The Amityville Horror - Book

Book

This section is fact on the version of events in Jay Anson's 1977 book The Amityville Horror: A True Story.

The house at 112 Ocean Avenue remained empty for 13 months after the DeFeo murders. In December 1975, George and Kathleen Lutz bought the house for what was considered to be a bargain price of $80,000. The six-bedroom house was built in Dutch Colonial style and had a distinctive gambrel roof. It also had a swimming pool and a boathouse, as it was located on a canal. George and Kathy married in July 1975 and each had their own homes, but they wanted to start fresh with a new property. Kathy had three children from a previous marriage: Daniel, 9, Christopher, 7, and Melissa (Missy), 5. They also owned a crossbreed Malamute/Labrador dog named Harry. During their first inspection of the house, the real estate broker told them about the DeFeo murders and asked if this would affect their decision. After discussing the matter, they decided that it was not a problem.

The Lutz family moved in December 19, 1975. Much of the DeFeo family's furniture was still in the house, since it had been purchased for $400 as part of the deal. A friend of George Lutz learned about the history of the house, and insisted on having it blessed. At the time, George was a non-practicing Methodist and had no experience of what this would entail. Kathy was a non-practicing Catholic and explained the process. George knew a Catholic priest named Father Ray who agreed to carry out the house blessing (in Anson's book, real-life priest Father Ralph J. Pecoraro was referred to as Father Mancuso for privacy reasons)

Father Mancuso was a lawyer, judge of the Catholic Court and psychotherapist who lived at the local Sacred Heart Rectory. He arrived to perform the blessing while George and Kathy were unpacking their belongings on the afternoon of December 18, 1975, and went into the building to carry out the rites. When he flicked the first holy water and began to pray, he heard a masculine voice demand that he "get out." When leaving the house, Father Mancuso did not mention this incident to either George or Kathy. On December 24, 1975, Father Mancuso called George Lutz and advised him to stay out of the second floor room where he had heard the mysterious voice, the former bedroom of Marc and John Matthew DeFeo that Kathy planned to use as a sewing room, but the call was cut short by static. Following his visit to the house, Father Mancuso allegedly developed a high fever and blisters on his hands similar to stigmata. At first George and Kathy experienced nothing unusual in the house. Talking about their experiences subsequently, they reported that it was as if they "were each living in a different house."

Some of the experiences of the Lutz family at the house have been described as follows:

• 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 Lutz 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.
• George 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 ominous.
• 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' 5-year-old daughter, Missy, developed an imaginary friend named "Jodie," a demonic pig-like creature with glowing red eyes.
• George would wake up to 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.
• When closing Missy's window, which Missy said Jodie climbed out of, Kathy saw red eyes glowing at her.
• While in bed, Kathy received red welts on her chest caused by an unseen force and was levitated two feet in the air.
• 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 January 1, 1976.
• Green gelatin-like 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 the living room by Kathy, revolved until it was upside down and gave off a sour smell.
• George tripped over a 4-foot-high (1.2 m) China lion ornament in the living room and found bite marks on one of his ankles.
• George saw Kathy transform into an old woman of 90, "the hair wild, a shocking white, the face a mass of wrinkles and ugly lines, and saliva dripping from the toothless mouth."
• Missy would sing constantly while in her room. Whenever she left the room, she would stop singing, and upon returning, she would resume singing where she left off.

After deciding that something was wrong with their house they could not explain rationally, George and Kathy Lutz carried out a blessing of their own on January 8, 1976. George held a silver crucifix while they both recited the Lord's Prayer and, while in the living room, George allegedly heard a chorus of voices asking them “Will you stop?!”

By mid-January 1976, after another attempt at a house blessing by George and Kathy, they experienced what would turn out to be their final night in the house. The Lutzes declined to give a full account of the events that took place on this occasion, describing them as "too frightening."

After getting in touch with Father Mancuso, the Lutzes decided to take some belongings and stay at Kathy’s mother’s house in nearby Deer Park, New York until they had sorted out the problems with the house. They claimed that the phenomena followed them there, with the final scene of Anson's book describing "greenish-black slime" coming up the staircase towards them. On January 14, 1976 George and Kathy Lutz, with their three children and their dog Harry, left 112 Ocean Avenue, leaving all of their possessions behind. The next day, a mover came in to remove all of the possessions to send to the Lutzes. He reported no paranormal phenomena while inside the house.

The book was written after Tam Mossman, an editor at the publishing house Prentice Hall, introduced George and Kathy Lutz to Jay Anson. The Lutzes did not work directly with Anson, but submitted around 45 hours of tape-recorded recollections to him, which were used as the basis of the book. Estimates of the sales of the book are around 10 million copies from its numerous editions. Anson is said to have based the title of The Amityville Horror on "The Dunwich Horror" by H. P. Lovecraft, which was published in 1929.