Title of book and movie about an alleged haunting in the 1970s. On November 13, 1974, a young man named Ronald DeFeo ran from his house in Amityville, New York, screaming that someone had murdered his family. DeFeo himself was later convicted of shooting his parents, two brothers, and two sisters. The next owners of the DeFeo home, a large, pleasant, Colonial-style house, were George Lutz, his wife Kathy, and their three young children. They moved in on December 18, 1975. Twenty-eight days later, they fled the home, saying it was haunted.
Very quickly, the Lutz’s attorney, William Weber, and a nationally known author, Jay Anson, got involved, helping the Lutzes tell and sell their story. Filled with sensational details, the successful book became a popular movie. Some of the incidents the Lutzes claimed occurred included cloven-hoofed tracks in the snow outside the house; malevolent entities that levitated Kathy and tried to possess her; an encounter between one of the children and a demonic pig; green slime that appeared in various places in the home; a hideous stench; the sounds of an invisible marching band tramping through the house; and personality changes in the Lutz family. In addition, Anson’s book said, a local priest who had blessed the house in an effort to drive the demons out was himself driven out by a shouting demon, and subsequently came down with a mysterious, enervating illness.