The Amityville Horror
Out of all the scary stories floating around about haunted houses, the Amityville Horror has to be the most notorious – accused of being both a fraud to being a genuine phenomenon. When I was a teenager, I read Jay Hanson’s book – Amityville Horror: A True Story – which is based on Kathy and George Lutz. Kathy and George moved into the house, located on 112 Ocean Drive and fled 28 days later. The book scared me, because the demon was named Jody – by the way, my mother’s name is Jodi – and appeared as a pig towards the end of the story. In the 1979 movie with Margot Kidder as Kathy Lutz, she walks into the little girl’s room where a rocking chair is moving by itself. Her daughter tells her that she scared Jody and Jody jumped out the window. Kathy strolls over to the window and out in the darkness, two glowing yellow eyes stare at her.
Several paranormal investigators have researched the Amityville House, including Ed and Lorraine Warren, who have conducted paranormal investigations for over fifty-four years. Ed was a demonologist and Lorraine is a medium. Lorraine continues to do investigations or consult with investigators, but Ed Warren died in 2006. Like the house, they are plagued with accusations of being fakes, but I have followed their investigations on A Haunting, Paranormal State and Scariest Places on Earth episodes and believe they are genuine. Lorraine insists to be a paranormal investigator that you must have a strong faith to help combat the evil that could plague you. On an episode on A Haunting, she said, “Every time you encounter a demon, a piece of your soul is scarred.”
But out of all the investigations they have investigated, the Amityville house was the most evil. In fact, Lorraine claims the evil followed her and Ed home. After they left the house, Lorraine was upstairs in bed, studying a file on the house, and Ed was downstairs in his study. In her bedroom, her two dogs were acting strange as if they were disoriented. The room dropped in temperature and a loud scratch echoed in her room, as if nails were dragged across metal. She could not move her hands and sat immobilized. On her nightstand, there was a security button she could push to notify Ed there was a problem, but her hands refused to move. She calls this diabolical confusion. The wind howled, but it was inside the house. Papers flew in her bedroom. In the door way, a tall black figure arose. Lorraine’s heart pounded and terror seized her, but she drew on her faith. In a loud voice, she commanded, “In the name of Jesus Christ, I demand you to leave and go back to where you came.”
The dark figure faded. A few minutes later, Ed came to bed and spoke to her, but his voice sounded far away like it was down a tunnel. He told her that a dark figure appeared to him in his study and he threw holy water on to it. Ed and Lorraine left their house and later, sold it.
Lorraine reports that only their solid faith saved them from the dark entity. She maintains that the personification of evil resided in the Amityville house.
On the other side of the story, other families have lived in the house and have not experienced any supernatural occurrences. So, why is that? I’m not sure, but what if the entity shifted to new victims? Or was it hoax? You decide.