Laura Wright 
Few private homes in America are as instantly recognizable as the house on Ocean Avenue in Amityville, New York.
Even people who know almost nothing about its history may recognize the distinctive shape of the house and the pair of quarter-moon windows that once seemed to stare from the upper floor.
During the late 1970s and early 1980s, Amityville became almost synonymous with haunted houses.
Books were written.
Movies were made.
Sequels followed.
Stories circulated about demonic voices, mysterious odors, levitating bodies, strange substances, invisible forces and a house apparently determined to drive its occupants away.
There was only one problem.
The more closely people examined the story, the more troublesome it became.
Something terrible unquestionably happened at Amityville.
But it happened before anyone claimed the house was haunted.
The House on Ocean Avenue
The large Dutch Colonial house stood at 112 Ocean Avenue in Amityville, a community on Long Island.
It was an attractive waterfront home.
Nothing about its appearance suggested that it would eventually become one of the most notorious houses in American popular culture.
Then came the DeFeo family.
Ronald and Louise DeFeo lived there with their five children.
For a time, the house was simply their home.
That changed forever in November 1974.
The DeFeo Murders
On the night of November 13, 1974, twenty-three-year-old Ronald DeFeo Jr. killed his entire family.
His father, Ronald Sr.
His mother, Louise.
His brothers, Marc and John.
His sisters, Dawn and Allison.
Six people were murdered inside the house.
DeFeo initially attempted to construct another explanation for what had happened, but suspicion quickly turned toward him.
Eventually, he confessed.
The house on Ocean Avenue had become a murder scene.
Why Did Ronald DeFeo Kill His Family?
That question became entangled with the later supernatural story.
Your original article notes two competing explanations.
The prosecution regarded financial gain, including the family’s substantial life insurance, as a possible motive.
The defense pursued another argument.
Insanity.
And eventually the idea that DeFeo had been influenced by some supernatural force became incorporated into the Amityville mythology.
The suggestion was irresistible.
Perhaps Ronald DeFeo hadn’t simply murdered his family.
Perhaps something inside the house had caused him to do it.
That idea would become enormously important later.
But after DeFeo was convicted, there was a much more immediate problem.
Someone had to sell the house.
A Murder House for Sale
A home where six members of the same family had recently been murdered wasn’t exactly the easiest property to put on the market.
The house was therefore offered at an attractive price.
Then along came George and Kathy Lutz.
The couple knew about the murders.
They purchased the property anyway.
In December 1975, the Lutz family moved into the house with Kathy’s three children.
They wouldn’t stay long.
According to the Lutzes, the nightmare began almost immediately.
Twenty-Eight Days
The Lutz family claimed they experienced increasingly frightening phenomena inside the house.
George reportedly began waking at approximately 3:15 in the morning, a time later associated with the DeFeo murders.
Cold spots appeared.
Unpleasant odors came and went.
Doors and windows supposedly behaved strangely.
George became obsessed with keeping the fireplace burning.
Kathy reportedly experienced strange sensations and apparitions.
The children had unusual experiences of their own.
One daughter supposedly communicated with an invisible friend named Jodie, sometimes described as resembling a pig with glowing red eyes.
Then there were the flies.
The Flies
One of the most famous Amityville stories involved large numbers of flies appearing inside the house.
This was particularly strange because it was winter.
The infestation supposedly centered around particular rooms and windows.
The flies became another indication that something unnatural occupied the house.
Other phenomena were even more dramatic.
Green slime supposedly appeared.
Objects moved.
Beds shook.
Invisible forces touched people.
And according to later accounts, Kathy even levitated from her bed.
Whether all of those details were part of the family’s earliest account or became more elaborate during subsequent retellings is one of the central problems with Amityville.
Because the story kept growing.
Father Pecoraro
Religion also became part of the legend.
A Catholic priest, generally identified in Amityville literature as Father Ralph Pecoraro, was said to have visited the house.
According to the famous version, while blessing one of the rooms he heard a mysterious male voice command:
“Get out.”
The priest supposedly subsequently experienced other disturbing events.
This became one of the strongest apparent pieces of corroboration for the Lutz story.
Except the priest’s relationship with the Amityville claims became considerably more complicated.
Your original article points out that friends, relatives and the family’s priest did not independently substantiate the extraordinary supernatural story attributed to the house.
That problem would follow Amityville for decades.
The Lutz Family Leaves
After only 28 days, George and Kathy Lutz abandoned the house.
They claimed the supernatural activity had become unbearable.
They left possessions behind.
The family never returned to live there.
Had the story ended at that point, Amityville might have remained a curious local haunting attached to an already notorious murder house.
Instead, the Lutzes’ experiences became a book.
And everything changed.
The Amityville Horror
Writer Jay Anson transformed the family’s claims into The Amityville Horror.
Published in 1977, the book became enormously successful.
It was marketed as a true story.
Readers weren’t being invited merely to enjoy a haunted-house novel.
They were being told:
This happened.
That distinction made Amityville irresistible.
The book became a bestseller.
Then Hollywood arrived.
The Movie
In 1979, The Amityville Horror reached theaters.
The house became an icon.
Those quarter-moon windows were perfect.
They resembled eyes looking outward from the darkness.
The film was followed by sequels, remakes and an ever-expanding franchise.
Soon the name Amityville no longer referred primarily to a small community on Long Island.
It meant horror.
And that created an unfortunate problem for the people who actually lived there.
The Amityville Horrors
Visitors descended upon Ocean Avenue.
People drove past the house.
They stopped.
They stared.
They photographed it.
Some approached the property.
For residents of the neighborhood, the tourists became a nuisance.
Your original article preserves a wonderful little bit of local sarcasm: residents supposedly began referring to the visitors themselves as the “Amityville horrors.”
Eventually, the famous address was changed.
The appearance of the house was altered as well.
The iconic quarter-moon windows were removed and replaced with conventional windows.
The house was trying very hard to stop looking like The Amityville Horror.
Then the Story Began Falling Apart
The greater problem concerned the haunting itself.
People began examining the Lutz family’s claims.
Contradictions appeared.
Details were challenged.
Individuals supposedly connected with events disputed versions attributed to them.
And perhaps most damaging of all, subsequent occupants of the house didn’t report anything resembling the Lutz family’s experience.
That creates a substantial problem.
If the house contained an overwhelmingly powerful demonic force capable of terrorizing an entire family into fleeing after 28 days, what happened to it?
Apparently, it stopped.
The Warrens
Paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren became associated with the Amityville case and maintained that something genuinely evil had existed within the house.
Their involvement helped preserve Amityville’s paranormal reputation.
Photographs, psychic impressions and investigation stories became part of the mythology.
One photograph in particular became famous.
It seemed to show a young boy peering from a doorway.
Some interpreted the figure as the ghost of one of the murdered DeFeo children.
Others offered ordinary explanations.
Like practically everything surrounding Amityville, the photograph became another argument rather than an answer.
Was Amityville a Hoax?
This is where the story becomes much more interesting.
The question isn’t whether six people died inside the house.
They did.
The question is whether the supernatural events described afterward occurred.
And the evidence is remarkably thin.
Your original article takes a distinctly skeptical position, noting that despite the enormous number of rumors generated by the story, there was no solidly documented paranormal event establishing the house as haunted.
The people reporting the overwhelming majority of the extraordinary phenomena were the Lutz family themselves.
Other people connected with them didn’t provide the kind of independent corroboration one might expect from a house supposedly overflowing with supernatural activity.
Then there was the family’s financial situation.
Money
Your original article notes that the Lutz family was heavily in debt.
That doesn’t prove they invented the haunting.
Financial trouble doesn’t automatically turn someone into a liar.
But once the story became commercially valuable, the family’s financial circumstances inevitably became part of the debate.
The haunting produced a bestselling book.
The book produced a blockbuster film.
The film produced sequels.
And Amityville became one of the most profitable haunted-house stories ever created.
That gave skeptics an obvious question.
Was the real supernatural phenomenon at Ocean Avenue simply a story that became extraordinarily lucrative?
The Real Horror of Amityville
There is an uncomfortable irony in the Amityville story.
We don’t need ghosts to make the house frightening.
Six people really went to sleep there one night in November 1974.
None of them awakened.
Ronald DeFeo Jr. murdered his father, mother, two brothers and two sisters inside their own home.
That is not folklore.
It is not paranormal speculation.
It happened.
And yet the supernatural story became so famous that the DeFeo murders almost became the prologue to somebody else’s haunted-house tale.
The victims became part of the scenery.
What Happened at Amityville?
Perhaps George and Kathy Lutz genuinely believed something was wrong with the house.
Perhaps anxiety, suggestion and knowledge of the murders affected their perceptions.
Perhaps ordinary events became frightening because they occurred in a place where six people had recently been killed.
Perhaps some claims were exaggerated.
Perhaps some were invented.
Or perhaps something genuinely strange happened during those 28 days.
There isn’t enough evidence to settle every question.
But there is an enormous difference between saying something unexplained happened and accepting every event in The Amityville Horror as historical fact.
The latter becomes increasingly difficult to defend.
The Amityville Horror
Today, the house still stands.
People have lived there since the Lutz family fled.
The façade has changed.
The famous windows are gone.
The address was changed.
And generations of owners have had to contend with the peculiar burden of living inside one of America’s most recognizable houses.
But the demons haven’t returned.
No subsequent family has fled after 28 days with another spectacular catalogue of supernatural events.
There has been no second Amityville Horror.
That silence may be the most interesting part of the entire story.
The house became internationally famous because one family lived there for less than a month.
Millions of people became convinced that something evil inhabited it.
Books and films turned that belief into modern folklore.
And yet the house itself simply went on being a house.
Perhaps the real lesson of Amityville has very little to do with demons.
A terrible crime created the setting.
A frightened family supplied the story.
A writer supplied the narrative.
Hollywood supplied the images.
And the public did the rest.
More than fifty years after the DeFeo murders, people still argue about what happened inside that house.
But one thing is certain.
The murders were real.
Whether the haunting was is another matter entirely.
About the Author
