In 1980, Ben and Jean Williams moved into
a new home in Crosby with their granddaughter.
Almost immediately, strange electrical problems
flared up all around the house and randomly flushing
toilets sent their water bills through the roof. Their
pet birds died, their granddaughter's gerbils went insane,
and their cat gave birth to a litter of hideously disfigured
kittens. Disembodied shadows stalked the house and
the family had a constant, palpable feeling of
being watched. When Ben and Jean’s married children
visited the couples fought and later divorced.
Six close relatives were diagnosed with cancer
and three of them died within the year. To be fair,
that’s difficult to pin on supernatural forces, but
it added to the stress in the house and the
vulnerability of its occupants.

      The Williams weren’t the only family
on Poppets Way to be bothered. Lights and
television sets all around Section 8 turned on
and off by their own accord. Sinkholes
insistently appeared in yards, and reappeared
after they had been filled.

     In 1982, Sam and Judith Haney moved
into their custom home across the street. They heard
discarnate voices and footsteps in their home. Judith
was awakened when an unplugged clock started sparking
and glowing. The following year when their contractors
began digging their pool, the backhoe unearthed a man
and a woman in crude wooden coffins.

      (A side note, Steven Spielberg on hearing of this,
used it in the movie "Poltergeist".)

The strange happenings took their toll on the Haneys’
health and peace of mind, and they sued the Newport
developers for building on a cemetery and making the
residents unwitting desecrators of the graves. A jury
awarded them $142,000, but the judge reversed the
verdict and ordered the Haneys to pay $50, 000 in court
costs. The couple declared bankruptcy and abandoned their
home.

The decision put the Williamses and their neighbors
in a bind. Without producing bodies on their property,
they would have no grounds for a lawsuit—and a
favorable decision was unlikely even then. On the
other hand even if they didn’t produce a corpse,
the notoriety of the case which had been followed
in The Houston Chronicle and other papers stymied
their attempts to sell their homes.

Frustrated and furious, Jean Williams began to dig
in her backyard near a tree with strange markings on
it that was claimed to indicate the graves of two
sisters. When she became exhausted, her daughter
took over—then suffered a massive heart attack that
ended her life at age 30.
Soon thereafter, Ben and Jean Williams with their
granddaughter moved to Montana and left their home
to be foreclosed by the bank.

In 1991, the Williams with John Bruce Shoemaker
published their story as
"The Black Hope Horror: The True Story of a Haunting",

which was subsequently made into a TV movie
starring Patty Duke and called "Grave Secrets"
with similarities between the Williams’s story

and the movie "Poltergeist".
Several other families also fled Section 8,
defaulting on their loans.