You're Wrong About - Winter Book Club: The Amityville Horror Part 1 with Jamie Loftus

Episode Date: December 20, 2021

Sarah tells guest host Jamie Loftus about the Amityville Horror, how it’s a Christmas story, and why buying murder furniture might not be such a great idea. Here's where to find Jamie:The Bechdel Cast [podcast] My Year in Mensa [podcast] and Aack Cast [podcast] Support us:Bonus Episodes on PatreonDonate on PaypalBuy cute merchWhere else to find us:Sarah's other show, You Are Good [YWA co-founder] Mike's other show, Maintenance PhaseLinks:https://www.iheart.com/podcast/105-the-bechdel-cast-30089535/https://www.iheart.com/podcast/867-my-year-in-mensa-55379945/https://www.iheart.com/podcast/1119-aack-cast-by-jamie-loftus-83922273/http://patreon.com/yourewrongabouthttps://www.teepublic.com/stores/youre-wrong-abouthttps://www.paypal.com/paypalme/yourewrongaboutpodhttps://www.podpage.com/you-are-goodhttp://maintenancephase.comSupport the show

God, okay, well, now I'm all fired up. Welcome to You're Wrong About. I'm your host, Sarah Marshall. So this episode is a return to the classic format of the You're Wrong About book club, where we go gradually through, I think, in the past, it's always been a weird 1970s claiming to be nonfiction book, because that's my comfort zone, apparently. And that's where I think a lot of important issues surface, and then are forgotten because they're in weird bestsellers that turn up in cottages for the next 50 years. I am talking with Jamie Loftus about the Amityville horror. I'm so happy to be talking to Jamie about this. I'm so happy to be doing something that dovetails with the episode

that we just did on Ed and Lorraine Warren, who are two other great based on a true story people of the 20th century. And perhaps we will find the story to be as factual as many of theirs ended up being. If you listen to that episode, and if you haven't, you should check it out. This is a multipart, so we're going to discuss what this book is and what it represents culturally, and then get about as far as things starting to get very serious for this family. And I also want to share with the world that the Amityville horror is a Christmas story. It is very appropriate, seasonal viewing and reading. And so we are going to get up to Christmas Eve in the events of this book, which is maybe a third of the way into this family's one month tenure in their scary,

scary house, because that's what the show is really all about, is the spirit of Christmas. We have a Patreon for the show where we do bonus episodes. We did one last month with Jamie talking about the Pinkerton Detectives. We have one this month with Eric Michael Garcia, who was a previous guest in a wonderful episode. We're going to be talking about the film Music by Sia. And as you can imagine, that's going to rise to quite a dramatic pitch, that conversation. And what can be learned from such a disaster? I was really excited to talk about this book, because I initially started researching it for an episode and then got profoundly sucked into and fascinated by the story, which is, I think, what has to happen for me to do good work with

anything. And I think this story is meaningful to me to explore, because anything that has this profound of an impact on the people who consumed it, anything this bad that people love this much, has to mean something. There has to be a reason beyond the quality of the writing, which has a quality of a certain kind. But there's something else that's drawing people in, and there's something else that was so compelling to people that made this such an unbelievably profitable story in the late 70s, and then has allowed it to stay famous and to remain a drawn, to keep ruining the lives of whoever lives on the same street as this house. I'm very curious about what's happening there. Why can't we move on?

Why are we haunted by this haunted house story? So that is what we're going to try to find out. Merry Christmas. Welcome to You're Wrong About, the show where we talk about ghost stories and stories where the ghosts are stand-ins for men being jerks. I don't feel like that's a spoiler. No, I don't think so. And with me today is Kami Loftus. Hi. I feel like you're the show's ghost correspondent at this point. I'm happy to take on that role. That's awesome. I'm excited to find out if you think any of the ghosts are real here. That should be one of the 36 questions to fall in love. Do you remember those? Yes, I do remember that. Do you believe in ghosts should be one of them? Because it is a kind of an intimate question that people hesitate

before they answer, usually. I mean, it's a risk either way, because you could be like, I do believe in ghosts to some extent. Someone could be like, huh, that's pretty silly. Or you could be like, I don't believe in ghosts. And someone could be like, how could you not believe in ghosts when they're so clearly your ghosts? I feel like I've heard people answer that question, and it has like slightly changed how I thought of them. I think mostly when someone I wouldn't expect to believe in ghosts does, it really endears me to them. I think it is vulnerable in many ways to believe in ghosts. And then it's also something that you can use to exploit vulnerable people, a professed belief in ghosts. She's transitioning. Wow. This is an historic recording

event. You and I are in the same place. This has never happened in the making of an episode of You're Wrong About Ever. Wait, ever, ever? Ever, ever. Wow. How do you feel? The goal of Skype or Zoom or any of the programs we've all been using incessantly for the past two years, if not for years before that also, is to make you to trick the mind, if only for a moment, into thinking that someone is really with you. So I feel as if like I've been working this spell for years and it finally worked. And I'm like, ha, you've conjured a person. Yeah. This is so nice. I will tell the story because I think it's nice. I had this plan and then I executed it successfully. I came back to my house in Portland and I have a live event this week

at Livewire, which will already exist in the world by the time you hear this and you can go here recording of that. And hopefully I was funny. You killed it. I look back fondly on that thing that's about to happen. And I'm sure that I wish I could do it all over again. You came to town to visit and you arrived before me. And then my friend, Alex Steed, who I call my brother, who I found on the internet, and Carolyn, who produces this show. You were all here in my house like waiting for me when I arrived. And so I opened the door and went, my little women. Which you had foreshadowed by the full two days and it really delivered. I'm so happy. You really gave us the full Odin Kirk on that one. It felt like, oh, we've got to like do some

podcast stuff while we're like in the house of podcasts. This is the business portion of the visit. Right. Yeah. So it can be a tax write off when we get hot dogs later. Yes. Yes. But it also feels appropriate because I feel like the pandemic was really hard for me socially. And I like really lacked the energy to either maintain friendships or make friends the way that I had before. Alex and I were extremely close for a long time before pandemic stuff hit. And Carolyn and I were newly close. And I feel like we were able to kind of maintain this like pod reality being in touch all the time because we started doing a different podcast together called You Are Good. And then you did one of the first new episodes of You're Wrong About of You're Wrong About Two

podcasts. And like the making of them have kept and brought these people into my life. And now it's like it makes sense to practice that thing while we're all here together. And I guess what I'm saying is like every so often somebody is like, should I make a podcast or should people make more podcasts? I bet you think there are too many podcasts. And I'm like, no, there should be like eternally more podcasts until the ratio of podcasts to human beings is like one to one. If not more because like, yes, a lot of people have said a lot of things, but you haven't yet probably. So many things happen through it. And one of them is relationships and friendships. And that's so important. Yeah, it is like a huge bonding exercise. I think I've like come all the

way around on that because I also struggle with like the social aspect of anything. And so to be put in a controlled environment where you are going to get to know someone better, you are going to ideally listen to each other and actually like communicate, I don't know, just a very gentle social boot camp sometimes in a way that I'm like, I like this. It's just been so nice podcast friendships are truly the best friendships. Yeah. So Merry Christmas. God bless us everyone. Thank you for being a podcast listener and supporting this new and weird art form that I'm so happy to be a part of. And I want to return a little bit to the format of yield you're wrong about book club satanic panic because this is a satanic panic book surprise because we're talking

about the amityville horror today, which one of the first things about that I feel like is important to remember given the evidence we have for ghosts in this book is that the movie, which was incredibly successful, one of the top earners of 1979 people don't sit around watching it now, but it was giant at the time. Yeah. Has the story take place and what looks like late summer into early fall and in reality, whatever happened happened basically right before Christmas. Right. And to the first days of the new year and one of the ghostly manifestations. It is a leitmotif in this book, which I just find so wonderful is like, it was so cold in the giant house they just bought. How could it be? And it's like December, it's a giant house. It's on the

ocean. I knew it was actually in December, but it never occurred to me why you would make that logic shift to make that. Wow. When I was putting my Warren's episode together, I just skipped over the amityville horror entirely. But it was hard to because I'm so curious about it. Yeah. There's certain books that have been special to me that I go through an experience with. And I'm first, I'm like, okay, I'm going to read this book. Then I'm like, oh, this isn't very good. And then I'm like, oh my God, this is terrible. I can't believe I'm reading this goddamn thing. And I can't believe I'm spending so much time looking at it and thinking about it. And then like at a certain point you break through a wall and you're like, this book is incredible. Are you on the side of

book good? Here's what I think. I've been thinking about this since we did the true crime episode. What does it mean that I grew up reading true crime? And why did I find it comforting? And I think for me, the writing style is always kind of the same. Yeah. Very competent, not a lot of flair. And there's usually some kind of template detailing of like the lives of the very normal victims before something terrible happens to them. Yeah. And it always emphasizes how nice things are for them. And it's like Becky Sue was a grade A student and a runner up for a homecoming queen whose boyfriend Kirk was detailing a motorcycle that he'd built from parts. They were planning a trip to Cape Cod that summer. He was going to tell her he was in love with her

three days after the event. You set up the Hallmark movie and then something terrible happens. Yeah. That's like a style that I'm very familiar with. And I think I saw it out when I was a teenage girl because I think that there was less reality TV and like reality social media content anytime before 10 years ago. And I think there's this thing where people want to just watch other people do normal things. I don't know. Sometimes I get afraid of books because I'm like, I'm going to have to really give my entire brain over to this. And this is like, you know, you don't need to be firing on all synapses to enjoy true crime. Yeah. It really has that going for it. This is just a weird book kind of in the way Michelle remembers is weird where it's presented

very credulously as factual. And then by the time you're done with it, you're like, really? And the publisher published it as nonfiction. And you're like, really though? And you know, the disclaimer is like, these events are true to the extent that we can verify them. And it's like, well, if someone tells you that like green slime suddenly appeared on his walls, and he didn't save anything, you can't really verify it. You just have to be like, who knows? He says it happened. And it was really cold in that house wasn't it? Pretty scary. But for some reason, I feel like it was culturally accepted as being pretty real in a way that people didn't really examine, which I kind of right. I don't hate it. It's just weird. Exactly. And then also this

book was incredibly successful. This movie was incredibly successful. It created a franchise that's still putting out sequels, by the way, like Amityville is like an extremely yeah, I didn't know this, but there's like eight billion Amityville sequels and franchise reboots still. I just knew about like the there's a Ryan Reynolds one, right? Oh, yeah. I haven't watched. Oh, I want to watch that. It's like a bona fide phenomenon. It's up there with Friday the 13th, for sure. And I feel like we've probably always tried to come in with spirits of the dead. But then in the 70s, we have definitely a haunted house boom in media. And also as this show has been about a lot of the time, the kind of precursor like orchestra tuning up for the satanic panic,

the exorcist, the omen, the consumer demand related increase in the supply of exorcists available to give you an exorcism in the 1970s. This interesting number of narratives, and this is just, and I don't have conclusions about this, but I have a lot of questions, where like the Catholic Church is right and they're the only ones who can save you. Right. The Catholic Church and the police are like going to the more heavily you fuck with them, the safer you will be and the more, you know, not having an inherent trust in either of those institutions will leave you extremely vulnerable. Yeah, it's totally like no atheist in a foxhole type of story. People in these stories, they either become more Catholic or they get possessed or

whatever. Does this family become more Catholic? Mm-hmm. Okay, okay. A little spoiler, but totally. Yeah. Okay. Let's just jump in. Let's do it. We have a preface by Reverend John Nicola, basically explaining, you know, it's pretty silly to take ghosts entirely as a matter of faith and not do any scientific inquiry, but on the other hand, it's pretty silly to take science as a matter of faith and not assume that science will Sunday explain ghosts. Now that's the spicy take. And if you don't believe in ghosts categorically, then like, it's kind of a prejudice on your part. Okay, he does sound like me at a party. So intro by Man of the Cloth and then the prologue by author Jay Anson who died in 1980s.

There's so many questions we can't answer him, such as was there goo? But yeah, Jay Anson is writing in that sort of dispassionate true crime style that I guess over the course of this book is the events get harder and harder to believe gets more and more weird for its dispassionateness. But it stays that way. Well, it does use a lot of exclamation points, but it's like, and then this thing totally happened and you're like, Oh, and yet other parts of it are so rooted and boring reality that it's just like, I don't know, I think that's probably part of why it's scary because it just feels believable and its ability to make this story somehow also dull. But the prologue just gives us the basics of the story, which is that George and Kathleen Lutz

bought and moved into a large colonial house at 112 Ocean Avenue in Amityville, New York, that one year before, a little over a year had been the site of a mass murder triple homicide, right? A guy killed his parents and his four siblings. So like, this makes me feel sad about today. But I'm like, you know, in the 70s, that was a lot of people to get shot all at once, not like today where that barely makes regional news. Oh boy. And it happened in an affluent community. And I think those stories always hit people harder, the people who live in the affluent communities anyway. Oh, yeah, media loves to push stories like that. They're like, it could happen anywhere. Rich people can shoot each other. Absolutely, they can. Our confusion about that

idea, there's a lot being expressed. And this is the kind of rich person crime story where maybe there were problems that people would have been less prone to overlook if they hadn't been in this really beautiful house and like successful and had, I mean, to me, a really telling detail is that they had two washing machines and two dryers. I still feel like if you have a washer and dryer in your home, wow, you're really living. Yeah, you know, for comparison, the Menendez brothers were accused of shooting their parents to death and not any siblings. And I think the death of children is even harder for a community to wrap their heads around a lot of time. And like that case was all anyone could talk about for a couple of years. And so the house was on the market for

a reduced rate because of the murders it sold for $80,000. God, wait. Hearing old timey real estate phrases is so upsetting. $80,000 for that big ass house. I feel like if you don't pay a speeding ticket, it like racks up $80,000 worth of debt in a couple of years at this point. I have $80,000 in like library fees. That is so, so wait, that house costs like half what a college education costs. God, okay, well, now I'm all fired up. Okay, that is such a large house, $80,000. I mean, what do you think there's skin? What should it have cost? Well, it says when they're describing their reactions to the price that it seemed like maybe it should have been priced at $180,000. Would you live in a house where people have been brutally murdered?

I probably not. I feel the same way. Yeah. I feel like if it happened 80 years ago, I would think about it. Sure. To me, there's something about moving into a house where this family annihilation took place about a year before just feels, this is me revealing myself as a superstitious person, but I'm like, that's too soon. That family is barely not there anymore. Yeah. There is something that like hangs around in a home, but if you like moved a family into that house and they had no idea that anything bad had happened there, how much of it is just like cognitive and how much of it is real ghosts, I don't know. I bet it's a little bit of both. If your neighbors were instructed to not tell you, you would pick up on the way they reacted to

the house and you being in it. We know it's the American dream to own property and there's good things about it, but like a lot of the time it feels like college. I know this is what is supposed to help me, but like is it? Then why does it feel so bad? And why do you have to like bleed yourself dry to be able to afford it? How many life compromises do you need to make in order to have access to it? And how many lifetimes do you have to work to be able to pay for it? They bought this house for $80,000. They moved in and 28 days later, they moved out. And as the prologue says, soon after they moved in, they had become aware that the place was inhabited by some psychic force and feared for their lives. They flee the house and then they

just basically start talking to the media. They have a press conference. They come up with a couple of articles saying, we're afraid to go back to our house. Here's a quote. Okay. They say that there's some kind of unnatural evil that is growing stronger every day that they stay there feeding on their energy or something like that. So out of that interest, this book is born and then sells a billion copies. Oh, I feel like there's a copy of this book in every public library I've ever been to. I'm just going to read you the very opening of the book proper and this will give you really a sense of what the style is like the whole time. Okay. Chapter one, December 18th, 1975. George and Kathy Lutz moved into 112 Ocean Avenue on December 18th. 28 days later, they fled in terror.

George Lee Lutz, 28, of Deer Park, Long Island had a pretty good idea of land and home values. The owner of a land surveying company, William H. Perry, Inc. He proudly let everyone know that the business was a third generation operation, his grandfathers, his fathers, and now his. This is where as like someone who used to teach writing, I would be like, you know, if something's in a second paragraph of your book, you're kind of implying that it's important. And also that's making me think there's a word count and he has to meet it if he's like third generation, you know, a grandfather, a father, and you're like, no, I know what a third generation is. It's beautiful. The writing style is perfect for making what it's claiming sort of weirdly viable

because it's like you seem totally free of guile or skill. So you must at least think you're telling the truth. Okay. Between July and November, he and his wife, Kathleen, 30, had looked at over 50 homes on the island south shore before deciding to investigate Amityville. None in the 30 to $50,000 range had yet met their requirements, that the house must be on the water, and then it must be one to which they could move George's business. So we will move forward. Important to note that they bought a house $30,000 higher than their max price. Yes, it is. My instinct with them is like, they realized that they were $30,000 in debt needed to manufacture something more profitable than George's. What is George's business? Land surveying. It's funny because

they talk about the financial picture. It comes up every so often in the book. And then it's like, well, anyway, this other scary thing happened. Don't worry about it. So another thing I love about this book is that it has a map of the property and then floor plans of the entire house. So I'm going to give this to you because you're actually here in front of me and you can look at the next few pages of maps. Okay, so I'll describe what I'm looking at a little bit here. They're right on the Amityville River. Okay, so there's like a big deck out here in the in the back. It looks like there's an in-ground swimming pool. Oh my God. Okay, two and a half story frame wood shingle dwelling. So they've got, these people have property. Okay. Okay, now we're inside.

This is the ground floor. We got a big old porch, a living room, dining room, kitchen and breakfast dinette. Sounds like a second dining room to me. Oh, there's three floors. You sickos. Okay. Second floor, there's a large empty space. There's dressing room, sewing room, fun, Missy's room. Great. Master bedroom. Great. Okay, we're going up a floor. Third floor attic, Danny and Chris's room. I think it's funny that there's a dressing room, but Danny and Chris can't have their own rooms. Interesting. Storage space, play room, bathroom, hall, stair, storage space. That's a big old house. Plenty of room for ghosts. The ghosts can have their own room. Yeah, and I think this is such a smart choice because it makes the whole thing feel more real,

like the same way that when you're reading the Lord of the Rings, you're like, well, there's a map of Middle Earth. So like, yeah, feels like a real place. They also have a boat house. George has two boats and he's like, we're going to save so much money on mortgage fees that this will make sense. And it's like, were you paying $30,000 a year for your boats? For your boats. How much are you using these boats? Are you using them to survey land? Which I know that that is a real job, but I don't understand it. So I'm being dismissive. There's something too about how true crime will set men up, especially as like, not seeming to be serial killers because they're doing well financially. And it's like, well,

he had an RV and a boat. So like everyone thought he was normal. Yeah, we're like people who are like, well, look, we're normal. Look at all the stuff that we have and gaining. And so the realtor takes them to the house. It's not even a dream house because a dream house is like, wow, there's plenty of room for everyone. This is amazing. As opposed to like, wow, there's more space than we honestly know what to do with. Right. It's like, who has the stuff to fill a house of that size if they're moving from a much smaller house? Yeah. And to that end, so they look at it, they're like, we're in love, we're going to take it. We know about the murders. We're not stressed about that. It's fine.

Are you ever so in love that you don't care about a sex tuple homicide that took place less than a year ago? Yeah. Like how fun is it if you have to tell your friends, like, I don't even care about the murders. About the child murders because George is so amazing. Even when I was watching like the movie back in the day, I'm like, it's really hard to root for these people. Right. You're like, you know, there's like having a ghost show up in a place he wouldn't expect and then there's like honestly bringing it on yourself. You're living outside your means George and Kathleen and you're putting a psychic weight on your very young children to do it.

And this is what Stephen King thinks that like it's this book so resonated with people because it's an economic horror story. Whenever someone is like, this is scary because of economics. I'm like, say more. And so they're like, yes, we're fine with the mass murder. And also once they decide to buy it, they're like, you know, we have a dining room now, but we don't have any dining room furniture. There's some other furniture essentials that we don't have or we don't really have time to get, but the murdered family has them and we can get them for a pretty good deal. Whoa. Yeah, which the book totally deadpans. That's brutal. I don't want to judge anybody. And it's like, you know, you're on a budget,

dining room sets are expensive. Like if you've done this, like I, you know, just buy a house for $50,000 and buy a table. Yeah. What are you doing? I think that's a good idea. I think that's what their accountant would say if they bothered asking. I wish I'm just like, wow, Kathleen didn't have enough female friends because I would have been like, Kathleen, you're out of your mind. I'm not going to drink coffee with you there. Here's where it says this. I love how little the book makes of this. Downstairs on the main floor, the Lutz has had a slight problem. They didn't own any dining room furniture. They finally decided that before the closing, George would tell the broker they'd like to purchase the dining room

set left in storage by the DeFeo's along with a girl's bedroom set for Missy, a TV chair, and Ronald DeFeo's the murderer's bedroom furniture. These things and other furnishings left in the house like the DeFeo's bed were not included in the purchase price. George paid out an additional $400 for these items. He also got for free seven air conditioners, two washers, two dryers and a new refrigerator and a freezer. Oh, that's nice. I would have taken those honestly. They live in the basement. Yeah. I'm definitely projecting superstition. I know that there's like class reasons why you would have this furniture, but seeking as a superstitious person the bed, that is so gross. The killer's bed. No. Right? Isn't there something kind of wonderfully

unthoughtful about that paragraph that almost feels like I'm having this whole IOC powder experience with this with Kay Anson, where I will never get to ask anything, but I'm just like, do you think so little of these decisions that you're just tossing this off casually, or do you know that the reader is going to be like, oh my God, and that's why you're saying it like this? I kind of hope it's the last one. What was his writing history before doing this? Was he like a known writer? Did he have any? He wasn't known the way he got known for writing this. He's just like a journalist? Yeah. His bio says, Kay Anson began as a copy boy on the New York Evening Journal in 1937, and later worked in advertising and publicity with more than 500

documentary scripts for television to his credit. He was associated with professional films incorporated. He died in 1980. Oh, no kidding. He was a publicity guy. Okay. Well, that's all you need to know. Interesting. Yeah. And so then there's the slight issue of the fact that Ronald DeFeo as the sole survivor of the mass murder that he was convicted of committing is quote, entitled to inherit his parents' estate, regardless of the fact that he had been convicted of murdering them. So they have to deal with that, but it all works out. And George is like, we can do it. We'll figure it out. It'll be great. And so we learn about their move, which again is wonderfully disarmingly boring. Or are they moving? Do they just like live in a different,

a smaller house? Yeah, they're moving from Deer Park, Long Island. And so one of the temperature things here is that they're not used to being by the ocean. And now they are by the ocean. Neither of these characters have character, really. Like they're both just kind of like a typical all American family, you know, just very relatable, very normal, which is like, interesting to see what you can kind of safely consider normal at any time. But also it means that these characters become like increasingly interesting and confusing as the book goes on. And you're like, I wish that we could have some of this explained to us, right, what they're like. Well, I would imagine that they had a pretty strong say in how they were portrayed

in the book as well. I don't know. That's such a Warren's thing where I feel like they presented this kind of like charcuterie board of types of families that were considering normal. And there's like the low income version of that family. And then like this is like the middle class version of that family. And they're all kind of, yeah, like featureless. And it's like doting mother, hardworking father, children that are sensitive to ghosts. Right. You're like, what's the dad like? And you're like, he does this job and he's doing pretty well. And you're like, but what's he like? And it's like, he's fine. He's surveying land right now. I can't tell you what he's like. This is mentioned very in passing, like probably about halfway through. But it's like,

oh, by the way, the Lutz has got married in July of that year. So there's all this stuff about like George had never acted like that before. He had never talked to the children like this. And it's like, well, honestly, how much do you know about how he talks to the children? Right. Because they're her kids from a previous marriage. Am I right? And the way they allude to that is also weird. But you're just like, the book kind of is like, he was their stepfather, whatever, don't worry about it. And you're like, I am worried about it actually. So they move in, there's all these little things that go slightly wrong that I feel like we're meant to think or maybe a little scary, like, oh, no, the realtor is the only one with the key. He has to go to the

realtors to get to the key. How inconvenient. And so then we get our next main character and some of the controversy around this character is like, is he based on a person at all? Or is he just totally invented? Oh, I vote that one. So this is our priest character, Fr. Mancuso. And he comes to bless the house. And this like might be the most iconic thing the house does. He comes to bless the house. And he hears a voice say, get out. Oh, classic Mancuso. I love how much time the book spends on this guy. I love how, as far as I can tell, the implication is like, well, all this bad stuff happened to a priest. So like, that makes it seem real, right? And how people were apparently like, it does, it doesn't make it seem real. Right. I remember that character in the

70s movie very clearly because whoever the actor is that is playing him has really given it. He's at like an 11. So the get out voice happens. He knows the Lutz is already a little bit because he helped counsel them before they got married. Kathy is Catholic. So we're also dealing with a Catholic woman who got divorced, which is like something that I think can affect you negatively if your religion has previously told you that you're not allowed to do that. They're in the Northeast and experiencing Catholic shame. And it's a little cold. It's almost Christmas. And oh my God, wait, I think I married a really mean guy. That's the real horror story. Yeah. And that's a really scary story. I wouldn't want to do that. I wonder how much

of a say she had in we're getting this house, you know, whatever in the space of a couple weeks, she could be in like a marriage that maybe isn't as good as she thought. All of her kids are there. She's living way outside of her means and seems to know it. And she's in a murder house. And also, then you're like geographically separated from your community before. I didn't think of this, but like, I mean, this is also how the stepford wives begins, not for nothing. Yeah. Yeah. So the priest comes, he hears a scary voice. He gets in his car and as he's saying goodbye, he's like, by the way, George, I had lunch with some friends over in Lindenhurst before coming here. They told me that this was the DeFeo home. Did you know that? And

George says, Oh, sure. I think that's why it's such a bargain. It's like, yeah, I think it was on the market for a long time, but it doesn't bother us at all. It's got the best of everything. Wasn't that a tragedy? Father said, Kathy, that poor family, imagine all six murdered in their sleep. And so then what we get as evidence, and this recurs throughout the entire book, it's like the largest overarching plot of anything is that the priest, because of his exposure to the house, apparently gets sick. Right. They really like go whole hog with it, no pun intended, because in the movie, I think he goes blind. He goes blind. But I don't know why the thing that stuck with me is just like, the actor is so sweaty. Yeah, it's uncomfortable. And he's wearing like

probably a pretty heavy garment. Yeah. Another one of the more mundane creepy things in the book that I think they cranked up higher in a great way in the movie is in the book, they're like, Oh no, there's like so many flies in the scary room in the house, but it's winter, but there's a lot of flies. That's weird. And in the movie, they have them swarm rods tiger. His face, yeah. Which room map wise is the scary room? Oh, thank you for asking. It is the sewing room here. The sewing room. Which we can see is next to Missy's room. This also feels very 1970s that they're like, Yeah, we moved into a new house that has a scary room. And so we have our five year old daughter in the room next to it. She'll be fine. She's sleeping in a murdered child's bed. And we

feel fine about this. And then in the morning, she'll put on her flammable clothes and play with some lawn darts. Yeah. And so in this, we don't go as far as Father Mancuso getting blind. Basically, he gets terrible fevers. He gets the flu several times. He gets blisters on his hands that are gross and super eating. Oh, and also he has car trouble a couple of times. Oh, no, they almost get in an accident, but then they don't. Every time I'm in a fender bender, that's good. The next allegedly scary things that happen are that their guard dog, Harry, we're going to get a lot of Harry in this book, is barking, but there's no one there. I've never known a dog to do this. They don't. It's not what they do. Or, you know, there is something going on,

but a human ear can't detect it. Or this dog just moved to this huge ass property he's never been to. So Harry's barking, who knows what at, and then George tries to go back to sleep, but his mind is racing. And we got a little bit of him reflecting on finances, which again is interesting. You would think they would either include it or not include it, but it's kind of here in a minimal way, but he's thinking the taxes in Amityville were three times higher than in Deer Park. Did he really need that new speed boat? How the hell was he going to pay for all of this? The construction business was lousy on Long Island because of the tight mortgage money. And it didn't look like it would get better until the banks loosened up. If they aren't

building houses and buying property, who the hell needs a land surveyor? I love that this is presented as a problem that is so unavoidable when it's like, yeah, maybe if he had thought any of this through before buying this house, I don't think he's going to do anything that's going to make you like him anymore for the next 200 days. What a loser. He's like, oh my God, can I get a speed boat if my business is failing and I'm living wildly outside? Yeah, I love this. Kathy shifted in her sleep so that her arm fell across George's neck. Her face burrowed deep into his chest. He sniffed her hair. She certainly smelled clean. He thought he liked that. The first time I read this, I heard it in my head as she certainly smelled clean. And she kept her children the same

way spotless. Her kids, George is now whatever the trouble she and the children were worth it. Okay. Okay. I love, oh God, heterosexual people are so sick. Roll over like, no, that's a clean wife. Yeah. Makes me think of her clean kids, about how clean she keeps them. First thing I think of, those are some clean ass children. Back to bed in my, this fucking murderer's bed I'm sleeping in. Oh my God. These people are so weird. The 70s family is like, we're so scared, but what are we scared of? It's you guys. You guys are scary. The call is coming from inside the house, just as with the Amityville horrors, that the call is coming from inside George. Because he can't stop sniffing his clean ass wife.

Ugh, it's so gross. And he's now reflecting on the kids. Okay. Danny was now beginning to call his stepfather, dad, no more George. In a way, he was glad he never got to meet Kathy's ex-husband. This way, he felt Danny was all his, which I'm just like an alarm and me starts going like, brr, brr, brr. Kathy said that Chris looked just like his father, had the same ways about him, the same dark curly hair and eyes. George would reprimand the boy for something and Chris's face would fall. And he'd look up at him with those soulful eyes. The kid sure knew how to use them. Why are they trying to make the kids sound hot? He's like, boy, that child sure is trying to emotionally manipulate me. And the book is like, yes. This book is very pro-George's POV.

Yeah, I think that's one of the insidious things about it. The way the kids are presented. They're like barely there. And when they are, the book is like, they were misbehaving a lot more than usual. And it's like, are they not undergoing a huge life change? And like also, are they And like also, are they perhaps picking up on their parents being stressed about things? Chris better turn off those soulful eyes right now. Next morning, Kathy wakes up. She decides to like George sleep in because there's so much to do. She has to make breakfast for everybody. It mentions her lighting her first cigarette of the day, which is just one of those like, these were the 70s kinds of sentences. It referenced

her and George practicing transcendental meditation, which doesn't really come back that much. Really? Yeah. The implication later from Father Mancuso, who we have to trust on these matters because he's probably fictional, you know, I wouldn't do your transcendental meditation anymore. I was wondering that if they're like, Oh, you don't get into this crunchy bullshit, come back to the come back to the cloth, flee the demons and return to the safety of the Catholic church. And also like, you're running away from the house, but like you're still with George. Like maybe you should run away from George. Yeah, because I do think Kathy should also get out of the house, but also get away from George. Maybe the voice was like, Oh, get out. Oh, sorry. I thought

you were Kathy. Get out of this marriage. You can't be a double divorced Catholic woman in the 70s. You can't. No, she's stuck with him. It's a nightmare. Yeah. And also, you know, you've got three kids, like that's a lot of kids to support. You have to find a guy who has a business that you can at least trust is doing well, even if it's not apparently. Right. So it's like, the house is a bad investment. And like, it's also about gradually finding out your husband is a bad investment. It's really a double. And here we've been the wonderful leitmotif of the house being cold. George wakes up and comes down and he's like, it's cold in here. Don't you have the heat on? And it's like, George, it's a fucking gigantic house. You're on the ocean. It's the week before

Christmas. And the temperatures are in single digits this week. I would certainly think so. Yeah, it seems like you're whining. Here's an allegedly scary thing, but maybe just a scary George thing. Okay, the boys ran past the kitchen door yelling at Harry, George looked up. What's the matter with those two? Can't you keep them quiet, Kathy? She turned from the sink. Well, don't bark at me. You're their father, you know, you do it. George slapped his open palm down on the table. The sharp sound made Kathy jump right, he shouted. George opened the kitchen door and leaned out. Danny, Chris and Harry whooping it up ran by again. Okay, the three of you, knock it off. Kathy was speechless. This was the first time he had really lost his temper with the children.

And for so little, that just sounds like being a short tempered parent. It's like a lot to trust someone with like, let's get married. I have three kids. I want you to be their father. You haven't been introduced to this gradually. It's just suddenly we're going to be a family now and I trust you to handle that. I understand that that's a huge adjustment for George, but it's like, don't scream at your new wife being like, why can't you keep these kids under control? Like, oh, I hate George. Yeah. And so basically George's problems begin now. He stops shaving and showering, which he always used to do. And the book is like, the house was being very scary. He wasn't working

and he always worked normally. And it's like, well, okay, yeah, it's the house. It's cold. And he keeps waking up at 315, which according to this book is when the murders took place. I remember this clearly. He keeps going out to look at the boat house, but he doesn't know why. And then this to me is the scariest part of the book, a corporal punishment event that both parents take part in. And the close of this chapter says, Kathy was tense from her strained relationship with George and from the efforts of trying to put her house in shape before Christmas. On their fourth night in the house, she exploded and together with her husband beat Danny, Chris and Missy with a strap and a large heavy wooden

spoon. The children had accidentally cracked a pane of glass in the playroom's half moon window. End of chapter. No reflection on that. End of chapter. Brutal. Oh my God. It's really awful. The book could have just not told us that, but it does. And then it moves straight on. Is the implication there? And they wouldn't normally do that. But all of a sudden they're living in this evil house that makes them beat their kids up. I think so. That's absurd. You know, maybe you're a worse parent than usual if you're married to someone who's being a bad parent and you're fighting with them. And there's an immense amount of pressure on you to make this work, which it's not going to. And you know that. And now the pressure is financial. Cool. Yeah. Take

that on in your kids. See what happens. Kathy does reflect on it for one sentence in the next chapter. Okay. So Kathy's up. She's thinking about Christmas. And we read, as she worked over a list of things to buy for Christmas, her concentration wandered. She was upset about having hit the children, particularly about the way George and she had gone about it. There were many gifts the Lutz family still hadn't bought. And it's like, okay, we're done. It's fine. She's like, man, I really wish I hadn't beaten my kids up. Anyways, I have errands to do today. Yeah, the way that J. Ensign presents this information is again, I feel like over shares like that. I know that they're intentional, but they don't age well. And I also am like, maybe I'm just projecting,

but I'm like, I think he's trying to reach a word count. I think he's including weird stuff that doesn't really connect with what the story is really about. I wonder about the kind of haste this book was written in because the Lutz's left the house in January of 1976. And this book came out around the end of 1977. I think the shining came out kind of early in 1977. Okay, there are some things that are very reminiscent of the shining where I'm like, either this is a coincidence, because similar things are scary for people sharing a culture, or also the shining came out and J. Ensign read it real quick. He was like filler, filler, filler, okay, cool. Some of these scares I'm just gonna list because I think if you support the theory that a lot of

this book is completely made up, then the process by which people would do that would seem to be like brainstorming a list of 50 scary things and then just using all of them. So Kathy has the experience of being embraced by a nice mom ghost who she gets a comforting feeling from. And then the inside of the toilet bowl is black because there's black stuff in it. She accuses the kids, but they say they didn't do it. So she has to scrub out the toilet. There is a stench, of course. There's always a stench. We find the literally hundreds of buzzing flies. Yes. Even though it is winter, this guy comes to their door and has a six pack in hand. And he says, everybody wants to come over to welcome you to the neighborhood. You don't mind, do you? And

George is like, that's fine. Did that happen in the 70s where people just show that your house, they're like, I'm coming in. They're like, let me in. Wild. True crime podcasts haven't been invented yet. So it's not normal for you to not let me in. And so the guy implies that the neighborhood is going to come. And then he just sort of like sits with them for a little while awkwardly. And then he's like, well, I'm going to go. The man held on to the six pack and finally said, I brought it. I'll take it with me. And left. George and Kathy never found out his name. They never saw him again. And then end of chapters that George wakes up at 315. He sees that the 250 pound wooden front door is ranked wide open hanging from one hang exclamation point.

And it was pushed open from the inside. What spirit could have done that? And I'm like, wait, let's talk more about the six pack man. He seems nice. Why did they include that? That's so funny. And that one, I believe, is just a thing that really happened because like, why would you make that up? Why would you include this boring anecdote about someone that you didn't let in your house? I think that he really took it on the took it on the chin. Well, he's like, well, I'm not just going to give you six beers. You guys can afford your own beers. They never saw him again. And then we got into George is burning logs in the fireplace all the time and the house is still cold. And then Jodie starts appearing because Missy in classic little kid and scary

story fashion asks her mother, well, first she's sitting in her little rocking chair humming to herself. Murder rocking chair? Probably. And then she says, mama, do angels talk? That will come back. First, we got to hear more about the priest having the flu, fever 103, which is the most ghostly fever to have. The 315 of fevers. Yes. We go into great detail about George's tree topping ornament that he inherited from his grandmother's grandmother. And I just was so expecting the kids to break this and it to be a thing. And I just doesn't come back. We just have to hear about George's stupid ornament for a whole paragraph. I mean, I appreciate that they keep reminding you that this is a Christmas story. This is the Christmas story of our time.

You know, it kind of is because it's like, don't let Christmas become such a stressor that you are a worse parent and like, don't buy a bunch of stuff you can't afford. Merry Christmas. Wow, it is. Yeah, it is kind of the the fiscal lessons of Christmas. Yeah, it's the story that the 1970s family doesn't want but does deserve. And then Father Mancuso is trying to call them to warn them about the scary room. But then he gets disconnected. Something goes wrong with the line in December. And this is the theme now they can't get in touch. Okay. But the fact that Father Mancuso might not be real is so funny because he is on every page. Yeah, I think it's so telling if it's like, so if he made this character up out of nobody essentially, because there was a real

priest named Father Pecoraro when pressed, I think the Lutz is an answer. And we're like, he's based on this guy. This is the real Father Mancuso. And Father Pecoraro was like, no, I'm not. I've never even been to your house. He fully denied it? Yeah. Wow. Oh, these, they're such liars. And I think there's something always very impressive when someone can lie in a way where you're like, do you really think people are going to believe that? And then they do, they believe it. Ultimately, I have to keep reminding myself, even though, well, I just don't, I don't like George because I think he's just a shitty abusive guy. But if they do scam the worlds, and now we have 500 Amityville horror movies, that is a relatively victimless crime. The real victims were the six

murdered people whose furniture who had to have their deaths associated with really dumb movies. And also the three kids in the house who have to deal with these parents, because if you're an adult, you can, you can decide to run a scam. You have at least some amount of agency almost all the time. Yeah. But not if you're five. And also that they use their kids real names. Right. Right. Did you find any information on like where the kids are at now? Oh, we will get into that. Oh, okay. There's some interesting material there. I mean, one of the first questions you would ask, I assume is like, do they say that the house was haunted? Oh, okay. All right. But let's close with a Christmas Eve at Amityville story. Harry is barking. We don't know what.

And so George goes out to investigate. The orb of the full moon was like a huge flashlight lighting his way. He looked up at the house and stopped short. His heart leaped. From Missy's second floor bedroom window, George could see the little girl staring at him, her eyes following his movements. Oh God. He whispered aloud directly behind his daughter, frighteningly visible to George. Was the face of a pig? He was sure he could see little red eyes glowing at him. That's scary. Okay. That's the first scary thing that's happened. Jodie is scared. Are you scared of Jodie? I think Jodie is like really funny. I do think pigs are kind of scary if you're not expecting them. Yes. I think this is the moment when, until this point, I was basically like,

okay, you're cold. Okay, George is a bad stepdad. Okay. Sure. And this is the moment when the book crosses over into like, and then there was a pig. I'm excited. And I feel like I grew up watching like 90s cable TV hour long specials about Amityville. I saw at least one of them that scared the big Jesus out of me when I was probably 10. Yeah. And it was always, I think, such a great cable TV staple because they could be like some say it was really haunted. Others say it was not haunted. Is it? Is it not? We don't know. Goodbye. We just wasted an hour. Thank you, E Network. I loved that. Yeah. Or as whoever was the audience for their shows, that like, maybe this is a story that endures because you're free to believe or not believe,

but it like is equally interesting either way. Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas from all of us here at the Amityville Horror Murder House. Yeah. Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas. Dix your stepdad and get a pig angel.