Amityville House

History The site was used as a sort of mental hospital for Native Americans who were sick and dying. There had been an enclosure on the property, where the patients were housed. Tortured souls have often been associated with haunted houses and other haunted dwellings.

Background: The problems at the Amityville house seemed to stem from the Ronald DeFeo murders on November 13, 1974. Mr. DeFeo hated his father and had plotted to kill him--he’d even worked out a scheme by which he could do so. Mr. DeFeo was on drugs, and his father knew about it. Later he said that there was a shadow ghost alongside of him during the killings which compelled him to shoot his two brothers and his sister at 3:15 am on November 13, 1974. Although the houses in this quiet Amityville neighborhood were only 40 feet apart, no neighbors awoke during the shootings. All of the victims were found on their stomachs..

Ed and Lorraine Warren met with a priest, Father Pecararo, and the Lutzes when they were first called in to investigate. The Lutzes were living at Mrs. Lutz’s mother’s house in Deer Park, NY because they were too afraid to go back to the house to live. They were all but afraid to even speak of the phenomena, so deep was their fear. They’d even left all of their furniture and possessions behind, not daring to return to move out--it simply wasn’t worth the risk.

The first time the Warrens went to the house it was with an anchorman from the Channel 5 news, a professor from Duke University, and the president of the American Society for Psychic Research. That first day was horrifying. Lorraine received nonstop clairvisual and clairaudial messages about the phenomena which had occurred.

Anxious to see for himself whether or not the phenomena was real, Ed, who normally experiences little clairvoyant feelings at all, went into the cellar. The cellar is typically where evil spirits spend their days, and Ed therefore felt that would be the best place for him to start. Despite his usual immunity from witnessing phenomena, Ed saw shadows along with thousands of pinpoints of light. These shadows attempted to push him to the ground. Ed used religious resistance and commanded the evil spirits to leave. He immediately got the sensation of something attempting to lift him off of the ground, and he knew then that this was truly a house of evil. Although he knew that this was serious case, he had no idea how severe it really was. He has never been so seriously affected in any case before, or after, the Amityville Horror case.

Lutzes’s Experiences: Lorraine was frightened even before she’d entered the house. She’d contacted some priest friends in advance and asked them to accompany her in spirit into the house. She took relics with her of Padre Pio which she’d received in a letter from a total stranger earlier in the week.

As she went to the stairs to go to the 2nd floor landing, she felt as if there was a huge force of rushing water against her, and the atmosphere around here was solidifying.

On the second floor, Lorraine went into the sewing room. Marvin Scott, the Channel 5 anchorman, told Lorraine, "I hope that this is as close to hell as I ever get," as they went into Missy’s room. Lorraine immediately clairvoyantly knew that Missy’s room had the same furniture as it had when the DeFeo girls were murdered. Mr. Lutz had let his children sleep in the DeFeo children’s death beds.

In the master bedroom, one wall was all mirrors. Lorraine sat on the bed where the DeFeo parents had been shot. Only the mattress on the bed had been changed. The feeling in the rooms was that of absolute horror, and going from room to room did not dissipate the feeling at all. One just seemed more horrible than the next.

On the third floor, Lorraine clairvoyantly encountered Ronald DeFeo. This encounter was so awful, and he was so sinister, that she felt there was absolutely nothing she could do to help--or eject--his spirit from the house.

Once she was downstairs again, she was asked to do something she had never wanted to do after entering the house--she was asked to communicate with the spirits in the house and ask what had really happened. All of the investigators were in the room. The investigator from Duke University actually passed out cold from fear! Two of the other investigators complained of heart palpitations and had to rest on the floor. The house seemed to have the most dire effect on men. The Director of a prominent psychic research group in New Haven, actually became so ill that she had to be taken outside and from that moment forward she never entered the house again.