M's Media Menagerie

28 Days of Terror in a House Possessed by Evil Spirits

In December 1975, the Lutz family moved into their dream home, the same home where Ronald DeFeo had murdered his parents, brothers and sisters just one year earlier.

The psychic phenomena that followed created the most terrifying experience the Lutz family had ever encountered, forcing them to flee the house in 28 days, convinced that it was possessed by evil spirits.

Their fantastic story, never before disclosed in full detail, makes for an unforgettable book with all the shocks and gripping suspense of The Exorcist, The Omen or Rosemary’s Baby, but with one vital difference…the story is true.

(clears throat) Here we go:

“There is no evidence that any strange events occurred at 112 Ocean Avenue after the period of time reported in this book[…].”

— Jay anson, author of the amityville horror

I still wanted to read the damn thing anyway, so I got an MMPB and annihilated it.

That there is every spooky event in the book, typically rather over the top and ridiculous. It was written like a true crime and I read it as a comedy.

So here we go: a summary of every spooky thing that happened.

not scary notes

• why was it important that the realtor was described as “an attractive, warm woman”
• george lutz asked the sellers to throw in the defeo’s old furniture: “[…]they’d like to purchase the dining room set[…], along with a girl’s bedroom set for Missy, a TV chair and Ronald DeFeo’s bedroom furniture. These things and other furniture 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 freezer.” i’m sorry??????????

the neighbors

nearly nonexistent

• everyone closed their shades in the direction of the house for some reason. no one would say why
• a man showed up with a case of beer and welcomed the lutzes to the neighborhood. he left shortly after being invited inside and brought the beer with him, saying, “I brought it, I’ll take it with me.”
• a neighborhood kid was invited inside and hated it and never came again

incidents from the defeo murders

• ronald confessed to hearing voices in the house
• everyone died while on their stomachs (???), which is the position echoed repeatedly in the first half of the book
• per the book the claim is that everyone died at 3:15 am

father mancuso

a major character in the book who is having his own bad time

• he was gonna go bless the house and all his buds were like, dude, that’s the defeo house. don’t go. he had a spooky feeling but went anyway
• upon walking into the house to bless it, heard a voice yell GET OUT behind him and no one was there
• afterwards the demons try to kill him by fucking up his car but he was fine. he had a bud pick him up and the demon tried to fuck with that car too
• consistently throughout the book he and the lutzes try to talk on the phone but it is continuously interrupted at first by what appears to be a bad connection and then “moans”
• the priest is afflicted not once, not twice, but three times with a horrible flu every time he gets involved with the lutzes.
  • during the second flu this is accompanied by blisters all over his hands
• after he holds a votive mass for them his apartment at the rectory smells like literal shit and it’s so bad he tries to put incense over it but it gets WORSE
  • he’s in such a bad mood he yells at a pastor
• a demon calls up and leaves a message saying “Tell the priest not to come back. […] Tell the priest not to come back or he’ll die!” like literally a demon calls and leaves a message with someone
• bro starts sneezing blood at some point
• seesaws in between wanting to help and then being punished with the flu, and then deciding not to help, getting better, trying again, in a cycle
• “Let whatever’s there have the place. Just go.”
• is totally fucked up by the demons messing with him. he hangs up on george during the final phone call. “Please, please, let me alone. I promise I won’t talk to him again.”

harry the dog

he lived aight

• almost got choked to death day 1 after attempting to jump the fence while leashed
• sleepy while left outside
• he is invited into the house frequently as the book goes on. he is scared of jodie
• this happens more after george finds out the dog can be a ghost detector
• he is also scared of the sewing room and the playroom. does not like being upstairs
• he throws up once and this is attributed to demons but that’s just how some dogs are in my opinion

3:15 am

• mysterious knocking on the front door. george goes out to look and he hears knocking at the boathouse. the boathouse door came open
• george wakes up in the middle of the night and finds the “two hundred and fifty pound wooden front door wrenched wife open, hanging from one hinge!”
  • they blame the wind
  • it happens again the last night they’re in the house
• kathy just screaming “she was shot in the head!” after a nightmare
• george goes outside and looks up to see a pig standing behind his daughter in the window (jodie)
• marching band sounds. the furniture is moved by the ghost to make room for said marching band to play
• the marching band again but george is sick of it so he doesn’t even bother investigating
  • he then begins to scream in his sleep “in two different tongues—languages she had never heard before!”
  • and then he yells about something being in chris’ room, stating he could see through the floor and up to the room, where a spooky shadow was
  • later chris says that he also saw through the floor and could see george
• SURPRISE they both levitate after leaving the house

jodie

• is a pig
• talks to missy imaginary friend style
• says he is an angel
• leaves cloven hoof footprints in the snow everywhere
  • reportedly ripped the garage door off the frame
  • is suspected to have done the front door
• is sighted as red eyes through the windows
• when both kathy and george witness jodie and it’s confirmed to BE jodie by missy (“that’s jodie! he wants to come in!”), kathy just fucking loses her shit and throws a chair at the window
  • it hurt jodie oof ouch
• “Last night he said I was going to live here forever so I could play with the little boy.”
  • this prompts everyone to try to leave but the car won’t turn over

being shitty to the children

• george yelled and slammed the door when the boys annoyed him
• night 4, the children accidentally cracked a window. kathy and george “beat Danny, Chris, and Missy with a strap and a large, heavy wooden spoon”
• “Tell me or I’ll break every bone in your bodies!”
• the ghosts throw open the windows in the children’s room and the lutz adults fetch them up and warm them up.
• the ghost slams shut a window on danny’s hand and flattens it flat stanley style. they take him to emergency but it turns out his hand just hurts but there’s no broken bones or cartilage, it just looks fucking nasty

ghost touches

• an old lady ghost gives kathy a hug from behind and pats her hand
• kathy gets hugged by old lady and the perfume smell makes her gag, then the ghost hugs her tighter until kathy says STOP and instead the ghost pats her on the shoulder
• instead of the ghost lady, some OTHER ghost hugs her and is mean about it. it tries to make her face it
  • notably, she wakes up in bed, has one of the children call the office for george who JUST left and MIGHT be heading home
    • instead he went to the bar
• ghost was heavy breathing behind george lmao
• after george tries to read a bible out loud a ghost keeps poking him in the back with cold fingers
• while kathy was suffering from her weird rash she was wearing only a bathrobe and a ghost stared at her, probably
• sometimes kathy dreams about having sex with someone and it makes her feel good

grossness

• all the toilet bowls turned black despite kathy’s constant attempts to clean them with Clorox specifically
  • on the initial introduction of Dirty Toilets, there was a Bad Smell in the adults’ bathroom
• hundreds of flies show up in the sewing room. no reason they just do that
• george suffered from diarrhea for a while and this was ascribed to the demon stuff i guess
  • we get this stellar quote:

• the red room starts to smell like human shit because why not. it gets better
• green ooze pours from the walls. they think it’s jello and george tastes it (it’s flavorless)
• the green ooze appears again, dripping from the sewing room door’s hole. despite being nailed shut the door is able to be opened and the room inspected
• the green ooze follows them after they leave

windows and doors NOT at 3:15am

• the window in the sewing room likes to open and close on its own
• windows thrown open in the middle of winter, blankets removed from sleeping adults, and then they realized ALL the doors and windows were open
  • except in Missy’s room where the little toy rocking chair was rocking i guess
• windows AGAIN thrown open, ten smashed
  • they call a guy to fix them and the dude goes in, fixes what he can, and doesn’t charge them. nicest guy in the book
• the doors also get busted up and have the handles/locks removed so they have big gaping holes in them

misc

• upside down crucifix by page 53
• jimmy, the BIL, takes $1500 in cash out of his pocket and shows it to the lutzes. it mysteriously disappears…
• an aunt who is also a former nun says this place is bad. “There’s something bad in here, Kathy. […] I must go now.”
• they find a “red room” hidden in the basement that smells like blood
  • later on a bartender says he had a nightmare about it being where animals and people were sacrificed
  • even later george finds a well in there, which a medium says the ghosts are coming from
• Ronald DeFeo’s face appears in the wood grain of a closet door
• george starts walking like Ronald DeFeo
• they have a porcelain lion that starts to move about a third of the way through the book
  • it bites george
  • and it makes faces at them while sliding around the living room
• george claims it’s too fucking cold and keeps building the fire until he uses a whole cord of wood in less than a month and becomes obsessed with it
  • yes the oil heater is on and the thermostat is set to 80 in the beginning of the book (later on they enjoy 75 degrees)
  • during his wood burning obsession a demon is burned into the brickwork of the fireplace. “the demon with horns and a white peaked hood on its head. […] She saw that half of its face was blown away, as if hit with a shotgun blast at close range.”
• kathy levitates while asleep
• sometimes the phone just doesn’t ring lol
• kathy levitates AGAIN and so george grabs her hair and yanks to bring her down
  • then she looks like an old lady and he screams, which wakes her up, and she screams when she looks in the mirror because some spooky gashes appear on her face
• the medium that visits them claims there were some ghosts sitting with them in the living room and indicates that with cold air they can feel with their hands. she mentions the well above and then explores a bit before skedaddling because it’s spooky
  • she speaks in father mancuso’s voice for a minute saying the house should be exorcised
• the banister of the stairs gets ripped the fuck up
• brother jimmy and new wife carey wake up in the night because a little boy ghost was asking where missy and jodie were
• kathy and george try a homemade exorcism by walking around with a crucifix and saying the lord’s prayer but the ghosts get mad, start trying to hum over it, and then yell, “WILL YOU STOP”
• kathy is told by her reflection, “Don’t do it! You’ll destroy everyone!”
• george tries to read the bible out loud and the fire reaches for him
• kathy gets like a weird burning, splotchy rash on her stomach and calls ehr mom to look at it. mom helps out for the day and is kinda pissed that the lutzes don’t want doctors involved
• everyone falls asleep in the same room at some point and george starts screaming, waking everyone up. they tell him he was saying “i’m coming apart” and he is pissed, correcting them to tell them he was saying, “i’m coming UNGLUED”.
• some dude was supposed to investigate the house scientifically and stay over but he caught the flu 🙁
• another escape foiled by the bad weather 🙁
• it got really hot
• then it got really cold
• kathy sits up and opens her eyes while sleeping
• the boys’ beds begin to slide around on the floor, then drawers start opening and closing, then a lot of people were talking downstairs, and then george couldn’t move, and was trying to scream but couldn’t
  • my guy this sounds like classic sleep paralysis to me
  • oh and then the doors get in on it
  • and then invisible things step on and kick him
• the kkk demon tried to get the boys and this inspires george to leap out of bed and go running for it
  • “it’s a monster! he doesn’t have any face!”
  • “On the top step stood a gigantic figure in white. George knew it was the hooded image Kathy has first glimpsed in the fireplace. The being was pointing at him!”

the irs

• for some reason george is being investigated by the irs and an agent has to have a meeting with him about his business. it is the scariest thing in the book and i really wish i knew more about that