The Real Story Behind the Amityville Horror House

Table Of Content

• The Amityville Horror True Story
• Is there any evidence that the real Amityville house was haunted?
• America’s Real-Life Horror Movie Houses, Mapped
• What became of Ronald after the DeFeo murders?
• Have any of the Amityville home's subsequent owners reported experiencing anything paranormal?
• Amite City, LA homes for sale & real estate
• Murders, Movies, and Those Who Remain

This also gave us a better look at the many merits of the house — beyond its bone-chilling history. And yet nobody else ever complained about strange, paranormal happenings at 112 Ocean Avenue. This makes one wonder if George and Kathy Lutz truly did just take advantage of the events surrounding their new house. TIME Magazine even included the house on their list of the top 10 haunted places in America, which certainly didn’t help anyone forget about all that happened.

The Amityville Horror True Story

The strange coldness is why the movie depicts George Lutz constantly chopping wood and burning the home's fireplace. Son Daniel Lutz gives his account in the documentary My Amityville Horror, released in 2012. According to Jay Anson's book The Amityville Horror, Kathy's Aunt Theresa was formerly a nun. She already had a family of her own by the time her niece moved into the home. In researching The Amityville Horror true story, we learned that they had married on July 4, 1975.

Is there any evidence that the real Amityville house was haunted?

In the movie, the parents take their son to the hospital and are eerily amazed that there are no broken bones in his hand. The real Amityville house was located on Long Island at 112 Ocean Avenue, Amityville, New York. However, the address has since been changed to 108 Ocean Avenue in an effort to deter tourists from visiting the location. In 2010, the 5 bedroom 3 1/2 bath house was listed for sale, featuring pictures of the interior.

America’s Real-Life Horror Movie Houses, Mapped

However, according to the real George Lutz, Missy did have an imaginary friend named Jodie, but it was not a ghost of one of the children slain during the DeFeo murders. It was an entity that presented itself to Missy in different forms, including as an angel and a pig. Below on the left is a drawing that Missy Lutz supposedly drew of Jodie when Missy was a child.

What became of Ronald after the DeFeo murders?

Just in time for summer fun, 60out is opening the largest and most innovative immersive entertainmentcenter on the west coast at HHLA. This flagship location will feature five escape rooms and a VR room withmore than 30 live-action adventures. The work was created using roughly 45 hours of audio recorded from George and Kathy Lutz. It’s first, and most memorable, film adaptation being the 1979 horror flick The Amityville Horror starring James Brolin and Margot Kidder as the Lutz. To this day, there is still much debate as to whether or not Ronald had an accomplice that helped him commit the murders.

Have any of the Amityville home's subsequent owners reported experiencing anything paranormal?

In 2010, the real Amityville Horror house located at 108 Ocean Avenue was up for sale. The majority of the pictures below were used to showcase the Dutch Colonial style home, featuring both exterior and interior photos. As you can see from the slideshow, the Amityville house has been significantly renovated since the 1970s.

"They [the filmmakers] could have just as easily had done the flies the way they really happened," says the real George Lutz, who found the movie's take amusing (The Real Amityville Horror). In Jay Anson's 1977 Amityville Horror book that provided the basis for the movie, the house is plagued by swarms of flies, which show up in the dead of winter. In the book, the priest tells George that the family shouldn't go back into the second-floor room where the flies are appearing. The 1979 film, based on Jay Anson's novel, is the best known in the series.

'Amityville Horror' House on Sale for $850,000 - NBC News

'Amityville Horror' House on Sale for $850,000.

Posted: Mon, 20 Jun 2016 07:00:00 GMT [source]

Our exploration into The Amityville Horror true story revealed that according to George Lutz, Missy did have an imaginary/paranormal friend named Jodie (spelled "Jody" in the film). The entity would present itself to his daughter in different forms, including as an angel and as a large pig. In the movie, George (James Brolin) sees Jodie in pig form in an upstairs window. Earlier, his wife Kathy (Margot Kidder) sees Jodie's glowing red eyes through a window in the darkness.

Yes, but it was actually a small storage space under the stairs which the DeFeo family had used to store toys. The 2005 Amityville Horror remake greatly exaggerates this hidden room, showing it as a large torture area/dungeon where native Americans were mutilated and held captive. In the picture below on the left, Patty Commarato, who was a former friend of Allison DeFeo, reveals the small red room during a segment for a 1980 episode of the TV show That's Incredible (Watch the Red Room Video). The Amityville Horror babysitter, Lisa (Rachel Nichols), is not based on a real-life individual, nor does she appear in the book.

In 1965, the house was sold to the DeFeo family, and that’s when things started to go downhill. The Amityville horror house’s address has historically been 112 Ocean Avenue, Amityville, New York. But in an attempt to protect its new owners’ privacy and keep tourists at bay, the address has been changed to 108 Ocean Avenue. With 3,600 square feet of living space, the house’s windows open up to beautiful views of the Amityville river. And to make the most of its waterfront location, the property also has a renovated boat house. Yet his story didn’t take long to unravel, and he soon confessed to being the sole perpetrator to the authorities.

Among the many claims made by the Lutz’s were swarms of flies, walls that oozed slime, spectral voices, and multiple sightings of a demonic, pig-like creature. Their account was popularized by a book entitled The Amityville Horror which subsequently spawned a film franchise that continues to produce haunted tales of the house nearly 40 years later. While most of the details of the Lutzs’ story have been refuted, true believers have blamed the haunting on everything from the vengeful spirits of the DeFeos to a Native American burial ground beneath the site. With the entire DeFeo family deceased, except for Ronald, their home remained vacant until it was put on the market a year later. In December 1975, George and Kathleen Lutz bought the house for $80,000, under market value due to the infamous murders.

It was most recently listed for sale in June 2016 before being sold in March 2017 for $605,000, according to property records obtained by The New York Post. However, just 28 days after purchasing the home and moving in, the Lutz family reportedly fled the residence, claiming to have experienced paranormal events in the house. In addition to the paranormal activity reported by the Lutz’s — which eventually spawned a book and film franchise — killer Ronald DeFeo Jr. also murdered his family in the Amityville residence just one year before the couple moved in. That being said, it’s these very murders that have since attracted mass amounts of attention to the Dutch Colonial house.

Kaplan went on to write a critical book titled The Amityville Horror Conspiracy with his wife Roxanne Salch Kaplan. 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".

The ‘evil eyes’ of the home, which is how people used to refer to the two attic windows, were also redone to tone down the evil — a bit late for that, but things were starting to look positive for the infamous murder house. Just 28 days after they moved to Amityville, they left the house but insisted that they didn’t plan for it to be their last night there. The couple claimed that soon after they moved into the Amityville house, strange things started happening, and they got increasingly creepier as the days went by. You and your family enter your new home, and chills run through your spines.

If it weren’t for its gruesome past, the 3,600 square foot property could easily be considered prime real estate. Much like its movie counterpart, the Amityville house is located along the waterfront and features its own boat dock. Thirty miles outside New York City, in the town of Amityville, resides a Dutch Colonial-style home with a dark history. Dubbed the Amityville house, this residence was the site of a mass murder in 1974. Given its past and the rumored dark energy that some believe inhabit it, the real Amityville house has fascinated skeptics and paranormal enthusiasts alike for years. In the ensuing years, the Lutzs, including their children who were present in the house, defended most of the details of the hauntings that made them flee.