The Amityville Haunting: the Lutz Family at 112 Ocean Avenue

The house at 112 Ocean Avenue in Amityville, Long Island, was a Dutch Colonial with a gambrel roof, built around 1924. It had a swimming pool and a boathouse. At one time it had a name, "High Hopes". On 13 November 1974, Ronald "Butch" DeFeo Jr., aged 23, shot his parents and four siblings there while they slept.

December 18, 1975. George and Kathy Lutz moved in with Kathy's three children, Daniel, Christopher and Melissa, known as Missy. A priest blessed the house. He felt uneasy about one room and told them not to use it as a bedroom. In Jay Anson's later book, he heard a man's voice order him to "Get out!"

As the family told it, the trouble came in layers. First there were repulsive odors. Then a "green Jell-O-like substance" leaking from the walls, and a "black gooey substance oozing from keyholes". House-flies swarmed in the sewing room in midwinter. George heard "a marching band tuning up, or an unorganized musical sound coming from downstairs." The family said the Lord's Prayer as they walked through the house. "It didn't work."

"We began to wake up at 3:15 in the morning," George said. Sources call that the supposed time of the DeFeo murders. Missy talked about a companion named Jodie. The family saw red eyes peering through the windows. Kathy threw a chair at them. Then came "the sound of a squealing pig piercing the night air." George said he found cloven hoofprints in the snow. He said he watched his wife levitate off the bed.

January 14, 1976. The Lutzes left. "I don't care what the weathermen said," George recalled. "For us that night there was a storm raging." The walls groaned. On the second-floor landing he saw a hooded figure "pointing directly" at him. The family never gave a full account of that night. They said it was too frightening.

Within weeks the Lutzes were meeting William Weber, DeFeo's defence attorney, to discuss a book. Newsday ran its first story on February 14, 1976. Investigators from the American Society for Psychical Research quickly concluded that the paranormal claims were groundless. Stephen Kaplan said his own investigation was called off once the family learned he would expose any fraud.

March 6, 1976. Ed and Lorraine Warren held a televised séance in the house. Lorraine said she felt "overwhelming evil". An automatic infrared camera caught a small figure with glowing eyes in a bedroom doorway. WPIX reporter Marvin Scott came away with a different view: "Despite all the drama and all the hype, I experienced nothing unusual."

In 1979 Weber told People magazine: "I know this book is a hoax. We created this horror story over many bottles of wine." That year, Judge Jack B. Weinstein dismissed the Lutzes' lawsuit, saying "to a large extent the book is a work of fiction." Researchers found there had been no snowfall to hold the hoofprints. The next owners found the doors and windows original and unrepaired. Skeptics say the photo shows investigator Paul Bartz caught in motion, with the infrared light reflecting off his glasses.

The Lutzes stood by their story. In examiner Michael Rice's opinion, their 1979 polygraph results "did not indicate lying." George insisted: "It's certainly not a hoax."

Anson's book sold about 10 million copies. The 1979 film starred James Brolin and Margot Kidder, and more than a dozen sequels and spin-offs followed. Joe Nickell's verdict: "it was a hoax, or is, simply, at best, a matter that's not proven." Daniel Lutz still believes it happened. The town of Amityville has resisted the attention ever since.