An old house that once held first place as the most iconic monstrous location in the world is now in the news once again even after the first family that made it famous, the Lutz family may have moved on but they are still haunted by the events that transpired in the old place back in the 1970’s. And now one of those family members is speaking out in the hopes that he can shed some light on the nightmarish experience he and his family had and put to rest a few of the ghosts that showed up in the Hollywood movie, but never appeared in real life.
It’s hard to say Christopher Lutz has led a normal life. In fact, the man has been haunted by the events that happened to his family when he was a child in more than one way. And the real mystery is just as much how Hollywood got their story so wrong as the paranormal events themselves. And the real cause of the problems may not have been the mass murder that happened so many years before. Instead, Lutz says his father was experimenting with a type of incantation and spoke the “forbidden” names of several demonic entities. But that’s not the first time disagreement has come up in the Amityville literature. In fact, the house’s history and virtually every fact in the nine films made on the subject have been the subject of debate. Even the nature of the paranormal force within it is contested with some suggesting it was a demon that had possessed the perpetrator of the DeFeo murders, Ronald “Butch” Defeo Jr. Others state the house itself was built on ancient and sacred land (although the latter is contested partially because of the lack of paranormal activity at the adjacent houses.
Of course the Lutz family and the legendary house on Ocean Avenue have been in the news a number of times in recent years, most recently in August of 2010 when the house went up for sale. Other moments included when the house was discussed in books or during any number of the films that came out – of which there are nine medium-to-large budget films.
And now it seems there is about to be yet another one. Christopher Lutz says the documentary will not only be scarier than any of the previous films – because he assures the viewing audience it’s all true. But one thing he wants to get straight is to make sure that the facts are told finally of this case without all the Hollywood gore and disrespect. The Defeo children, in particular, are often arguably disrespected in the films when they are depicted as ghoulish monsters rather than real people who ultimately met a tragic ending. A fictionalized version of real events that becomes more popular than the events themselves does eventually threaten to overshadow the original story.
And it does seem interesting the way these films have essentially fictionalized not only the ghosts but the very people who they once were. It seems Lutz wants to take the horror movie monsters off the screen and remind us all that these were once real people.