- Amityville

The house remembered. It waited, watching the snow come down in white, white silence. The night held the house like a hand over a mouth. Something in the wood waited. Something in the walls held. The house knew what it had been before. The house knew the weight of what came after.

The Beginning: High Hopes

It was called High Hopes at first. That sounded easy. That sounded like everything should be.

Built in 1925 for John and Catherine Moynahan. Six bedrooms. A boathouse on the water that waited like a sleeping beast. Beautiful waterfront. That was what they said. Beautiful. The water reflected the sky. The sky held secrets. The house held them too.

When the DeFeo family arrived in June 1965, the house felt different. Ronald Sr. and Louise brought five children. Ronald Jr. Butch then just a boy. Dawn. Allison. Marc. Little John. The house held them. The house held its breath. They would not know what the house had been waiting for.

November 1974: The Massacre

November 13, 1974. A Tuesday. The kind of Tuesday that becomes a lifetime in a minute.

The gunshots rang through the house while they slept. A rifle. A boy with a rifle. Ronald DeFeo Jr., then twenty-three years old. He shot them all in their beds. Parents and children. All gone. All while they lay down. The house heard. The house held the sound.

The rifle disappeared. Tossed into a nearby river where the water waits and remembers. At a bar afterward, the boy told people he was the target of hitmen. He was mistaken for someone else. Someone else with a purpose. Someone else with a voice that led him there.

The trial came. His lawyer argued the boy heard voices. The psychiatrist noted a personality disorder. Not a serious illness. The prosecution argued planning. Evidence suggested awareness. They wanted to show what was known, what was done. The verdict came. Multiple life sentences.

But the house kept the memories. The bullets left their marks. The blood stained the floorboards. Wood remembers what humans forget.

The house value fell. Unsellable. Vandals came and left messages. “Killers live here” scratched into walls. The name stuck. The Murder Mansion. It was a title. A weight.

December 1975: The Lutz Family Arrives

December 1975. The Lutzes bought. George and Kathy. Three children. Eighty thousand dollars for what they saw as a bargain. The house waited. The house had secrets. The house had nothing to do with secrets they thought they understood.

Father Ralph Pecoraro came to bless the home. He brought holy water. He began sprinkling it in the foyer by the staircase.

A voice shouted from the second floor. “Get out!” It came through closed windows. Closed doors. A cold wind shook picture frames. Red blisters appeared on the priest’s hands. George and Kathy both felt it. Invisible hands pushing them toward the front door. Ten to fifteen minutes. Afterward Father Pecoraro chose not to return. Neighbors found his rosary cracked.

On December 23, 1975, five-year-old Missy Lutz saw something in her playroom around seven p.m. A strange being. She called it Jodie. A pig creature with human features. Bright red eyes. Cloven hooves. It spoke telepathically. “Play with me, but don’t tell Mommy or I’ll hurt you.”

The encounters continued. Five to ten minutes each time. After bedtime stories. Missy made crayon drawings showing a figure with tusks and a boyish smile. After these experiences, Missy became very scared of the dark. Refused to sleep without a hallway light.

The Basement: Red Room

Between December 24 and 31, 1975, George would wake up at exactly 3:15 a.m. The same time as the 1974 murders. Loud rhythmic footsteps from upstairs. In the red room in the basement, black flies buzzing around a single nail. Twenty to thirty flies. Despite temperatures at 20°F. An expert later determined this biologically implausible.

George heard faint whispers chanting names. “George, Kathy, Danny” for fifteen to twenty minutes nightly. Documented in his diary from 1976. German Shepherd Harry would not go into the basement. Would growl at the door instead. A building inspection showed no loose floorboards to explain footsteps. George’s health suffered. He lost around 25 pounds. Doctors linked it to lack of sleep caused by disturbances.

January: The Slime and The Hooded Figure

January 1, 1976. New Year’s dinner in the kitchen. Green slime seeped from walls, ceiling, and cabinets. A terrible smell. Rotten food. Sewage. Children Daniel, who was nine, and Christopher, who was seven, felt as if they were being dragged across the floor. Their sister Missy giggled. Talked about Jodie’s game.

Kathy noticed the slime burned her skin when touched. Left red marks on her hands. For about 30 minutes, the family heard strange laughter. A mix of childlike giggles and deeper, unsettling sounds.

In January 1976, a local lab tested the goo. Found it to be a type of algae. Inspectors found no leaks. The children later made drawings showing green puddles and flying chairs.

On January 8, 1976, at 10:00 p.m., a young woman named Kathy Lutz had a terrifying experience in a bath. She saw a tall hooded figure in a foggy mirror. About six feet high. Dressed all in black with no face visible. The figure reached out through the mirror and scratched her chest, leaving three deep marks that drew blood before vanishing.

The mirror was cracked afterward. George took photos of the scratches confirmed by a dermatologist’s report as real. Not self-inflicted. Kathy recalled a strong smell of sulfur and a vision of a strange man. Looked like Ronald DeFeo Jr. during hypnosis with a doctor in 1977.

The Night of January 14

January 14, 1976. One a.m. The Lutz family experienced strange events. Beds shook as if an earthquake had struck. Furniture moved on its own. A large hooded figure appeared at the top of the stairs. Growling “Out now!”

Additionally, a thick dark mass blocked the front door. Gave off a horrible smell. When they recited Catholic prayers, the mass moved aside. They escaped in panic through freezing 10°F snow to Kathy’s mother’s house in Deer Park. A neighbor named John Gibbons saw them leaving in panic. Reported it in the newspaper. Medical records revealed George Lutz had frostbite on his feet requiring treatment at Good Samaritan Hospital.

A geological survey conducted in 1976 showed no earthquakes in Suffolk County at that time. In August of that year, a building inspector from Stony Brook University determined the algae findings were biologically implausible.

March 1976: The Warrens

March 6, 1976. 9:00 p.m. Ed and Lorraine Warren with photographer Gene Campbell held a séance in an upstairs bedroom. During the séance, room temperature suddenly dropped 30 degrees despite being heated. They heard rhythmic knocking sounds that seemed to spell out “Leave” in Morse code.

Using an infrared camera, Campbell captured a photo of a ghostly figure appearing like a nine-year-old boy with white eyes. Lorraine described feeling a strong presence. “Ancient hatred” in the room. The séances resulted in audio recordings of knocking noises. Featured in books promoting the haunting’s fame.

July 1995: Hans Holzer

July 15, 1995. Hans Holzer explored the creepy basement red room at 10:00 p.m. During the investigation, he recorded a faint voice like a child’s, asking for help. Mentioning someone named Butch. At one point, a device to measure electromagnetic fields showed higher readings than normal, raising concerns.

Holzer experienced nausea. Described a thick, gooey substance. He called it ectoplasm. His assistant Maria Torres reported tasting something metallic in the air. Later featured in documentary “Amityville: The Evil Escapes.”

April 2017: Ghost Adventures

April 8, 2017. The Ghost Adventures team conducted an investigation from 8:00 p.m. to midnight. Daniel Lutz, now fifty years old, reported experiencing sudden sharp pain in his stomach that felt like a punch during the investigation. They used special cameras in the playroom that detected a strange figure resembling a child named Jodie moving strangely around.

They captured unusual orbs of light near a boathouse. Heard low growling sounds in audio recordings. Four hours were spent investigating. The technical team measured electromagnetic fields finding high readings in playroom. All equipment functioned properly throughout the investigation. Daniel’s experiences were similar to what he remembered from living in the house in 1975.

Theories and Explanations

Ronald DeFeo Jr. claimed he heard voices that led him to commit the murders. Later in prison, became interested in the occult and worked with Aleister Crowley. Lorraine Warren’s psychic sensed presence of over twenty spirits during their investigation, including one believed to be a sixteenth-century Dutch settler who died by suicide, casting a curse on the land.

An attempt to perform an exorcism was thwarted when the priest was pushed away, allowing dark forces to take hold. Polygraph tests in 1976 cleared the Lutzes of lying. Recordings from a paranormal investigation in 1995 captured strange Latin chants.

There was no evidence of haunting before the 1974 murders, suggesting violence left a mark on the house. Other residents, like the Cromartys, reported peaceful living in the home with no reports of haunting until the DeFeo murders.

Some believe dark entities thrive on fresh fear. Making it a never-ending feast. Explaining why it particularly targets newcomers. The stone tape theory suggests intense emotions like fear and betrayal can leave a mark on materials like wood, causing moments to replay when triggers occur.

Reports of eerie events happening around 3:15 a.m. could be seen as echoes of the tragic night when the DeFeo family was murdered. Some witnesses talk about seeing shadowy figures or feeling a chilling presence. As if memories of the killer linger in the house.

Reports of levitation and mysterious claw marks do not easily fit residual haunting explanation and remain puzzling. The Lutz family might have inadvertently amplified these haunting experiences by knowing the house’s dark history. Much like tuning a radio to pick up static.

Other strange occurrences like swarms of flies or unusual slime might be explained by natural factors like nearby marshes producing gases. Mass psychogenic illness can cause people to develop similar symptoms or beliefs without clear cause, leading groups to react in similar irrational ways.

The Lutz family faced personal struggles like blending two families, financial issues after George lost his job, and Kathy’s worries about the move affecting their children. With the house’s dark history, including bullet holes and eerie stories, it was no wonder they felt on edge, leading to what experts call mass psychogenic illness.

Some skeptics think it might have been mold due to poor ventilation, though all family members experienced phenomena simultaneously with no known mental health issues. A physicist in 1977 suggested the slime might have been caused by static electricity buildup, though there were no electrical problems or damages to explain sliding sensations.

The Spin: Turning Tragedy Into Profit

By spring 1976, George Lutz’s surveying business was failing. They were at risk of losing their home after buying it during a recession. Their lawyer William Weber came up with a plan to turn the tragedy into profit. Telling sensational stories about supposed hauntings.

They created wild tales over meetings filled with wine, including made-up stories of levitation. Sold to author Jay Anson for fifty thousand dollar advance. The book was called “The Amityville Horror” and ended up making millions for the family. By 1980, the Lutz family had earned about three hundred thousand from their tours and appearances.

George Lutz admitted to embellishing the story for dramatic effect, and court documents revealed diaries that contradicted family’s claims. Even the lie detector tests raised suspicions—some think they may have been rigged or coached.

The House Today

There are no records of hauntings in the house before the DeFeo murders. Families who have lived there since the 1980s, including the current one, describe it as a peaceful home. They made some changes like changing the address to keep away curious visitors. Sometimes investigators visit and note minor changes in electromagnetic fields.

Locals think any strange feelings come more from the house’s infamous reputation rather than from spirits. Tests conducted in 1985 showed dangerously high levels of radon in the Amityville home.

The house waits. It holds what it has held. It remembers. The walls know. The floors remember. The house remembers the blood. The house remembers the screams. The house remembers the prayers. The house remembers the silence afterward.

And then the dark held the rest.