Episode 176: On the night of November 13, 1974, In the sleepy community of Amityville on the coast of Long Island, New York, a 23-year-old man named Ronald (Butch) DeFeo Jr. came running into a local bar. He was distraught and claiming his whole family, his mother and father and 4 siblings, had been murdered in their home, a large Dutch Colonial house located at 112 Ocean Avenue. However, it was later determined it was Butch himself who’d annihilated his family. A year later, Butch was convicted on six counts of second-degree murder and received an equal number of sentences of 25 years to life in prison for slaughtering his family as they slept.
A month after Butch DeFeo’s conviction, the Lutz family, Kathy, George and their three kids moved into the property having purchased it for a steal, $80,000. But, after only 28 days in the house, the Lutz family fled. They claimed they’d been chased out by relentless psychic torture inflicted on them by some unseen presence; they thought demonic, who’d made life in the house impossible. A 1977 book on the case by author Jay Anson titled The Amityville Horror, and subsequent film in 1979 introduced the story to an international audience and has become one of the most well-known, most covered and at the same time, controversial tales of hauntings and demonic possession in history.
Sources:
[The Amityville Horror Website: Hosted By George Lutz – ARCHIVED]
[The Amityville Murders—The Story Behind the Haunted House and Murders – ARHIVED]
[The Real Amityville Horror: The Tragic Murder of the Ronald De Feo Family – ARCHIVED]
[The Amityville Files – America’s Most Famous Haunted House Controversy]
[Ronald DeFeo: The Original 911 Call Transcripts of the Murders]
[The Real ‘Amityville Horror’: Chilling Facts About the Crime and Haunted House – Biography]
[Slain Family Drugged, Police on L:I..Report – The New York Times]
[Ronald DeFeo – Murders, Movie & Family – Biography]
[Reel or Real? The Truth Behind Two Hollywood Ghost Stories | Skeptical Inquirer]
[Inside the ‘Amityville Horror’ house today, Long Island’s most notorious mansion – New York Post]
[Morgan Knudsen – Entityseeker Paranormal Research & Teachings]
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