DEFEO-LUTZ HOUSE
(aka THE AMITYVILLE HOUSE)
Location: Amityville is thirty miles
east of New York City on U.S. Highway 27 on Long Island. The former DeFeo House
is located at 112 Ocean Avenue which runs alongside the Amityville River down to
South Oyster Bay. The address and the exterior has been altered to deter trespassers
and sight-seers, but tourists still stand across the street to get pictures
taken with it in the background.
Description Of Place: A three-story black and while Dutch Colonial
mansion on a fifty by two hundred and thirty-seven foot lot, the six bedroom
edifice has three and a half baths, a finish basement, a two-car garage, a
heated swimming pool and a large boathouse. The iconic half-moon windows that
were portrayed as eyes in the motion picture franchise have been redesigned.
Ghostly Manifestations: Doing an analysis of the Amityville hauntings is like doing a credit check on Santa Claus or doing research on a historical Noah; one has to wonder what is true and what isn't. After all the research into the location known as the Amityville House, there is a lot of doubt as to anyone believes in whether or not the place was ever haunted, making this location possibly the most controversial haunted location in paranormal research.
The story about the Defeo house being haunted comes solely from George and Kathy Lutz. Efforts have been made to link the “haunting” to the Catholic Church, the Suffolk County Police, the Amityville Police, the Psychic Research Foundation at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, but these links are tenuous at best. Many of the so-called outside participants in the house’s mythology have turned out to have been non-existent or identified by names and titles that vary and change with every edition of the “The Amityville Horror,” a novel created solely from the mind of Jay Anson and very loosely based on the Lutz’s memories. It is suspicious that a book that is considered the definitive account of the hauntings has been rewritten, changed and reworked numerous times. Prominent characters and incidents have been altered, the layout and house plans of the house randomly move and change, and weather conditions never match the actual meteorological reports.
This is some haunted house…...
Yet, so-called relatives and individuals who claim to have known the Lutzes all have the same response, "You weren't there; you don't know what they went through."
That answer doesn't necessarily mean that the house is haunted. The personal testimonies of George and Kathy Lutz do suggest that something did happen that forced them to flee into the night one day in 1975, but it is also quite obvious it was not to the extent or severity as the book or the movie claimed.
In order to ascertain what actually happened to the Lutzes (and later blown out of proportion by Jay Anson), one might want to peruse what has been passed as the "official" account as corrected by the family. George and Kathy Lutz moved into the house on December 18, 1975 with Kathy's three kids, Daniel, Christopher and Melissa ("Missy"). (This date ends up getting revised in later editions of the book.) The purchase of the house included a good chunk of the DeFeo's furniture including but not limited to the bedroom sets of Ronnie and Allison DeFeo, seven air-conditioners, a double washer and dryer set and a new freezer. George said he felt a chill his first day in the house, but the book fails to mention that the heating system had broken down in the house.
The first sign of any haunting begins with the visit of the priest. According to Kathy Lutz, this priest (known as Father Ray, according to Daniel Lutz) was a close friend of the family and was blessing the house as a request. As he was walking through the structure, the priest reports hearing a very angry masculine voice say, "Get Out." It's not known where George was at this moment, but he was hardly religious whereas Kathy was a practicing Catholic. Several years later, Daniel Lutz confessed George was into the occult and sometimes claimed he could move things with his mind. All he recalls from this day is that between unloading two boxes from the van that Father Ray had arrived and left. Kathy was similarly into New Age mysticism and practiced transcendental meditation for reasons of health, but she gradually got out of it. George himself was frequently neglecting to lock the boathouse door, later believing it was unlocking itself.
When discussing "The Amityville Horror" in a book on his career, noted horror writer Stephen King calls it one of the "greatest horror movies of all time," adding that the movie begins slowly and gradually builds up to a point that explodes with tension. However, he has not yet given his opinion on whether he thinks the house it was hilariously exploited from is actually haunted. In the real world, haunted houses jump and range in tendency. They can charming on some days, tediously boring on others and terrifying on others. This alone shows that the novel and later movie were not based on any real incidents and instead exploited from the Lutz's encounters. On December 22, Kathy began having the feeling of being watched and even at times of being touched. She also detected the odd scent of a "sweetish perfume" in the master bedroom, but that was soon replaced by the horrific scent of a thick black substance filling all the toilets. It should be noted the house was on the river, and when the river ran into the sewer line, it blocked up the toilets for anywhere from five to eight minutes on the street. This could explain the flies forced up into the house described in an interview with William Weber. A stained bathroom sink proved to be stained by fingerprint dust from the investigation.
Kathy also described a neighbor trying to welcome them to the neighbor with a six-pack of beer, but he never entered the house. It's alleged it was because he knew the house was haunted and wanted no part of it, but Anson never postulates the guy was trying to meet George, and in a minute of awkwardness, just departs.
On December 23, George started experiencing insomnia. He found himself waking up several nights at 3:15 AM. In the novel, this was the time the DeFeo's had been murdered, but the truth is the coroner was never able to ascertain the time of the murders. It was rationalized they had been murdered closer to the time the family dog began barking. One night, George woke to the sound of the front screen door banging open on the front porch. It had been swinging so badly that it was now hanging on by one hinge. Yet, when Anson adapted this for the book, it was the heavy wooden door being ripped down by a powerful presence, provoking a police presence, but the police have no records of ever being in the house.
As Christmas was coming up, Kathy noticed Missy singing Christmas carols. She would go in and out of her bedroom, breaking from the song and picking it up again from the last lyric as she entered her bedroom without fail. A crucifix on the wall of a large closet was found inexplicably flipped itself around, and when she tried to get the priest to re-bless the house, he like much of the city was in the throes of a flu epidemic that soon hit George as well.
On December 25, George says he saw a pig-like creature in a window behind Missy by the light of a full moon. However, astronomical records show there was actually a quarter moon that night. One wonders if George actually saw the neighbor's Siamese cat, and his imagination filled in the rest. The little rocking chair in Missy's room was said to rock incessantly.
The following day, Kathy smelled the "sweetish perfume" again, this time calling it overwhelming. Her brother was also getting married and mysteriously displaces $1500. Although this is a great example of supernatural forces messing with a person, why has no one questioned a marriage the day after Christmas? Maybe the incident happened somewhere else in the chronology and Anson moved it. Danny and Chris also brought friends over to play in the house, but these neighbor kids never went upstairs. It is likely they knew about the murders and were feeling hesitant about the house. George around this time soon found a small two-by-three space in the basement that gave access space to the plumbing in the house. Because it had been painted red, a lot of people have debated what it was really used for. Anson claims George saw the face of Ronald DeFeo Jr. in it, never explaining that at the time DeFeo was still alive and languishing in prison for the murder of his family.
One of the more likelier accounts of activity occurs on December 29 when Kathy reported hearing the windows in the sewing room opening and closing by itself, but she gets too scared to check it out. The beginning of January brought hurricane level winds that took the neglected doors off the shed, and temperature levels in the house dropped, but it was known one window in the sewing room never closed properly, and Missy was the only one with a room that warmed properly. The rocking chair was still rocking by itself even at this point, and it was one night this week Kathy thought she saw eyes looking in from outside the house. The neighbors still had their cat at this time, but Kathy also described the sensation of being embraced in the bedroom.
Kathy also had a ceramic lion she had bought to decorate the house. This thing was reportedly floating all over the house, turning up in strange places and locations. George tripped over it once in the living room, and Kathy moved it to the sewing room, but for some reason, it inexplicably reappeared in the living room.
During the week of January 5, George began hearing the sounds of an unseen marching band in the house, such as drumbeats and marching coming down from the attic. Kathy also purportedly levitated two inches off her bed, and the phantom marching bed returned for George another night that week. George also had a brief vision of Kathy as a very old woman. By this point, both Kathy and George had seen some level of paranormal activity to make them concerned. Although it hasn't been threatening at this point, the priest tells them to get out, and a medium, the friend of one of Kathy's co-workers, reportedly ends up speaking in his voice.
On January 8, Kathy's married brother and his wife stay the night, and are visited by the ghost of John DeFeo, asking where Missy and Jodie (Jodie was Missy's imaginary friend. She was linked both to Allison DeFeo and to the "demon" in the house.) The Lutzes ultimately have had some activity while trying blessing the house themselves, and get a warning to stop it, but no one else hears it. The following morning, red liquid (Anson calls it green ooze) stains the walls of the third floor attic, but it is also established that rain water enters the house on certain occasions. Kathy receives burning welts on her body as well, but she never sees a doctor for them. (Although the novel says she did, the hospital has no record of her visit.) George tries contacting paranormal expert Stephen Kaplan for help, but a clash of personalities leads him to contacting George Kekoris of the Psychic Research Center of North Carolina, but his investigation isn't until February 18, 1976, almost a month after the Lutz family moves out.
Although they have lived in the house for over twenty days, the family doesn't hear about Missy's imaginary friend until January 12. According to Missy, Jody wants her to stay and live in the house with the spirit of a young boy, believed to be that of John DeFeo, the youngest son of the previous owners. It is known that Missy had talked about Jody on earlier occasions as the fussy window in the sewing room had inexplicably slammed down on Daniel's hand sometime prior, causing damage that lasted into his adulthood, and that Missy had said Jodie had did it. George was having tax problems with his contracting business at this time, and to confound his stress, he hears the sound of the marching band again with the added sound of voices. It is also believed he had been doing some sleepwalking. Although no storm occurs this night, Anson reports that a storm had knocked out the phone and electricity. Danny and Christopher report seeing a figure in their room this night.
By January 14, the activity in the house confounded by the stress of everything else in the house drives George and the family to move out of the house. Despite all the paranormal activity, the breaking point comes when George himself sees for himself a strange figure staring down at him from the third floor. It now becomes a shame that the true story of what the Lutz family actually experienced was never actually investigated by true paranormal investigators. While we know the family did face real activity in the house, it is the accounts described by Jay Anson that have been outed as a hoax, not the Lutz's own memories themselves later edited and distorted by the book.
Following their departure from the house, it is known that George DeFeo returned to collect many of the family's possessions, but the bulk of it was sold by parties unknown and scattered around the country. (A clock and a lamp turned up as far as California.) It is rumored a few of the families had paranormal experiences themselves, but these reports are far and few between. Meanwhile, the Ocean Avenue house was briefly rented by fraudulent psychic exploiting the location until they were exposed by John Baxter, a reporter from the "National Tattler." He later rented the former Lutz House himself to do an expose on it and even conducted a paranormal investigation in it, but even his story was grossly exaggerated by the Hollywood film industry, having the house blow up from a gas leak and moving a hidden well under the house from under the porch to the center of the basement.
Since 1975, George and Kathy Lutz have divorced, remarried separate people and passed on. Two of the children have apparently changed their identities, and Daniel DeFeo has found contentment and bliss by living outside the system. In 2018, he appeared in the documentary, "Murder In Amityville," possibly the only true serious investigation of the Defeo-Lutz House in over forty years. In it, he describes his kinship with his mother, a strained relationship with his step-father and discusses some of the actual phenomenon never revealed in the Jay Anson book, such as poltergeist activity, cold spots (describing a 20-degree difference in temperature between two rooms) and apparitions in the house. He also described the lack of parental style from his parents, who he calls strict disciplinarians. He also said the family dog, a larger Golden Retriever named Harry, barked at the house incessantly, and once nearly strangled himself trying to get out of his pen behind the house. He also said the garage door would go up and down repeatedly by itself. He also went into more details about the window that crushed his hand, leaving it briefly swollen afterward and with nerve damage in one finger.... A far cry from the "no damage at all" reported in Jay Anson's book.
History: The city of Amityville was founded in 1780 by Captain Philip Ketchum. This is a fact, but it also seems to have inspired a claim that a man named John Ketchum, supposedly ousted from Salem, Massachusetts for practicing witchcraft, later set up residence within the vicinity of the future DeFeo property. Claims that the land was used by Shinnecock Indians as a burial ground have just been proven false several times over. (George reportedly discovered this fact on December 29 while living in the house, but he actually researched the history of the property on January 25, and the library actually never had any research that this was ever factual.) The house itself was built in 1928 by a man named Monaghan (or Monahan) and left to his daughter and son-in-law, the Fitzgeralds. The next owners were the Rileys. Shortly thereafter, the Defeos acquired the house somewhere around 1970.
Called "Butch" by his family, Ronald Defeo Jr. was the son of Ronald Defeo Sr. and his wife, Louise Defeo. He had two sisters, Dawn and Allison DeFeo, and two brothers, Mark and John Matthew Defeo, as part of a strictly devout Catholic Family. Some allegations have risen about the father's exceedingly familiar abuse, but Butch is known to have experimented with some mind-altering drugs such as quinine and even mixed it with alcohol.
As an employee of the Brigantine-Karl Buick dealership owned by Butch's grandfather, Michael Brigantine, Butch and Arthur Belin, a former employee, stole $19,000 in cash and checks from the dealership on November 1, 1974 and later claimed to been robbed. Arrested November 16, Belin later implicated Butch, who was also implicated September 1973 for stealing and attempting to sell an outboard motor.
The complete details of the November 13, 1974 murders have never fully been resolved since Butch has altered his story numerous times, even once going as far as blaming the Mafia. The story revealed to the public and confirmed by the police investigation is that he returned home from work to discover his family had been murdered. Both his parents had been shot twice in the head. (This claim was later proven false and corrected.) The four children were each shot once in the back. He then fled to a local tavern called Henry's Bar (called The Witches Brew in the novel mythos), later returning to the house with the police. After several conflicting reports as to his whereabouts, the police began considering him a suspect.
Several aspects of the murders have since become known. All of the victims were found on their stomachs, making them easily vulnerable to be killed by the same person. Dawn Defeo was discovered to have unburned gunpowder on her hands and person, but then, all the bodies had some powder burn marks on them. (One theory is that Dawn participated in the murders and that Butch took the rifle away from her, killing her himself.) The killer had shot them less than a foot away. One question was not easily answered as to why no one woke after the first shot. Theory has it the family may have been administered barbiturates in their dinner (which Defeo resisted eating under your auspices of a stomachache), but with the mode of death established, there was no known attempt to test to stomach contents.
Butch was arrested on November 15, and the murder weapon, .35 caliber rifle, was subsequently rescued from the river by the police. The motive was narrowed down to a $200,000 insurance policy. Boasting that he would be released on a plea of insanity, Butch was analyzed by psychiatrists who found that he had an antisocial personality, but this was not enough for an insanity plea. Butch would end up convicted and sentenced with six consecutive life sentences.
In the various incarnations of the fictional accounts of the haunting in Jay Anson's book, the Lutzs moved into the house on December 18 or December 23, lived there for 28 days (one reference claims 10 days) and moved out either January 14 or January 15. Several references are told of the Lutzes buying the house in the summer.
By this time, William Weber, Defeo's lawyer, was still trying to acquit his client of the murder charges on an insanity charge. It is unclear though from where the haunting idea came from, but it reportedly seems to have developed gradually between the Lutzes, Weber and a writer named Paul Hoffman, looking for something mysterious to write about the house. This rumor was corroborated on live radio by Weber himself.
Undeniably, the worst written account about the activity in the house is "The Amityville Horror" book by Jay Anson. Anson, a screenwriter for the movie, "The Exorcist," used tape recordings of the Lutz's observations which he later reworked, changed and altogether fabricated into his famous fictional novel. This book was later developed into a movie script from which a series of sequels would spring. Allegations that the movie crew was too afraid to film in the actual house are complete propaganda. The truth is that the Town Council of Amityville refused the film-makers access to the house because of the media frenzy.
The new owners of the house at 112 Ocean Avenue, the Cromarty's, however, have not been haunted by anything except for tourists, sight-seekers and the morbidly curious. They sued the Lutzes because they blamed them for the mobs of people trespassing on the property, but the case was settled out of court.
Meanwhile, Robert "Butch" DeFeo Jr. languishes in prison for the murder of his family.
Investigations: There's been quite a bit of research done into "The Amityville Horror," each investigator bringing his or her own style of expertise to the case. The earliest known investigation was February 18, 1976 by Marvin Scott of New York's Channel 5. Accompanying him was George Kekoris of the Psychic Research Institute from Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, Jerry Solfvin of the American Society of Psychic Research in New York, psychics Mary Pascarella and Miss Albert Riley, Mike Linder of WNEW-FM, television cameraman Steve Petropolis, photographer Paul Barta and Ed and Lorraine Warren of the New England Society for Psychic Research. It was the Warrens who suggested that the Lutzes write their book. However, unlike previous clients of the Warrens who wrote books on their experiences, the Lutz's names never appeared on the book.
At 10:30 PM, the first of three séances began with George Kekoris sitting in and Jerry Solvin observing. Pascarella, among others, reportedly became very ill. One of which was allegedly Marvin Scott, who later sued the Lutzes his for the accusations about him in the book by Jay Anson.
Lorraine Warren, a noted psychic in her own right, described demonic forces which had "nothing to do with anyone who had ever walked the Earth in human form." In short, there were no surviving personalities in the house, unofficially starting the whole "The Devil did it." legend. She also voiced a belief of something demonic in the inanimate objects in the living room.
Jerry Solfvin meanwhile wandered the house looking for physical and tangible evidence. When he found none of the sort, he later reported that the media circus had prevented any sort of proper scientific study. The Warren's more psychic investigation, however, was the only proof that they ever needed to believe them the house was haunted. Many of the claims that they have put forward such as the house being built on the Shinnecock burial ground have been largely attacked. When the Warrens finally left the house, they departed the house believing they had exorcised it.
Of the many photographs taken in the the house, the majority turned out to be uneventful or nothing of notice. However, one image has become notorious as revealing a spectral boy peeking over the staircase railing. The Warrens and their supporters believe this spectral boy is the ghost of Matthew DeFeo, one of the victims of Butch's night-time rampage in 1977. However, the photo they are touting as evidence is a heavily cropped version of a photo of photographer Paul Barta sitting to catch his breath.
A major critic of the Warrens has been the late Dr. Steven Kaplan of the Parapsychology Institute of America and the Vampire Research Center. Kaplan was previously invited to the Lutz's residence to do research around January 13, 1975. Warning George Lutz he would expose any hoax he discovered, Kaplan was dismissed.
Kaplan would slowly get involved in what he believed to be a hoax by listing the discrepancies and contradictions in Anson's version of the Luts's encounters and then by challenging the Warren's claims. As his research threatened to Warren's religious beliefs, the Warrens began a rather one-sided feud with him. Kaplan continually asked the Warrens to produce physical evidence and even challenged them to a lie detector test, but they always seem to counter with an urgency of anonymity with their sources. Kaplan's request to interview the priest who helped the Warrens exorcise the house were often met with their diligent endeavors to conceal the possibly non-existent priest's identity.
Another person to investigate the house was Hans Holzer, the noted ghost hunter and author. First invited to investigate the house with Kaplan in March 1976, Holzer had declined out of disinterest. When he finally became interested, he was approached by Channel 5 Metromedia, who only wanted an 8-minute expose, not a full investigation. Holzer declined again; that just wasn't enough time for a serious investigation
In the Fall of 1976, Holzer was approached once more, this time by defense lawyers William Weber and Bernard Burton, who wanted to determine any paranormal influence in the house in order to base their appeals into an insanity plea defense in Ronald DeFeo Jr.'s case, and Holzer finally reached the house January 13, 1977, accompanied by psychic Ethel Johnson-Myers, attorneys Weber and Burton, Channel 5 Researcher Laura Dido and paranormal photographer Gerri Warner.
Oblivious to where she was, Mrs. Meyers was allowed to roam the house's interior interior freely. By this time, the house was vacant and empty of furniture. Holzer filmed her from a distance with a video camera, but it inexplicably stopped working shortly after entering the house. Warner continued clicking pictures with a Polaroid Automatic. Her pictures varied from figures to amorphous shapes of ectoplasm. Photos of bullet holes in the house were marked with auras.
Meyer's sensations, however, tended to reflect and even elaborate on the Warren's then-preposterous claims. She sensed Indians, one with an elongated jaw whose grave been disturbed. She also perceived an original house which once existed on the site before 1928 and moved nearby. The name "Emily" or "Emma" came up. She also went on to describe a man and a woman taken over into committing some unknown atrocity.
According to Holzer's research, DeFeo Jr. had hallucinated he had been handed his rifle by his sister, Dawn DeFeo. He took the gun into his parent's room, but no sound came from it when he fired it at them. As this hallucination continued, Ronnie left the gun in the room, but later heard shots coming from far away in the house. Later tracing Dawn to her room, he discovered her reloading the rifle. Pushing her down to her bed, he shot and killed her himself. (This illusion has no basis in fact as according to the known evidence.)
Holzer has since uncovered information
about a dead Indian chief's remains that were excavated a quarter of a mile
south at 108 Ocean Avenue. Confirmed by Seth Purdy, curator at the Amityville
Historical Society, these remains have since been somehow misplaced.
Identity Of Ghosts: Because of the fiction and exaggerations
connected to this house, it is difficult to impossible to connect the activity
in the house to any actual historical or public persons. The range of
personalities here runs like a cast list for a Hollywood horror movie: A demonic
pig named Jody, the vengeful spirit of a warlock named John Ketcham, a cacophony
of
vengeful Shinnecock Indians driven insane by the cursed land and lastly, the
supposed ghosts of the murdered DeFeo Family.
Source/Comments: The Amityville Horror
(1979/1982/1983/1989/1992/1996/2005) - Activity based very loosely on the book
(which is known to be fictional) and the accounts in the movie that can be
verified by witness accounts. All the extraneous activity from the movie sequels
(excluding the reboots) included for entertainment purposes only.
Geri Betzler aka Zoe Trilling (Amanda Evans 1983) also played Shirley Finnerty in "Night of the Demons 2."
Diane Franklin (Dawn DeFeo/Tricia Montelli 1989) also played Louise DeFeo in "The Amityville Murders" (2019).
Melissa George (Kathy Lutz 2005) also played Jessica Rylan in "Triangle" and Maddie Devore in "Bag of Bones"
NOTE: This bio covers both the fictional history of the Amityville House portrayed in the films and incorporates the research, controversy and investigations of the historical residence. It as well as the other cases of the CGS are not meant to be taken as literal investigations into the paranormal. So, give me a break, okay?
RESEARCH: