Most horror-savvy fanboys know the "true" story of the Amityville haunting, even if they haven't read the original 1977 book The Amityville Horror: A True Story by Jay Anson: In that creepy-lookin' house on Long Island, on a spooky night in 1974, "Butch" DeFeo shot and killed his parents, his two brothers, and two sisters while they slept. It was said that he, perhaps, felt an otherworldly presence in the house commanding him to kill, but it wasn't until the Lutz family moved in a year later that the ghost stories began. The Lutz family complained that they also felt some sort of unnamable presence in the house. They were plagued by noises and voices. They found ectoplasmic slime on the walls and furniture. They found (this is strange) hoofprints in the snow outside of their windows. Doors and windows rattled and knocked and, in some cases, spontaneously wrenched themselves off the walls. They even had a brief but biblical plague of locusts. The Lutz family asked a priest to come in and exorcize the demons, but he fled after developing weird sores on his hands. Fun stuff.

Eventually (being smart house-hunters) the Lutzes moved out. Jay Anson collaborated with the Lutzes to write his book, and it became immensely popular. Popular enough for nearly thirty years worth of books and horror films and episodes of Sightings.

The part the horror fanboys usually don't get in the rubber monster flicks and Melissa George vehicles is that Butch DeFeo's lawyer, a man named William Weber, admitted in DeFeo's trial that the ghost story was all a fake. It was a hoax purposefully perpetrated by DeFeo and the Lutz family. Not that DeFeo committed the murders merely to start a haunting hoax (that would pass from the realm of playful lies into psychotic disturbance), but he did wittingly abet the Lutzes when they decided to use his crime as the cover story. What else had DeFeo to lose? He was already guilty of murder (the haunting was not a part of his defense), why not help Weber and the Lutzes make a buck or two? So, like all hoaxes, there was that single magical moment when a group of people gathered together, and carefully, thoughtfully, decided to lie to the public at large.

And what a successful hoax! Bravo to DeFeo and the Lutzes for cashing in at just the right moment. What they did was artful, and all the more amazing because of the supernatural nature of their claims. The Amityville hoax persists as a "true story" to this very day, which means the hoax is still deliciously alive, despite the admission of William Weber. In fact, in the press notes for the 2005 Amityville Horror remake, the cast and crew all tout what a wonderful film it was to work on because it is a true story. The researchers and actors either didn't do their homework, or they were subversively keeping the hoax alive. Either way, even throughout the production of a major motion picture, everyone was fooled again by the Lutzes hoaxial artistry.

Why did (and does) the hoax succeed despite the fact that it has already been revealed as a fraud? Part of it was its timeliness. This was 1977, only a few years after The Exorcist became overwhelmingly popular, and the American public was eating up ghost stories. William Peter Blatty based his famous demon possession novel on a real life case he read about in Georgetown, so the "true horror story" was coursing across people's minds when they saw poor Linda Blair getting jostled on the screen in the film version of The Exorcist. What these true horror stories promised, and still promise, though -- and I think this is the main reason the Amityville hoax lives on -- are real supernatural possibilities. Anyone can merely invent a ghost story, but it's rare that we're offered witnesses and documentation and hard evidence, proving that there is indeed another world beyond this one. The Amityville story had a chance to let onlookers see a true ghost story as it was in the midst of happening.

112 Ocean Avenue is still plagued by supernatural-seeking gawkers. And bless them for continuing to believe in the possibilities. I'm going to visit there myself someday, and see just how creepy the place is.

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