Amityville Horror This film was inspired by a real-life family but what some may not know is that this movie was shot in the exact home in Long Island, New York, from a murder case which occurred in November 1974. The oldest boy, (Butch) Ronald DeFeo Jr, shot and killed six members of his family. Daniel Lutz recently admitted that his step-father (George) was engaged in occult activity. During the period that the Lutz family was living at 112 Ocean Avenue, Stephen Kaplan, a self-styled vampirologist, was called in to investigate the house. Kaplan and the Lutzes fell out and Kaplan went on to write a critical book entitled The Amityville Horror Conspiracy with his wife Roxanne Salch Kaplan. The book was published in 1995 and Stephen Kaplan died of a heart attack in the same year. On the night of March 6, 1976 the house was investigated by Ed and Lorraine Warren, a husband and wife team described as demonologists, together with a crew from the television station Channel 5 New York. During the course of the investigation a photograph was taken allegedly showing a demonic boy with glowing white eyes. Outside Ed Warren’s office an old chapel clock ticked away the moments with quiet, mechanical precision. All else stood still. It was the middle of a cold, dark night in New England. Inside the office, a brass lamp lit the desk where Ed Warren, a pensive, gray-haired man of fifty sat working. Hundreds of books surrounded him, most bearing strange, arcane titles on the mysterious lore of demonology. Above the desk hung photographs of monks and grim-faced exorcists, standing with Ed Warren in abbeylike settings. For Ed, working in the still silence of night, it had been a wicked day — one that was not yet over. Just before the hour the clock movement came alive in a series of clicks and relays, finally churning up three somber, resonating bongs. At the third stroke Ed looked up, listened into the darkness, then went back to writing. It was three o’clock in the morning, the true witching hour, the hour of the Antichrist. And now, unbeknownst to him, Ed Warren was on borrowed time. Only hours before, Ed and Lorraine Warren had returned to their home in Connecticut after having been called in to investigate claims of a “haunted house” on Long Island’s south shore, in a pleasant residential suburb of New York City. In December 1975, the house had been purchased by George and Kathleen Lutz, who moved into it around Christmas of that year with their three young children. A year before the Lutzes bought the house, the eldest son of the previous owner murdered the six sleeping members of his family at 3:15 in the morning of November 13, 1974, with a .35 caliber rifle.* *The New York Times, November 15, 1974 On January 15, 1976, the Lutzes fled from the house, contending that they had been victimized by manifest supernatural forces. It was a case that later came to be known as The Amityville Horror. By the end of January 1976, the press had become fully aware of the Lutz family’s claim of a bizarre experience in the house, and promptly called experts into the case. The experts brought in were Ed and Lorraine Warren. The Warrens were consulted because, in professional circles, they are considered to be perhaps this country’s leading authorities on the subject of spirits and supernatural phenomena. Over the course of some three decades, Ed and Lorraine Warren have investigated over three thousand paranormal and supernatural disturbances. The question the news media had essentially wanted answered was whether there was a “ghost” in the house at the time. The answer the Warrens gave at the end of their three-day investigation, however, was something no one had bargained for. Indeed their answer literally strained credulity. “Yes,” the Warrens disclosed at the time, “in our judgment, there was a spirit that had plagued the Lutzes in the house. But they also concluded, “no ghost was present.” What did this paradoxical statement mean? Did this imply there were other kinds of spirits than ghosts? Incredibly, the answer the Warrens gave was “Yes!” “There are two types of spirits that are encountered in true haunting situations,” the Warrens explained on March 6, 1976. “One is human; the other, however, is inhuman. An inhuman spirit is something that has never walked the earth in human form..” The Warrens’ sobering information was not merely well-intentioned speculation — because fully two weeks before, Ed and Lorraine Warren had been confronted by an inhuman spirit in their own home. The visitation happened to Ed first. Ed Warren’s office is located in a small, cottage-sized building attached to the main house by a long enclosed passageway. As Ed sat working on preliminary details of the Amityville case that fateful February morning, the latch at the end of the passageway snapped open, followed by the percussive boom of the heavy wooden door. Footsteps then started toward the office….. The house was also investigated by the parapsychologist Hans Holzer. The Warrens and Holzer have suggested that 112 Ocean Avenue is occupied by malevolent spirits due to the past history of the house. In 1978, James Brolin was hesitant when he was first offered the role of George Lutz. He was told that there was no script and that he must obtain a copy of Jay Anson’s novel and read it as soon as possible. Brolin started the book one evening at seven o’clock and was still reading at two o’clock in the morning. He had hung a pair of his pants up in the room earlier and at a really “tense” part in the book, the pants fell down from wherever they had been hanging. Brolin jumped out of his chair, nearly crashing his head into the ceiling. It was then that Brolin said, “There’s something to this story.” He agreed to do the movie. In 2005, a dead body washed up on the shore at the house a few weeks later, right before they started shooting the movie. Evidently, it was a fisherman. Ryan Reynolds claims that he was actually waking up every night at the same time as he did in the movie. My Ghostly Experience… I had a ghostly experience in South Carolina. I was staying there for about 4 days and attending a wedding on the weekend. I stayed at my friend’s grandmother’s house. I needed to use the bathroom connected to her bedroom because the other one was occupied. On my way out, I noticed that she had at least 50 lipsticks displayed on her bureau. Who wouldn’t take a peek? I opened one of them to see what color it would be when, all of a sudden, there was a huge bang on her closet door. I placed the lipstick back in its place and stupidly apologized for touching it! The next night, we were getting ready for a poker game, so I eagerly dashed to the bedroom to grab the cards from my suitcase. I stopped dead in my tracks before exiting the room as I noticed a silhouette of a man in the reflection of the glass covering a landscape painting. I said, “Don’t scare me- I see you hiding around the corner!” There was no response. My eyes were locked on the silhouette as I waited for my friend to pop out and scare me. Then I hear him and his grandmother talking in the kitchen. I dropped the cards and ran into the kitchen to tell them what I saw. Grandma decided to let us in on a little secret. Evidently, her brother who passed away years ago likes to pay a visit every so often- right where I saw his form in the reflection! I slept on an inflatable bed in the living room for the next two nights.
Posted on: Wed, 07 Jan 2015 22:29:40 +0000