How well do you know your neighbor? You know the one that lives across the street.

We're right next door to you on the right. You know the one that lives across the street or right next door to you on the

right. You walk outside every morning and you wave at them. They wave back. How well do you truly

know them though? From the outside they look like any normal person. But how do they act when they go back inside that house?

When that house goes quiet, when the television hum fades to static, when the furnace clicks off,

when the only sound left is the slow breathing of the people you trust most.

Because in Decatur, Illinois in 1964, evil did not break a window.

It did not wear a mask.

It did not creep in from the outside.

It lived there.

It ate dinner at the table.

It slept under the same roof.

It knew which steps creaked on the stairs.

And on one cold Friday night in late February, it walked down into the basement, picked

up a hatchet and came back up.

This is American Dread. True stories of tragedy and terror from the dark side of American Heartland. I'm your host Adam White. American Dread is part of the American

Hauntings Podcast Network.

I'm going to take you back to a quiet neighborhood with a modest frame house on south 32nd Street in Decatur, Illinois.

A house that looked ordinary, with a quiet family that lived inside, a house in which

a monster was born, and would give that house its name.

The Hatchet House.

In 1960, Decatur was home to just over 94,000 people, a small but powerful town at the time,

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