricane Ike hit Houston, Texas in 2008, this house was left standing while everything else was demolished. This is the same house where an exorcism took place 10 years prior.”
The house, which can be seen in a Google Maps street view, is listed for rent by Swedes Real Estate with the moniker “Last House Standing.” It attracted global attention after the 2008 hurricane due to photos of the home surrounded by the devastated Gilchrist landscape, according to Houston-based ABC 13.
It is impossible for the house to have been the site of an exorcism in 1998. Pam and Warren Adams, the home’s owners at the time of Hurricane Ike, built it in 2005 after their previous home on the same property was destroyed by Hurricane Rita, the Houston Chronicle reported. (RELATED: Viral Video Claims To Show Hurricane Hanna Blowing Over Part Of The US–Mexico Border Wall In Texas)
Check Your Fact was unable to locate any credible media reports of an exorcism being performed in the house. Warren Adams told the Houston Chronicle less than a month after Hurricane Ike that the home had been constructed 15 feet above the ground and that the property’s elevation is farther above sea level than many surrounding lots.
Pam Adams later wrote an article for the Crystal Beach Local News in which she discussed her experience before and after Hurricane Ike. In the article, she does not mention an exorcism taking place at the house.
