The Amityville Horror refers to a claimed haunting reported by the Lutz family at 112 Ocean Avenue, Amityville, New York, in December 1975, built on the site of a real mass murder committed the previous year. It became one of the most commercially successful haunting narratives of the 20th century, and remains one of the most widely cited — and widely disputed — cases in American paranormal history.
The DeFeo murders
On 13 November 1974, Ronald "Butch" DeFeo Jr. shot and killed his parents and four siblings as they slept at 112 Ocean Avenue. DeFeo initially claimed the killings were the work of unknown assailants connected to organised crime, but confessed within a day, later stating that "voices from the house" had driven him to the murders. He was convicted on six counts of second-degree murder in November 1975 and sentenced to six consecutive terms of 25 years to life; he died in prison in 2021.
The Lutz family
In December 1975, George and Kathy Lutz purchased the house at a bargain price of $80,000, aware of its history, and moved in with their three children. According to their later account, the family experienced a wide range of phenomena over the following weeks — doors and windows opening and closing on their own, unexplained noises, green slime seeping from walls, a demonic pig-like face glimpsed at a window, and a pervasive sense of dread — before fleeing the house after just 28 days, abandoning most of their possessions.
The book and film
Author Jay Anson turned the Lutzes' account into The Amityville Horror: A True Story (1977), which sold over ten million copies and was adapted into a 1979 film, launching a long-running horror franchise. Paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren were among those who examined the house during this period and publicly supported the family's claims of a demonic presence.
Evidence of fabrication
The story's authenticity has been extensively disputed since shortly after publication. Ronald DeFeo's own defence attorney, William Weber, stated in 1988 that he had discussed constructing a haunting narrative with the Lutzes "over many bottles of wine," partly to support a possible retrial defence for DeFeo and partly for shared profit from a book deal, and described specific elements of the published story as embellished versions of mundane real-life details — a neighbour's cat peering through a window, he said, became the demonic red-eyed pig face; a domestic argument involving spilled red sauce became the green slime oozing from the walls.
Court records from a subsequent lawsuit further undermined the story's credibility: after the Lutzes sued writer Paul Hoffman, Weber, and two magazines over unauthorised use of their story, a New York judge dismissed the case in September 1979, remarking that the book itself appeared "to a large extent" to be a work of fiction shaped by Weber's own suggestions. The family who purchased the house after the Lutzes left reported no unusual activity during their own long tenancy.
Legacy
Despite the substantial evidence pointing to fabrication, the Amityville story remains a fixture of American popular culture, spawning numerous sequels, remakes, and spin-off films, and continuing to be cited — often uncritically — as one of the best-known "true" haunted house cases in the country.