Amityville Horror: Where Do You Stand?

[stu neville]

You'd think there would be lots of talk about the place throughout Long Island if a lot of people bought into the story, but to be honest it seems like belief waned more and more as the fictional stories of the movie series, etc. proliferated.

To say that American Indians lived, died, and were buried anywhere in Suffolk County (and continue to do so) is kind of like saying trees grow in the forest. I've never understood why old Native American graves are more likely to cause spooky things than any other graves of similar vintage.

To me Amityville is just a not particularly interesting place on the South Shore.

We lived there (LI) thirty years ago, and right at the beginning of this thread - twenty years ago, oh god oh god - I said this:

Exactly - it had all changed when I swung past, about ten years ago now. I only found it cos one of my neighbours originally came from that locale, and drew me a map! You'd have a hard job finding it, otherwise. (Didn't go there just to see the house, BTW - was visiting someone further along the coast.)

One of our neighbours came from Amityville and knew the house and family and thought it at best seriously exaggerated.

As for the graveyard motif, along with demonic activity that's something that pervades US ghost hunting generally.

 

[maximus otter]

…even stranger is Google Maps as blurred this area out, and it is claimed only military can blur things out on Google maps for sensitive, above top secret items.

Incorrect.

As @Damien points out, anyone can apply for this to be done. My own house is munged on Google Earth.

maximus otter

 

[Floyd]

I don't believe the British would be very happy if I called their reports 'bollocks'

You get used to it. Most people give that retort to all my theories anyway.

 

[escargot]

You get used to it. Most people give that retort to all my theories anyway.

I will add here that the thread title Amityville Horror: Where Do You Stand? elicits an honest response, which in my case is 'bollocks'.

By the time this thread began, all of 20 years ago as @stu neville kindly pointed out, we'd the already seen the Horror sensationalised and its meagre content wrung out until little remained except hype.

Hungry for news of the Paranormal, pre-internet times, I'd read/watched it all and long dismissed it as, well, you know.

I'm as ready to enjoy an account of a haunted house as the next Fortean but I know a yarn when I hear one.

 

[catseye]

I will add here that the thread title Amityville Horror: Where Do You Stand? elicits an honest response, which in my case is 'bollocks'.

By the time this thread began, all of 20 years ago as @stu neville kindly pointed out, we'd the already seen the Horror sensationalised and its meagre content wrung out until little remained except hype.

Hungry for news of the Paranormal, pre-internet times, I'd read/watched it all and long dismissed it as, well, you know.

I'm as ready to enjoy an account of a haunted house as the next Fortean but I know a yarn when I hear one.

I think that as soon as I hear that someone has written a book about something I know that facts are going to have been....massaged, shall we say? Nobody wants to read a book that is strictly a list of chronological events which may be interpreted in various ways. Readers are going to want answers, or, at the very least, events that steer them towards a conclusion. And that conclusion will be the one that the author is promoting.

 

[escargot]

I think that as soon as I hear that someone has written a book about something I know that facts are going to have been....massaged, shall we say? Nobody wants to read a book that is strictly a list of chronological events which may be interpreted in various ways. Readers are going to want answers, or, at the very least, events that steer them towards a conclusion. And that conclusion will be the one that the author is promoting.

Well yup, books are naturally written from a certain viewpoint. You see this with rival biographies of famous people; a spurned lover, for example, might present a different picture from that offered by a longterm spouse or fellow politician. We have to weigh them against each other for a full picture.

With the supernatural though, anything goes. There are usually few eyewitnesses and we might not know how reliable are the ones we do hear from, or even if they exist.

 

[Floyd]

I will add here that the thread title Amityville Horror: Where Do You Stand? elicits an honest response, which in my case is 'bollocks'.

By the time this thread began, all of 20 years ago as @stu neville kindly pointed out, we'd the already seen the Horror sensationalised and its meagre content wrung out until little remained except hype.

Hungry for news of the Paranormal, pre-internet times, I'd read/watched it all and long dismissed it as, well, you know.

I'm as ready to enjoy an account of a haunted house as the next Fortean but I know a yarn when I hear one.

I haven't looked into it for years. I read a book on it as a teenager, but how reliable said book was I don't know. All I remembered (before looking on here) was something about a fly infestation and a disembodied voice saying 'get out' to someone when they went into a particular room.

 

[ChasFink]

We lived there (LI) thirty years ago...

I had no idea, Stu. I guess that makes you the expert, at least as far as physical proximity is concerned. Approximately where on the Island did you live?

 

[maximus otter]

It's nowhere near that secret. The former 112 Ocean Avenue was renumbered to 108 to discourage folks from bothering the residents. House number sequences on Long Island often have gaps, owing to small lots being consolidated to build large houses, so this probably didn't disrupt the order of the house numbers. This information is very easy to find online, but I guess the theory was if you're smart enough to research it, you're smart enough to know they don't want you knocking on their door.

Copy and paste:

108 Ocean Avenue, Amityville, NY, US

- into Google Earth Street View and you'll find that the image of the address has been munged. It's still plainly visible on the aerial view, though.

maximus otter

 

[stu neville]

I had no idea, Stu. I guess that makes you the expert, at least as far as physical proximity is concerned. Approximately where on the Island did you live?

North Isle, between Coram and Port Jeff Station (lived there for a year whilst Mrs N was working at Stonybrook on an exchange scheme.) Funnily enough I googled the area not long ago and the whole place had changed - our immediate neighbourhood was the same but the surrounding area has altered massively, a whole mall demolished and a bigger one in its place, lots of new housing, etc. But it has been thirty years!

 

[ChasFink]

Well, this is odd.

I just looked at 108 Ocean on my phone's Google Maps. The street view does show the house blurred, and adjacent ones are blurred in some pictures. But the default map view not only puts the number 110 on it, but also says a bar with a name in the Thai alphabet exists there: ร้าน, which transliterates as R̂ān, and apparently means "store" or "shop".

 

[MrRING]

My vote on the survey is for the middle option, which seems to jive with all that I've read of the case. Mix together a troubled family dynamic, the house's history, heavy emotional turmoil, and something paranormal (psychic residue from the murders? something the Lutz's brought themselves), and you have the events that led to the family leaving the house. Scared and probably looking for angles to recoup the money for the house, they work towards a book with others, but the real story gets buried under the story the book author spins. Later, aggreved parties who didn't feel like they got their due finacially (or due to falling outs with the Lutzs) claim hoax to try to get their money in another way. The family sticks by their story saying that something did happen if not to the level of events in the book, and the kids who have talked publicly have continued to say strange things happened. That's my take on it.

 

[maximus otter]

The murders.

The book.

The film of the book.

maximus otter

 

[MrRING]

There's a new Podcast called Very Scary People, which includes interesting bits from people who knew the DeFeo's, but unfortunately they also have Ric Osuna, the self-styled "expert" who "believes" there were multiple people involved in the murders, followed by a police cover-up

https://edition.cnn.com/audio/podcasts/very-scary-people

Thanks for this tip - I'm two episodes in, and it's quite interesting to hear family friends talking about the DeFeo family. Have the family portrait oil paintings refereed to in the podcast ever been shown to the public? I can't remember seeing it as of yet. Also, isn't Ric Osuna one of the guys who went into the story being totally pro-haunting, but after a falling out over a book deal became a super skeptic?

 

[Endlessly Amazed]

It's NOT only the military that can blur out a place on Google maps, you can make applications for a private residence to be blurred out, it's a simple process.

Thanks! I did not know this. I may have my own home blurred out, to prevent either zombies from my former employer finding and killing me, or Fellow Fortean Travelers from gatecrashing and staying with me for long stretches.

 

[catseye]

My vote on the survey is for the middle option, which seems to jive with all that I've read of the case. Mix together a troubled family dynamic, the house's history, heavy emotional turmoil, and something paranormal (psychic residue from the murders? something the Lutz's brought themselves), and you have the events that led to the family leaving the house. Scared and probably looking for angles to recoup the money for the house, they work towards a book with others, but the real story gets buried under the story the book author spins. Later, aggreved parties who didn't feel like they got their due finacially (or due to falling outs with the Lutzs) claim hoax to try to get their money in another way. The family sticks by their story saying that something did happen if not to the level of events in the book, and the kids who have talked publicly have continued to say strange things happened. That's my take on it.

Mind you, show me a house which has NEVER had anything strange happen in it - even if the strangeness was subsequently explained - and add the American tendency to plaster the label 'demon' onto things that would be called poltergeist, ghost or even common-or-garden misperception in the UK, and you've got a topic for a book...

 

[escargot]

Mind you, show me a house which has NEVER had anything strange happen in it - even if the strangeness was subsequently explained - and add the American tendency to plaster the label 'demon' onto things that would be called poltergeist, ghost or even common-or-garden misperception in the UK, and you've got a topic for a book...

Yup, we Brits don't go in for demons.

 

[Lb8535]

Yup, we Brits don't go in for demons.

Most Americans can't pronounce poltergeist and the word demon sells so many more books.

 

[MrRING]

Just finished the podcast, interesting and frustrating too!

Interesting that family patriarch Ronald DeFeo was convinced he had ESP and would pray to the Catholic statuary in the front yard while wearing his underwear.

I think it is strange that for some people the idea that sister Dawn was the real mastermind of the killings is a reasonable way to look at the case. It is apparently Ric Osuna's POV and he is convinced of that storyline.

Nobody has found an explanation of how they all died on their backs, but were killed with an exceptionally loud gun.

The mob ties of the family are pretty interesting too.

 

[sherbetbizarre]

Thanks for this tip - I'm two episodes in, and it's quite interesting to hear family friends talking about the DeFeo family. Have the family portrait oil paintings refereed to in the podcast ever been shown to the public?

No, there's rumours they were buried with a family member. But there are pictures of them on the walls in the crime scene pics.

Also, isn't Ric Osuna one of the guys who went into the story being totally pro-haunting, but after a falling out over a book deal became a super skeptic?

Yep, that's him. Then he turned his book into a documentary with his publisher, fell out with him, and now the doc concludes by saying Ronnie did the murders alone

 

[sherbetbizarre]

By the time this thread began, all of 20 years ago as @stu neville kindly pointed out, we'd the already seen the Horror sensationalised and its meagre content wrung out until little remained except hype.

There's a lot of content if you trawl through documentaries from the last 20 years - the Lutzes talking about their experience minus the hype. I mean, I'm not saying you'll come away believing anything, but it's there!

 

[Sharon Hill]

So much that people believe about this case just isn't true. Demonstrable so, particularly the "Indian burial ground" bullshit. What's really incredible is that what supposedly happened there was repeatedly revealed to be bogus but so many people still think it really happened like in the book/movie.

Two interesting podcasts of late:

You're Wrong About... the Amityville Horror (3 parts)
Monster Talk: Amityville Horror

If you just consume the manufactured media on these topics, you will fail at getting the best information every time. It's important to check out all sources and then things will sort themselves better.

 

[maximus otter]

Yup, we Brits don't go in for demons.

Bibaa Henry and Nicole Smallman might disagree.

maximus otter

 

[catseye]

Just finished the podcast, interesting and frustrating too!

Interesting that family patriarch Ronald DeFeo was convinced he had ESP and would pray to the Catholic statuary in the front yard while wearing his underwear.

I think it is strange that for some people the idea that sister Dawn was the real mastermind of the killings is a reasonable way to look at the case. It is apparently Ric Osuna's POV and he is convinced of that storyline.

Nobody has found an explanation of how they all died on their backs, but were killed with an exceptionally loud gun.

The mob ties of the family are pretty interesting too.

I haven't studied either case in very great detail, but are there parallels with the White House Farm Murders (the Jeremy Bamber case), where a whole family were murdered more or less in their beds and it's uncertain as to why or how nobody seemed to react?

I think the mother was beside her bed and the dad downstairs, but the sister and children were killed in their beds.

 

[GNC]

I haven't studied either case in very great detail, but are there parallels with the White House Farm Murders (the Jeremy Bamber case), where a whole family were murdered more or less in their beds and it's uncertain as to why or how nobody seemed to react?

I think the mother was beside her bed and the dad downstairs, but the sister and children were killed in their beds.

Or the murders in Truman Capote's book In Cold Blood, where the family seemed to accept the criminals' sudden authority over them and allow themselves to be murdered. It's very strange, but you'll never know how you'll react to a crisis until it happens.

 

[EnolaGaia]

... are there parallels with the White House Farm Murders (the Jeremy Bamber case), where a whole family were murdered more or less in their beds and it's uncertain as to why or how nobody seemed to react? ...

Or the murders in Truman Capote's book In Cold Blood, where the family seemed to accept the criminals' sudden authority over them and allow themselves to be murdered. It's very strange, but you'll never know how you'll react to a crisis until it happens.

According to the survivor / confessed murderer Ronald Jr. he'd drugged them ...

Slain Family Drugged, Police on L:I..Report

By Pranay Gupte Special to The New York Times
Nov. 18, 1974

AMITYVILLE, LI., Nov. 17 —Ronald DeFeo Jr. the 23‐year‐old auto mechanic who is accused of murdering his parents and four brothers and sisters, has reportedly told the police that he administered heavy doses of barbiturates to his family on the night they [were] killed.

According to law‐enforcement officials, the sleep‐inducing drugs were added to the family dinner as it was being prepared last Tuesday night at the DeFeo home here. ...

SOURCE: https://www.nytimes.com/1974/11/18/...-police-on-li-report-motive-still-sought.html

 

[GNC]

Well, that would do it.

 

[SimonBurchell]

According to the survivor / confessed murderer Ronald Jr. he'd drugged them ...

SOURCE: https://www.nytimes.com/1974/11/18/...-police-on-li-report-motive-still-sought.html

I know he claimed that, but I believe that the autopsies found no trace of drugs in the victims.

 

[Endlessly Amazed]

The murders.

The book.

The film of the book.

maximus otter

MO - you are the resident firearms expert, so if you could be gracious enough to explain, I'd be grateful:
1. Could any type of silencer be used on the gun which would greatly decrease the sound while also allowing some GSR to be deposited on the victim? Even a home made silencer, which could be replaced after each shot?
2. To what extent could the house construction reduce the gunshot noise enough so the neighbors would not hear it, but still allow the dog barking from inside the house to be heard by the neighbors? Would the different sound frequencies between a dog bark and a gun shot be affected by the wall construction? I know this sounds farfetched, but...

Signed,
YAFF (Your American Favorite Fan)

 

[MrRING]

@Endlessly Amazed I'm not a firearms expert by any stretch of the imagination, but that recent podcast that @sherbetbizarre linked to earlier indicated that the gun itself is a particularly loud type.

The dog (named Shaggy, which I don't recall hearing before - I wonder if it was in honor of the Scooby Doo character?) was taken outside and tied in an outer shed during the murders (I think it is on the boat dock). It was outside and was heard barking. It was also the detail that led to DeFeo being convicted; a juror was interviewed and they believed that DeFeo taking the dog and tying it up outside was proof of his premeditation, as Shaggy didn't like DeFeo. According to Ric Osuna (who is a questionable source), he interviewed people who claimed to have heard shots but never reported it to the police due to not wanting to get involved.

@SimonBurchell That is my understanding too - the autopsy showed no drug in their system, at least for the living DeFeos - Butch DeFeo was admittedly high on drugs and alcohol that night, though I don't know if he had a tox-screen. I also didn't know that he insisted on a physical after he was charged that showed lots of minor injuries to the body, head and face. He's claimed that police beat the confession out of him, but he also claimed that he got into an altercation with his Dad as well.