The Amityville Horror

[Amasov]

What do you guys think of these alleged events that took place in the small Long Island down in the mid 70's?

I have to admit, it does fascinate me and I'm not sure why.

Taken from Wiki, here's a breakdown of some of the events that supposedly took place:

• 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 Lutzes' 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.
• Kathy 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 negative.
• 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' five year old daughter, Missy, developed an imaginary friend named "Jodie," a demonic pig-like creature with glowing red eyes.
• George would be waken up by 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 "German 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.
• While checking the boathouse one night, George saw a pair of red eyes looking at him from Missy's bedroom window. When he went upstairs to her room, there was nothing to be found. Later it was suggested that it could have been "Jodie".
• While in bed, Kathy received red welts on her chest caused by an unseen force and was levitated two feet off the bed.
• 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 on January 1, 1976.
• Green 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 a closet by Kathy, revolved until it was upside down and gave off a sour smell.
• George tripped over a four foot high china lion which was an ornament in the living room, and was left with bite marks on one of his ankles.
• George saw Kathy transform into an old woman of ninety, "the hair wild, a shocking white, the face a mass of wrinkles and ugly lines, and saliva dripping from the toothless mouth."

 

[John Picard]

I read the novel when I was around 13 and couldn't sleep without the lights off for about a week or two afterward. I believe it later came out that the Lutz embellished their account of what happened with the house, and that there weren't any reports of alleged paranormal occurrences from subsequent owners.

 

[Chaos Descending]

I think none of those events happened at all, and those people lied about the whole thing.

 

[Adm_Hawthorne]

I think none of those events happened at all, and those people lied about the whole thing.

That's been my thought as well. They just cashed in on a horrible event in the house's history.

 

[John Picard]

The True Crime Library is a fascinating source of information:
http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/notorious_murders/family/amityville/2.html

 

[Amasov]

I think part of me (and maybe all of us) wants to believe that it all did happen. I do think something did take place, but it was nowhere near the scale of the family's account.

 

[Adm_Hawthorne]

I think that paranormal activity is nothing more than the power of suggestion gone wild. The more you and the people around you believe in it, the more likely it is that "something" will happen.

 

[Ethros]

Didn't the guy behind it just admit to making it all up? Sure I read that somewhere.

I recently saw both movie versions anyway. The original was pretty good, but the remake was AWFUUULLLL. Jesus, the makers of that movie just had zero clue on how to do horror and suspense.
The only good thing about that film was the babysitter. Mmmmmmmm....

 

[Amasov]

Didn't the guy behind it just admit to making it all up? Sure I read that somewhere.

I recently saw both movie versions anyway. The original was pretty good, but the remake was AWFUUULLLL. Jesus, the makers of that movie just had zero clue on how to do horror and suspense.
The only good thing about that film was the babysitter. Mmmmmmmm....

Didn't care for either one.

I didn't think the original film had much in the suspense department. It felt like the film was building up to something huge in the end, but nothing seemed to happen. There wasn't any payoff.

Granted, I think it's more based off the book than the "actual" events? The family's last night in the house doesn't correlate with Geroge's account of what took place on that night.

 

[Kira Nerys]

I thought it was a loud of hogwash totally unbelieveable .The movie was good entertainment.

 

[Rett Mikhal]

Pretty sure if you look into the family, they were in huge amounts of debt. More than likely it was a complete hoax in order to make money.

Strangely, though, a van with a bunch of teenagers and a great dane never showed up to prove them frauds...

 

[RJDiogenes]

I don't believe a word of it.

 

[Yeoman Randi]

I'm a Long Islander and remember the DeFeo murders. As teens we use to drive past the house just to get a look at it (it was nothing like the house in the original movie, except for the windows which were very similar). Anyway, i think the family that moved in after the murders made it all up. (I also believe Ronald made up the original stories about demons telling him to murder the family).

That said, i do wonder that if a person meets an untimely and violent death, is there some sort of "imprint" left?

 

[Joeman]

I've never been all that genuinely scared by horror movies, but the glowing red pigs eyes scared the shit out of me when I was a kid. It still creeps me out to this day, as anything that appears to be glowing red eyes in the dark makes my skin crawl.

That being said, I think it's mostly horse shit. I watch all those ghost hunter shows on TV, and if anything they're moving me more in the direction of not believing than believing. I remain quite skeptical.

 

[Unicron]

I think that paranormal activity is nothing more than the power of suggestion gone wild. The more you and the people around you believe in it, the more likely it is that "something" will happen.

I'm not sure I'd entirely agree with that stance myself. I'm pretty skeptical, but I think there's a lot more to it than merely the power of suggestion. There have been legends about paranormal stuff that have been more or less consistent for ages, and are similar in nearly every culture even though those cultures often didn't interact with each other. And while it's unlikely that every single report is true and not simply people misreading the evidence, the sheer number of reports makes it unlikely to me that they're all either lying or wrong.

When it comes the the Amityville case, I do consider that a good example of the facts not adding up and there being a likelihood that the Lutzes were mainly trying to make money. Some of the alleged events are known to not have occurred, like the claim that hoof prints appeared in the snow in winter of 1971 when the weather reports show it never snowed that night. The lawyer who represented Ronald DeFoe in court made the claim that he and George came up with the idea of using the murders as a basis for publicity. And the folks who moved into the house after the Lutzes fled reported inconsistencies with their story and said that nothing unusual happened.

To my knowledge the Lutzes always maintained their view that the horror was real, and to his credit George did acknowledge that some of parts of the legend had become "embellished" over the years and were not necessarily accurate. I tend to think the thing was a hoax personally.

 

[sojourner]

Maybe George did "see" these things happen. Maybe George was having a psychotic break.

 

[Adm_Hawthorne]

I think that paranormal activity is nothing more than the power of suggestion gone wild. The more you and the people around you believe in it, the more likely it is that "something" will happen.

I'm not sure I'd entirely agree with that stance myself. I'm pretty skeptical, but I think there's a lot more to it than merely the power of suggestion. There have been legends about paranormal stuff that have been more or less consistent for ages, and are similar in nearly every culture even though those cultures often didn't interact with each other. And while it's unlikely that every single report is true and not simply people misreading the evidence, the sheer number of reports makes it unlikely to me that they're all either lying or wrong.

The reasons consistencies such as that occur is because mankind, on the whole, wants answers for why things happen. If there's nothing scientific to pull from, we're going to make something up we think answers it.

This is the same reason religions exist. It is the answer to they why questions that no one can answer using science.

Up until just a few decades ago, science wasn't even the basis for believing why something was the way it was. Everything was more-or-less based on 'spiritual' reasoning.

So, yes, there are going to be reports throughout history that are constant because the technology or knowledge hasn't been around to explain the why. Constant and consistent reports do not make something real, however. What makes it real is sound scientific proof. Of which, we have none for the paranormal.

I believe that we have the ability to produce certain things in our environment simply because we expect them to happen.

Take a Ouija board as an example.

If you've ever messed with one or seen one used, it's pretty creepy. You ask questions. You barely touch that little moving thing. BAM! Some 'unseen' force answers you.

Truth is, one of you is moving that thing. You're not doing it conscientiously, but you are doing it.

There have been studies done where participants have been given one board to look at. They are blindfolded and set up in front of what they think is the same board. In fact, it's a board with a different layout. As they ask the questions, the thing moves. But it moves towards where the answers would be if the board they all had seen was in front of them.

It's all the power of suggestion.

 

[Australis]

Haven't read all this. I'll just point you to a very long article on it:
http://www.snopes.com/horrors/ghosts/amityville.asp

When Snopes takes a while to say something... you gotta listen.

 

[Unicron]

The reasons consistencies such as that occur is because mankind, on the whole, wants answers for why things happen. If there's nothing scientific to pull from, we're going to make something up we think answers it.

This is the same reason religions exist. It is the answer to they why questions that no one can answer using science.

I agree to an extent, but there's a key difference between organized religions like Christianity and conducting paranormal research, in that the latter doesn't have to pretend not to answer to science. If I want to investigate a site that's alleged to be haunted, I have a theory to work from (a ghost is supposed to be a collection of energy, which may or may not be sentient, and which generates any of the following phenomena - apparitions, sounds, cold spots etc) and it's easy to research that theory with modern science. I can bring equipment to measure some of these things and then see what sources can explain them.

Now, that doesn't mean I'd find conclusive evidence pointing to a ghost versus some natural event, and that's why I think one needs a healthy dose of skepticism as well as open-mindedness. If you can say with a certain degree of knowledge that an unusual sound or cold spot can't be attributed to something mundane, and if it's consistent with whatever the details of the haunting are, then maybe it's worth considering a ghost. If however you can explain it with mundane sources, then it's not. Compare this with some versions of Christianity, in which God has convenient protection from all empirical proof when there seems to be none supporting Him.

Up until just a few decades ago, science wasn't even the basis for believing why something was the way it was. Everything was more-or-less based on 'spiritual' reasoning.

Do you mean in terms of exploring supernatural or paranormal matters? I'm not sure I'd agree there either, although I do think science perhaps wasn't applied as it should have been, and that some people were too quick to jump on the spiritual side. But it varies.

So, yes, there are going to be reports throughout history that are constant because the technology or knowledge hasn't been around to explain the why. Constant and consistent reports do not make something real, however. What makes it real is sound scientific proof. Of which, we have none for the paranormal.

Not right now, that's true. But why should we assume, for the sake of argument, that if there's any truth to ghost legends and there is some reality or form of consciousness besides the one we know, that our current technology is capable of giving us information on it? We can disprove a lot of circumstances that would have been considered valid only a few decades ago, but I don't know we're any closer to being able to gather conclusive evidence for ghosts than we are to contacting other life in the galaxy (if it exists).

All I'm saying is, I think technology is a good tool but I think it's a mistake to also assume it can answer every question. And some of the questions relating to ghostly phenomena, such as whether the existence of ghosts would prove the existence of another realm of being, are not empirical. They're metaphysical, and we can't answer them directly even if we knew a certain place had reliably unusual phenomena that could be recorded. This is the problem all the ghost shows run into - they want to use science as a tool, but they also want to be entertaining. And it's a lot more entertaining to see someone claim they've spotted something unusual than being purely scientific about it. Just like CSI is entertaining because the protagonists do a lot of stuff that real forensics people don't actually do, like question suspects and the like. It wouldn't be quite the same show if everyone was a Greg Sanders (the lab tech in the early seasons).

I believe that we have the ability to produce certain things in our environment simply because we expect them to happen.

We might have to agree to disagree then, because I don't share this view myself. I'm just not convinced the human mind is that powerful, or whether it might even have the potential. I do agree that the power of suggestion can be a factor, but how much of a factor depends a lot on the individual I think. It's where we have to balance our skepticism and our imaginations.

 

[Dark Dreamer]

I was never a believer in paranormal phenomenon until I had several disturbing experiences of my own. The encounters were highly personal and would sound made up if I described them in any depth. The only person i've shared them with is my wife, I wouldn't expect anyone else to believe me.

Being a fan of haunted house stories, I've seen all The Amityville Horror movies and read the book. I'm one of the few who liked the remake better than the original, but neither were all that great. As for the veracity of the original account there seems to be ample evidence to suggest that the story was at the very least exaggerated. George Lutz even admitted that was the case at one point.