I remember the first time I read Amityville Horror. I was 12 and had watched the movie with my dad. The copy I had was old with yellowed pages and had flies printed on all the pages. As I read the book, it looked as if the flies were crawling across the pages. Nothing has ever creeped me out more. Returning for to the book for class, I had a normal copy with no flies and I wasn’t sure how to react to the book.
As a ghost story, the tale is fascinating. Dark rituals, waking up at the same time every night, giant evil pigs, and a power so strong it can reach out of the house for miles to inflict bad luck and illness on priests resting on consecrated grounds. Having looked at the other stories we’ve read for class, next to the manitou in Ghost Story, the entity in Amityville is the strongest we’ve seen. The motivation of the demonic force is simple – to terrorize the family on its property and do nothing but drive that terror higher and higher. There is no ghost looking for answers or redemption. No ghost looking for the light. No dead maniac looking for revenge or to hide the awful secret of being short. It is evil with no other purpose of but to be evil.
The truth of the story is always what I have had an issue with. Many believe the story to have been faked due to the Lutz’s financial troubles. The Native American tribe denies a burial ground in the area and insists even if there had been, it would not have been in character for their dead to possess people to terrorize others. Many of the other phenomena have been called in to question as well.
I don’t know the veracity of any of these claims. I did not live through the Lutz’s nightmares and I am no expert in Native American culture or theology. Taking the novel for what it is, the nightmare of those 28 days are palpable. The setting of the evil house continues and though I don’t feel it has the character of Hill House, Hell House, or the Overlook Hotel, it certainly has a presence that overshadows the people trapped in its clutches.
Ramblings of Jhenry 