Horror or Hoax?

Did a priest really bless the house when the Lutz family was moving in?

On December 18, 1975, the day that the real Lutz family was moving into their new Ocean Avenue home in Amityville, a Catholic priest allegedly came by to bless the house, supposedly at the request of Kathy Lutz. On October 4, 1979, a little more than two months after the release of the movie, the investigative television program In Search of featured an episode that included an interview with who they claim is the real Amityville priest. He wanted to remain anonymous, so his face was kept hidden. Watch the Amityville Priest Interview

"I was blessing the sewing room," says the priest. "It was cold. It was really cold in there. I'm like, 'Well, gee, this is peculiar,' because it was a lovely day out, and it was winter, yes, but it didn't account for that kind of coldness. I was also sprinkling holy water, and I heard a rather deep voice behind me saying, 'Get out!' It seemed so directed toward me that I was really quite startled. I felt a slap at one point on the face. I felt somebody slap me, and there was nobody there."

Did a swarm of flies appear in the home?

Yes. During an interview with Inside Edition in 2005, Chris explained that, "There was definitely a lot of flies but nothing again like Hollywood is portraying it." His brother Daniel also mentioned issues with flies in his documentary My Amityville Horror, although he claims there were many more.

Did flies really swarm the priest who blessed the home?

No. "They [the filmmakers] could have just as easily had done the flies the way they really happened," says George Lutz, who laughed at the movie's portrayal of flies attacking the priest (Rod Steiger). -The Real Amityville Horror

Did the priest really get static on the phone when he tried to call and warn the Lutzes?

Yes, at least according to the TV program In Search of and their 1979 interview with who they state is the real Amityville priest. Noise interference prevented any phone communication and he could never get through to warn the family.

Were there cold spots in the real Amityville Horror house?

Yes, at least according to most of the people involved in the story. This includes son Daniel Lutz and Father Ralph Pecoraro, the priest who allegedly blessed the home. The strange coldness is why the movie depicts George Lutz constantly chopping wood and burning the home's fireplace.

Did the toilets overflow with a black sludge?

No. At least not according to what George Lutz said during the 1979 Good Morning America interview. He states that it was the porcelain toilet bowls themselves that turned black, not the water.

Did Missy have an imaginary friend named Jodie?

Our exploration into The Amityville Horror true story revealed that according to George Lutz, Missy did have an imaginary/paranormal friend named Jodie (spelled "Jody" in the film). The entity would present itself to his daughter in different forms, including as an angel and as a large pig. In the movie, George (James Brolin) sees Jodie in pig form in an upstairs window. Earlier, his wife Kathy (Margot Kidder) sees Jodie's glowing red eyes through a window in the darkness. A drawing that the real Missy Lutz allegedly did of Jodie is featured in Jay Anson's novel. The creature in the drawing looks more like a cat than a pig. However, the book describes it as a drawing of a pig walking through the snow.

Left: Missy Lutz's drawing of Jodie running through the snow. Right: George (James Brolin) sees Jodie the pig in an upstairs window in the 1979 movie.

 

Did Daniel get his hand smashed in a window?

Yes, according to Daniel Lutz, he did get his hand smashed by the window. In real life, Daniel says that the window smashed his hand "skin on skin", emphasizing the initial severity of his injury. In his documentary My Amityville Horror, he holds his hand up in front of the camera to demonstrate that his little finger is still bent from the injury. Moments later, he contradicts himself somewhat by saying that his hand had magically healed just minutes after the injury. In the movie, the parents take their son to the hospital and are eerily amazed that there are no broken bones in his hand.

Was there really a secret red room in the basement?

Yes, but the red room was exaggerated in the movie and book. In reality, the red room wasn't all that secret. It was part of a storage space under the basement stairs. Patty Commarato, a former friend of the murdered DeFeo daughter Allison, revisits the real Amityville red room (pictured below) during a 1980 episode of That's Incredible (See Video of the Red Room). She says that the DeFeos used to store toys in the small red space.

A former friend of Allison DeFeo sits in the real Amityville house's red room (left). Right: Actor James Brolin sees a familiar face in the movie's secret Amityville basement room.

For the Amityville movie scene pictured above on the right, the filmmakers recruited the real-life brother of actor James Brolin to portray the face/entity that Brolin's character sees in the secret basement room. They needed someone who looked like Brolin and when given a beard and mustache, his brother easily fit the part.

Did the window in the Amityville house really break?

No. Not only was there never any physical evidence of a window breaking, in a 2011 interview, son Christopher Lutz confirmed that no Amityville house windows broke. -Spooky Southcoast
During a 1980 Amityville episode of the TV show That's Incredible, Barbara Cromarty, who purchased the home with her husband Jim after the Lutzes moved out, allowed the cameras inside the home to demonstrate that the upstairs eye window had never shattered like in the movie, noting that the window frame still showed the old paint and putty from when the house was built in 1927.
In a 2011 interview with 30 Odd Minutes, Christopher Lutz clarified that even though one of the Amityville home's infamous eye windows never shattered, this element of the movie was in fact inspired by the windows having opened on their own. "That was my bedroom...Those two windows are one bedroom and that used to be Ronald DeFeo's bedroom, and when we moved in the house my brother and I shared that room. That window opened many times, but rather than display it like it happened, they showed it absolutely shattering. It didn't shatter the glass. The window opened. The thing swung open."

Did the front door really get ripped off?

No. In The Amityville Horror movie, demonic forces cause the wooden front door to explode outward. "It did not get ripped off," said son Christopher Lutz during a 2011 interview (Spooky Southcoast). It should be noted that mother Kathy Lutz had previously stated that the door did blow outward, leaving police and repairmen dumbfounded. However, no physical evidence has ever surfaced to validate Kathy's claim.

Did blood drip down the walls?

No. In the 2005 documentary The Real Amityville Horror, the real George Lutz said that blood never dripped down the walls.

Did George Lutz really fall through the basement stairs into a hole filled with black sludge?

No. During the 2005 Christopher Lutz Inside Edition interview, he says that the exciting scene at the end of the film when James Brolin's character falls through the basement stairs into the sludge-filled hole never happened in real life.

Did anything paranormal happen on The Amityville Horror set?

No, at least not according to the movie's two main stars. "I watched with great amusement as the studio's publicity machine went into action concocting these terrible things that were happening on our set, which weren't really," says Margot Kidder, who portrays Kathy Lutz in The Amityville Horror movie.
Actor James Brolin recalls with amusement, "We're being asked, 'Is there weird stuff goin' on?' and we're goin', we're lookin' for stuff now, you know, cause we'd like to tell 'em, 'Awe, yeah, you wouldn't believe what happened yesterday.'"

 

 -http://www.historyvshollywood.com/reelfaces/amityvillehorror1979.php