Original subtitles

[unsettling music]

♪

[fly buzzing]

♪

[woman breathing heavily]

It's--I think it's-- it's whatever's here.

Whatever is here is-- [breathing heavily]

[man] Is it trying to harm you?

Yes.

It's like a black shadow that forms a hood.

[reporter] Surrounded by pastoral charm

in a quaint Long Island township

stands a wooden frame house

that some folk claim is haunted.

♪

[dog growling, barking]

[interviewer] George and Kathleen Lutz

are with us this morning to talk about

what happened in Amityville.

Within a week, Kathy's hand had been touched

by something that we discussed and couldn't explain.

It was just something unseen.

We also had hordes of flies

that would appear within two rooms.

You played George in the movie.

- [James] Mm-hmm. - And you did research this.

I didn't realize what I was getting into.

The Amityville Horror is an experience in terror

you will never forget.

[distant scream]

♪

I remember the tagline. "For God's sakes, get out."

♪

[interviewer] Do you plan to show the movie here?

No, we don't.

Our people put up quite a stink.

And the distributor agreed not to show it in Amityville.

[Carol] People forgot after seeing The Amityville Horror

the true tragedy of really what happened.

♪

I lost a whole family in one night.

♪

And I couldn't bring them back.

♪

[reporter] A young man murdered, in cold blood,

his father, mother, four brothers, and sisters

because voices told him to do it.

[man] Nobody was drugged.

Nobody heard any shots.

And to this day, all the clever lawyers

and all the police officers have no answer to this.

Because they just aren't qualified to understand it.

♪

[eerie music]

♪

♪

[soft dramatic music]

♪

[Kathy] We also had hordes of flies

that would appear within two rooms.

And no matter how many times we would kill them,

they'd reappeared.

My name is Christopher Quaratino.

I'm formerly known as Christopher Lutz,

Kathy Lutz's son.

The Amityville Horror is called a true story.

And what really happened is,

to me, more traumatic.

And it was something that I would like to have

just forgotten about.

♪

Unfortunately, I wasn't able to do that.

And now, it's time to set that record straight.

♪

The first time I went to go see the house in Amityville

would've been when my parents were serious about buying it.

The real estate agent was there.

I was just a kid.

And I'm, like, checking out this new, big sprawling place,

a new playground.

To me, it was like, this place is huge.

We'd never had a house that large.

George and Kathy asked me to go out with them

to look at the house

that they were interested in buying.

It went right up to the sound.

So the--the water was right behind the house.

There was a big stretch of land

to get from the house to the sound.

And there was a whole boathouse.

[gulls squawking]

It was very pretty neighborhood, very quiet.

[gulls squawking]

♪

They gave me a camera

and they asked me to take pictures of the house.

And we spent a good hour or so walking around the house

'cause it was a big house.

We walked in and there was this marble floor...

a beautiful banister going up three stories...

and you could look from the foyer and look up

and you could see the balcony on the third-floor landing.

It was beautiful. The house was gorgeous.

[Mrs. Townsend] You'll see what a beauty this is.

[birds chirping]

There's nothing like it on the market,

not at this price.

- Come in. Come on in. - [Kathy] Thank you.

[Townsend] Impressive, isn't it?

[Kathy] Mm-hmm.

As soon as Kathy walked in the front door,

she just had this smile like this was it.

I describe the house as charming

the first time I saw it

because that's what I thought of it.

[eerie music]

♪

[Carol] Before we left, George and Kathy asked me

if I felt anything in the house.

I don't know why, but there was just something

that made me feel strange.

And that's when they showed me the bullet holes.

♪

When George showed me the bullet holes,

he was actually laughing,

not because of what had happened,

but for the fact that he did not believe that

there was anything in this house

that would stop him from buying it.

[both laughing]

The house was on the market for $100,000.

We made an offer of $80,000. It was accepted.

And we moved into this beautiful

4,000 square foot home

on the water with a heated pool, full basement,

boathouse, garage,

and we thought we were home.

[upbeat funk music]

♪

[Christopher] My mom had divorced my real dad

when I was about five.

Mom was Irish. Dad was Italian.

[singer] ♪ Started a business deal

[Christopher] My mom was an angel.

They had my older brother Danny first.

And then I was second.

And then came my younger sister Melissa.

[singer] ♪ Love was the last Thing that crossed my mind ♪

♪ But business

[Christopher] After the divorce,

Mom, she was working as a waitress.

George used to come in to where she'd work

and sit in her section, and he was fond of her.

One night, her car wouldn't start.

She began to walk home.

George showed up as a hero on his Harley,

gave her a ride home.

And pretty soon, Mom had sold her house

and we moved into the Amityville house.

My mom was excited about it.

It was an exciting time for all of us.

[Joe] On the cuff of my jeans, all my jeans,

I had angel wings with Harley-Davidson in the middle.

They were, like, three inches wide, an inch tall.

And this guy next to me is looking at my cuff and says,

"Hey, uh, you ride a motorcycle?"

I said, "Yeah, I have a Harley-Davidson."

He says, "Yeah, so do I. My name is George Lutz."

He said his grandfather owned a surveying company,

and he was now running the business,

which gave him time, I think, to hang out

on the Harley-Davidson.

[electric guitar playing]

♪

In those days, guys were chopping their motorcycles,

extended front ends, lots of chrome,

high handlebars.

And I rode with a bunch of guys that

had bikes like that.

And that's the group I introduced George to.

And we just took him into the group

like he was one of the guys.

[tense music]

[Christopher] I think the first time

I remember meeting George,

he showed up on that Harley trike.

By then, I was riding a two-wheel bike,

but I still had my big wheel.

And I saw that Harley trike with the wheelie bars on it.

And its loud engine was, like,

you know, definitely cooler than my big wheel.

I remember he gave us kids each a ride on it.

And it was pretty impressive.

He was into Harleys big time.

He also had a really big chopper.

It was fun to be around.

Early on, everything was like, it's a new friend.

He's got cool things.

And he was a black belt in jujitsu.

He started getting us boys involved in jujitsu classes

and starting to learn to fight and how to defend yourself.

And so it was all new.

It was somebody that was a man figure that was there

and kind to us, and-- and, uh, and Mom liked him,

and that was that.

♪

[Carol] After he married Kathy,

the children looked like they were very happy with George.

They got along with him well.

He seemed to be a very good father,

especially to the boys.

I think Danny was nine,

Christopher was seven,

and Missy was five and she was adorable.

All the kids were really nice.

Kathy was a very good mother.

She was a very sweet, innocent,

beautiful, beautiful person.

George and Kathy were young parents.

♪

We love this house.

We were so happy to get that house.

We really wanted to live there.

There was such a desire on our part

to move in and be a family there.

[Christopher] It was the time where I was just a kid

and running around different places

to explore and look around.

And I was exploring my new room

and looking out that quarter round window.

We'd only been in two-story homes before,

so a three-story was, like, cool.

I remember about that bedroom that

the weird and kind of colorful and cool

and interesting wallpaper.

The one wall being all, like, dots,

but then the other side where it had, like,

all these old-fashioned drawings.

And I remember a lady on there with a hat.

♪

In my closet, there was a hook.

I had this bag that had a drawstring,

and I hooked it on there.

♪

The weight of it caused the paneling...

- [wood bangs] - ...to tip forward.

And that revealed, like, an area

that was behind there.

♪

The Realtor told us after we had toured the house,

this is the house the DeFeos were murdered in,

the news stories that had been a year earlier.

We talked about it at length as a family.

We asked the kids, "Look, you're gonna have

the same bedrooms that these kids had,

and they were killed here."

"Is that gonna be a problem?"

And they were all fine with it.

It wasn't a snap decision by any means.

♪

[Joe] George told me that he bought the house.

He paid 80,000 for it,

had to furnish it,

bought some of the furniture that was in the house

from the DeFeo estate.

♪

When he first saw the house,

there was still some blood in some of the rooms

and on some of the furniture.

It was kind of strange.

♪

[eerie music]

[insects buzzing]

[Christopher] On the second floor,

in the sewing room,

there was a lot of flies there,

and that was the first place

that I had seen them.

There was times when you'd feel a chill.

♪

And then, I remember the awkward moment

where I was in the basement

and Mom and George were down there.

And I remember asking,

"Is this where they hid the bodies?"

I remember Mom looking at George

and George looking at Mom,

and then they all looked at me.

And nobody answered the question.

[flies buzzing]

[dreamy sitar music]

♪

[reporter] The Maharishi Mahesh Yogis program

of transcendental meditation attracted

thousands of followers.

[Christopher] George was into this new thing

that I didn't know anything about.

It was new to me, anyway.

It was called transcendental meditation.

He would sit in this specific position sitting on the floor,

legs crossed, palms open,

and holding his fingers in a weird way,

and say these sounds.

[reporter] Every single student at the university

is a regular practitioner of transcendental meditation.

[student] It's nothing out of the ordinary at all.

At times, one...

[Christopher] He got my mom into it.

[reporter] ...of their vast organization.

We were both into practicing transcendental meditation.

♪

[Christopher] I don't think she ever had anything

to do with it prior to them getting together.

[ambient music]

♪

It was a pretty regular thing that they did.

And they would want time to be able to do it.

And we would be quiet,

whether it was up in our own rooms or outside.

I recall them wanting a long time to meditate, so...

♪

That was my introduction to transcendental meditation.

♪

And he had me doing it with him.

♪

I was practicing transcendental meditation.

And on one occasion,

during the meditation,

something reached out and took hold of my hand.

[eerie music]

And my only description for it was

the touch of a woman,

simply because you could feel a softness.

But yet, you know there was an inner strength involved.

I thought she was kidding

and she, you know, reiterated it again.

And I believed her.

♪

She was concerned enough to tell me about it.

And we really put it down to

just being overtired and moving in.

We moved in a week before Christmas, 1975.

So we were very anxious to get set up for Christmas.

We had a lot of company coming the following week.

[Carol] And on a weekend, there were a number of people

who were going to go and help them

move their stuff into the house.

What do you think?

[Carol] My ex-husband and I,

both of us were gonna go to the house

and help him move in.

When we got to the house, I just became violently sick.

I got very dizzy. I felt very nauseous.

And I told my husband, I said, "I can't go in there."

What's the matter?

[Carol] And I felt like I was gonna pass out

sitting in the car outside the house.

I don't want to go any closer.

Carolyn, what are you talking about?

[ghostly voice] Get out.

It gives me the creeps.

[Carol] George and Kathy wanted to have, like,

a housewarming holiday party together.

Again, the exact same thing that happened to me in the car

happened to me in the apartment.

I got dizzy.

I got sick.

I felt like I was gonna pass out.

And I never made it to the party.

I never made it out the door.

It was just a unbelievable feeling.

[suspenseful music]

♪

And after that, I had other encounters

with a presence either in our bedroom,

the kitchen, or the dining room.

Missy came down on one occasion.

And she said, "Mommy, do angels talk?"

And I asked her to explain her question.

And she said, "Well, something talks to me,

and I answer."

And I shrugged it off, a child's vivid imagination.

On several occasions,

I'd go and stand in front of Missy's closed door,

and I would hear her carrying on a conversation.

And I would hear the answer.

And I opened the door.

You could hear the sounds of an answer.

- Of another voice? - I would open the door.

And Missy would be sitting on her bed.

And she had a small rocking chair in the room.

And the chair would be rocking.

You couldn't see anything sitting in it.

And Missy was talking in the direction of the chair.

[unsettling music]

♪

And then Missy told us about Jody.

♪

- You scared Jody. - Jody?

She tells me about the little boy

who used to live in my room.

He got hurt and he died.

[Kathy] Missy said that there was this pig.

We put it to her imagination

until there were

hoofprints out in the snow.

[snow crunching]

Something walked from the house,

through the snow, out to the river,

and right off into the water.

[unsettling music]

♪

[Christopher] Christmas came.

Danny and I started fighting more than ever.

My brother is, you know, kind of an instigator.

The whole wall along the playroom,

it was closet area.

And my brother convinced me to go in there and get something.

- He shut the door. - [door slams]

And I couldn't get out.

[doorknob rattling]

Backing up, something grabbed the back of my calf.

And it scared the hell out of me.

[bluesy guitar playing]

♪

[Joe] So I met George in '73

and we spent a lot of time together.

He was just getting his marriage annulled

from his first wife.

Didn't know much about his background,

except he was an ex-Marine.

But he never talked about the military service.

[loud explosions]

[rapid gunfire]

[Carol] George did say that he served in Vietnam.

[helicopter whirring]

There was something

that he didn't want to talk about

when it came to his service in Vietnam.

[helicopter whirring]

And too many people, my friends,

the ones that did come back,

they were not the same.

[men chanting]

[reporter 1] Over 1,000 Vietnam vets came here to say

the war was a horrible mistake and should end.

[reporter 2] The protest was angry

and more passionate than most

because these vets had borne witness.

The men have a flair for drama,

throwing back the medals they had won in Vietnam.

They were still unsatisfied.

♪

[Erik] The Vietnam veteran is a fascinating

and tragic figure in American history,

particularly in the '70s.

They carried the guilt of this absurd and useless operation.

And they don't return home to any kind of homecoming,

any kind of celebration.

[crowd cheering and whistling]

[vocalizing]

A lot of vets returning, finding themselves alienated

both from mainstream America and from the counterculture,

would find themselves joining biker gangs

because it's a way of building up a kind of identity

that is independent

and as a way of dealing with the dislocation

and confusion of that era.

[tense music]

♪

The logic of a biker gang is not dissimilar than a platoon.

That sense of camaraderie in a hostile universe,

it carries over into a biker gang,

where you're really there for your fellow bikers.

And there's an incredible tight bond.

So in a way, they represent the profound

and painful contradictions of the era.

A couple of guys in our group were veterans from Vietnam.

But they never talked about it.

They just enjoyed the camaraderie

and the motorcycles.

♪

George's gas tank was shaped like a coffin.

It was also painted all black.

That says something.

He made sure the trike was his own.

George had himself painted in the prone position

with George laying on the coffin tank,

like he was in a coffin.

[bluesy guitar playing]

♪

When we went to New Hampshire Bike Week,

I think this was in 1975.

♪

And one of the guys said that his brother-in-law

had moved to Weirs Beach.

It was just a short ride down the hill from our hotel.

And his name was Ray Buckland.

I am a follower of the religion of witchcraft,

the pre-Christian religion.

[Joe] He had a big name in the occult,

wrote books on witchcraft.

We got there and he gave us a tour of the whole house.

[reporter] Witchcraft and Satanism are

exploding in popularity, especially among youth.

This lecture is given by Dr. Raymond Buckland,

anthropologist and white witch of Long Island, New York.

If we can have the house lights off,

then we'll get into the slides.

[reporter] His slides show ceremonies

held in his own basement,

where he and his wife, a high priestess,

hold nude rituals

to summon Neolithic gods of the hunt and fertility.

[eerie music]

They say these ceremonies can heal the sick,

but they could be used for evil purposes

in the wrong hands.

[Joe] Ray Buckland originally had a museum in Bayshore

on Long Island.

George also said that he had been to the museum in Bayshore.

♪

And we headed outside,

had a smoke before we got ready to ride again,

but George was nowhere to be found.

He was still in the house talking to Ray.

He finally came outside.

We razzed him a little bit about

what the heck he was doing.

He never said anything about

why he was talking to Ray at any extended length of time.

So we just got on our bikes and rode.

No further mention of it for the rest of the week

and the seven-hour ride home.

Absolutely nothing.

And, you know, we knew each other

pretty well by that time,

'cause I had already been best man at his wedding.

So it was kind of strange.

And he was into meditation.

So every once in a while on the ride home,

he would stop and then meditate.

He's, "I'm gonna meditate, so don't disturb me."

[vocalizing]

[Erik] Understanding the human as something that has

these greater potentials

is a super important part of that whole

'70s spiritual mind frame.

There are psychic powers. Telepathy is possible.

So there was a sense that there was an opportunity

to change the self, to explore the self.

What can we actually do

to enhance our own inherent powers?

The occult and the paranormal

and radical psychological techniques,

they were all part of this, as well as drugs.

[vocalizing]

[interviewer] Did you ever think

maybe you're conjuring this up yourself,

or it could be your own mental powers working on it?

Have you tried anything in that area or...

None of us really had any--

neither of us had any knowledge of the occult

- prior to moving into the home. - [interviewer] Nothing?

You hold yourself up for ridicule, for one thing,

to just stand up and say, "This really happened."

I'll tell you what. I wouldn't be afraid

to tell anybody if it happened to me.

Come to think of it, again, on second thought,

I'd run around and tell them all, maybe.

- Charge admission to the house. - [laughter]

We'd watch the furniture fly or do something.

[vocalizing]

[Erik] One of these alternative spiritual practices

was transcendental meditation.

Some of The Beach Boys practiced TM,

and it was kind of a clever practice

because it was relatively simple.

It would fit into an ordinary day.

And yet there was a little bit of magic in it.

You had the secret mantra.

[vocalizing]

People thought it started to open up magical powers even.

So like a lot of these practices,

they provide immediate rewards,

but then they also open the door

towards the possibility of more mystical

or spiritual kinds of states.

[vocalizing]

So a mantra is a series of sacred syllables.

And it might mean something,

but the point is to keep repeating it,

not unlike saying a rosary.

And you're repeating the name of a god,

or you're repeating a certain phrase

that you would get from your guru,

a series of sacred syllables

that have some extra power to them.

[vocalizing]

[Christopher] The word that you repeat

over and over and over again

is actually the name of a spirit.

And what you're doing is,

you're calling that spirit into you.

What George doesn't talk about is

the other thing that he was mixing it with.

[vocalizing]

What I found out is that the list of spirits

that are recommended from

transcendental meditation practitioners,

they tell you what the word is that you're gonna say.

The things that he was calling on

are not on that recommended list.

[vocalizing]

It's not a good thing.

And by calling that spirit into himself,

he availed himself to possession.

Because you're-- you're giving it--

you're giving it entry.

What George was doing in that house

would have caused a haunting in any home.

[ominous music]

♪

[flames crackling]

♪

[Joe] We were at home in Babylon,

and there's a knock on the door,

and it's George and Kathy.

They were frightened.

I had never seen them like that before.

They were truly frightened

of what was happening in the house.

[flames crackling]

The temperature extremes in the house,

the way George explained it was like

a runaway locomotive.

It got hot or it got cold.

[flames crackling]

He was up every night at three o'clock

wandering the house,

visiting the boathouse for no apparent reason.

I had never seen them like that before.

They were truly frightened

of what was happening in the house.

[flames crackling]

[Christopher] George had a change in his demeanor

where he no longer went into work,

became obsessed with just sitting around the fire

and obsessed with his boats and his boathouse.

[thunderclap]

And George's temperament was, like,

quick to get pissed off and express that.

That became scary.

[George] Confusion, anger, misplaced

because I would direct it at Kathy for no reason.

- [banging] - [children crying]

[banging]

Noises would go off downstairs every night,

slamming doors.

The kids would come down from the third floor

to see what was going on.

- [sighs] - [phone rings]

When we called Father Ray the next day,

he asked what we were still doing there.

He was surprised that we were still even in the house.

And it hadn't even occurred to us to--even at that point

to just up and abandon everything.

Father Ray wasn't just your average parish priest.

He was trained in the Vatican.

[George] The only priest I knew was a priest

by the name of Father Ralph Pecoraro.

I had met him when my previous marriage,

which had lasted about six months, had been annulled.

He went room to room, said prayers in each room.

[Ray] I was blessing the sewing room.

It was cold. It was really cold in there.

And I thought, "Gee, that's-- this is peculiar."

I also--sprinkling holy water.

[ghostly voice] Get out.

[Ray] And I heard a rather deep voice behind me

say, "Get out."

[George] He stopped and just asked us

what we were going to use one bedroom for.

There was something about the room

that made him uncomfortable and he wanted to leave.

That was evidently the bedroom

where the two boys had been murdered.

♪

We had asked him to come back and bless the house again,

which he refused to do.

And we were really shattered by that.

We didn't know why he wouldn't come back.

We couldn't understand that.

♪

Pretty soon, New Year's came.

I remember coming back from school one day.

I was laying on my bed,

looking out into the hallway.

Right in front of the door, there was this figure.

♪

It looked like a shadow,

doesn't have legs that touch the ground.

♪

And as I'm looking at this thing,

it's coming towards me.

♪

And I was petrified.

[ghostly voice] Get out!

[Kathy whispering] Our Father which art in heaven,

hallowed be thy name.

[tinkling]

[George] The last week we were there was the worst.

[Kathy whispering] Thy will be done.

At a suggestion of a friend, we went around

and we blessed the rooms in the house.

There was quite a deal of screaming.

[George] We heard a chorus of voices scream out,

"Will you please stop?"

♪

[Christopher] I remember them having us go around

and open all the windows.

What they were trying to do was, like,

basically their own exorcism of the house.

And here they were walking around saying these prayers.

It was afterwards that they had us closing the windows,

and that was when the incident with Danny's hand happened.

[screaming]

[Christopher] My mom trying to get the window off his hand

took more time than it should have.

[screaming, crying]

[Kathy] Let me push it up.

[Christopher] And Danny was, like, screaming in pain.

[screaming, crying]

[unsettling music]

♪

[George] I was half dressed.

Then I looked down at Kathy, and...

♪

...the lines started to form in her face.

And she saw herself and started screaming.

[interviewer] What did you look like?

[George] Like an old crag.

- [audience laughs] - [interviewer] You tell me.

What did you--what was your--

tell me what you saw and what you thought.

What did you think when you look in the mirror

and you see yourself age like that?

Well, it was really repulsive.

My mouth was very tight, severe lines,

lines throughout the cheeks, crow's feet,

and the change in the hair color.

[interviewer] Did you feel--

Physically, I felt without energy.

[interviewer] Huh.

Uh, looking in the mirror,

it was like looking through a Halloween mask,

knowing how you are, what you look like.

And yet what you see isn't what you know.

[unsettling music]

♪

[George] Something's going on

that you don't really understand.

And we really did not want

to just give up on living there.

We wanted to get the house fixed.

[Carol] George wanted to do some research on the house.

He got involved in looking up what the land was

and all the history of the house

to see if there was any sort of connection in the past

to things that had happened on the property, to the house.

♪

[insects buzzing]

George and Kathy felt that

something was let loose in the house.

I do believe in the paranormal,

that people can have experiences.

So maybe there were children ghosts in the house.

And maybe that's what Missy was talking to.

[distant sirens wailing]

[George] We learned after we spoke

with the local police there

that we had the same odor in the house

that would come and go

that was there when they arrived on the scene.

[distant sirens wailing]

We could tell the police about the murders

things that were never released to the public.

We knew who was shot,

where they were shot,

what position they were in.

The first week in the house,

the children and Kathy all slept on their stomachs.

And we knew from that that the murders had--

everyone in the family had been shot,

they were facedown on their stomachs.

I found myself waking up at 3:15 every morning

and for no reason at all.

When we found out later from the police

something that had never been released was

that was when the murders took place.

[Carol] George and Kathy told me the story about the DeFeos.

They were a family from Brooklyn.

And what happened, supposedly,

Ronald DeFeo, the son,

murdered his entire family in the house.

♪

[Gloria] Sometimes, he'd remind me

of Charles Manson.

Maybe they thought he'd get away with it,

that it wasn't him, it was a ghost that did it.

I said, if anyone could haunt a house, it's him.

♪

[Tommy] This is really the first time

I'm even talking about it.

I don't want to be associated with it,

to be honest with you.

But something tells me I should--

I have a couple things to say.

And I'd like to let people know

some things that they don't know.

November 13, 1974.

It was the last time I saw him.

George told me that he--

he had learned that the house was built

on an Indian burial ground.

He went to the society in Amityville,

and they had old maps.

And that it was possible spirits in the land

had something to do with the evil

that was in the house.

[thunder crashes]

[interviewer] What happened the night

that made you flee the house?

The boys' bedroom was above ours,

and they each had their own bed.

And we could hear the beds slamming down onto the floor.

[all screaming]

Something tremendous would pick it up and slam it down.

Their bedroom door would open and close.

Their closet doors would open and close.

And the boys were in fear watching this.

Go! Run!

[suspenseful music]

[thunder crashing]

♪

[mellow guitar playing]

♪

[psychedelic rock music]

♪

[singer] ♪ Try

♪ To understand what I say

♪ We are not leaving today

♪ It's true

♪ Oh, we're just Passing through ♪

♪

♪ You may hide away For a while ♪

♪ When you come back There's a smile ♪

♪ On the face of your clock

♪ As the time passes by

[music fades]

[eerie ambient hum]