The Amityville Horror: 28 Days and ‘Many Bottles of Wine’ (1975)

ARCHIVE FILE · Event year: 1975. This happened in 1975–76 and is not breaking news. It’s part of the Redacted Weekly evergreen archive. More cases: [Paranormal](/category/paranormal/).

What happened

The Dutch Colonial house on Ocean Avenue in Amityville, New York, has quarter-circle attic windows that look a bit like eyes. Its real history is a mass murder. The haunting story built on top of it may be largely invented.

On 13 November 1974, Ronald DeFeo Jr. shot and killed his parents and four siblings as they slept in the house, then numbered 112. After a seven-week trial he was convicted of second-degree murder in November 1975 and sentenced to six terms of 25 years to life. He died in prison in March 2021. The house’s notoriety began with those deaths, not with ghosts.

On 18 December 1975, George and Kathy Lutz moved in with her three children and their dog. About four weeks later they left, saying terrifying phenomena had driven them out. Jay Anson’s book The Amityville Horror, built from roughly 45 hours of the couple’s taped recollections, came out in September 1977. It sold an estimated 10 million copies and spawned a 1979 film and many sequels.

The footage

Video: “In 1979, WPIX reporter busted outside ‘Amityville Horror’ house,” uploaded by PIX11 News on 27 July 2018, 1 min 55 s. The upload description says WPIX sent reporter Kristi Witker to the house on 26 July 1979, the day before the film’s release, to report on the tourists besieging it, and that she ended up in police custody. It’s contemporary news footage of the crowds the book drew. It shows nothing paranormal, and no film of anything inside the house during the Lutzes’ stay is known.

Timeline

• 13 Nov 1974: Ronald DeFeo Jr. kills six members of his family in the house.
• Nov 1975: DeFeo is convicted and sentenced.
• 18 Dec 1975: The Lutzes move in. In the book, a priest blessing the house that afternoon hears a voice tell him to “get out.”
• 1 Jan 1976: The book’s date for cloven hoofprints in the snow.
• 14 Jan 1976: In the book’s account, the family leaves, abandoning their possessions.
• 14 Feb 1976: Newsday publishes the first report.
• March 1977: A new couple buys the house for $55,000.
• May 1977: The Lutzes sue Weber, a writer, two self-described clairvoyants and several publications.
• Sept 1977: Anson’s book is published.
• June 1979: The Lutzes take polygraph tests.
• 26–27 July 1979: WPIX reports from the besieged house; the film opens.
• Sept 1979: Judge Jack B. Weinstein dismisses the Lutzes’ remaining claims. People runs Weber’s “many bottles of wine” quote in its 17 September issue.

What witnesses reported

George and Kathy Lutz were the only witnesses to the events at the center of the book. As ABC Science’s Karl Kruszelnicki put it: “Nobody else saw them.” Their account, as published by Anson, includes the priest’s “get out” voice, a priest’s car whose hood flew up while he drove, and a final scene of “greenish-black slime” coming up the stairs at a relative’s house. The couple declined to describe their last night in detail, calling it “too frightening.” George Lutz maintained the book was “mostly true.” Their children are not named here.

What the research found

The weather records don’t settle the hoofprints, but they correct the debunk. The book places cloven hoofprints in the snow on 1 January 1976. Researchers Rick Moran and Peter Jordan, as summarized by Wikipedia, said there was no snowfall then. NOAA’s daily records disagree. The National Centers for Environmental Information show 0.8 inches of snow at Islip MacArthur Airport on Long Island on 1 January 1976, with 1 inch on the ground. Central Park recorded 1.0 inch, and none was left on the ground by 2 January at either station. Neither station is in Amityville. A light snowfall that day was likely, so the “no snow” argument fails. That doesn’t make the hoofprints real.