Was "The Amityville Horror" a Hoax?

hello this is dr grande today's question asks if i can analyze the amityville horror another question here is was this story a hoax just a reminder i'm not diagnosing anybody in this video only speculating about what could be happening in a situation like this if you enjoyed this video please like it subscribe to my channel and consider supporting me on patreon i'll put the link to patreon in the description for this video so first i'll look at the background of this case analyze the claims made in the amityville horror and i'll share a story that illustrates how paranormal beliefs can originate the amityville horror is a book that was published in 1977 by jay anson it was presented as a true story based on the experiences of the lutz family who moved into a house at 112 ocean avenue in amityville new york where six homicides had taken place the book was the basis for movies the first of which was released in 1979 it starred james brolin and margot kidder first let's briefly take a look at what happened in this house in the early morning hours of november 13 1974 23 year old ronald defeo jr used a rifle to kill his two parents and his four siblings defeo would eventually be found guilty on six counts of second degree murder and given six consecutive life sentences the crime had nothing to do with supernatural forces some mental health professionals said that defeo had anti-social personality disorder others said he was hearing voices but either way no one said that ghosts were involved the theory behind the amityville horror was that the ghosts came later i guess this brings us to the lutz family and their story george and kathleen lutz married in 1975 they each owned houses but they wanted to buy a house together kathleen had been married before and had three children from that marriage two boys and a girl ages nine seven and five george and kathleen moved into the ocean avenue house in december of 1975. they bought it for 80 000 which was considered a pretty good deal they were advised that murders took place in that house but that didn't bother them the lutz family was having serious financial problems specifically george lutz had a substantial amount of debt from a failing business the couple had a catholic priest come out to the house to bless it because of the whole murder thing his name was father piccaro the book referred to him as father mancuso father pecorero came out to the house on december 18 1975 and was blessing the house when he heard a voice command him get out and he was slapped in the face by an invisible hand he didn't tell the couple what happened initially but on christmas eve he called them and said they should stay out of the second floor room where he heard that voice later the priest developed blisters on his hands and had a high fever the lutz family claimed to have a number of unusual experiences in addition to this here are a few of them it took many days to get the house warm there were strange odors the front door would slam in the middle of the night they would find strange gelatinous stains on the carpet flies kept appearing in two rooms like a lot of them like hundreds of flies there was a demonic boy who appeared in the house there was a demonic pig looking through the windows and cloven footprints were left in the snow demonic pigs are a problem because they are made into demonic sausage which leads to demonic heartburn so there's really no winning with a demonic pig this is really just one more reason to look for the made from non-demonic pigs label on sausage many people don't think to look for that george claimed that he saw kathleen transform into an old woman like not over time but rapidly a sculpted lion came to life and bit george almost every morning at 3 15 the time when the murders were thought to have taken place george lutz would wake up hear the children's beds slamming up and down on the floor and be unable to move due to a mysterious unknown force during one morning episode he said his wife was levitating and moving across the bed sometime around january 14 1976 they moved out of the house leaving everything behind they never described the horrors that occurred during that final night of terror i guess their imaginations ran out of gas george and kathleen met with paranormal investigators they also met with ronald defeo's attorney william weber weber was already exploring the idea of writing a book or having a book written on the story so lutz's story was interesting to him it would only make the book more successful later weber would say that during that meeting the lutzes started in a reserved tone but they drank about four bottles of wine and the evening turned into a creative session he said that he never believed their story was true the lutzes were not okay with sharing profits with defeo so they decided not to work with weber instead they moved to california and agreed to work with jay anson supplying him with about 45 hours of audio recordings with their memories they never signed a contract with anson and only received about three hundred thousand dollars even though the book would end up selling millions of copies and the movie in 1979 was a massive success at the box office there were several problems with the lots of story let's take a look at a few of the problems the priest said he had never been out to the house he only talked on the phone with george and kathleen but other reports say that he did actually visit the house the story in the book said that windows doors and locks were damaged but these subsequent owners said that all those items appeared to be original the book said that there were hoof prints in the snow on january 1 1976 this would have been challenging as the weather records indicate there was no snow on the ground in amityville new york on that date nobody from the lutz family ever called the police yet in the book it features them calling the police several times there were claims that the house was built on a native american burial ground this was simply not true george lutz tried to stick with his original story he said that the events in the book were mostly true later he would say that it was certainly not a hoax he did admit to making up some of the things in the book though for example there was never any green slime george and kathleen divorced in 1988 kathleen died in 2004 from ephesema george would die in 2006 from heart disease one of kathleen's sons said the hauntings were real but george also greatly exaggerated them for profit another son also agreed the hauntings were real subsequent owners of the home have reported no paranormal problems so with all this in mind was the amityville horror a hoax i think it was it was most likely perpetrated from money this leads to the question why do people believe in stories like this it seems fairly clear this was a hoax and one that was perpetrated quite easily many people were eager to believe in this fantastical story which of course was presented without any supporting evidence and a substantial amount of contradictory evidence well there were a few things that initially bolstered the credibility of george and kathleen lutz they did not have any connection to defeo they simply selected that house because they liked it it didn't appear to be any type of conspiracy what are the chances that a couple who would fabricate a story like this would just happen to move into a house where murders occurred also they moved out after 28 days and left all their stuff behind many people struggled to believe they would do that if nothing had happened their financial problems weren't widely advertised if they were it would have provoked a more skeptical reaction and sadly people often believe what they see in books and movies those types of media contribute to the credibility of these types of stories which seems kind of ridiculous if somebody said something was true people wouldn't believe them but if they wrote it down all of a sudden it must be true in general belief in the paranormal starts young and of course some paranormal activity could be real there's no way to prove or disprove it now children tend to be more gullible than adults the research is clear on this interestingly skepticism starts to form when children reach the age of seven or eight so children may not be as gullible as people would initially think but here's the problem the type of skepticism that starts to develop early is based on the ability to detect when a statement is made in one's self-interest so if a child encounters an adult and that adult wants the child to believe something that would help the adult the child may be skeptical if that statement is unrelated to self-interest there will be less skepticism initially especially for children it's hard to detect the self-interest component in the story of george and kathleen lutz if anything it seems like their story is frightening who would want that to happen to them why would somebody make that up combine this with the fact that many children are scared of the dark and afraid of creatures lurking about and things like that this story taps into a real fear for children once a belief in a story like the amityville horror solidifies that child will grow up into an adult and probably not challenge that narrative many of the people who believed that the ami of the horror was real were children when the different media products were released i want to describe how belief in these fantastical stories can form under relatively normal circumstances and i think a story from my own childhood illustrates this pretty well so i'll wrap up this video with that story when i was young i used to visit my grandparents in scranton pennsylvania every summer they had lived there for a long time they knew everybody in the local community and talked with them often there weren't many people moving in and out of that community when i was about seven years old so this would be around 1979 my grandmother told me the story about one of the neighbors this neighbor had a two-story house and there was a television upstairs one day when she was cleaning she heard the television was on so she went upstairs and turned it off she went back downstairs but heard it on again so she went up to turn it off and she noticed that it was not plugged in the television show that was airing was the price is right with bob barker the neighbor believed that because the tv was on with no apparent power source and turned on by itself that a demon must have possessed the television set now at seven years old i found the story to be scary but more like a fiction story would be frightening but when i would tell various friends they would instantly believe it years later maybe when i was around 13 or 14 i spoke with another kid around my age who was the grandson of that neighbor who had this incident with the television he used to visit his grandparents much like i visited mine although i really didn't see him too often there weren't many times when our trips would intersect when we were both there and scrant at the same time either way we started talking one day and realized that we both heard the same story about this mysterious television set so i asked him to ask his grandmother her thoughts on that story and he did she told him that she initially believed that demons had possessed the television but then a few months later after she had told everybody this story she noticed that one of her cats turned the television on by himself it was just a button so the cat could push it and turn the tv on but he couldn't turn the tv off she used to keep an iron on top of the television and of course because an iron gets hot she would unplug that when she was done using it so she realized that the plug that she saw on the floor that was not plugged in actually belonged to the iron and not the television set she never actually looked at the electrical outlet to see if anything was plugged in so it's an understandable mistake so as it turns out the cat turned on the tv and the tv was plugged in the whole time that really explains everything that happened i find it interesting that the guy's grandmother never told people hey by the way the cat turned the tv on don't worry about that whole demon thing but i guess she had other things to do i think this story illustrates pretty well how unusual circumstances can be misinterpreted how sometimes people form their own opinion in advance and then look for evidence to support that opinion also known as confirmation bias now to be fair this was an unusual occurrence cats typically don't watch television especially not the price is right for two reasons they're notoriously bad at estimating costs of consumer products and starting in 1979 bob barker wrapped up every episode reminding people to have their pets spayed and neutered i can't imagine a cat would be too happy about that message would a cat really turn the tv on and remind his owner about neutering a cat that doesn't seem like a good plan so those are my thoughts on the amityville horror please put any opinions and thoughts in the comments section they always generate an interesting dialogue as always i hope you found my analysis of this topic to be interesting thanks for watching

Channel: Dr. Todd Grande

Views: 175,860

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Length: 13min 45sec (825 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 01 2020