{"id":1976,"slug":"amityville-horror-house-amityville-new-york","story":[{"heading":null,"paragraphs":["On November 13, 1974, Ronald DeFeo Jr. murdered his parents and four siblings in the Dutch Colonial at 112 Ocean Avenue — six people in their beds, a crime the file can date to the day. It is the most documented horror in the archive: a massacre with police records, a trial, and a verdict.","Thirteen months later the Lutz family bought the house for a price only a murder explains, moved in during December 1975, and left after twenty-eight days — abandoning their belongings and telling a story of flies, cold spots, a demonic pig they called Jodie, and a house that wanted them gone. In 1977 Jay Anson's book sold their account to the world, and 'The Amityville Horror' became the most famous haunting in America."]},{"heading":"Twenty-eight days","paragraphs":["The file's discipline is essential here, because Amityville is where the atlas's two layers collide hardest. The DeFeo murders are documented fact. The Lutzes' twenty-eight days are a bestseller — a story they told, profited from, and defended in court, but which investigators, subsequent owners, and DeFeo's own circle have contradicted for decades. No later resident has ever reported the phenomena.","The legend won anyway. The house's eye windows became a genre's logo; 'Jodie' entered the entity list; a dozen films followed. The file's verdict is structural: whatever happened in those twenty-eight days, the story outperformed the evidence so completely that the evidence stopped mattering to the market."]},{"heading":"Why this file matters","paragraphs":["Amityville is the archive's load-bearing cautionary tale: a real massacre underneath a probably-manufactured haunting, and the most commercially successful ghost story ever told. It is why this dossier format exists — to hold 'six documented murders' and 'twenty-eight days of claimed phenomena' in the same file without letting one borrow the other's credibility.","The house still stands on Ocean Avenue, privately owned, quietly occupied. Whatever the neighbors think of the legend, they have had fifty years to stop asking about it. The file suggests the legend was always the louder tenant."]}],"name":"Amityville Horror House","aliases":[],"type":"HOUSE","type_label":"House","cats":["DARK_HISTORY","DISPUTED_LEGEND","HORROR_MEDIA_LOCATION"],"groups":["dark-history","historic-sites","legends"],"desc":"112 Ocean Avenue—site of the DeFeo murders and a contested haunting.","full_desc":"Ronald DeFeo Jr. murdered his six family members here on November 13, 1974. Thirteen months later the Lutz family fled after 28 days, claiming demonic torment—the basis of the 1977 book and film franchise. Subsequent owners report nothing; researchers widely regard the haunting as a hoax the Lutzes helped invent.","address":null,"city":"Amityville","county":null,"state":"New York","postal":null,"region":"Northeast","lat":40.6669,"lon":-73.4147,"coord_kind":"EXACT","status":"ACTIVE","access":"PRIVATE","access_notes":"Private residence on a public street; the owners have long asked for privacy.","ownership":null,"website":null,"phone":null,"year_built":1927,"year_opened":null,"year_closed":null,"year_demolished":null,"designation":null,"current_use":null,"research_notes":"New record from encyclopedia/official-source pass; VERIFY task auto-queued for primary-source corroboration.","stage":"SOURCE_RESEARCH","quality":{"level":"MEDIUM","score":70,"dims":{"location_confidence":0.75,"identity_confidence":0.65,"historical_confidence":0.8,"source_quality":0.3999999999999999,"paranormal_claim_provenance":0.8,"coordinate_confidence":0.85,"current_access_confidence":0.7,"freshness":0.65}},"claims":[{"id":1169,"type":"HAUNTING_LEGEND","description":"The Lutzes described swarming flies, cold spots, a red-eyed figure and an invisible \"pig\" named Jodie. Amityville Horror House in Amityville, New York is the kind of old house where every sound eventually gets a name. The claim is disputed by the sources that preserve it. The tale is the site's other archive — oral, embroidered, and outlasting the documents.","evidence":"DISPUTED","evidence_label":"Disputed","entity":"Jodie","where":null,"first_report":null,"approx_date":null,"confidence":0.8,"conflict_notes":"Investigators found the account inconsistent and partly fabricated; subsequent owners report nothing.","source":{"name":"The Amityville Horror","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Amityville_Horror","publisher":"Wikipedia","type":"ENCYCLOPEDIA","authority":4},"conflicting_source":null,"variants":[]},{"id":1170,"type":"REPORTED_ANOMALIES","description":"The DeFeo defense attorney claimed supernatural involvement in the murders—later admitted to be a publicity story. A house with Amityville's history behind it gives the reports a setting that needs no exaggeration. Internet-era retellings built most of the file; the underlying report is thin. The report is preserved in sources like 'The Amityville Horror'. Small phenomena, steadily reported: the file's most honest kind of haunting.","evidence":"INTERNET_RUMOR","evidence_label":"Internet rumor","entity":null,"where":null,"first_report":null,"approx_date":null,"confidence":0.8,"conflict_notes":null,"source":{"name":"The Amityville Horror","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Amityville_Horror","publisher":"Wikipedia","type":"ENCYCLOPEDIA","authority":4},"conflicting_source":null,"variants":[]}],"history":[{"description":"Ronald DeFeo Jr. murdered his parents and four siblings in the house on November 13, 1974. The documented date is 1974-11-13. The house's past is on record — this entry belongs to the verified layer of the site's file. It's verified history: the dossier's load-bearing detail. The record appears in 'The Amityville Horror'. The record keeps it — history, not lore.","evidence":"HISTORICALLY_VERIFIED","date_start":"1974-11-13","date_end":null,"confidence":null,"source":{"name":"The Amityville Horror","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Amityville_Horror","publisher":"Wikipedia","type":"ENCYCLOPEDIA","authority":4}},{"description":"The Lutz family moved in December 1975 and left after 28 days; The Amityville Horror (1977) sold their story. A house in Amityville, New York with this much documented history gives the dossier substance underneath the lore. The record holds it as fact — documented, not retold. The detail is preserved in 'The Amityville Horror'. The detail belongs to the verified spine of the entry.","evidence":"HISTORICALLY_VERIFIED","date_start":null,"date_end":"1975-12","confidence":null,"source":{"name":"The Amityville Horror","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Amityville_Horror","publisher":"Wikipedia","type":"ENCYCLOPEDIA","authority":4}}],"legends":[],"entities":[{"name":"Jodie","claimed_identity":"Jodie","verified":null,"summary":"The Lutzes described swarming flies, cold spots, a red-eyed figure and an invisible \"pig\" named Jodie. A house with Amityville's history behind it gives the reports a setting that needs no exaggeration. The account appears in 'The Amityville Horror'. The name travels further than the proof; the sightings keep renewing the lease.","behavior":"The Lutzes described swarming flies, cold spots, a red-eyed figure and an invisible \"pig\" named Jodie.","area":null,"first_ref":null,"source":{"name":"The Amityville Horror","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Amityville_Horror","publisher":"Wikipedia","type":"ENCYCLOPEDIA","authority":4}}],"events":[{"name":"DeFeo murders","type":"CRIME","date_start":"1974-11-13","date_end":null,"description":"In the early morning of November 13, 1974, Ronald 'Butch' DeFeo Jr. murdered his parents and four siblings in their beds at 112 Ocean Avenue — six victims, all found face-down, none apparently awakened by the rifle shots. DeFeo was convicted in 1975 and died in prison in 2021. The real horror preceded the famous fictional one.","evidence":"CRIME","source":{"name":"The Amityville Horror","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Amityville_Horror","publisher":"Wikipedia","type":"ENCYCLOPEDIA","authority":4}},{"name":"Lutz occupancy","type":"ALLEGED_HAUNTING","date_start":"1975-12-18","date_end":null,"description":"George and Kathleen Lutz moved into 112 Ocean Avenue on December 18, 1975 — and fled 28 days later, claiming voices, swarming flies, cold spots and a pig-like entity named Jodie. Jay Anson's book became a phenomenon; subsequent owners lived quietly for decades, and investigators generally regard the haunting as a hoax layered on the real DeFeo tragedy.","evidence":"ALLEGED_HAUNTING","source":{"name":"The Amityville Horror","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Amityville_Horror","publisher":"Wikipedia","type":"ENCYCLOPEDIA","authority":4}}],"investigations":[],"encounters":[{"report_date":"1975-12","encounter_date":"1975","witness":"Lutz family","description":"The Lutz family reported 28 days of phenomena before abandoning the house; the account is famously disputed by investigators and later residents. Lutz family is named as the reporting witness. The encounter is dated 1975 in the record. It is filed as a documented account — the account itself, not a verdict on what caused it. Amityville Horror House in Amityville, New York supplies the setting. The record appears in 'The Amityville Horror'.","evidence":"DISPUTED","source":{"name":"The Amityville Horror","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Amityville_Horror","publisher":"Wikipedia","type":"ENCYCLOPEDIA","authority":4}}],"media":[{"title":"The Amityville Horror","type":"BOOK","creator":"Jay Anson","date":"1977","episode":null,"url":null},{"title":"The Amityville Horror","type":"FILM","creator":null,"date":"1979","episode":null,"url":null}],"persons":[],"visitor":{"tour_availability":"Verify before visiting","notes":"Private property; not open to the public. View only from public rights-of-way where legal.","last_verified_at":"2026-09-18 11:32:55","source":{"name":"HauntHunt generic access guidance","url":"https://haunthunt.com/about#access-guidance","publisher":"HauntHunt editorial","type":"DIRECTORY","authority":2}},"sources":[{"name":"The Amityville Horror","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Amityville_Horror","publisher":"Wikipedia","type":"ENCYCLOPEDIA","authority":4}],"conflicts":[],"wiki":null,"counts":{"claims":2,"history":2,"legends":0,"entities":1,"sources":1}}