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Voice
of Reason: Giving up the Ghosts
By
Benjamin Radford
The
Skeptical Inquirer 10 December 2004
In
early December 2004, a woman named Mary Anderson put her father's
"ghost" up for sale at the online auction site eBay after
her six-year-old son said he was afraid that his grandfather's ghost
would haunt him. The grandfather's ghost -- or, at least, his cane
--was purchased by the online casino GoldenPalace.com for display as
a piece of Americana. Anderson swears the auction was legitimate, an
effort to console her child. Instead of paying a therapist to
assuage her son's fears of ghostly visitations, she managed to get
rid of the (potential) ghost and turn a tidy profit.
Anderson's
child is not alone; many people believe in ghosts and that the dead
can contact the living. In 2003, a Buffalo, New York, family asked
me for help getting rid of their ghost. A working-class couple and
their young daughter had fled their home, convinced that a ghost was
haunting it. They had left two weeks earlier, on Halloween, and
refused to sleep there overnight. They told me of mysterious events
in their home: animals acting strangely, footsteps in empty
hallways, mysterious images in photographs, objects and furniture
moved and then replaced, ghostly sounds on audiotape, and so on. A
priest performed an exorcism, but the spirits apparently refused to
leave and the haunting got worse. I investigated the case for
several weeks, eventually explaining all of the phenomena; it seemed
that there was no ghost after all. I set the family's mind at ease,
and they soon returned to their home. (The full, detailed
investigation can be found at here.)
Ghost
stories have been around for centuries, yet most Americans do not
have first-hand experience with ghosts; they are most familiar with
hauntings from horror novels and films such as The Amityville
Horror. Because it was such a widely-known case (and supposedly
based on a true story), a look at the real story behind the true
story proves interesting.
The
story of The Amityville Horror, as with The Exorcist , began with a
best-selling novel. A book titled "The Amityville Horror: A
True Story", written by Jay Anson, was published in 1977 and
quickly became a hit. Soon it was made into an equally successful
horror film starring James Brolin and Margot Kidder. And, as with
The Exorcist, several inferior sequels followed in its wake
(including a 3-D version). Anson was not a resident of the infamous
possessed house, but a professional writer hired to pen a book based
on "true events" that happened there several years earlier
...
The
story behind the story began on November 13, 1974, when six members
of an Amityville, New York, family were killed. The parents, Ronald
and Louise DeFeo, were shot in bed while they slept, along with two
sons and two daughters. The sole remaining family member, Ronald Jr.
("Butch"), was arrested for the crime and later sentenced
to prison. With the family dead (and Butch in no position to inherit
the place), the house went up for sale. The horrific nature of the
massacre unnerved the otherwise quiet Long Island neighborhood,
though no supernatural activity was associated with the house at 112
Ocean Avenue.
The
following year, a new family, the Lutzes, moved into the house.
George and Kathy Lutz, along with their three children, said that
shortly after moving in, the six-bedroom abode became a Hell house.
It seemed that perhaps the demons that drove Butch to slaughter his
family were not in his head but in the house. An unseen force ripped
doors from hinges and slammed cabinets closed. Noxious green slime
oozed from the ceilings. A biblical-scale swarm of insects attacked
the family. A demonic face with glowing red eyes peered into their
house at night, leaving cloven-hoofed footprints in the morning
snow. A priest called upon to bless the house was driven back with
painful blisters on his hands. And so on.
A
local television crew did a segment on the house, bringing in
several self-styled "ghost hunters" (including Ed and
Lorraine Warren) and other alleged psychics. All agreed that a
demonic spirit was in the house, and that an exorcism would be
needed to stop the activity. The Lutzes left the house but took
their terrifying tale with them, collaborating with Mr. Anson for
their book. And, as William Peter Blatty did when he promoted The
Exorcist, Anson vouched for the truthfulness of his fantastic tale:
"There is simply too much independent corroboration of their
narrative to support the speculation that [the Lutzes] either
imagined or fabricated these events."
Some
people expressed doubts about the events in the house, and a few
specific parts of it were even proven false (for example, the Lutzes
could not have found the demonic hoofprint in the snow when they
said they did, because weather records showed there had been no
snowfall to leave prints in!). Still, the Lutzes stuck to their
story, reaping tens of thousands of dollars from the book and film
rights.
The
truth behind The Amityville Horror was finally revealed when Butch
DeFeo's lawyer, William Weber, admitted that he, along with the
Lutzes, "created this horror story over many bottles of
wine." The house was never really haunted; the horrific
experiences they had claimed were simply made up. While the Lutzes
profited handsomely from their story, Weber had planned to use the
haunting to gain a new trial for his client. The Lutzes also later
admitted that virtually everything they had said about the
haunting-and everything in The Amityville Horror-was pure fiction.
Their
account was likely influenced by another fictionalized story-that of
The Exorcist, which was released in December 1973. Demonic
possession and hauntings were very much in the public's mind when
Lutzes spun their stories of demonic activity a year or two later.
The Lutzes must have had a good laugh at the expense of the
mystery-mongering ghost hunters and self-proclaimed psychics, who
reported their terrifying visions and verified the house's
(non-existent) demonic residents. Apparently, it was all their
imagination. To this day, the fact that The Amityville Horror story
is an admitted hoax is still not widely known; as they say, the
truth never stands in the way of a good story. (Go ask Hollywood,
where a remake of The Amityville Horror is in production.)
Ghost
visitations have a long history and will probably always be with
us-if not in reality, at least in our imaginations and stories.
People find comfort in believing that their loved ones can contact
them and will be reunited with them after death. Though hard
evidence of life "on the other side" has yet to be found,
it seems that humanity is reluctant to give up the ghost just yet.
Benjamin
Radford is a writer, investigator, and managing editor of Skeptical
Inquirer magazine. Details for this article were taken from Joe
Nickell's article "Amityville: The Horror of It All," in
the January/February 2003 issue of Skeptical Inquirer magazine.
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