The Amityville Horror: What happened inside America’s most famous haunted house-Sarah Ingram-Entertainment – Metro

Within just four weeks after moving in, the Lutz family had fled their spooky new home (Credits: Bettmann Archive)

When George and Kathy Lutz bought 112 Ocean Avenue in Amityville, New York, they couldn’t believe their luck.

It was 1975 and for just over £60,000 they had snared a 40,000 square foot home with a heated pool, boathouse, garage and basement for £15k less than the asking price.

For that price, the couple – along with Kathy’s three young children, Christopher, Danny and Missy – couldn’t wait to live there. So much so, they were happy to overlook the blood stains on the inherited furniture and carpets and the bullet holes in walls that served as a reminder of the house’s dark past.

That was, until sinister things started happening and within just four weeks after moving in, the family had fled their new home.

The Long Island property had been the location for a brutal and senseless massacre carried out by Ronald DeFeo Jr., who shot and killed his four young siblings and his parents on November 13, 1974 – a year before the Lutz family moved in.

Flanked by two Suffolk County Homicide Squad detectives, 24 year-old Ronald DeFeo is led to his booking on multiple murder charges on Nov. 11, 1974. (Picture: Don Jacobsen/Newsday RM via Getty Images)

Mourners attended a funeral Mass for the six slain members of the DeFeo family (Picture: Bob Luckey/Newsday RM via Getty Images)

112 Ocean Avenue was a large Dutch Colonial house on the south shore of Long Island. With three floors and two characteristic quarter circle windows on the front, the attractive home in the pretty, quiet neighbourhood charmed Kathy and George Lutz, who didn’t know about the fates of the previous occupants until after they’d been shown around and the realtor told them about the property’s gruesome history.

George told a TV interview later: ‘We asked the kids; “Look you’re going to have the same bedrooms as the kids that were killed here. Is that a problem?” They were all fine with it. Taking the house wasn’t a snap decision by any means.’

For a week and a half, George and Kathy noted that the Lutz children had started to uncharacteristically sleep on their on their stomachs in bed; a chilling position they didn’t understand the significance of until later. And the family soon started to experience other strange happenings; sounds, banging doors, strong odours and significant and unexplainable shifts in temperature.

Kathy remembered being ‘touched’ while sitting quietly and Christopher was ‘grabbed’ by his calf when his brother locked him in a wardrobe.

The house when Ronald DeFeo carried out his murder spree (Picture: Bettmann Archive)

George and Kathy Lutz thought they’d snapped up a bargain (Picture: Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Flies would gather on the second floor, and Kathy told a TV interview later: ‘I would encounter a presence in our bedroom, kitchen or dining room. Missy came downstairs and said “Mommy, do angels talk?” I asked her to explain her question. And she said: “Something talks to me and I answer”.

‘I shrugged it off as a child’s vivid imagination. But several times I would go up and stand outside her door and I would hear her in conversation. And I could hear an answer – another voice. I would go in and a rocking chair in her room would be rocking. And she would be talking in the direction of the chair.’

A friend remembers going to visit the Lutzs in their new home, but as she walked towards the front door she was overcome with nausea and dizziness, and feeling like she was going to pass out, she retreated to her car and refused to go any further. Meanwhile, George started to wake in the early hours and find himself wandering around the house.

He recalled: ‘I find myself waking at 3.15am for no reason at all. We found out later that was when the murders took place,’ he told a TV interview. He also found out later from the police that the victims had all been found on their stomachs, shot dead while they slept.

The couple’s son Christopher spoke to the BBC documentary, Amityville: An Origin Story in 2023 and described lying on his bed and looking out at the hallway when he saw a figure. ‘It looked like a shadow without legs,’ he told the filmmakers. ‘I was looking at it and it was coming towards me and I was petrified.’ It left a foul stench in its wake.

The house pictured on the day after the murders, on November 14, 1974. (Picture: Stan Wolfson/Newsday RM via Getty Images)

The house has ended up a morbid tourist attraction (Picture: David L. Pokress/Newsday RM via Getty Images)

There were other frightening events that took place in the long month that the Lutzs lived in the house; one of the characteristic quarter windows would fly open even after being latched several times, the family dog seemed to sense malevolence and one day tried to jump over a fence while he had his lead on. George rescued him as it hung from its neck.

Desperate for help, the couple asked their local priest Father Ralph Pecoraro to exorcise the house. While blessing one of the upstairs rooms with holy water, he encountered a chill and heard a deep voice behind him telling him to ‘Get out’. The room was the one in which DeFeo had shot his two young brothers in their beds. Father Ralph refused to return after that incident.

In another chilling encounter, George said he saw Kathy turn into an old woman in front of his eyes. She remembered: ‘It was repulsive. The lines. The change in the hair colour. Physically I felt without energy. Looking in the mirror it was like looking through a halloween mask. What you see isn’t what you know.’ On a different occasion he claimed to have seen her floating over her bed.

The couple believed the house was possessed by evil spirits and fled one night – just 28 days after they’d moved in.

James Brolin and Margot Kidder who starred in the movie ‘The Amityville Horror’ (Picture:Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation/Getty Images)

Rod Steiger and Don Stroud hold mass in a scene from the film (Picture: American International Pictures/Getty Images)

The whole family moved to California for a new start, while George and Kathy worked with author Jay Anson on a book about their experiences; the Amityville Horror, which was marketed as a true story.

It was a hit, and they sold the rights to make a movie in 1979, catapulting the family and their former address into international fame. The film has since become one of the highest-grossing independent movies of all time and a horror classic.

Meanwhile, Christopher, who was just seven when they moved in, was subject to intense scrutiny from his schoolmates and was accused of having a liar for a mother. He felt sold out by his parents who allowed him to be depicted in the film when he was 11, costing him his privacy and, after Kathy died of emphysema in 2004, he abandoned Lutz and took on his father’s surname, Quaratino.

His brother Daniel released the documentary movie My Amityville Horror in 2012, recounting his own experiences, while sister Missy has shied away from the limelight.

For Christopher, the book and movie distorted and fictionalised the reality of his experiences almost beyond any semblance of truth. He cites a photograph of a ghostly boy from inside the house which he believes has been doctored by a photographer. And other commentators have asked whether the depiction of a demonic pig who stalked the garden and blood oozing from the house’s walls were beyond belief.

Christopher Lutz says what really happened to the family was far more traumatic than anyone realises (Picture: BBC/MGM/MGM+/B17 Entertainment)

View of a house in a scene from the film (Picture: Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation/Getty Images)

Christopher explains: ‘The Amityville Horror is called a true story. What really happened to me is more traumatic. It was something that I would have liked to have forgotten about. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to do that.’

As the Lutzes started to make money from their experiences, the public started to ask whether it was all a hoax. The pair passed a polygraph test and Christopher maintains to this day that the experiences he reported are true – though he believes others involved in the book and movie may have fabricated events.

DeFoe, who was convicted of second-degree murder in November 1975 and sentenced to six terms of 25 years to life in prison, died in March 2021. Kathy and George Lutz divorced in 1980. Kathy, while George passed away from heart disease two years later. It later emerged that George was violent and abusive to Christopher and his first wife.

As for 112 Ocean Drive, the Cromarty family moved in after the Lutz’ vacated. While they didn’t experience any paranormal events, they were forced to sell after two years because they were fed up with rubber neckers and horror tourists parking outside their home and taking pictures.

Since then, the house’s characteristic windows have been replaced, the address is now blurred on Google street view and its number long changed to protect the occupants. While a remake of the movie in 2005, starred Ryan Reynolds and Melissa George.

How the house looked in 2005 (Picture: Paul Hawthorne/Getty Images)

But those that walk near the house today are well aware of its dreadful presence, according to Vin Gill, a publicist from London who grew up in Long Island in the next town over from Amityville.

‘People get really creeped out by the house. They try selling it, it takes ages to sell, then someone buys it, then it goes back on the market. This was a recurring theme when I was growing up; new owners all the time. remembers Vin, 27, who works at Element Communications in London.

‘When my parents went to the wedding that was right next door to the house in the nineties, my mom told her friend: “I can’t believe they have new owners already”, because she felt like she was being watched. The friend turned to her and said: “The house has been abandoned for two years.’

‘Mom felt really uncomfortable after that, because she felt like there was a presence there. That someone had been watching over them the entire time.

‘There’s a legend that if you put your car in neutral outside the house, ghosts would push you down the street, leaving fingerprints on the back of the car. There have also been reports of figures outside the house really late at night. You walk by it and you get a weird feeling, like a presence.

‘I can guarantee that that house is haunted.’

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