Welcome back Readers! I hope you had an incredible Halloween! Speaking of, are you ready to let go of Spooky Season? I’m not. Not by a long shot. This month I’m bringing back a classic; The Amityville Horror. You might have seen any one of the many, many film adaptations, sequels, prequels or spin-offs – there’s at least 16 of them! But this short novel is the Genesis of this franchise. Y’know. Along with Ed and Lorraine Warren. (You know them! From The Conjuring franchise! Wait… I’m sensing a pattern, here…)
So! Grab yourself a pot of coffee, throw a few more logs on the fire and let’s contend with the supernatural together! It is approaching the holidays, after all and nothing brings folks together like a good old fashioned haunting…
Book Stats
- Author: Jay Anson.
Formats: Hardcover, Paperback, and Audible.
Price: $58.25 for Hardcover, $15.59 for paperback, and $15.29 for Audible, or one Credit on Audible.
Length: 256 pages or 6 hours 28 minutes in audio format.
Narrator: Ray Porter.
Number of books in the series: It honestly depends on how you define ‘series’ as this is more of a franchise. The book itself is technically stand-alone but there are many, many sequels and works inspired by the original.
Basic Premise
George Lutz and his new family need a bigger home. A fresh start. A listing is brought up for a 5 bedroom, 3 bathroom, 3 story home with a basement, yard and boathouse on a lake shore at 112 Ocean Avenue. Asking price is a bit over $80,000. (It always makes me laugh when George wonders if that price is missing a 1 in front. 1975 property prices sound wonderfully, if comically, small. In 2024, he’d be wondering how many 0s had been left off the end.)
They take it, as well as a bunch of furniture and appliances left in storage after a tragic incident caused the home to be put on the market in the first place. That incident? Eh… nothing too crazy. The prior owners, the DeFeos, were murdered in their beds by a member of the family.
Now the price tag on this house starts to make sense.
They have a Priest by the name of Father Mancuso come to bless the house based on its history. (George is a Methodist and Kathy is a Catholic, though non- practicing. They both do transcendental meditation, however.) Father Mancuso is more than happy to perform this happy duty for the young family. Or, he is until he hears a deep, commanding voice bellow “GET OUT!” He doesn’t mention this to the Lutz family. (Because… reasons?)
From that point onward, the Priest’s health starts to suffer. He develops flu-like symptoms and a high fever. Eventually his hands start to well up and blister with festering boils. This condition worsens essentially any time he has phone contact with George Lutz, which he does often. Though, something makes these calls quiet and filled with static and thus hard to hear, anyway.
Back at 112 Ocean Avenue, things start go go wrong pretty fast. The youngest child, Missy, finds friendship in an imaginary pig by the name of Jodie. The boys are quick to anger and misbehave, which results in them being beaten, which has never been something George or Kathy had done before. George feels cold to his very bones and avoids any activity that takes him away from the fireplace where he’s constantly stacking wood to burn. This includes going to work, and their savings are drying up faster by the minute.
And that’s all before windows and doors start opening and smashing, before the ghostly band strikes up an unbearably loud number and Jodie starts leaving hoofprints in the snow, alluding to his maybe not-so-imaginary nature…
And it’s certainly before they discover a secret, blood red room in the basement and an uncapped well! And long before a local bar-keep tells George about the terrible rumors surrounding that little red room.
Do you want to know where 16 movies and 10 additional books got their chilling start? This would be the book to pick up.
My Take
I love this book. It’s one of my favorites. It’s like comfort food for the part of my soul that likes being scared. The story is laid out as a factual retelling so the language is precise, descriptive, no-nonsense and has a very “Just the facts, Ma’am.” feel to it. This helps keep things engaging, fast-paced and intriguing. This is helped by the Audible versions stellar reading by Ray Porter. His crisp, barely emotive tone is perfect for this kind of story.
That’s not to say it’s perfect! A lot of the scarier parts might be considered a bit tame by today’s standards. And there are many, many disputes over the truth of this story. That’s not super important to me, but it may effect how some people view the book being as it’s billed as based on actual happenings – especially by fans of Ed and Lorraine Warren.
Still! There’s always something so fun and outlandish when it comes to horror from the 70s. I love it.
The real victim here, as much as we might feel for George, Kathy and the kids, is The Good Father. His brief interactions with the Lutz family leave him marred and miserable – suffering as an expression of his faith takes on a whole other meaning as he does his golden-hearted best to help the Lutz family. (Especially George, who literally calls Father Mancuso once to tell him the names of all the demons he’d read about at the local library. Not cool, man.) He moves from New York to San Francisco just to be free of this nonsense!
Anyway! I needed a good, old fashioned horror novel to scratch that Halloween itch and, despite having enjoyed it many times prior, I went for a wander back to 112 Ocean Avenue. Maybe, one day, you’ll stop in to visit too!
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