Ghosts are often associated not only with mysterious, but simply chilling stories with a bloody end. One of the most mysterious places is Amityville, a small quiet town thirty kilometers from New York. This is a beautiful small town, old houses, well-groomed lawns, parks - everything a person needs for a quiet and cozy life.
At the same time, bloody murders, the fact of the most famous case of ghost possession in American history, an exorcist who was defeated in a fight with spirits and the curse of the slain Indians is also Amityville.
The spooky story that took place in a large, beautiful mansion at 112 Ocean Avenue began like this …
On a far from fine morning, November 13, 1974, a young man named Ronald DeFeo, the eldest son in a large and friendly family, opened a closet, chose a 35-caliber Marlin shotgun from a large collection of weapons, suitable for hunting a bear, loaded it and went to the parent's bedroom …
The DeFeo family - parents Ronald and Louise and their children - were shot to death in their own beds. Ronald DeFeo Sr. was killed by two shots. Louise DeFeo survived her husband by only a few seconds - she was shot next. After that, the killer left the parent's bedroom on the second floor of the house and went to the children's room.
The boys Mark and John were shot at point-blank range. 12-year-old Mark died instantly, 9-year-old John was less fortunate - his spinal cord was severed. Two girls - 13-year-old Alison and 18-year-old Don - were shot in the head. Ronald DeFeo Jr., the only survivor of the massacre, was arrested on suspicion of murder.
On November 19, 1975, he was found guilty of six murders and for each of them received a life sentence. It was clear that he would never be released.
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So the family murder case was over and justice was done? How to say … There are a lot of questions in the case. The most important of these is the motive for the crime.
It is known that Ronald did not love his father, but why did he kill his mother, whom he had defended so many times earlier from his father's beatings? Why did you kill your brothers and sisters? Neighbors and family acquaintances claimed that Ronald was very attached to little Alison and his younger brother John. Meanwhile, it was these two who took a terrible death at his hand. There was also something else …
None of the family members tried to defend themselves or flee. Meanwhile, the shooting continued for over ten minutes. At first, the investigation had a version that Ronald had poured sleeping pills on his relatives, but the examination gave an unequivocally negative result.
According to the manufacturer, the 35-caliber Marlin carbine emits such a roar when fired that it can be heard about a kilometer away. Meanwhile, not only the victims themselves, but also numerous neighbors, whose houses are located 50 meters from DeFeo's house, did not hear anything! The investigation put forward a version that the walls of the house worked as a muffler, but it did not stand up to criticism.
And finally, the strangest thing: all six of the killed were found in the same position - face down. No sign of the killer changing the position of his victims was found. It turns out that a moment before they died, they all slept with their faces to the ground?
All this was very strange and the answers to these questions have not been received. Be that as it may, the killer went to prison, the killed were buried, and the house was put up for sale.
The history of the house, of course, scared away buyers, but still, there were those who bought it: a certain George Lutz with his wife Katie. They agreed to buy the house that became an Amityville legend - the house was selling for almost nothing.
(It is curious that George and Katie did not hide the history of the house from the children. They asked them if they would agree to sleep in the same rooms where they shot sleeping people a year ago. Children, and they were then 4, 7 and 9 years old, this circumstance is not frightened.)
On December 18, 1975, the family moved into their new home with the dog. And very quickly, their dream house turned into a real nightmare, which is difficult even to imagine. They lived in this house for only four weeks, after which they left the mansion in panic, leaving all their belongings there.
George, the head of the family, although he did not believe in otherworldly forces, still insured himself: he invited a Catholic priest to consecrate the house. So, just in case. Father Ralph Pecoraro responded to the request with understanding.
The consecration took place calmly. Father Pecoraro walked around all the rooms, sprinkled them with holy water and said the due prayers. Nothing worried him, except for one room on the second floor - it was the bedroom in which little Mark and John DeFeo died.
It was there that something happened that made the holy father flee from Amityville in panic, without even explaining to the owners of the house the reason for his behavior. All he had time to say was an urgent advice not to make a bedroom out of this room.
The Lutz family had just begun to settle down in their new home when the Amityville horror made itself felt. At first, the floorboards began to creak and doors slammed in the house. There was an intolerable smell of decomposing meat, which was impossible to get rid of. At night, someone's footsteps were clearly heard on the stairs, and one day green mucus began to ooze down the walls of the rooms.
But much more than that, George and Katie were alarmed by the fact that their four-year-old daughter Masie suddenly got herself an imaginary girlfriend named Jody, with whom she constantly talked.
No one except Masi saw this girl, who allegedly also lived in this house. Masi chatted with her, played and once told her mother that Jody told her: Masi and her parents will have to live in this house for the rest of their lives.
Not long after that, something else happened: One night, Katie Lutz slept face down. (All members of the Lutz family, as soon as they moved into a new house, began to sleep in the same position - face down.)
Suddenly, Katie's body rose above the bed and began to slowly rotate in the air near the ceiling. George immediately woke up, but he could not move his arm or leg. Cathy levitated for several minutes.
The next morning, George called Pecoraro's father and told him what had happened. Ralph Pecoraro took the story for granted and was surprised at only one thing: why hadn't they left this damned place yet? George knew himself that they had made the mistake of buying the damned house.
He decided with his family to leave the mansion as soon as possible - and the house seemed to understand this. Whispers, footsteps and laughter were heard in the rooms, and the air first warmed up, and then cooled down and the house turned into a giant refrigerator.
But the Lutz family, having temporarily moved to Katie's mother, who lived nearby in another city, until they were going to part with the house on Ocean Avenue. They wanted the house to be cleared of spirits and ghosts. To do this, George contacted the Warrens - Ed and Lorraine, the most famous ghostbusters in America.
They took part in the exorcism of spirits from the House of Deaths in Pennsylvania, offered their services for the ritual of exorcism, in general, they attended almost all the sensational obscure and mystical cases, offering their services as exorcists and exorcists.
A couple of trendy psychics arrived with great fanfare, accompanied by a crew from the television news channel Channel 5 and the president of the American Society for Paranormal Research.
The results of the session were terrifying: Lorraine and Ed, as befits professionals, experienced the monstrous influence of "evil forces", and the uninitiated leading news channel Marvin Scott was carried out of the house unconscious. So there was no benefit from this visit.
After the Warrens, seven more famous psychics visited the house. According to unanimous opinion, evil was so deeply rooted in this building that the only way out could be a full-fledged session of exorcism, which, as you know, is fraught with great danger to the life of the priest who expels the spirits.
The owner of the damned house did not dare to do such an experiment, and in March the Lutz returned the mansion to the bank.
So what is the reason for all the horrors associated with the house? Their origins should be sought in the distant past
In the area that is now called Long Island (New York), in 1644 there was a very difficult relationship between English and Dutch settlers and Indian tribes.
The parties could not agree on how to assess the position of the Massapekua Indians, whose leader Takapausha argued that the lands occupied by the Dutch colony were leased to him, and not at all sold forever.
In the end, the Dutch decided it was time to end this problem once and for all. They remembered Captain John Underhill, the famous thug, whom the Indians feared like plague.
There were reasons for this: a few years ago, in the war with the Pequot tribe, John Underhill participated in the massacre of the Redskins. Four hundred Indians were burned alive for having dared to leave the settlement near the Mystic River without permission.
After some time, John Underhill moved to Long Island and put in a lot of effort, making it clear that if he was paid well, he would take up the case and solve the Massapequa problem.
He was a very cruel man. He did not consider the Indians as people at all, so he did not see anything special in the murders of the Redskins. The Whites paid him well, and Captain John Underhill worked that money in full.
First, he arranged a demonstration torture and execution of seven Indians, whom he accused of stealing pigs. Then he lured into a trap and killed about twenty Indians (their remains were buried in a mass grave at Fort Nack).
(When a road was made at the Fort Knack site a year later, the ground was still red. The bones of 24 people were found, the rest of the victims were never found.)
But what is the connection between the slain Indians at Fort Nack and the events at Amityville? The Indian grave was just a mile from 112 Ocean Avenue.
After Ronald DeFeo Jr. shot and killed his entire family, he claimed to be possessed by the spirit of an Indian chief, which made him kill.
The Amityville story has been controversial for a long time. Many believe that she is fictional from start to finish. Ronald DeFeo Jr.'s lawyer, William Weber, once said that he and the Lutz family "created this horrible story over a bottle of wine."
They say that ghosts have never lived in the house, the terrible events that the Lutz told about were invented from beginning to end. Weber planned to use ghost stories as an extenuating circumstance for his client, Ron DeFeo.
It is said that they were all prompted to create the Amityville ghost story by another fictional story of an "exorcist" that appeared in December 1973.
Tales of demons and ghosts were in the public eye just as the Lutz allegedly began to invent their own story of demonic activity a year or two later.
Whether this is so is unknown. There is too much independent evidence to support Lutz's account to suggest that they themselves invented or fabricated it all.
One local story about the extermination of Indians and mass graves is enough to believe that the matter is not clean here and, perhaps, the Lutz family still got off easy …