Former owner of Amityville house has died

[hyperconjugated]

GET OUT!

[Sachi]

True or not, if it's a good and entertaining book, I'll read it

[nikonikoniko]

AJBryant wrote:
The whole thing was a rather well-documented fraud.

Indeed. Hence my question about which "actual events" were stretched.

From The Skeptical Inquirer

“We created this horror story over many bottles of wine that George Lutz was drinking,” Weber told the Associated Press. “We were creating something the public wanted to hear about.” Weber later filed a two-million-dollar lawsuit against the couple, charging them with reneging on their book deal. The Cromartys also sued the Lutzes, Anson, and the publishers, maintaining that the fraudulent haunting claims had resulted in sightseers destroying any privacy they might have had. During the trials the Lutzes admitted that virtually everything in The Amityville Horror was pure fiction (Nickell 1995; Kaplan and Kaplan 1995).

For anyone who doesn't know, William Weber was Ronald DeFeo's lawyer. Going way past the insanity plea, he hoped that if it could be established that ancient demonic forces were at work in the DeFeo house, it might help his client get off easier. The Cromartys were later owners of the house, who purchased it at a bargain totally unaware of the house's infamy from the popularity of Amityville Horror.

I don't mind people enjoying the story as fiction, but the thing that amazes me is that even after everyone involved admits it was a fraud, people still think there was something supernatural going on in that house. If they're looking for a real-life story of a haunted house, this isn't it.