Amityville is a village in the Town of Babylon in Suffolk County, on the South Shore of Long Island, in New York, United States. The population was 9,500 at the 2020 census. The village maintains its own accredited law enforcement agency the Amityville Police Department.
The Amityville Horror is a book by American author Jay Anson, published in September 1977. It is also the basis of a series of films released from 1979 onward. The book is based on the claims of paranormal experiences by the Lutz family, but has led to controversy and lawsuits over its truthfulness.
Ronald Joseph DeFeo Jr. was an American mass murderer who was tried and convicted for the 1974 killings of his father, mother, two brothers, and two sisters in Amityville, New York. Sentenced to six counts of 25 years to life, DeFeo died in prison on March 12, 2021. The case inspired the book and film versions of The Amityville Horror.
Jay Anson was an American author whose most famous work was The Amityville Horror. After the runaway success of that novel, he wrote 666, which also dealt with a haunted house. He died in 1980.
The Amityville Horror is a 2005 American supernatural horror film directed by Andrew Douglas, and starring Ryan Reynolds, Melissa George, and Philip Baker Hall. It also featured the debut of actress Chloë Grace Moretz. Written by Scott Kosar, it is based on the novel The Amityville Horror by Jay Anson, which was previously adapted into the 1979 film of the same name, while also serving as the ninth film in the Amityville Horror film series, and was also served as inspiration for The Conjuring, which documents the experiences of the Lutz family after they move into a house at 112 Ocean Avenue, Long Island. In 1974, real-life mass murderer Ronald DeFeo Jr. killed six members of his family at the same house in Amityville, New York.
Amityville II: The Possession is a 1982 supernatural horror film directed by Damiano Damiani and starring James Olson, Burt Young, Rutanya Alda, Jack Magner, and Diane Franklin. It is an international co-production between Mexico and the United States. The screenplay by Tommy Lee Wallace is based on the novel Murder in Amityville by the parapsychologist Hans Holzer. It is the second film in the Amityville Horror film series and a loose prequel to The Amityville Horror (1979), set at 112 Ocean Avenue and featuring the fictional Montelli family, loosely based on the DeFeo family. It follows the Montelli family's decline under apparent demonic forces present in their home.
Edward Warren Miney and Lorraine Rita Warren were American paranormal investigators and authors associated with prominent cases of alleged hauntings. Edward was a self-taught and self-professed demonologist, author, and lecturer. Lorraine professed to be clairvoyant and a light trance medium who worked closely with her husband.
The Amityville Horror is a 1979 American supernatural horror film directed by Stuart Rosenberg, and starring James Brolin, Margot Kidder, and Rod Steiger. The film follows a young couple who purchase a home haunted by combative supernatural forces. It is based on Jay Anson's 1977 book of the same name, which documented the alleged paranormal experiences of the Lutz family who briefly resided in the Amityville, New York home where Ronald DeFeo Jr. committed the mass murder of his family in 1974. It is the first entry in the long-running Amityville Horror film series, and was remade in 2005.
Hans Holzer was an Austrian-American author and parapsychologist. He wrote more than 120 books on supernatural and occult subjects for the popular market as well as several plays, musicals, films, and documentaries, and hosted a television show, Ghost Hunter.
Ghost hunting is the process of investigating locations that are purportedly haunted by ghosts. The practice has been heavily criticized for its dismissal of the scientific method. No scientific study has ever been able to confirm the existence of ghosts. Ghost hunting is considered a pseudoscience by the vast majority of educators, academics, science writers and skeptics. Science historian Brian Regal described ghost hunting as "an unorganized exercise in futility".
Amityville 3-D is a 1983 supernatural horror film directed by Richard Fleischer and starring Tony Roberts, Tess Harper, Robert Joy, Candy Clark, Lori Loughlin and Meg Ryan. It is the third film based in the Amityville Horror series, it was written by William Wales, a pseudonym for David Ambrose. It was one of a spate of 3-D films released in the early 1980s, and was the only Orion Pictures film filmed in the format. It’s an international co-production between the United States and Mexico.
Amityville 4: The Evil Escapes is a 1989 American made-for-television supernatural horror film written and directed by Sandor Stern, and starring Patty Duke, Jane Wyatt and Fredric Lehne. The fourth film based on The Amityville Horror, it premiered on NBC on May 12, 1989. This was the only Amityville sequel to be based on a book in the main book series. Amityville: The Horror Returns was to air on NBC but the film was never made. The film is set between the events of The Amityville Horror (1979), and Amityville II: The Possession (1982) and before the events of Amityville 3-D (1983).
The Amityville haunting is a modern folk story based on the true crimes of Ronald DeFeo Jr. On November 13, 1974, DeFeo shot and killed six members of his family at 112 Ocean Avenue, Amityville, on the south shore of Long Island. He was convicted of second-degree murder in November 1975. In December 1975, George and Kathy Lutz and their three children moved into the house. After 28 days, the Lutzes left the house, claiming to have been terrorized by paranormal phenomena while living there. The house became the subject of numerous investigations by paranormal researchers, journalists, and skeptics, including Ed and Lorraine Warren. These events served as the historical basis for Jay Anson's 1977 novel The Amityville Horror, which was followed by a number of sequels and was adapted into a film of the same name in 1979. Since then, many films have been produced that draw explicitly, to a greater or lesser extent, from these historical and literary sources. As Amityville is a real town and the stories of DeFeo and the Lutzes are historical, there can be no proprietary relationship to the underlying story elements associated with the Amityville haunting. As a result of this, there has been no restriction on the exploitation of the story by film producers, which is the reason that most of these films share no continuity, were produced by different companies, and tell widely varying stories.
Stephen Kaplan was an American paranormal investigator, vampirologist, and founder/director of the Vampire Research Center and the Parapsychology Institute of America, both of which were founded in Suffolk County, New York and subsequently relocated to Elmhurst, Queens. He was also an author and radio commentator, and a prominent skeptic of the alleged Amityville Horror hauntings. Kaplan lived in Suffolk County, New York and worked for the New York City Board of Education. His overview of the Amityville Horror became the basis for the film The Amityville Horror Conspiracy that chronicles his attempt to prove the story was a hoax.
Murder In Amityville is a non-fiction book written by Hans Holzer and first published in 1979 which serves as a prequel to the 1977 novel The Amityville Horror. It has since been re-released as part of a trilogy under the title Amityville: Fact or Fiction?.
Amityville: The Final Chapter is the third installment of the Amityville book series written by John G. Jones. Most of the book is believed to be fiction unrelated to the actual claims of the Lutz family. Amityville: The Final Chapter was intended to be the final book in the series. However after the success of this book an entirely fictional Amityville sequel was created titled Amityville: The Evil Escapes.
Amityville: The Horror Returns is a 1989 horror novel and the fifth installment in Amityville book series written by John G. Jones. It is the final book to be about the Lutzes as they are stalked by the presence they fled from in Amityville.
The Amityville Curse is a prequel to The Amityville Horror written by Hans Holzer and released in 1981. Two film adaptations also titled The Amityville Curse were both released direct-to-video in 1990 and 2023, respectively.
Amityville: The Evil Escapes is a 1988 horror fiction book and the fourth installment in the Amityville series of books. The book is known for starting the fictional sequels by John G. Jones.
Ralph Sarchie is a retired NYPD sergeant and traditionalist Catholic demonologist. He has written a book, Beware the Night, which details many of his paranormal investigations; his accounts were later the basis of the film Deliver Us from Evil. Sarchie, in 2016, was featured in the film Hostage to the Devil, which detailed the life of Malachi Martin.
