112 Ocean Avenue — The Amityville Horror House
The Dutch Colonial where Ronald DeFeo murdered his family in 1974 — and where the next family fled after 28 days, launching America's most famous haunted-house story and its most famous debunking.
Case File No. 172
FILE 01 The Legend
On 13 November 1974, Ronald DeFeo Jr. shot his parents and four siblings dead as they slept at 112 Ocean Avenue, on Long Island's south shore. Thirteen months later George and Kathy Lutz bought the house at a reduced price, moved in with Kathy's three children — and left 28 days later, describing a siege: waking every night at 3:15 a.m., swarms of flies in winter, green slime on walls, a demonic pig called Jodie at the window, invisible bands gripping the family, and Kathy's apparent levitation. Jay Anson's 1977 book 'The Amityville Horror' and the 1979 film made the address a global brand. The Lutzes held a press conference and passed polygraphs; critics and courts heard a different story.
FILE 02 The Sightings Log
The paranormal record is almost entirely the Lutzes' 28 days: the 3:15 wakings, the hoofprint in the snow, the red eyes in the window, the blessing priest — Father Ralph Pecoraro, 'Father Mancuso' in the book — reportedly struck ill mid-visit with blistered hands. Subsequent owners, decades of them, have reported essentially nothing, and deliberately altered the house — the famous quarter-moon windows replaced, the address renumbered — to deflect tourism.
FILE 03 The Skeptic’s File
In 1979 William Weber, DeFeo's defence lawyer, stated in a signed statement and interviews that the horror story was concocted 'over many bottles of wine' with the Lutzes amid a collapsing business deal; the family had lived rent-free for a time amid financial distress the story relieved. The priest's account shifted on retelling; the hoofprint and slime were never photographed; investigators who examined the file found a superstorm of claims with no evidence. DeFeo's six murders are the true horror at the address — everything after them is publishing history.