The Amityville Horror—A 50-Year Old Lie That Won’t Die
Jay Anson’s haunted-house yarn was a highly lucrative hoax, but it struck a popular chord amid the financial precarity of 1970s America.
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On December 18, 1975, the Lutz family—George, Kathy, and their three young children—moved into a large house in the town of Amityville on Long Island. “Twenty-eight days later,” writes Jay Anson in the opening paragraph of his 1977 book, The Amityville Horror, “they fled in terror.” Anson’s book purports to be a nonfiction account of the various supernatural occurrences that drove the Lutzes from a luxurious, three-story, 4,000-square-foot home that boasted a heated swimming pool, a full basement, a detached garage, and a boat house.
Although the Lutzes lived in the house for less than a month, their story gave birth to an enormous pop-cultural cottage industry that now includes dozens of films (a Wikipedia page titled “Works Based on the Amityville Haunting” lists 46 separate movie titles) and numerous books (the same page lists ten official titles, but numerous other unofficial books have been inspired by the success of Anson’s story and the subsequent 1979 film adaptation). Last year, the MGM+ streaming service released a four-part documentary called Amityville: An Origin Story. And later this month, a new 4K UHD/Blu-ray edition of the 1979 film adaptation of Anson’s book is scheduled for release.
