Table Of Content
- Amityville Horror House – The Scene Of The 1974 DeFeo Murders
- The “Schitt’s Creek” mansion in Toronto is for sale (again). But you’d need Rose family money to afford it
- Many question the validity of the Lutz's story
- The chilling true story of the Amityville horror house, and what really happened there
- Storyline
While there’s no definitive way to determine if the Lutz’s ghost story that inspired the films is true, the mass murders that prefaced the alleged Amityville hauntings were very real. On the night of November 13, 1974, Ronald DeFeo Jr killed his mother, father, 2 sisters, and 2 brothers in their family home. The legend of the Amityville house ran wild after the publication of Anson's The Amityville Horror book in September 1977. One year later, director Stuart Rosenberg's adaptation of the same name came out and became a modern day horror classic. And then, the subsequent owners, the Cromartys, refuted much of the stories about the state of the house when they bought it, including the book's stories of "greenish-black slime" and a hidden "Red Room" which was just a closet. Independent investigators then proved the cloven hoof prints that were said to be found in the snow would be impossible because there was no snow during the time the Lutz's lived in the house.
Amityville Horror House – The Scene Of The 1974 DeFeo Murders
The following year, Amityville builder Jesse Perdy constructed the five-bedroom, three-bathroom Dutch Colonial house that still stands there today. On November 13, 1974, the property at 112 Ocean Avenue in Amityville, New York, was the scene of a gruesome mass-murder. A murder in which six members of the same family were all shot dead while they lay sleeping. On their final night in the house, George reported that Kathy levitated and slid off the bed, while George was kept awake all night by the sound of the children's bed slamming on the floors above him, flickering lights and an unseen presence lurking in the room. The next day, the kids awoke traumatized, saying they were unable to move or leave their rooms.
The “Schitt’s Creek” mansion in Toronto is for sale (again). But you’d need Rose family money to afford it
In December 1975, George and Kathleen Lutz bought the house for $80,000, under market value due to the infamous murders. They moved their blended family, with her three children from a previous marriage into the home before Christmas. George asked a Catholic priest, Father Ralph J. Pecoraro, to bless the house, which he did. From that moment forward, supposedly a rash of incidents occurred in the house that were so frightening that the Lutz family escaped the house on January 14, 1976. They sent a mover to pack all of their possessions and then put the house back on the market.
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Many question the validity of the Lutz's story
Yet his story didn’t take long to unravel, and he soon confessed to being the sole perpetrator to the authorities. He was tried in court and received several consecutive life sentences; he is still serving time in prison today. Then, in 1965, their descendants sold the home to the DeFeos, a seemingly happy and well-off family with Italian roots, who left Brooklyn for Long Island. The bone-chilling history of the house at 112 Ocean Avenue begins in 1925 in the small, quaint town of Amityville, roughly 30 miles outside New York City. It's a testament that dates back before The Amityville Horror, before Castle Keep, before even the films of Dickson and Melies.
The owners of the Amityville Horror House have had to put up with tourists, ghost hunters, and all sorts of other folks trying to find the property. He stated that he took the blame because he was afraid to say anything negative about his mother to her father, Michael Brigante Sr., and his father’s uncle, out of fear that they would kill him. His father’s uncle was Peter DeFeo, a caporegime in the Genovese crime family.
On the Brewster Burial Ground, there are also three statues devoted to specific members of the Brewster family that had been erected in the 1950s by a descendant. Everything you thought you knew about the famous haunted house in New York is wrong. The only absolute truth is that the Amityville home has had multiple owners since the Lutzs left.
Inside The Amityville House At 112 Ocean Avenue Today
Following a paranormal investigation conducted that March, the Lutzes returned the house to the bank and moved to California. Despite a Newsday report debunking a majority of their story, The Amityville Horror sparked a public fascination with the home that persists to this day. In 1975, a family of five moved into their dream home — a six-bedroom Dutch Colonial at 112 Ocean Avenue named "High Hopes" — knowing that the house had been the scene of a grisly mass murder just a year before. Having given up on the idea of selling the house, the Cromartys eventually moved back in. Fighting to defend the home's reputation, they accepted speaking engagements throughout the New York area where they could share the real history of the house.
The home — its original address was 112 Ocean Ave. but was changed to 108 to deter tourists — was purchased by George and Kathy Lutz one year after the murders. But they ditched the property after only one month due to reported paranormal activity, which inspired a 1977 book and 1979 movie. Much of the paranormal happenings that allegedly took place in the real life Amityville house were reported by the Lutz family.
Storyline
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.
When Jim and Barbara Cromarty bought the house for $55,000 in April of 1977, they were unaware that a book would soon be published about it. By November, the Cromartys had been bombarded by so many unwanted visitors, they decided to change the address of the house. This, however, did nothing to stop curious onlookers from coming by at all hours of the day. When they purchased the house, the DeFeos had four children, Ronald Jr., Dawn, Allison, and Marc, and one on the way—their son John was born later that year. Being able to move his family from their small apartment in Brooklyn to the spacious home on Ocean Avenue was a dream come true for Ron Sr., who dubbed the house “High Hopes” and hung a sign bearing the name off a post in the front lawn. Inside, however, “Big Ron’s” pattern of abusive and controlling behavior towards his wife and children caused tension to build until it came to a tragic head nine years later.
Biography notes that the couple "took a lie detector test to prove their innocence," and that they passed the polygraph. Son Daniel also "claims the house ruined his life and that he continues to have nightmares to this day." The Lutz family left the Amityville horror house, claiming that they had been terrorized by paranormal phenomena while living there and that the home was a real-life haunted house. The Amityville House — now with a different house number to discourage horror fans — has been sold at least four times since the murders and none of the newer owners have reported seeing any psychic phenomena. The house where the movie was filmed in 1979 has been completely renovated and is currently for sale for $1,699,900.
It quickly became a best-seller, and fittingly was snapped up by Hollywood to become a major motion picture—one that would put Amityville on the map for reasons the town wish had stayed uncharted. On November 13, 1974, after committing the murders, DeFeo went to work at the car dealership. Suffolk County police arrived, and DeFeo offered up an array of alibis before eventually admitting his guilt. The reality is, it wasn't the images on the TV screen, nor the voices from the walls of the Amityville house, that caused DeFeo to kill. Biography describes car salesman Ronald Sr. as a "domineering authority figure" who "engaged in hot-tempered fights with his wife and children," with Ronald Jr. (nicknamed "Butch") receiving the brunt of the abuse.
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They followed the advice of a friend and had the house ‘cleansed’ by a priest before moving in, but as it turned out, that didn’t help much. George and Kathy Lutz didn’t really get to enjoy life in their new mansion for long. The eldest son, Ronald, or Ronnie, as friends called him, was a troubled young man who wasn’t able to find his place in the world, who couldn’t hold down a job, and who was in constant fights with his father. The effort to preserve the site was led by Sandi Brewster-Walker, the executive director of the Montaukett Indian Nation.
The house that first came to be known as the "horror house" in the wake of the murders, and then The Amityville Horror house after the 1979 movie, refers to the large, three-story Dutch Colonial home at 112 Ocean Ave. in Amityville, New York. First built in 1927, it has gone through several renovations and sales since it was constructed. Publicly, the address was changed to 108 Ocean Ave. to deter the influx of tourists trying to find the residence. Per the story, the property was built on top of a Shinnecock burial ground, and one of its previous owners, John Ketchum, was an avowed Satanic worshipper. Those two rumors are uncorroborated, but are now chalked up to the many fabricated claims about the property that have bloomed from the multiple horror films about the property, and from the book, The Amityville Horror, by Jay Anson. With the entire DeFeo family deceased, except for Ronald, their home remained vacant until it was put on the market a year later.
The couple had the home built in 1924 and resided in the Dutch colonial for many years. The original story surrounding the Amityville horror house centers around the DeFeo family — especially Ronald DeFeo Jr. in particular. Back in 1974, DeFeo murdered six family members inside the house, eventually being convicted and sentenced for his heinous and jaw-dropping crimes.
It was purchased by James and Barbara Cromarty who lived in the house for a decade with no paranormal sightings. But none of that would have happened without the actual story behind both Amityville Horror films, the true-life haunting of the infamous residence located in the Long Island, New York suburb of Amityville. And then, a year after, the property was sold for a song, with the subsequent hauntings sending the new owners running a mere 28 days later. Here's what you need to know about the true to story, to make your next Amityville Horror universe (with many of the films now streaming on Peacock) binge watch all the more chilling.
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