The Last House Standing

This evening on Facebook, I saw no less than six paranormal pages post this little infographic.  The picture is very real...but the information about it is very false, lol.  Since I am getting frustrated posting the information for it over and over, I thought I would just go ahead a blog about it!  Anyway...

In 2005, Pam and Warren Adams lost their home in Gilchrist, Texas to Hurricane Rita.  Determined not to let the destruction force them from the home they loved, they resolved to rebuild a new home on the same lot.  This lot was located on Crystal Beach, which is on the Gulf Coast side of the Bolivar Peninsula.  In a neighborhood of about 200 other homes, the Adams' new home would be the newest construction.  And what a construction it was!

With the help of Aran & Franklin Engineering and AM Coastal Construction, the Adams' built a new home, finished in 2006.  As the newest home in the neighborhood, the house was built under the newer and stricter building codes of the county.  It's hurricane windows and pitched roof were designed to withstand wind speeds of 130+mph, and additional improvements were also added, notably 14ft tall, thick, wooden column stilts.

The house was already on one of the highest lots in the neighborhood, so with the addition of the stilts, the home was a good 22ft above normal sea level, which, combined with the updated construction codes, would lead to this home's infamous reputation.

On the night of September 13, 2008 Hurricane Ike struck the area of Gilchrist, obliterating an entire neighborhood.  The only exception was the Adams' home, which stood proudly and almost eerily among the flattened neighborhood.  An aerial photo taken by Smiley N. Pool of the local newspaper, The Chronicler, quickly got picked up by the Weather Channel, CNN, and every local news broadcasting station in the country.  AP photographer David Phillips dubbed the little yellow home The Last House Standing. 

However, not all was well.  The majority of damage to Crystal Beach from Ike came from the 14ft storm surge, which left everything in the home ruined, covered in mud and uninhabitable.  Pam, a cost analyst working in Houston, and Warren, a retired electrical designer, fought with their insurance company for two years over an unfair payout.  But, all would work out in the end.  The house, which many believed would have to be demolished, was saved and the couple moved back in a little after a year following Hurricane Ike.  In addition, they bought the property across the street and opened up a popular restaurant called FantaSea BBQ and Grill.  Several other houses in a nearby neighborhood also lived through the storm, and although FEMA bought up much of the surrounding property with an order than homes could not be built there, there are still neighborhood lots where residents ARE rebuilding their homes AND their lives.

Therefore, its easy to see how false this image is...how can a house have hosted an exorcism in 1988 when the house didn't even exist??  What is rather...paranormal...is how many people keep posting this and pondering its authenticity.  It literally took me less than 5 seconds to do an internet search and come up with 100s of articles on this home, none of which contained any mention of an exorcism on Crystal Beach or concerning the Adams'.  Coincidence?