The Amityville Scarefest

I remember reading that book, The Amityville Horror, when I was a kid in the late 70s. I think I read it in one sitting, on the porch of my house, in the middle of the afternoon. It scared me silly. God help me if I read it at night. (I remember reading The Exorcist a few years later at night, in my bedroom, the single window a few feet away open into the blackness, and I could not summon a muscle to move and pull down the shade.) But this book was absolutely terrifying.

Though I haven’t read it in thirty years, I can still vividly recall some of the scenes. I even remember the name of the protagonists, George and Lorie Lutz, I believe. The slime that oozes out of the walls. The statue of the lion that inexplicably bites George. The fact that he continues to awake at 3:15 every morning (an eerie tendency I have at times – it is said that at 3 am the devil walks the earth because that’s 180 degrees past when Christ died on the Cross). And who could forget that pig, Jodie, perhaps a demon, perhaps an hallucination. The scene when George is walking in the backyard and turns to look at his house and sees those glowing pig eyes – in his daughter’s bedroom – wow, I just got goose bumps.

There was some hoopla over whether it was proven to be a hoax; I didn’t follow it and don’t know the outcome. I know there was a bunch of unsuccessful sequels written, but maybe they just needed the cash, you know? Unwitting celebrities. Even if it was a hoax (which it probably was, my rational left-brain is screaming at me), it was still hands-down the scariest book I have ever read. Keep away from it, if you susceptible to these kinds of things. Me, I get a perverse thrill in getting scared. Like millions others, I suppose.

But do you want to hear something else that’s scary?

The Amityville Horror is on television tonight, on AMC at 8 pm!

It’s the 1979 original, not the crappy remake of a few years’ back. I saw the first movie once or twice, maybe fifteen or twenty years ago, and recall being disappointed. However, that pig-eye scene is still there, and it’s one of the most frightening things ever caught on film. I dare you to watch it and not jump five feet in the air. And later, sleep with the lights on …

PS … Just discovered that George Lutz died three years ago. And that his wife’s name is Kathy, not Lorie. From this website.

And I just remembered, as a small piece of useless trivia, one summer day in 1986. My friends and I drove down the Jersey shore to a bungalow owned by the mother of my friend, Rich the guitarist, and after a coupla hours jamming went to a lake, or perhaps a cove, a few miles away to jump off the dock and swim. Rich pointed up the shore, to a group of houses nestled in the woods a hundred yards inland. “See that house … right there,” he said, guiding my line of sight. “That’s where they filmed the Amityville Horror. That’s the house.” And then I saw it, those tell-tale attic windows, and got very creeped out.

PPS ... Just did an online search of my local libraries and found out that they classify the book as Nonfiction. Hmmmmm ...