Sightings - You Don't Know Amityville: New York, 1975

Episode Date: April 14, 2025

It's arguably the most infamous haunting in the world. But you've never heard it told like this. Step inside the horror as one family realizes their dream home is anything but. Sightings is a REVERB and QCODE Original. Find us on instagram @sightingspod Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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turning a dream home into an absolute nightmare? Because if houses have memories, what happens when they hold a grudge? Welcome to Sightings, the series that takes you inside the world's most mysterious supernatural events. Each episode, we bring you a thrilling story that puts you at the center of the action, followed by a discussion that dives into the accounts that inspired this story and our takes on them.

I'm McCloud. And I'm Brian. And today we are tackling one of the most infamous ghost stories ever. The Amityville Haunting. When one family moves into their dream home, they quickly realize that something else lurks within its walls. But is this the most terrifying haunting of all time? Or the most notorious hoax? Find out on this episode of Sightings. My name is George Lutz. I'm 32 years old, father of three, and until tonight, the owner of 112 Ocean Avenue in

Amityville. I suppose that legally, technically, I still own the place, but I'm never going back there. Not for my furniture, my clothes, none of it. Because that house, it's evil. Pure, unfiltered evil. You'd never know from the looks of it, of course. A beautiful Dutch colonial sitting right on the water, complete with a boat house and swimming pool, three stories, six bedrooms, three and a half baths and a finished basement. The kind of place most families can only dream about. I remember the moment Cathy and I first stepped inside. We'd been

married only a couple months and been house hunting nearly as long. Since Cathy had three kids from her previous marriage, we were desperate to find something big enough for our blended family. And this place, well, right there in the foyer I saw Cathy's face light up, and I could tell she was mentally arranging furniture, planning where the Christmas tree would go, imagining our life here. This was it. This was home. Of course, the price seemed too good to be true. Eighty thousand dollars for a house that should have cost at least one hundred twenty-five thousand. And since I've always been a bit more than practical, I'd learned long

ago that when something's being sold below market value, there's usually a reason. So I asked, and that's when our realtor told us. I noticed then that she'd been uncomfortable the whole time she'd been in the house, shifting her weight from one foot to the other, fidgeting with her keys, clearing her throat. But after I asked her about the price, she took a deep breath, forced a brave smile, and explained that 13 months earlier, a young man named Ronald DeFeo Jr. had shot and killed his entire family in this house while they slept. Six people, his parents and four younger siblings, all murdered in

their beds right in that very house. And I suppose that's not what anyone wants to hear about the home of their dreams. So Kathy and I took a long walk alone around the property and as we talked it all through I noticed the distinctive quarter moon windows on the third floor. To me they looked like eyes watching over the property. And I found that incredibly unnerving, but at the same time that made me realize how silly I felt. It was just a house after all.

Besides, a tragedy from the past had nothing to do with us. So we bought 112 Ocean Avenue right then and there. We could handle the house with a dark history. But it turns out we were wrong about that. So, so wrong. The day of our move, a friend suggested having the house blessed, and it seemed like a good precaution given the history. So I called a priest I knew, Father Ralph, and he set out to do his thing. But when he came back outside, he was shaken and said we shouldn't use one of the upstairs rooms as a bedroom but wouldn't say why. I at least pressed him for which room it was and he said it was the smallest one.

And I honestly breathed a sigh of relief because we didn't plan on using that as a bedroom at all, but a sewing room for Cathy. Superstitious crisis averted, we settled in. The kids were all thrilled to have their own room and I was ready to settle into this next chapter of my life. I fell asleep before my head even hit the pillow. But at 3.15am exactly, I bolted up in bed. There was no nightmare or noise that I could recall, I just felt this nagging need to check the house. So I got up, careful not to wake Cathy, and walked through each room, checking on the kids, making sure all the doors and windows were locked, and wouldn't you know it, everything was absolutely fine.

But the next night the same thing happened, wide awake at 315 on the dot. I got up again and this time noticed the side door to the boathouse was open, which was strange because I distinctly remembered locking it before bed. I secured it again and went back to sleep, though not easily. By the end of our first week in the house, I'd woken up at exactly 3.15 every single

night. And there were other odd things, too. Things we tried to write off as new house jitters and nothing more. But our dog, Harry, normally the most even-tempered Labrador you'd ever meet, refused to enter certain parts of the house and would stand at the foot of the stairs, barking at nothing. We'd find random cold spots throughout the house, areas where the temperature would drop twenty degrees for no apparent reason, even with the heating running full blast. And then there were the flies. Even in the dead of winter, swarms of black flies would appear in the sewing room, seemingly out of nowhere. I'd kill dozens of them only to find more when I came

back a few hours later. Kathy started leading me in transcendental meditation to deal with the stress and lack of sleep. But one night while we were meditating in the living room, she suddenly gasped. Said she felt someone touch her hand. Not threatening, she said, but definitely there. Definitely real. she said, but definitely there, definitely real. As if that's not enough, our youngest, five-year-old Missy soon developed an imaginary friend she called Jodie. She said sometimes Jodie was a little boy, and sometimes Jodie was a pig, a very large pig with glowing red eyes.

Of course, kids have imaginary friends all the time, so we didn't think much of it, at least until I glanced up at her window one night and saw an adult-sized figure moving around in her room. I rushed inside to check on her, but found her alone and sound asleep. I told Kathy what I'd seen, and she tried to brush it all off as the stress of moving into a new home and trying to blend our family. Perhaps I was gaining a protective fatherly instinct. Besides, we didn't have time to indulge in ghost stories. But the incidents kept piling up.

Kathy would feel invisible hands touching her when she was alone in the kitchen. Black stains would appear in the toilets overnight, stains that no amount of cleaning could remove. We'd catch footsteps overhead, even when everyone was downstairs, and her doors slammed when no one was nearby. And those flies, God, the flies kept up alright. And let me tell you, flies don't swarm like that in December, and they don't reappear after being killed.

But these did. I tried to keep my head down, telling myself I was being hyperbolic, hysterical even. But the thought that something odd was happening here kept nagging at me. And I kept thinking about those DeFeo murders. Surely they couldn't be linked to this. So I went to the library and pulled some old newspaper articles.

And I don't think I'll ever quite be able to shake what I found. The DeFeo family, it seemed, had been killed in the middle of the night, all shot while sleeping in their beds. And all of the newspaper stories said it happened at 3.15 in the morning, the same time I'd been waking up every single night. And sitting there in the library, I had a terrifying thought, that the house itself seemed to remember the trauma of those murders. And now it wanted us to remember too.

But that was ridiculous. Hyperbole, hysteria, It was a quirky old house. Everything was explainable. Tricks of the eyes, odd creaks in the night. So I decided not to bother telling Cathy what I'd found. Instead I went home, cooked a nice dinner, and sat down to enjoy evening coffee with Cathy once the kids went to bed. The hearth was my favorite place in the house, this majestic fireplace in the

living room that cut the winter cold. And just as the logs were crackling, I settled into my chair and thought about how good we actually had it there. But as I lifted my cup to take a sip, I noticed Cathy had gone completely still, her eyes fixed on the hearth. So I followed her gaze toward the flames and smoke. And there it was. A figure. Not just shadow patterns, but an actual figure, a hooded head with demonic horns rising towards the chimney. And as the embers swirled around it, I could swear the faceless thing was staring right

at me Then Kathy screamed snapping me from my gaze and I grabbed her hand and we ran from the room And it was right then standing in the dark cold that I knew this wasn't hysteria We weren't just jumpy new homeowners scared of shadows and creeks Something real was in this house with us, and it turns out it was just getting started. That demonic figure in the fireplace changed everything. Before that moment, we'd been rationalizing away the unexplainable. But seeing that hooded form materialize from the flames?

Well, there was no explaining that away. Both Cathy and I had seen it, and it scared the hell out of us. Worse, the activity escalated after that night. Those black stains now consumed every toilet in our house. Then came the slime. We'd find puddles of it, a thick gelatinous substance, in random places throughout the house. At first we blamed the kids, thinking they must have spilled something. But then we found it appearing even when they were at school. It would materialize on window sills, doorknobs, banisters, anywhere you might need to touch.

The substance had no source we could find and no explanation we could fathom. Sometimes it would appear right before our eyes, oozing out of seemingly solid surfaces. The cold spots in the house grew more intense and more frequent. Rooms would drop 20 or 30 degrees in moments, even with the heating running full blast. We'd walk through patches of air so frigid it felt like stepping into a freezer.

And these weren't static, they'd move, following us from room to room, as if something unseen was trailing in our wake. Soon the dog refused to go upstairs at all anymore, and I'd catch him outside seemingly looking up at those eye-like quarter moon windows on the third floor. And now when I looked up at them, all I could see was cold, calculating hunger. And worst of all, it began affecting the kids. They began having nightmares, terrible ones that left them screaming in the dark. Danny, the oldest, told Cathy that something with red eyes watched him sleep.

Christopher swore that his bed would shake violently, like someone was trying to tip him onto the floor. And Missy? She continued her conversations with her imaginary friend Jodie, which became increasingly disturbing. One evening I overheard her telling Jodie that mommy and daddy will stay here forever. When Kathy asked her about it, Missy said that Jodie knew everything that would happen to us. I should have just cut and run right then and there. But where would we go?

We'd sunk everything into this place. So I hoped, prayed that we could wait it out. That it would just go away, like a bad dream fading after you wake up screaming. But it didn't go away. Instead, it got violent. Two days after the fireplace incident, Cathy was alone in the kitchen when she felt something touch her from behind. She described it as if invisible arms were wrapping around her waist,

and at first she thought it was me playing a joke. But the embrace quickly turned sinister, squeezing her so hard she couldn't breathe. She struggled against nothing at all, gasping for air until, just as suddenly as it began, the pressure released. Then Danny said he smelled something horrible in the playroom upstairs and went to open the window. But before he could step back, the heavy wood frame came slamming down on his hands, trapping

his fingers. The sound of his scream sent Cathy and me running up those stairs three at a time, and we found him hysterical, tears streaming down his face. And I tried to free him, to lift the window back up, but it was like someone was holding it down with tremendous force. It took everything Cathy and I had to finally raise it enough to free his hand. His fingers were a mess, purple, clearly broken, maybe worse. Cathy rushed him to the kitchen for ice while I dealt with the window, which now moved up

and down as easy as it ever had. No resistance at all, like it was mocking me. I was heading back downstairs when I heard news screams from the kitchen, different than before. I ran in to find Danny pointing at the kitchen table, shrieking in terror and saying someone was sitting there staring at him. I couldn't see a damn thing, but the way that boy was looking at that empty chair, the absolute conviction in his eyes, I knew he was seeing something real, something that had deliberately hurt him. So I scooped him up, injured hand and all, and carried him outside to the yard. And the strangest thing happened.

The moment we crossed the threshold, Danny stopped screaming. He looked down at his hand and so did I. The swelling was gone. The purple color had vanished. His fingers, which had been bent at unnatural angles just moments before, were completely normal like the injury had never happened at all. But I'd seen those broken fingers and Danny remembered the pain, even if his body no longer showed evidence of it. That was the final straw. Clearly whatever was in the house wasn't

content with just scaring us anymore and next time maybe the injuries wouldn't magically disappear. So I told Kathy we were leaving. No discussion, no debate. We'd pack up tomorrow and figure the rest out later. Turns out, we didn't even make it that long. 28 days. That's how long we lasted at 112 Ocean Avenue. And I think I'm only alive to tell this story because we ran when we did. It's well past midnight now. Things came to a head

about three hours ago. We were all sleeping in the master bedroom, the kids on the floor mattress, Cathy and me in our bed. And though everyone else had managed to drift off, sleep felt impossible for me. So I lay there, watching over my family, listening to every creak and groan of that damned house. Then all of a sudden, Cathy sat up next to me. Her movements were strange, mechanical almost. Without a word, she swung her legs over the side of the bed and walked to the dresser mirror. Not wanting to wake the kids, I whispered to ask what she was doing, but she didn't respond, didn't even seem to hear me. She just stood there, staring at her reflection, completely motionless.

So I got up and went to her, set my hand on her shoulder. But when I caught a glimpse of that mirror, I realized it wasn't her reflection staring back. It was that thing from the fireplace, that hooded horn figure. And even though it had no visible face, I somehow knew it was staring right at me. Through me. I yanked Cathy away from the mirror, and she came to with a gasp like someone surfacing from deep underwater.

She had no memory of even getting out of bed. But before we could even process what had happened, there was a tremendous crash from downstairs. Like every piece of furniture in our living room was a tremendous crash from downstairs. Like every piece of furniture in our living room was being thrown around at once. The noise was deafening, but somehow the kids didn't stir. They slept through it all. So Cathy and I crept down the stairs, holding on to each other, dreading what we might find. But when we reached the living room, everything was exactly where it should be.

Not a chair out of place, not a picture crooked on the wall. And then we heard the screams coming from upstairs. All three kids at once, like they'd woken simultaneously from the same nightmare. So we turned to run back up, but I froze halfway up the staircase, because there at the top of the stairs was that hooded figure. Not a reflection this time. This was a solid, dark, and very real shape that was blocking the path to our children. I charged up after it, protective instinct overriding my fear, but by the time I reached the landing, it was gone. In the bedroom, all three kids were

huddled together in the corner, as far from the bed as they could get. They were babbling over each other, but I caught enough to understand each of them had felt something crawl onto their mattress with them. Something heavy, something that breathed on their faces. I looked at my wife, at these three terrified children, and knew right then and there that we weren't spending another minute in this house. Not one second longer. So I scooped up the kids and we ran like hell, still in our pajamas, down the stairs and out the front door. I hustled everyone into the car, fumbling with the keys, desperate to get away for good. But just before I got into the driver's seat, I couldn't help taking one last look back

at the house. And there, in one of those quarter moon windows, stood that hooded figure. It raised a long, thin arm and pointed directly at me, at us. I drove us to Kathy's mother's house in a daze. She made up beds, settled the kids, and eventually they all fell asleep. All except me. So here I am, lying awake in bed, trying to make sense of what happened. Trying to figure out what we do now.

Where we go from here. All I know for certain is that I'm never set in foot in 112 Ocean Avenue again. Never. Whatever possessions we left behind, they can stay there. They're not worth our lives. I'm just glad we were able to escape when we did. But... wait... something's wrong. The sheets around Kathy, they're... they're moving. Lifting, and so is she. She's not even touching the mattress at all, and that's impossible. But I'm trying to grab her, and I feel my own body lifting up, moving off the bed against

my will. And I realize now with absolute clarity that though we may have left the house, we haven't escaped a thing. Sightings will be back just after this. They were heavy footsteps, like it sounded like someone wearing a big pair of boots going bump, bump, bump up the stairs. And I'm thinking, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, See Me in the Dark, hosted by Nate Reisman and Melissa Sweezy. Around like 2 a.m., I feel like something kind of standing over me, and it's her.

I looked down the street and there was a woman in a white nightgown, barefoot, just walking down the middle of the street. And it stopped me in my tracks, and I just felt this fear just come over my whole body. You can see me in the dark wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome back, everybody. I hope you aren't too freaked out.

As you know, this story is unique because it's like Wham-O, way up there. It's a pop culture phenomenon. Ryan Reynolds took a swing at it. So right away, I'm wondering if this is all a bunch of Hollywood smoke and mirrors to sell books and movies, or did something really happen in this house? Well, what we do know comes from the Lutzes, who, I guess we gotta kinda take them at their word, knowing that they made a ton of money off of this. Did they really?

Oh yeah, yeah. They sold, they made the book, they made hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars, and then there's been what, and then, uh, there's been what? 10 or 20 movies, so... Is that what Ryan Reynolds, is he the Lutz? I'm gonna make a confession, I have never seen an Amityville Haunting movie. Oh wow, you know what? I haven't seen one of the original ones, I've only seen the Ryan Reynolds one.

Okay. Which is probably not the best one. I figure he has to be a Lutz, if it was a remake, unless, you know, he's one of the ten thousandth families that move into this house and keep experiencing weird things. But in this case, though, the events in the story that you read were the events as the Lutz said they happened. I didn't make anything up for this. Ooh.

So, you know, they moved in, crazy stuff happened, and then they run in the night. OK, so that was a admittedly horrifying and creepy chilling experience that he claims his family went through. But what about the murders? Is that a real thing? Yeah, the DeFeo family murders. That happened. Oh. Yeah. November 13th, 1974, Ronald DeFeo Jr. slaughtered his family in the house.

Two parents, four siblings, all shot point blank with a rifle while they were sleeping. The next day, he claimed that someone else did it. Then he ended up confessing that he did indeed do it. It's worth noting though that he was a drug addict and the DeFeo family seemed to be pretty messed up to say the least. His legal team ended up mounting an insanity defense, but ultimately he was found guilty for these murders. Well, that's dark, but you know, it begs the question, was there actually something in the house,

a demonic presence that possessed him during the murders or did it spring from his horrible actions? Possession is definitely a theory. He did not ever claim that he was possessed though, but after that, he ends up in jail, the house is empty because everyone's dead, and it sits on the market for, I guess, 13 months until Galut's family moves in. Matthew Feeney Just like for the record, I got to go ahead and say, because I know this is a fun podcast, but that's a deeply upsetting story.

Aaron Ross Oh, absolutely. Matthew Feeney Very upsetting. Aaron Ross Absolutely. We try to avoid true crime on this show or upsetting things, but I think this case, it's a little bit integral to the story. No, of course. I'm not saying we should avoid it. Because to me, well, you know, I won't go to jump to our skeptical gecko-ness yet,

but... Um, anyway, eventually, the Lutz family moves in, which apparently, big mistake. There was stuff in the book and in their account that I had to leave out of the story because there was just so much happening. When they moved in, for instance, and this is insane, when they moved in, they were offered some of the DeFeo family's furniture for $400. No.

Including the bedroom sets. No. That they were murdered in and they took them. No. Well, see, now I'm like, they must have known what they were murdered in, and they took them. Oh, well see, now I'm like, they must've known what they were doing. Like, they must've been looking at it as an investment. Like, why do you, no sane person would be like,

yeah, you know, like even to save a buck, you wouldn't be like, yeah, I'll take the bed that someone got shot in. Well, it wasn't the mattresses anymore, it was some of the other stuff. Well, sure, but still. That makes me suspicious. I think a lot of people are suspicious, but let's lay it all on the table first

before we jump to any conclusions. Yes, so after this story, like what happened? They go on a media tour? It seems to have taken a little bit before the book came out and then all this stuff, but relatively soon after they moved out, they seem to have wanted to know what might have been going on in the house,

even though they didn't seem to step foot in the house again. I'd have to look at it if that's actually true, if they never stepped foot in the house again. Because eventually a bunch of experts descended on the house, like psychics, Ed and Lorraine Warren, like the conjuring people, they came into the house, they hosted a seance there apparently. Of course though, Channel 5 News was there too.

Right. So that makes me question a little bit of things. But during that whole experience, Lorraine Warren said that the sewing room, which was the room that the priest went in and said like, this room is messed up and a bunch of stuff was kind of happening there. She said that that room was as close to hell as she'd ever get. Right. Right.

And this is the conjuring woman. So I have to assume that it was bad. was as close to hell as she'd ever get. Right, right, right. And this is The Conjuring Woman, so... I have to assume that it was bad. But that aside, eventually, they ended up pairing up with a writer named Jay Anson, who produced the book The Amityville Horror, which was an instant bestseller, blockbuster movie. Yeah.

It is worth saying that several families have lived at 112 Ocean since then. None of them have experienced a haunting. Well, I gotta say, well, first off, I think that's kind of wild. Like, raise this house to the ground. It makes sense, yeah. I would not be brave enough to go and live in this house. But I guess at that point, it's families that are pursuing the kind of story, I would think. I wouldn't imagine it's just unsuspecting, like, oh, what?

One would clearly think that this might all be a money play. Yep. But in terms of the Lutzs, they both took a polygraph test and passed. Also, their son Daniel, who's the one whose fingers got smashed in the window, he is someone who clearly has no love for his parents. But he does say in an interview in 2012 that the haunting did happen and was real. Okay. Well, see, that was actually going to be one of my questions is whenever there's like kind

of these like family hauntings or situations, especially if there's been a bunch of money made off of it, I'm like, where do the kids stand on this? That's the only one I could really find anything about, but that is something. So those are kind of the facts. There's a little bit more that we can get into, but I want to do them through the lens of theories kind of. Okay. Yeah, please. So let's jump into the theories. Like off your topic, like, I mean, it seems like there's a couple of theories here. You know, one, this is actually a haunting.

Yep. Two, this is a hoax or just a story made up to make a buck. Can you think of anything else? Cause I think those are kind of what I've... No, let me see. Well, I guess obviously the other possibility is like misinterpretation. Oh, valid. So it's not an intentional hoax, but I mean, this is a lot to misinterpret.

Yeah, okay. Well, let's start by putting on our skeptical Gukko hats and take a look at the hoax angle here or the made-up story angle here. I got a little juicy tidbits for you to feed the gecko. Okay. On this one. So apparently after they fled the house, relatively quickly after that, they met up with this guy named William Webber, who happened to be the lawyer of the DeFeo son who murdered the family.

05.05.05 And allegedly, they all cooked up the story that this was a haunted house and all that kind of stuff. Webber later admitted this to the Associated Press. He could have been bitter, though, because they were going to write the book with him, apparently. And then they left and went to this other guy. And he was like, no, no, no, this was all fake. Yeah. One more little tidbit, suggesting this might be a hoax, is that the Lutzes insist that when they were in the house, they claimed to see hoof prints in the snow. Remember that they were only in the house for 28 days, and people have looked.

And during those 28 days, it never snowed on Long Island. So those are all kind of little pieces that imply that, yeah, there might be a little more going on here than meets the eye in terms of Scooby doing this a little bit. Sure. But let's put on the Believer Beaver hat and take a look at this as either a real haunting or I guess you could really head

into demonic infestation territory here because this isn't just nice ghosts. No. Yeah. So any thoughts on that before I give you some food for thought? I mean, demonic presences, just straight up. It just has to be what they said it was.

If it's believer beaver territory, then it's just straight up like the devil owns this house and drives people mad. Yeah. No, I think there's something to be said for that because it could have driven that guy to kill his family. But so then the question, even within the believer beaver construct, you gotta ask why only the Lutzes? Yes.

Or maybe the DeFeo guy too, like the DeFeo guy and the Lutzes, and then the Lutzes left and what, the devil was just like, ah nuts, I'm done here. Well, it apparently followed them because they started levitating elsewhere. Oh, right, right. But it doesn't sound like they were haunted for the rest of their lives by anything. Other than by money. By money. By money, yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

That said though, there are a lot of the hallmarks of this story match, I guess, what you would consider the infestation stage of possession. So, you know, you've got the footsteps, you got the foul odors, you got the disturbed sleep, like bizarre, impossible things like the slime and the flies and all these things. Now, related to demonic infestation and the occult, I guess, twist here,

is that Daniel the son, who we mentioned earlier, says that George Lutz, the character you read, was into the occult. Well, this is exactly what my next question was gonna be. Tell me more about George Lutz and his history and like his awareness potentially of the kind of story structure behind these types of events. Well, I think I hadn't thought of it that way,

but it would seem that if he's into the occult, he would be well versed with all of these things in order to cook up a story like this. Although his son suggests that his father may have invited the evil. That doesn't necessarily make sense to me though, because the evil was clearly in the house when the DeFeo guy killed his family. So I am no expert in occult things, so I don't know how invitations or summoning or any of

that kind of stuff works. I think it's food for thought though. I don't know. My beaver teeth ain't too sharp on this one. Okay. Well, let me give you one more. Okay. There was a renowned paranormal investigator named Hans Holzer.

Okay. Who said that the murders and hauntings were caused by a spiritual thing, not necessarily something demonic, but it was a spirit of a Native American chief whose burial ground the house had been built over. Oh, like the poltergeist style. Exactly. You know, which to me seems like, uh, is that a little bit...

Hollywood? A little Hollywood, exactly. But there's a newspaper article from 1885 that says that the remains of Iroquois tribe members were found buried on the very land that the Amityville house stood. Gotcha. Okay. Not like an official burial ground, but there were buried bodies. Native Americans who were buried and dug up there. So I don't know what to make of it.

Again, I'm not an expert in the occult or in demonic stuff really. I think the closest we've come to anything demonic really has been the Rolandot exorcism episode that we did. Right, right, right, right. But if I'm wearing my Believer Beaver hat and this is actually true, it is indeed terrifying. Yeah, it's the worst.

I mean, and to be perfectly clear for you and everybody, even though I think listening to the information, I'm pretty firmly planted on my gecko pads. I wouldn't, I don't want to go in this house. No. Like again, I have a very strong imagination and I would never, I would, I don't want to be within 10 feet of this place.

Yeah. I don't want to be in the city. You know, it reminds me of when we did the Char Man episode and talked about urban legends and like Bloody Mary, how like, I don't think Bloody Mary is a thing, but I am not going to walk into the bathroom. Yeah. And test it to find out. Right. Because we're just a couple of wusses telling lots of scary stories.

Can that be your new theme song? Nice. Okay. So sounds like you're in the skeptical gecko camp. I am too. And it sounds to me, from all the research I did, it really does sound like most people believe that maybe something could have happened in the house, but there was a very clear effort to commercialize it. Right, and make it bigger. And make it bigger and more intense. Because if it was just some creaky floorboards or something like that, you don't get a Book and a Blockbuster movie out of that. Right. more intense because if it was just some creaky floorboards or something like that, you don't get a book

in a blockbuster movie out of that. Right, and you know, I know we're kind of wrapping up here, but like, I guess I would be willing to entertain something subtler happening. That there was a Colonel in here that just got, you know, hyperbolized, that was exaggerated. But that there was some kind of creepy event that maybe happened to the son

who says he believes in the haunting, but it wasn't this kind of- 28 days of insanity. Phantasmagoria of horrors. So that's the Amityville house, kind of the big boy of haunted house stories, I guess. And I think the consensus seems to be it might be a hoax. But great story nonetheless, which is why I was so excited to do it on here.

Yeah, definitely a story that freaks me out. Because I can really imagine it's houses, man. I can imagine just kind of rattling around a house and kind of like, also, it's such as it's like scary in the way dementia is scary like the idea of like not being able to trust what you see and what you hear not being able to trust your mind I think is personally a very scary concept and that that leads you to hurting people you love is very upsetting for me. But listeners if you have any experience in Amityville if If you've been to Amityville, let us know.

Hit us up on Instagram at SightingSpot, or try us on Spotify in their comments. We love responding to those. All right, so all that said, Brian, I am ready to flee this haunted house. And it's that time where I got to know where we're heading next week. We are heading to Canada next week.

We are going to head to the best documented UFO sighting in Canadian history. Awesome! Best documented? I'm not gonna say what it is, but it's pretty cool. It's pretty cool. There's gonna be pictures. Pictures! Yeah, it's pretty awesome. So stay tuned for that. Same time, same place, right here on Sightings. Sightings is hosted by McLeod, Andrews and Brian Sigley. Produced by Brian Sigley, Chase Kinzer and McLeod, Andrews. Written by Brian Sigley. Story music by Jack Staten.

Series music by Mitch Bain. Mixing and mastering by Pat Kickleiter of Sundial Media. Artwork by Nuno Cernatus. For a list of this episode's sources, check out our website at sightingspodcast.com. Sightings is presented by Reverb and Q-Code. If you like the show, be sure to subscribe on your favorite podcast platform so you're first to hear new episodes every week. And if you know other Supernatural fans, tell them about us.

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