MOST HAUNTED HOUSE AND SCARIEST STORY EVER : AMITYVILLE HORROR

On November 13, 1974, Ronald DeFeo, Jr. shot and killed six members of his family at 112 Ocean Avenue, a large Dutch Colonial house situated in a suburban neighborhood in Amityville, on the south shore of Long Island. He was convicted of second-degree murder in November 1975.

In December 1975, George and Kathy Lutz and their three children moved into the house. After 28 days, the Lutzes left the house, claiming to have been terrorized by paranormal phenomena while living there.

The house at 112 Ocean Avenue remained empty for 13 months after the DeFeo murders. In December 1975, George and Kathleen Lutz bought the house for what was considered to be a bargain price of $80,000. The six-bedroom house was built in Dutch Colonial style and had a distinctive gambrel roof. It also had a swimming pool and a boathouse, as it was located on a canal. George and Kathy married in July 1975 and each had their own homes, but they wanted to start fresh with a new property. Kathy had three children from a previous marriage: Daniel, 9, Christopher, 7, and Melissa (Missy), 5. They also owned a crossbreed Malamute/Labrador dog named Harry. During their first inspection of the house, the real estate broker told them about the DeFeo murders and asked if this would affect their decision. After discussing the matter, they decided that it was not a problem.

The Lutz family moved in December 19, 1975. Much of the DeFeo family's furniture was still in the house, because it was included for $400 as part of the deal. A friend of George Lutz learned about the history of the house, and insisted on having it blessed. At the time, George was a non-practicing Methodist and had no experience of what this would entail. Kathy was a non-practicing Catholic and explained the process. George knew a Catholic priest named Father Ray who agreed to carry out the house blessing (in Anson's book, real-life priest Father Ralph J. Pecoraro is referred to as Father Mancuso for privacy reasons).

Father Mancuso was a lawyer, judge of the Catholic Court and psychotherapist who lived at the local Sacred Heart Rectory. He arrived to perform the blessing while George and Kathy were unpacking their belongings on the afternoon of December 18, 1975, and went into the building to carry out the rites. When he flicked the first holy water and began to pray, he heard a masculine voice demand that he "get out." When leaving the house, Father Mancuso did not mention this incident to either George or Kathy. On December 24, 1975, Father Mancuso called George Lutz and advised him to stay out of the second floor room where he had heard the mysterious voice, the former bedroom of Marc and John Matthew DeFeo that Kathy planned to use as a sewing room, but the call was cut short by static. Following his visit to the house, Father Mancuso allegedly developed a high fever and blisters on his hands similar to stigmata. At first George and Kathy experienced nothing unusual in the house. Talking about their experiences subsequently, they reported that it was as if they "were each living in a different house."

Some of the experiences of the Lutz family at the house have been described as follows:

·         George would wake up around 3:15 every morning and would go out to check the boathouse. Later he would learn that this was the estimated time of the DeFeo killings.

·         The house was plagued by swarms of flies despite the winter weather.

·         Kathy had vivid nightmares about the murders and discovered the order in which they occurred and the rooms where they took place. The Lutz children also began sleeping on their stomachs, in the same way that the dead bodies in the DeFeo murders had been found.

·         Kathy would feel a sensation as if "being embraced" in a loving manner, by an unseen force.

·         George discovered a small hidden room (around four feet by five feet) behind shelving in the basement. The walls were painted red and the room did not appear in the blueprints of the house. The room came to be known as "The Red Room." This room had a profound effect on their dog Harry, who refused to go near it and cowered as if sensing something ominous.

·         There were cold spots and odors of perfume and excrement in areas of the house where no wind drafts or piping would explain the source.

·         While tending to the fire, George and Kathy saw the image of a demon with half his head blown out. It was burned into the soot in the back of the fireplace.

·         The Lutzes' 5-year-old daughter, Missy, developed an imaginary friend named "Jodie," a demonic pig-like creature with glowing red eyes.

·         In the early morning hours of Christmas Day 1975, George looked up at the house after checking on the boathouse and saw the pig standing behind Missy at her bedroom window. When he ran up to her room he found her fast asleep with her small rocking chair slowly rocking back and forth.

·         George would wake up to the sound of the front door slamming. He would race downstairs to find the dog sleeping soundly at the front door. Nobody else heard the sound although it was loud enough to wake the house.

·         George would hear what was described as a "marching band tuning up" or what sounded like a clock radio playing not quite on frequency. When he went downstairs the noise would cease.

·         George realized that he bore a strong resemblance to Ronald DeFeo, Jr., and began drinking at The Witches' Brew, the bar where DeFeo was once a regular customer.

·         When closing Missy's window, which Missy said Jodie climbed out of, Kathy saw red eyes glowing at her.

·         While in bed, Kathy received red welts on her chest caused by an unseen force and was levitated two feet in the air.

·         Locks, doors and windows in the house were damaged by an unseen force.

·         Cloven hoofprints attributed to an enormous pig appeared in the snow outside the house January 1, 1976.

·         Green gelatin-like slime oozed from walls in the hall, and also from the keyhole of the playroom door in the attic.

·         A 12-inch (30 cm) crucifix, hung in the living room by Kathy, revolved until it was upside down and gave off a sour smell.

·         George tripped over a 4-foot-high (1.2 m) China lion ornament in the living room and found bite marks on one of his ankles. Later this lion would reappear in the living room after George had moved it back upstairs into the sewing room.

·         George saw Kathy transform into an old woman of 90, "the hair wild, a shocking white, the face a mass of wrinkles and ugly lines, and saliva dripping from the toothless mouth."

·         Missy would sing constantly while in her room. Whenever she left the room, she would stop singing, and upon returning, she would resume singing where she left off.

·         On one occasion Kathy heard what sounded like a window being opened and closed through the sewing room door even though she was sure no one was in there.

After deciding that something was wrong with their house they could not explain rationally, George and Kathy Lutz carried out a blessing of their own on January 8, 1976. George held a silver crucifix while they both recited the Lord's Prayer and, while in the living room, George allegedly heard a chorus of voices asking them "Will you stop?!"

still an unsolved mystery, the image of a boy caught in camera by investigators

By mid-January 1976, after another attempt at a house blessing by George and Kathy, they experienced what would turn out to be their final night in the house. The Lutzes declined to give a full account of the events that took place on this occasion, describing them as "too frightening."

After getting in touch with Father Mancuso, the Lutzes decided to take some belongings and stay at Kathy's mother's house in nearby Deer Park, New York until they had sorted out the problems with the house. They claimed that the phenomena followed them there, with the final scene of Anson's book describing "greenish-black slime" coming up the staircase towards them. On January 14, 1976 George and Kathy Lutz, with their three children and their dog Harry, left 112 Ocean Avenue, leaving all of their possessions behind. The next day, a mover came in to remove all of the possessions to send to the Lutzes. He reported no paranormal phenomena while inside the house.

The book was written after Tam Mossman, an editor at the publishing house Prentice Hall, introduced George and Kathy Lutz to Jay Anson. The Lutzes did not work directly with Anson, but submitted around 45 hours of tape-recorded recollections to him, which were used as the basis of the book. Estimates of the sales of the book are around 10 million copies from its numerous editions. Anson is said to have based the title of The Amityville Horror on "The Dunwich Horror" by H. P. Lovecraft, which was published in 1929.

REAL STORY OR FAKE??

 Much of the controversy surrounding The Amityville Horror can be traced back to the way that it has been marketed. One edition of the book has a quote from a review in the Los Angeles Times on the front cover stating: "A fascinating, frightening book... the scariest true story I have read in years", while the tagline states: "More hideously frightening than The Exorcist because it actually happened!". The reference to The Exorcist is revealing, because the 1973 film had been a box office success and had received generous media coverage. Many of the incidents in the book recall the style of The Exorcist and this is one of the reasons why it has aroused suspicion.

In the afterword of The Amityville Horror, Jay Anson states: "There is simply too much independent corroboration of their narrative to support the speculation that [the Lutzes] either imagined or fabricated these events," but some people remained unconvinced. Almost as soon as the book was published in September 1977, other writers and researchers began looking into the events at 112 Ocean Avenue and the conclusions that they reached were often at odds with those that had appeared in Anson's book.

The role of Father Pecoraro in the story has been given considerable attention. During the course of the lawsuit surrounding the case in the late 1970s, Father Pecoraro stated in an affidavit that his only contact with the Lutzes concerning the matter had been by telephone. Other accounts say that Father Pecoraro did visit the house but experienced nothing unusual there. Father Pecoraro gave what may have been his only on-camera interview about his recollections during a 1980 episode of In Search of..., a documentary series about the paranormal narrated by Leonard Nimoy. Father Pecoraro's face was obscured during the interview to preserve his anonymity. In the interview, he repeated the claim that he heard a voice saying "Get out," but stopped short of giving it a paranormal origin. He also stated that he felt a slap on his face during the visit, and that he did subsequently experience blistering on his hands. As with many areas of The Amityville Horror, the inconsistent accounts given by Father Pecoraro about the extent of his involvement with the Lutz family have led to more questions than answers.

The claims of physical damage to the locks, doors and windows were rejected by Jim and Barbara Cromarty, who bought the house for $55,000 in March 1977. In a television interview filmed at the house for That's Incredible!, Barbara Cromarty argued that they appeared to be the original items and had not been repaired. The That's Incredible! feature also showed that the "Red Room" was a small closet in the basement, and was known to the previous owners of the house because it was not concealed in any way. The claim made in Chapter 11 of the book that the house was built on a site where the local Shinnecock Indians had once abandoned the mentally ill and the dying was rejected by local Native American leaders. The claim of cloven hoofprints in the snow on January 1, 1976 was rejected by other researchers, because a check on the weather records showed that there had been no snow in Amityville on the day in question. Neighbors reported nothing unusual during the time that the Lutzes were living there. Police officers are depicted visiting the house in the book and 1979 film, but records showed that the Lutzes did not call the police during the period that they were living on Ocean Avenue.[12] There was no bar in Amityville called The Witches' Brew at the time, and Ronald DeFeo, Jr. was a regular at Henry's Bar, a short distance from 112 Ocean Avenue.

Critics including Stephen Kaplan pointed out that changes were made to the book as it was reprinted in different editions. In the original hardcover edition, Father Pecoraro's car is "an old tan Ford" and he experiences an incident in which the hood flies up against the windshield while he is driving it. In later editions the car is described as a Chevy Vega, before reverting to a Ford.

In May 1977 George and Kathy Lutz filed a lawsuit against William Weber (the defense lawyer for Ronald DeFeo, Jr. at his trial), Paul Hoffman (a writer working on an account of the hauntings), Bernard Burton and Frederick Mars (both alleged clairvoyants who had examined the house), along with Good Housekeeping magazine, the New York Sunday News and the Hearst Corporation, all of which had published articles related to the hauntings. The Lutzes alleged invasion of privacy, misappropriation of names for trade purposes, and mental distress, and claimed $4.5 million in damages. Hoffman, Weber, and Burton immediately filed a countersuit for $2 million alleging fraud and breach of contract. The claims against the news corporations were dropped for lack of evidence, and the remainder of the lawsuit was heard by Brooklyn U.S. District Court judge Jack B. Weinstein. In September 1979, Judge Weinstein dismissed the Lutzes' claims and observed in his ruling: "Based on what I have heard, it appears to me that to a large extent the book is a work of fiction, relying in a large part upon the suggestions of Mr. Weber." In the September 17, 1979 issue of People magazine, William Weber wrote: "I know this book is a hoax. We created this horror story over many bottles of wine." This refers to a meeting that Weber is said to have had with George and Kathy Lutz, during which they discussed what would later become the outline of Anson's book. Judge Weinstein also expressed concern about the conduct of William Weber and Bernard Burton relating to the affair, stating: "There is a very serious ethical question when lawyers become literary agents."

George Lutz maintained that events in the book were "mostly true" and denied any suggestion of dishonesty on his part. In June 1979, George and Kathy Lutz took a polygraph test relating to their experiences at the house, which in Mr. Rice's opinion they both appeared honest.In October 2000, The History Channel broadcast Amityville: The Haunting and Amityville: Horror or Hoax?, a two-part documentary made by horror screenwriter/producer Daniel Farrands to mark the 25th anniversary of the case. George Lutz commented in an interview for the program: "I believe this has stayed alive for 25 years because it's a true story. It doesn't mean that everything that has ever been said about it is true. It's certainly not a hoax. It's real easy to call something a hoax. I wish it was. It's not."

The debate about the accuracy of The Amityville Horror continues and, despite the lack of evidence to corroborate much of the story, it remains one of the most popular haunting accounts in American folklore. The various owners of the house since the Lutz family left in 1976 have reported no problems while living there. James Cromarty, who bought the house in 1977 and lived there with his wife Barbara for ten years, commented: "Nothing weird ever happened, except for people coming by because of the book and the movie.

AT LAST, WE IN GREAT TERROR, HAVE TO ADMIT, THE WHOLE STORY MIGHT BE TRUE