Episode 93: "Amityville: An Origin Story"

A lot of us like ghost stories and haunted house movies. But The Amityville Horror  is a bit more than that.

➡️ What actually happened at 112 Ocean Avenue?

➡️ Was the mafia involved?

➡️ Were the ghost stories faked for money?

➡️ Were people summoning spirits and doing astral projection inside the house?

➡️ Did "Jodie" the pig demon walk out of the house and into the water? And did this entity follow Missy to California like the alien followed William Shatner in The Twilight Zone?

➡️ George was in the military and went to Vietnam but doesn't want to talk about what he did there. George's biker group has a bizarre meeting with Raymond Buckland and George stays behind to talk to Ray privately . . . about what?

➡️ We're told the priest involved was no ordinary priest, but had been trained at the Vatican. 🤨

➡️ Was the house attracting men with psychopathy?


Links:

https://press.epix.com/programs/amityville-an-origin-story/

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt26750834/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raymond_Buckland

https://www.buzzsprout.com/2289560/14175977

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10097173/RFK-assassin-Sirhan-Sirhan-maintains-does-NOT-remember-killing-accepts-responsibility.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Colombo

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castle_Keep

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Holzer

https://www.amazon.com/Ultimate-Evil-Maury-Terry/dp/0553276018

https://www.historyvshollywood.com/reelfaces/amityville-ghost-boy.php

https://www.kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/the-posthumous-assassination-of-john-f-kennedy

https://unsolvedmysteries.fandom.com/wiki/Margaret_Wilson

https://www.amazon.com/Wasnt-Ready-Say-Goodbye-Surviving/dp/1402212216

Need more? You can visit the website at: https://consaracytheories.com/ or my own site at: https://saracausey.com/. Don't forget to check out the blog at: https://consaracytheories.com/blog. 

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My award-winning biography of Dag is available on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Decoding-Unicorn-New-Look-Hammarskj%C3%B6ld-ebook/dp/B0DSCS5PZT

My forthcoming project, Simply Dag, will be available globally next summer. 

Transcript

Transcription by Otter.ai.  Please forgive any typos!

Sara Causey discusses the documentary "Amityville Origin Story," released in 2023 on EPIX, now MGM+. The series explores the Amityville Horror case, focusing on the Lutz family's experiences post-DeFeo murders. Key points include the Lutz family's purchase of the house for $80,000, their paranormal encounters, and George Lutz's interest in Transcendental Meditation. The documentary also delves into the DeFeo murders, suggesting mafia involvement and Ronnie DeFeo's potential innocence. Sara questions the authenticity of the hauntings, the influence of media and Hollywood, and the psychological aspects of the individuals involved.

Welcome to con-sara-cy theories. Are you ready to ask questions you shouldn't and find information you're not supposed to know? Well, you're in the right place. Here is your host, Sara Causey.

 Hello, hello, and thanks for tuning in. In tonight's episode, since spooky season is almost at an end, which is always a little bittersweet for me. I love Thanksgiving. I love the autumn in general. But like, oh, spooky season is my favorite. I wanted to talk about this documentary, Amityville and origin story. I'm not really sure where to recommend that you find this. If you want to watch it, you'll just have to poke around online. I watched it back in 2023 when it was on a network called epics. But I think epics has now become MGM+ you may be able to find it online by the time this hits the airwaves. It may even be something else. Who knows there have been so many mergers and acquisitions, and with the economy being the way that it is, it's impossible to tell where this might end up, but if you have to rent it and spend a few dollars to do so, in my opinion, it's worth your time. I found it really interesting back in 2023 when I watched it for the first time, and it kept my attention on a second watching so that I could take notes for this podcast episode. So what actually did happen at Amityville? What's the real story there? Choose your frosty beverage of choice, and we will settle up and take this ride. Episode One of the Docu series is titled The Haunting, and it opens with Jean Paul Sara's quote that Hell is other people. Any introvert can tell you that we can vouch for that being the truth. We see videos of Ed and Lorraine Warren conducting their investigation. You may remember that Ed and Lorraine Warren received a lot of publicity, and in some respects, really made their name off of being affiliated with the Amityville Horror investigation. I think it would be interesting one of these nights to go down the Ed and Lorraine Warren rabbit hole and just do an episode devoted to what was the deal with these people. Were they sincere? Were they serious about what they were doing? Was it a joke or a con of some kind? They had that museum, and I guess somebody still has it, the museum that had, like the haunted Annabelle doll and whatever in it, and OB J dar that supposedly were connected with demons. That would be an interesting topic to cover one night. We also see vintage news reports and interviews with the lutzes. You may remember that George and Kathy Lutz were the people who purchased the home after the horrific DeFeo murders had taken place there. And if you've seen the 1979 film The Amityville Horror, supposedly, the story being told there is based on things that really happened to George and Kathy Lutz and their kids in the house. The residents of Amityville do not want the film shown in Amityville. We meet Christopher Lutz, who is one of George and Kathy's kids and is one of the kids depicted in the film. He now goes by Christopher corotino. Hopefully, I'm saying that right. And he appears in the Docu series throughout the bullet holes from the DeFeo killings were still in the walls. When George and Kathy Lutz go to look at the house, creepy, they offer 80k for $100,000 house, which I think was already priced to price low price to move because of the terrible things that had happened there. And their $80,000 offer is accepted. Kathy divorced Christopher's father when he was about five. George and Kathy meet through her job in a restaurant. Christopher talks about a weird cubby hole that he finds by accident in his bedroom closet. A family friend said there was still blood in the house and on the furniture when the Letts toured the home, George goes down the rabbit hole of Transcendental Meditation. George gets Kathy into the practice as well. Kathy claims that during a TM session, a woman touched her, yet no one was there. Another family friend says the house makes her feel ill and she declines to even go inside. Kathy tells a horrifying story of her daughter, missy, talking to a friend. Kathy claims she could hear a voice answering Missy in return, and that this entity was sitting in a rocking chair and rocking it back and forth. Its name, apparently was Jody. Missy says that Jody is a pig, and the lutzes claim they find hoof prints in the snow. They say these prints led from the house through the yard out to the water. It naturally. Your first idea is, well, maybe it was just a deer, but no, supposedly, these hoof prints come from inside the house, and then they go out through the yard and out to the water. Christopher says that he is grabbed by an unseen force inside of a closet. A couple of friends say that George had been a Marine who served in Vietnam. He will not discuss the war or what he did. One of his biker friends says that his gas tank was shaped like a coffin, and that he had a painting of himself lying in the coffin somewhere around 1975 George's biker group has an encounter with Ray Buckland. They are even brought in to tour Buckland's house. George stays behind to have a private conversation with Ray. If you're not familiar with Raymond Buckland, let's just hop over for a second to his Wikipedia page. Raymond Buckland was an English writer on the subject of Wicca and the occult, and a significant figure in the history of Wicca, of which he was a high priest. According to his written works, primarily witchcraft from the inside, published in 1971 he was the first person in the United States to openly admit to being a practitioner of Wicca, and he introduced the lineage of gardenerian Wicca to the United States in 1964 after having been initiated by Gerald Gardner's then High Priestess, Monique Wilson, in Britain the previous year. And he forms his own tradition, which focuses on the symbolism of Anglo Saxon paganism. End Quote, so within the movements of Wicca and so called White witchcraft. Raymond Buckland is a pretty prominent and well known figure. I know some people will be tempted to say, well, he was a devil worshiper. I don't believe that to be the case. There is a difference between people who get into the love and light and blessings only, and if it harm, none do what thou will, kind of Wicca versus people who get into so called black magic or who work with both hands. So let's take a deep breath here and think about where we're already at. We're told that George had been a Marine who served in Vietnam, but he would not discuss the war or what he did there. We're also told that his biker group somehow has an encounter with Ray Buckland, who's a major figure within the movement towards Wicca, or witchcraft in America, they're allowed to tour Buckland's home and then George stays behind to have a private conversation with Ray. I got to tell you, I'm totally putting on my Dave McGowan hat here. I'm like, this seems awfully strange. It's like how Dave McGowan wonders, why would a movement about peace and love and hippies and make love, not war? Why were there so many people involved, at least peripherally with the military industrial and military intelligence complexes in a so called Peace Movement. That's weird. Why would his biker group just randomly have this encounter with Ray? And then what does George stay behind to talk to Ray about in private. I'm thinking also of The Exorcist in the last episode, how William Peter Blatty just seems to always be in the right place at the right time to get this film made. I have to be honest with you here, I'm starting to wonder how much of this Satanic Panic and the devil around every corner, the ultimate Boogeyman. I'm starting to wonder how much of this could have been created by the military industrial slash military intelligence, complex and various intelligence agencies. I understand you might be laughing. Oh, Sara, that's preposterous, come on. Lookout Mountain was up there in Hollywood. We know that there has been a relationship between the intelligence agencies and Hollywood.

I'm legit wondering.

In an interview, the luxes claim they knew nothing of the occult before moving in. Christopher says that George was mixing transcendental meditation with spirit conjuring. He outright says that what George was doing in the house would have caused a haunting in any home. Father Ray, the priest who I believe is, I'm trying to remember, I think that that was the role played by Rod Steiger in the film. I think father Ray enters the scene, and we're told that he's no average priest. He has been trained at the Vatican. So again, some really unique, auspicious circumstances here I'm. Thinking again about what we learned in The Exorcist untold, just one auspicious, good luck circumstance after another after another. Christopher says one day he's lying in bed and sees a shadow figure. He talks about George and Kathy trying to make an exorcism of their own house, when Danny's hand gets trapped in a window and he's injured. That's a very popular and memorable scene in the film. We're also told that Kathy's face ages by 50 or 60 years and frightens her the let's say they don't want to leave. They want to cleanse the house. George says the house is built on a Native American burial ground. Episode Two is titled the crime, and it opens with the Huxley quote, the deepest sin is to believe things without evidence. We get a little bit of a history lesson here. Amityville is known early on for bootlegging. The defeos move from Brooklyn to Amityville outside the house, they keep a shingle that says, high hopes. How are these family members killed on two different floors and no one moves. There's no sign that anyone tried to escape after the first shot. Wouldn't you wake up? Ronnie DeFeo is the only survivor. Now, this, I absolutely plan to read more about, it, falls in the category for me of something like the ultimate evil by Maury Terry, where he goes down the rabbit hole with the sons of Sam murders, which I did a podcast episode about last year. I think it was there has to be more to this story about what really happened to the defeos that night. This makes no sense. Something is very, very fishy about that story. I don't pretend to know what it is. I would need to do more research, but wow, something is really effed up. One of the neighbors says that when she heard the news about the murders, she immediately wondered about Ronnie. One of Ronnie's friends tells him that the mob killed his father. The rumor mill of Amityville starts churning. One family friend claims that Mrs. Defeos father came to the wake with a boom stick. Was he expecting violence? We see a jailhouse interview with Ronnie DeFeo, and he says he never got physical with his father, but his father would get physical with him. Rumor has it that Mr. DeFeo had mob ties. We hear that Ronnie attempted to kill his father a year before, but the boom stick jammed, so Mr. DeFeo gets religious in a hurry. A family friend says that Ronnie was wild and had a drinking problem. He was not a hard worker. Their grandfather bought the home for the defeos. Again, Mafia involvement is mentioned. Ronnie says he was using heroin and would have blackouts. He believes this is what happened to him the night of the murders. Okay, wait a minute. Yet again. This is another movie that we've seen before, because Sirhan. Sirhan says that he has no memory of killing. RFK, we're supposed to think that he did. And here we go again, a lone nut, pop, Popper, a crazy, a kook. Maybe he has selective amnesia. Maybe he's blocked it because it was traumatic. Maybe he's lying. The man says he has no memory of murdering RFK. So it's like these so called political extremists like an Oswald or a Sirhan. Why is it that they don't come out and say, Yeah, I did it, and I want to tell you why I did it. I did it for a cause. I did it for a political reason. And here's what that reason is, Oswald screams to the media that he's just a patsy, and you have Sirhan saying, I don't remember doing this. Now we have Ronnie saying, Well, I was using heroin, and I would sometimes black out when I would take drugs. Maybe that's what happened to me the night of the murders. Something is weird here. A police officer says that Ronnie confesses to the murders and says that he hated his parents. He gives them clues about where he left the boom stick and a set of bloody clothes and the clues that he provides. Check out. One of Ronnie's friends says the whole thing seems impossible. Ronnie had been bragging on his brother making the football team, and then he shoots him. Makes no sense. A journalist says the Brooklyn DA is investigating Mrs. Defeos father on suspected ties to Joe Colombo. They were bugged. Allegedly. There were tapes of this man saying, what are we going to do if that kid gets off? If he gets off, we've got real problems. End quote, so who was Joe Colombo? So Joseph Columbo was the boss of the Columbo crime family, one of the five families of the American mafia in New York City. So we're not really talking about small potatoes here. If it's true that the Brooklyn da was investigating Mrs. Defeos father because he suspected there were ties to Joe Colombo. That's not small time. It's not like some kid that goes out and does graffiti or minor acts of vandalism around the neighborhood. This would be serious business. Also, there are supposedly tapes of this man saying, what are we going to do if that kid gets off? If he gets off, we've got real problems. So if that's true, that would lend itself to the idea that Ronnie is a patsy. Somebody else has done this murder, and they've set him up to be the fall guy, or that he participated in the murder, but he wasn't the only one doing the crime, a private investigator says Mrs. Defeos father hires him to find out what really happened. The investigator's son points out that it is impossible to go from room to room and kill an entire family while they're asleep. Somebody would have woken up, somebody would have heard, somebody would have moved there had to be more than one killer. Ronnie's defense attorney calls it the crime of the century and wonders if it was an act of insanity. The prosecutor says that Ronnie is evil incarnate in the trial, Ronnie claims he heard voices. He says he had to kill his family before they killed him. Ronnie's psychiatrist argues that the murders were inspired by the film Castle keep. The psychiatrist believes that Ronnie thought he was in some type of Kill or be killed situation. Castle keep is this weird movie from 1969 It was made by Sidney Pollack, I think before he really became a major name. And it's it's just a weird movie. There are elements of the surreal in it, and it's kind of like a Drama Comedy. You can't quite tell if it's supposed to be pro war or anti war. It's a weird movie, but it's not the kind of film that I would automatically think would trigger somebody to go on a murder binge. It's not a movie like Natural Born Killers, for example. I mean, I I don't know. I don't get it. Ronnie's personal friend says that the puzzle does not make sense. The boom stick is loud and holds six shots. How would no one wake up? The echo inside of the house would be tremendous. The private investigator's son says once they made the arrest, the case was over. Boom. Haven't we heard that before? This reminds me of the decision that Oswald was already guilty, we've decided he's the guy and he acted alone. He was a lone wolf nut bag. He did it all by himself. So now we need to go about making our facts fit the narrative that it was Oswald acting alone. Case closed. So it sounds to me like if, if this assertion is true, once the authorities had arrested Ronnie, that was the end of the story. They already knew that he was guilty. Wink. They already knew it was him. So everything had to fit this idea of it was Ronnie acting alone, even though the crime is completely bizarre, aside from the fact that it's completely abhorrent and terrible and disgusting, it also seems to be physically impossible that all of these people are laying on their stomachs, they're all in the same position, and they're murdered on different floors of the house, yet nobody wakes up, and none of the neighbors says, oh my god, we heard all of these shots, and it was so loud and we were freaked out.

Pretty freaking weird. Hans Holzer gets involved, and he wonders if the causes are paranormal. Well, this could easily be a case of, when you're a hammer, everything looks like a nail. If you're not familiar with Hans Holzer, I'll just hop over to his Wikipedia page for a second. Hans Holzer was an Austrian American author and parapsychologist. He wrote more than 120 books on Supernatural and occult subjects for the popular market, as well as several plays, musicals, films and documentaries, and hosted a television show, ghost hunter, not to be confused with Ghost Hunters, I can just about guarantee that if you've ever been in the paranormal or a cult section of a used bookstore, you have probably seen at least one Hans Holzer book. He was, as they say here, a pretty prolific author on the paranormal. Did the devil make Ronnie? Do it? Did the devil help him to pull off an Impossible series of murders? Ronnie tells Hans that he heard weird things in the house, and claims that his mother felt that the devil was in the house. So now we think of The Exorcist. You know, there's that scene where Demi says something like, well, this girl isn't saying that she's possessed of a demon. She says that she's possessed of the devil himself. This is like people who say they're the reincarnation of Jesus or Cleopatra or Napoleon. She says that she's possessed of Satan. A family friend says that Mr. DeFeo claims he has a hotline to Saint Joseph, and also says that he himself was present at the crucifixion of Jesus. So yet again, I feel like we need to just take a second here. Let's take a pause, take a breath and think about where we're at in this story. Mr. DeFeo claims he has a hotline to St Joseph and that he himself was present at the crucifixion of Jesus. This is weird. There are a lot of different possibilities here, and I don't claim to know the answers for sure. Maybe he's crazy. Maybe he's making it up. Maybe he thinks it would be hilarious to tell somebody that at a dinner party and watch him freak out. Maybe he really believed what he was saying. Maybe he had delusions or was on something, and he thought he was present at the crucifixion of Jesus, and he thought he was talking to someone who was St Joseph. You may recall, if you read Maury Terry's book The Ultimate Evil, there's this bizarre story about how the guy, John Carr, sorry, I had to hit the pause button because my brain completely blanked. I was like the guy, the other guy, not Berkowitz, who was the other guy? The guy John Carr, was supposedly having entire conversations with Abraham Lincoln, in fact, I will read. I've went back and pulled up my copy of the ultimate evil and in the chapter, why not? Why not we read? He stated John would run around, beating on the walls, breaking glass and screaming something that was incoherent. John conversed quite often with Abraham Lincoln through a picture, carrying on lengthy conversations with the past president, he would write all over the walls the letters X, X, O and X, O, x, with an inverted cross beneath. He would also write, there's only 32 days in a month, so to hell. End quote. So what's going on with this? I mean, is he really in his mind, believing that he's having a conversation with St Joseph and that he's time traveled to the crucifixion. There seems to be some real overlap here, at least with the occult themes mean another possibility, if we want to go down the paranormal occult wormhole, is he doing some kind of genuine spirit communication? Is he doing some kind of astral projection that doesn't sound like someone who has religion, quote, unquote, has religion in some traditional Christian sense, most churchy types would really issue the idea of having these spirit conversations and astral projecting and trying to trying to time travel or do remote viewing, something is very off base here.

At the end of Episode Two, we get a teaser of Ronnie saying that the whole haunted house nonsense was a concoction to make money. Episode Three is titled The big time. This episode opens with the quote, if you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything. When the lutzes leave, they just go, and they don't even take their possessions. They believe that Ronnie was influenced by evil to do his crimes. William Webber was a defense attorney for Ronnie. He wants the lutzes to saddle up with his idea that Ronnie was influenced by the devil. We see images of The Exorcist and the Omen, which makes me think that Amityville is not a complete coincidence. Ronnie is on tape saying that William Webber tells him these people named the lutzes, just bought your house. We can use them to make money. We got the Godfather and the exorcist all in one. We can make big money. Hmm, just as we saw in the exorcist untold documentary that I talked about last week, we see images of people lining the streets to watch The Exorcist. People leave the theater saying they are traumatized. When the lutzes have a press conference in William Webber's office, they are quite vague on what happened. Ed and Lorraine Warren get involved. A friend of the lutzes picks up the Warrens and their psychic and says that the psychic was trying to get inside her thoughts. Ahead of time to see what she knew about the lutzes. George says that Webber wants to give money to Ronnie and that he would control what the lutzes could say. He disagrees with this. Jay Anson writes what we know now as the Amityville Horror. The lutzes relocate to San Diego. They are able to live off the proceeds of the book. Ronnie's friend says it's a joke. George's friend says that it's all a joke. George sells the rights to the movie. Their family friend says George is happy with the fame. George and Kathy are given polygraph tests by a man who has done so for the military and intelligence agencies. Hmm, imagine that. Here we go again in 1979 the film is released, as one of the commentators points out, the lutzes appear on Good Morning America with James Brolin, and it blurs the line between fact and fiction, because if someone tells you a story about a haunted house, you go, okay, that's fine. It's just fiction, but when you see it on the morning news, it gives a whole other layer of depth to the story. So let's also think about that, knowing what we know about the mockingbird media and how the mainstream media will print whatever they are told by their corporate and military masters to print. They're not going to do anything rogue. They're going to do what they're told. Hmm, isn't it interesting that they all wind up on Good Morning America, and it blurs the line between fact and fiction. The cromerty family who lived there at some point after the lutzes have left, they say that they have never experienced anything paranormal, but needed to leave due to all the publicity and the looky Loos, Christopher sneaks in to see the Amityville Horror. George and Kathy go on a world tour, and we're told that the kids are dumped off at an orphanage. Some opinions turn on the lutzes and believe that they perpetrated a hoax. Christopher claims the photograph of the ghost boy. There's this famous photo. I will see if I can find it posted somewhere online, and drop a link to it if, for some reason you haven't seen it before, it'll give you the opportunity to this photo is really touted as the evidence, the one unexplained thing that you really can't debunk. Christopher claims that the photograph of this so called ghost boy is a picture of the photographer himself, even down to the plaid shirt. William Weber turns on the lutzes and says they all got drunk and made up an elaborate ghost story the final episode, Episode Four is titled the feedback loop. It opens with the quote from Voltaire, every man is guilty of all the good he did not do. George and Kathy are on a TV interview where Kathy describes the frustration of being accused of perpetrating a hoax. And this is just my opinion. To me, she seems pretty self righteous as she's sitting there saying this. Christopher says their parents sold them for $275 a piece for their film depictions. Christopher says George became obsessed and thought it was fine to add fiction to the true story. He calls George a perpetrator, not a hero. Christopher says that the cubby hole in his room was where Ronnie DeFeo would hide things. He says he found bags of pills later in life. Christopher asked George what the pills were, and he says Quaaludes, Christopher says that George had a change in demeanor. He stopped working, stopped managing his personal hygiene, and just wanted to sit around a fire. He wonders if George took those drugs and had a drug binge. George wants a second Amityville book and hires a writer. He claims that an evil presence followed them from Amityville to California, and even says that Missy saw Jody, the pig demon, on the wing of the airplane, which sounds to me like the episode of The Twilight Zone where William Shatner sees the alien. Lorraine Warren says that Missy was very sensitive, and truly believes that demons and ghosts were her playmates. Christopher says the Warrens became part of their lives. Father Ray also comes to visit the lutzes in California. We see a clip of Jordan Peele talking about how his movie Get Out was a nod to Eddie Murphy's comedy bit on Amityville and how Eddie Murphy is like the ghost. The ghost told you to get out. So get the fuck out. No shit. John Carpenter talks about how Amityville is fundamentally a haunted house movie, and this genre has been around since the 1890s as he says, the formula. Is always the same. A house is haunted. People move in, they are terrorized, and instead of moving out quickly, the way normal people would, they stay because they're movie people. Ronnie says he'll never get out of jail because of the Amityville Horror. The public is terrified, and they don't want me back out in the streets. An ex con who did time with Ronnie says Ronnie blamed the films for his parole problems and that a movie came out at the same time as one of his parole hearings. I feel like I've heard this story before too, because if you read James D eugenio's excellent article the posthumous pop pop of John F Kennedy, this is one of the things that you see anytime there's been a major anniversary of Kennedy's murder, here comes some scandal, some nasty story. He was a drug head. He was a sex hound. Here's another alleged mistress. And just on and on it goes. So is this possible? Is it possible that these stories of Amityville were hyped up right around the time that Ronnie would have a parole hearing to make damn sure that he stayed behind bars. The EX con laughs at Ronnie because he feels like Ronnie is not getting out because he killed his family and not because of the movies. He says that Ronnie told him that the mafia killed his family, but then about a year later, Ronnie started to tell him a different story. He says that Dawn his sister murdered the family, and that he had to take the boom stick away from her and shoot her in order to survive. The film Amityville two introduces a storyline of incest, ie that some of the defeos were sleeping together. George and Kathy Lutz file a suit over the film Amityville becomes George's center. Kathy says that she wants to try to shelter the kids from all of it. We see an interview with James Brolin where he says he spoke to the kids and got the impression that they had been schooled on what to say. Christopher pushes back that they knew if they didn't toe the line, they'd be beaten behind closed doors. Christopher says that George believed Christopher could make him ill using his mind. He says George beat him for attempted murder through telepathy. Just when you think you've heard it all in this story, you get attempted murder through telepathy. A family friend says George was obsessed with hauntings and that he would hear voices after learning she was pregnant, a family friend who had been around them for quite some time leaves California and wants nothing more to do with Amityville or the lutzes. So here we go again with this narrative of somebody is hearing voices. We're told that Ronnie supposedly heard voices and went off the rails. Now we're told that George would hear voices and has gone off the rails. We're told that Kathy supposedly heard Missy talking to a pig demon and heard both Missy talking and the pig demon talking back in response to her. I'm not saying this is MK Ultra. I'm not saying this is some kind of weird psychological weapon, but I'm kind of not not saying it either. It could all just be a hoax. It could all be a bunch of made up bullshit. We need to never forget that as a possibility, money is a big motivator for people, but we heard this same attempted lie as well with the Son of Sam, that supposedly the dog was telling Berkowitz to go and kill people. Was it the dog, or was it MK Ultra? I mean, I don't fucking know. I'm just saying. The second book discusses an exorcism performed on George and Kathy to sever any ties to the house. George and Kathy get divorced. Christopher moved in with her to take care of her after she became ill, and then after her death, he changed his name to get away from the Amityville legacy. Christopher gets the Amityville Horror domain name and wants to stop the making of a movie called Amityville. 25 years later that George was peddling, we see video footage of Ed and Lorraine Warren making the talk show circuit. Christopher says he found out that they had been consultants for other movies, and he doesn't find this to be genuine. The EX con says the father may have actually had connections with the mafia, but the mafia guys in jail would have nothing to do with Ronnie. They actively disliked him and felt he was an embarrassment to them. Ronnie's personal friend says he does not believe organized crime had anything to do with the murders. He says the mob had rules not to kill a man at home and or in front of his own family. Ronnie says the real Amityville Horror was his family's murder. Everything else was fiction. That may be true. We're told that father, Ray. Handled the annulment of George's first marriage, and his secretary documented everything. The documents show that, according to his first wife, George was a misogynist who also extorted money from her. There are accusations of physical abuse. A therapist says George has anti social personality, personality disorder. Let me try this again. A therapist says George has anti social personality disorder. So was he a psychopath? If so, how would that change the Amityville story, Ronnie DeFeo was interviewed in 2006 by a psychiatrist. And the psychiatrist there believed that Ronnie also had anti social personality disorder. So what's going on with this house? What's going on with this property? If these statements are true, which I'm not saying they are, I don't know. But if these statements are true, why do you have this house attracting two different people not related to each other, two completely different people that have both been labeled by psychiatrists as having psychopathy. Psychopaths don't make up a large enough percentage of the population. I don't think for that to be completely common, as I was watching this documentary, one of the thoughts that I had, and pure speculation on my part, I'm not telling you that my opinion is, God, I don't know. But one speculation that I had is, maybe it's not that the house is attracting in innocent people and then turning them into something monstrous. Maybe the house is attracting in people who already have those inclinations. Anyway. You ever heard the expression like attracts like that? There's a point to ponder.

We also get the racist trope of the so called Indian burial ground. Why is a Native American burial ground always considered to be a source of evil, something that's extra supernatural, extra paranormal. It's not like a regular white folks cemetery. No, if it's an Indian burial ground, it must be extra haunted, and they play a montage of clips like from pet cemetery and from The Shining where the same trope comes up over and over again in horror. We're left at the end with this question of, why did so many people want the Amityville story to be true? It could be like what John Carpenter is talking about people like haunted house stories. And the idea of haunted house films goes all the way back to the 1890s the clips that they show those old, old silent films were even pre dating the works of somebody like mer now or Fritz Lang, super creepy. That's the kind of thing where it's like, I would not want to watch that at night with the lights off. It kind of gave me the willies. But stories of haunted houses and ghosts, those have been with us for so long. As I said earlier on, I wanted to do a couple of episodes for spooky month, because I love this time of the year. I love Halloween. I love the whole mystique around all of it, as well as the whole mystique around the Samhain and the Beltane, that the veil between living and the dead gets thin, and it might be easier to have those communications with an ancestor, to have somebody who you loved and cared about, but who has passed on come through to you in a dream. I'll tell you, there's an episode of unsolved mysteries that I will never forget. It made a huge impression on me when I saw it on television for the first time back in the day, and I still remember it now, around Halloween, they would typically do ghost stories. One of the most famous, I think, was their profile of resurrection Mary. But I remember this episode, and I had to go back because I couldn't remember anybody's name. I just remembered the details of the story because it gave me the willies when I saw it. I saw it when it aired the night that it was first on, and then I've just always remembered it ever since. But I would go to the unsolved mysteries fandom as they tell this story from the episode, and I remember so clearly this woman had been getting ready to celebrate her mother's birthday, and one evening, shortly before it's going to take place, this birthday party is going to take place, this woman says that her deceased father appeared to her and said that he wanted her to take down a. Letter to give to her mother. So she does this, and then she gives the letter to the mother. She chalks it up, like, even though I saw his ghost, I believe that it was just a dream. And then she goes back and reads the letter, and she's like, I don't think that this was a dream. I really believe that I had a ghostly encounter. She passes the letter on to her mother during the birthday party. Of course, the mother begins to cry and is shocked by this letter, and as she's going through the letter, she realizes that there were certain details that the woman the daughter could not have known on her own, certain nicknames, certain circumstances, things that happened before this woman was ever even born, but yet they're mentioned in this letter, stuff like that. Just it gives you the goose flesh. There's an excellent book I really like called I wasn't ready to say goodbye, and it's written about how to process your grief if you experience the sudden death of a loved one. Although I think even if a death is not sudden, this book on grief could be very useful. There's a story. It's it falls into that same category for me as that story from Unsolved Mysteries. I remember when I first read this book, when I was going through the grieving process for someone that I had lost, I read this story, and it just gave me the goose flesh. I was like, holy shit. I believe this is real. So I'm gonna go to this book and read the story for you. Now, I had my first dream three weeks after Caleb's death, which I was told was surprisingly soon, and I have had many since. I think that since I try so hard to be the foundation for others, I work through a lot of my grief and feelings in my sleep. Three weeks after Caleb's death, my book on single parenting was due. In an attempt to meet the deadline, I took three days to curl up in a hotel and get some solid writing done. I usually stay up until one or two when I'm on my writing escapades. Yet on this night, I had an overwhelming feeling to lie down and read some of my notes. I plopped onto the bed, my feet, propped up on pillows and my head near the bottom. I still had my contact lenses in, and being only 9pm I knew I'd get at least five more hours of work in before calling it a night. The next thing I knew, it was 6:45am I was in exactly the same place on the bed, and I had dreamt of my brother. We were in our childhood home in northern Wisconsin, our rooms, as in reality, when we were kids, were directly across from one another. I was in my room, as I had been during the week. I stayed up north after Caleb's death. In the dream, I was fully aware that my brother was dead, and I was grieving it with my entire soul. Suddenly, there was the familiar thud of footsteps down the hallway, Caleb's no doubt. At first, I peered out my door a bit nervously. I could see Caleb standing in his room. Every detail of his face, body and clothing were clear to me. Caleb was wearing the clothes he had been cremated in. He was rustling through His room's contents with a frustrated expression. Then he saw me, Brooke, where are all my clothes? He asked. Peering into his duffel bag. I stood rigid. I knew he was dead, yet I knew he was there. Caleb, you're dead, I said. Simply. He looked up and said he knew that, but he had to take care of a few things first. However, he wanted to change his clothes. Where are you going? I asked, I'm just going to see a few people. He said, grabbing something off his desk. Though I couldn't tell what it was, Caleb, I said, gently. I don't think that's a good idea. Everyone thinks you're dead and well, you might scare some people really, Caleb, don't go without hugging me, I said, tears filling my eyes, my brother took me in his strong arms, you cannot go. I repeated. Everyone thinks that you are dead. Please don't go. I'll never see you again. He tilted my head up towards his and wiped a wisp of my hair away from my face, staring straight into my eyes with his little smirk. He said, You poor little children. In that moment, I knew he was saying he lived on, though I never understood in what way. Feeling somewhat foggy, I got up and slowly moved around the room. I had this incredible I had this feeling of incredible closeness with Caleb, so close I was tingling. Over the course of my writing weekend, I brought one large box that I wanted to go through during my breaks. Inside were photos, papers and other miscellaneous things from Caleb's desk drawers. I wanted to sort through and divide up the photos for his friends and find any estate paperwork. At that point, I had yet to open the container. I walked over and opened the box. I reached in and pulled out a picture of Caleb. I reached in again and pulled out a card. On the inside of the card was a quote in Caleb's handwriting. The quote was taken from Jonathan Livingston, seagull. If our friendship depends on things like space and time, then we have already destroyed our brotherhood. But overcome space and all you have is here. Overcome time and all you have is now, and in the middle of here and now. Don't you think we might see each other once or twice? To this day, when I recount this dream, people ask me what I think it meant. Many want to know if I feel I had actual contact with my brother, or if that was Caleb trying to speak to me. All I can say is that for a night when we should have been the furthest apart, separated by death and the unknown, I had never felt closer to him. End quote, do you have goose pimples? I do.

I mean, it's open to interpretation. Do I think she had an actual encounter with her brother? Yes, I do. And I think the poem is so prescient. Don't you think that sometime between here and now, we might meet again? I do. This is an inclusive program. I don't discriminate against anybody. You're entitled to your beliefs, but I firmly disagree with the atheist camp that thinks that when you go into the ground, that's it, the lights go out. Your consciousness is gone, you're gone, and you just become worm food. Mean, there are even parts of the brain, so called Zombie parts of your brain, that don't even activate until after you're dead. Yeah, I had an experience a little while back. I had been thinking of a friend who passed away some years back, and I don't even really know why, I just had thought about him that day. It wasn't his birthday or his death day, nothing like that. I'd just been been thinking of him, and that night, I had a similar experience to what she's talking about. Some people would call it a lucid dream, because you're aware there's it's not like the type of dream where you go to sleep and you're like, oh my god, I was being chased by a rhinoceros that was pink with purple polka dots, and then I saw a medieval knight, but he was standing outside of McDonald's eating a Big Mac. And what did it all mean? It's not like one of those crazy cuckoo dreams where it's just like a lot of random imagery, and it seems like something that Salvador Dali could have painted. When you have one of these types of dreams, you're aware your faculties are clear and crisp, and it's not kooky and weird and messed up like that. It's it's a very plausible scene, like in her dream, she sees her brother, and they're back in their old house, and he's going through his duffel bag, and they're having a completely coherent conversation. That night, I went to bed, and it wasn't like typically falling asleep and then going into crazy, cuckoo dreams. I saw my friend so clearly I it's clear to me what he was wearing. It's clear to me where we were. We were sitting in a restaurant, and we were in like a one of those U shaped, kind of horseshoe shaped booths. I remember how clear and clean and white the tablecloth was, and he was smoking and had an ashtray that was also like a clear, crystal ashtray that was sitting on the table. We never ate anything. We drank, I think we had cocktails of some kind, but we never spoke with our mouths. We were so telepathically connected. It was like he was inside my head. I was inside his head, and I could think something, and instantaneously he received it. He could think something, and instantaneously I receive it. There was no gap in communication, like with this podcast, I'm sitting here talking into a microphone, even though it's a minute delay, my brain has to process a thought and it has to come out my mouth and get recorded onto this platform, and then you have to hear it and receive it in your mind. There was no gap like that whatsoever, and we talked for hours. I mean, it had to have been four or five hours in this time space dimension that we were sat there talking, and when I woke up, I was like, Holy shit, holy shit. I didn't sit there and think that was a dream or, wow, that's really crazy. I knew. I knew that we had been together and we had sat and had that conversation. People like ghost stories. They like haunted house stories. So I can understand where somebody would say, I find the Amityville Horror to be interesting. I'm also curious about what Christopher says, like, yeah, we experienced things in that house. He says that he was grabbed. He found that weird cubby hole where Ronnie was hiding his drugs, supposedly, like, it sounds like there are some real details there, but they've been so embellished and amped up. And then, as Christopher says, George was okay with adding fiction and letting things get farther and farther afield of what truly happened. So then the lines get blurred, and you're not sure what to think, and you're not sure who to believe, and there's money involved and Hollywood's involved, so then you really don't know what to think, but I get the appeal of a haunted house story. I get the appeal of a. Ghost story. I think in the case of the Amityville Horror, Ronnie may very well be the one telling the truth when he says the real Amityville Horror is the murder of the defeos. Have a wonderful Halloween. Stay a little bit crazy, and I will see you in the next episode.

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