why did george lie to the others about what really happened

Over the years, John G. Jones has been asked every conceivable question about the facts and legends surrounding "The Amityville Horror" – the story of what happened to George and Kathy Lutz and their family unit when they lived for a short fourth dimension at 112 Ocean Avenue in the repose boondocks of Amityville, New York. It'due south a story that has been told and retold for most twoscore years, and with every telling it has drifted farther from the facts, like a game of "Telephone" that has lasted literally a lifetime.

Information technology's time to set the tape directly.

The Facts

The Amityville House in 1975-76

In Dec, 1975, George and Kathy Lutz and their three children moved into the house at 112 Ocean Avenue in Amityville, New York. Less than four weeks later, on January 13, 1976, they left the business firm with little more than the clothes on their backs and fled to Kathy's mother's home. They left the land presently after. Neither George nor Kathy e'er returned to Ocean Avenue.

The Lutzes were owners of a successful, multi-generational family business organization; though they had put a nifty deal of their money into the house, they were non known to be in deep financial trouble, nor were they known to be storytellers, scam artists, or "oddballs." They were by all accounts a normal young couple trying to raise their children. Simply soon subsequently they fled, they sold their dream house — the firm they had purchased just a month before — at a substantial loss, and had intermediaries sell nearly everything in the home at auction, from a distance.

Ronald DeFeo, before long subsequently the murder of his family

One last set of facts: the previous owners of the abode, the DeFeo family, were murdered in their beds by their son Ronald, in Dec1974 – roughly a year earlier the Lutzes purchased the domicile and moved in. Ronald DeFeo confessed to the murders, and although there were a number of strange, seemingly unanswerable questions surrounding the facts of the instance, general circumstances and ample corroborative proof sent him to prison to serve six concurrent sentences of 25 years to life. DeFeo is still live and held in Green Haven Correctional Facility in Bekman, New York. All of his appeals and requests for parole have been denied.

George and Kathy Lutz divorced in the late 1980s. Kathy died of emphysema in 2004; George died of heart affliction in 2006. There was nothing particularity suspicious or eerie nearly their deaths.

That is the sum total of all the demonstrable facts surrounding the Lutz family's experiences in Amityville. Everything else – including what they said happened, including the reports and enquiry past professionals and amateurs since then – simply cannot be proven.

The evolution of a best-seller…and a worldwide phenomenon

Kathy and George Lutz in 1977

More undisputed facts: shortly after they left the house, a book editor at Prentice Hall introduced George and Kathy Lutz to Jay Anson, a professional author who had published a number of "backside-the-scenes" and "making-of" books well-nigh films and film personalities in the 1970's. Though the Lutzes did non work directly with Anson, they did submit about 45 hours of tape-recorded recollections to him, which he used as the ground for his volume. That book, The Amityville Horror, was published in 1977. Information technology has sold more than 11 1000000 copies in the years since. Anson went on to write a horror novel of his ain, 666, which was published in 1980, shortly later on his death from heart disease.

James Brolin and Margot Kidder as George & Kathy Lutz

The acknowledged Amityville Horror book was fabricated into a movie starring James Brolin and Margot Kidder. (Anson wrote the original screenplay, only the producers passed on information technology and hired a more than experienced screenwriter, Sandor Stern.) At the time of its release in 1979,The Amityville Horror was the near successful independent motion picture in history; grossing more than than $86 million (in 1979 dollars) in US box office acquirement alone, as well as millions more in video sales, syndication, and the similar. The remake of the original story, this fourth dimension starring Ryan Reynolds, released in 2006, fabricated a cracking deal more than.

John G. Jones met George and Kathy Lutz through mutual friends in California in the early 80's. Soon subsequently they met, the Lutzes asked John to tell the continuing story of what happened after they left the infamous house in Amityville in 1976. John agreed. His starting time volume, Amityville Horror II, was published in 1983 by Warner Books. Within a week it was on the New York Times Bestseller List. Soon after it became an Internationalbest-seller. Other highly successful Amityville Horror volumes followed.

Because "Amityville" was a town in New York State long earlier it gained its nighttime and entirely undeserved reputation, the normal trademark and copyright protections to the "Amityville" story ofttimes didn't use. Any book, TV programme, or pic could use the globe "Amityville" in its title to imply some connexion to the Lutz story or the blockbuster film, and the listing of unauthorized horror stories grew every year and continues to grow. The net effect has buried the real story in layer after layer of error, speculation, and outright lies. The trick is to tell ane from the other.

So what actually happened to the Lutzes in Amityville?

Over the years, their story has been told and retold, distorted and recast, then many time and for and so many reasons, that only the facts to a higher place can actually be proven. But a few of the most common misconceptions should be addressed:

Jay Anson didn't become information technology 100% right. Similar whatever storyteller, Jay Anson embellished some scenes, omitted others, and simply made some mistakes in his version of the story, fifty-fifty though it was based on the Lutz' own tapes (These tapes have never been released; at that place'south some doubt if they even so be at all.). Inaccuracies on inconsistencies in dates, a precise sequence of events, even the weather itself, can be chalked up to poor recollection, a lack of fact-checking, and dramatic license.

A terminal, complete version of what happened to the Lutz family after they fled Amityville will be published in 2015. John Grand. Jone'sThe Amityville Horror IIand subsequent volumes that touched on the lives of the Lutzes have been out of print for years; a fully revised, updated, and enriched version of "the residual of the story" will be published asThe Amityville Horror: The Returnin 2016. Information technology is derived from Jones' own lifetime of experience and contact with the Lutz family unit, and now that George and Kathy have both passed abroad, it will serve as the final and definitive word on what happened next, and how it ended.

The Lutzes did non dream the whole matter up with an attorney back in 1976. In fact, in that location was an chaser deeply involved in the DeFeo example, and later in lawsuits brought past the Lutzes and by the attorney himself, where he claimed that that he, George, and Kathy concocted the story, though he offered no contemporaneous notes or agreements to prove his allegations. The Lutzes denied this, repeatedly and consistently, though the attorney connected to make his unsupported claims for quite some fourth dimension.

George and Kathy Lutz stood by their story for their unabridged lives. This much is true: George and Kathy Lutz never changed their story. Until their deaths, they maintained that what was in the volume was "mostly true" – assuasive for the errors and embellishments mentioned above. In June 1979, George and Kathy took a prevarication detector test concerning the events in the house, and they passed. Fifty-fifty twenty-5 years after their time in Amityville, in a documentary on the History Aqueduct, George said, "I believe this has stayed alive for 25 years considering it's a true story. It doesn't mean that everything that has ever been said about information technology is truthful. Information technology'due south certainly not a hoax. Information technology's real like shooting fish in a barrel to telephone call something a hoax. I wish it was. Information technology'south not."

This is the central difficulty with "proving" or "debunking" the Lutzes' story. Virtually all of the events that the Lutzes described are individual matters, matters of perception and nightmare. They cannot be proven or disproven objectively; they tin can but be believed or disbelieved.

It'due south pure speculation, but information technology'due south probably worth noting that the whole field of "truthful horror stories" that is such a lucrative industry today only didn't exist in 1976. The Exorcist – a novel and film that was published equally fiction, not fact – had only appeared a couple of years before; Poltergeist and the subsequent array of "mod twenty-four hours hauntings" that would become a profitable subcategory of the horror genre were years in the future; in fact The Amityville Horror's unexpected success was key in creating that subgenre. It would have been a feat of near-paranormal prescience to think that a best-seller and blockbuster movie could be based on this kind of subject matter at the time the Lutzes fabricated their recordings, especially from a couple with no real feel in media relations, publishing, or film product. It's certainly not incommunicable, but it's highly unlikely.

The Lutzes did not go rich from the books and movies. Yes, they received a portion of the royalties or licensing fees for some of the books and a few movies, but it was never a dandy bargain of coin, and it faded apace. After a life of condolement and stability in New York, the Lutzes, as a family and as individuals, struggled financially for the remainder of their lives. Amityville didn't make them rich, not fifty-fifty in the starting time.

The firm is not congenital on an Indian burying ground. At least , the Lutzes never claimed it was. Many of the unauthorized books and films speculated well-nigh power spots, burial grounds, seventeenth-century warlocks, and other even more unprovable histories for the property. None of them were put along by the Lutzes, and none of them have a strong footing in provable historical fact. Merely ask the Amityville Historical Society.

The family that purchased 112 Ocean Avenue from the Lutzes claimed they experienced no supernatural events of any kind. And that is consistent with the Lutzes story. The house remained empty for months subsequently the Lutzes left, but when the Cromarty family bought it in 1977 – for thousands less than the Lutz' buy toll – they reported no damaged fixtures, no strange smells or apparitions. However, from the beginning, the Lutzes claimed that the force they encountered in their domicile followed them when the left, and connected to plague them wherever they fled for years subsequently. And they kickoff fabricated these statements earlier the firm was sold. So two interpretations are as possible: at that place was never whatever evil forcefulness in the house in Amityville, or it left with the Lutzes. Either mode, the house itself would be 'prophylactic' and tranquility after January 1977.

By the way, the house has been renovated and the address changed to discourage the constant stream of gawkers. The whole facade has been altered; the 'evil' windows have long since been replaced. Every moving picture or television set program that shows the firm has used alternative sites or built facades to resemble the original house, and the people of Amityville do not welcome ghost-hunters or fans of the paranormal.

In the end, at that place are only the facts: I day in Dec 1975, an manifestly happy, patently stable immature family moved into their dream house in a groovy footling town on Long Island…and less than a calendar month later they literally ran screaming from that firm, never to return. They abandoned their comfy lives and fled to the far side of the land, three immature children in tow, with no coin, no employment prospects, and no programme.

Why? In that location are only iii possible explanations:

1. This previously sane and unassuming couple risked their kids (and their livelihood) on a bizarre and previously unimagined get-rich-quick hoax, and the plot failed.
2. The unabridged family was victim of some previously undiagnosed case of mass hysteria or group delusion, though at that place was no previous history of mental disorders in the adults and no reported use of drugs or alcohol that might trigger such behavior.
3. The family was plagued by some unknown, unseen forcefulness that slowly drove them all to the brink of insanity and ultimately forced them to flee, never to return. Then the entity that constitute them in Amityville followed them, across the country and around the earth. They never fully recovered.

None of these alternatives tin can be proven or disproven. We can simply look at the few facts, listen to what the Lutzes said – consistently, for more than thirty years – and and then choose what to believe.

In the end, belief is all nosotros have.

Get out any comments or questions below. Join John and his contributors on AmityvilleNow.com for the best of horror, suspense, science fiction and the supernatural, and follow usa on Twitter.

You tin can exist notified on the publication of additional Amityville books, essays, and posts, including the upcoming book, Amityville Horror: The Return , by leaving your east-mail address here.

dinardogratch.blogspot.com

Source: http://thetruthaboutamityville.amityvillenow.com/

Bagikan Artikel ini