Reel Or Real? The Truth Behind Two Hollywood Ghost Stories
Benjamin Radford
In this special two-part article, Benjamin Radford and John Gaeddert examine the truth behind two recent Hollywood ghost stories, The Amityville Horror and White Noise.
De-ghosting The Amityville Horror
The story of The Amityville Horror, as with The Exorcist, begins with a best-selling novel. A book titled The Amityville Horror: A True Story, written by Jay Anson, was published in 1977 and quickly became a hit. Soon it was made into an equally successful horror film starring James Brolin and Margot Kidder. And, as with The Exorcist, several inferior sequels followed in its wake (including a 3-D version). The latest version is due out April 15. Anson was not a resident of the infamous possessed house, but a professional writer hired to pen a book based on “true events” that happened there several years earlier. . . .
The story behind the story began on November 13, 1974, when six members of an Amityville, New York, family were killed. The parents, Ronald and Louise DeFeo, were shot in bed while they slept, along with two sons and two daughters. The sole remaining family member, Ronald Jr. (“Butch”), was arrested for the crime and later sentenced to prison. With the family dead (and Butch in no position to inherit the place), the house went up for sale. The horrific nature of the massacre unnerved the otherwise quiet Long Island neighborhood, though no supernatural activity was associated with the house at 112 Ocean Avenue.
The following year, a new family, the Lutzes, moved into the house. George and Kathy Lutz, along with their three children, said that shortly after moving in, the six- bedroom abode became a hell house. It seemed that perhaps the demons that drove Butch to slaughter his family were not in his head but in the house. An unseen force ripped doors from hinges and slammed cabinets closed. Noxious green slime oozed from the ceilings. A biblical-scale swarm of insects attacked the family. A demonic face with glowing red eyes peered into their house at night, leaving cloven-hoofed footprints in the morning snow. A priest called upon to bless the house was driven back with painful blisters on his hands. And so on.
A local television crew did a segment on the house, bringing in several self-styled “ghost hunters” (including Ed and Lorraine Warren) and other alleged psychics. All agreed that a demonic spirit was in the house, and that an exorcism would be needed to stop the activity. The Lutzes left the house but took their terrifying tale with them, collaborating with Mr. Anson for their book. And, as William Peter Blatty did when he promoted The Exorcist, Anson vouched for the truthfulness of his fantastic tale: “There is simply too much independent corroboration of their narrative to support the speculation that [the Lutzes] either imagined or fabricated these events.”
Some people expressed doubts about the events in the house, and a few specific parts of it were even proven false. (For example, the Lutzes could not have found demonic hoofprints in the snow when they said they did, because weather records showed there had been no snowfall to leave prints in!) Still, the Lutzes stuck to their story, reaping tens of thousands of dollars from the book and film rights.
The truth behind The Amityville Horror was finally revealed when Butch DeFeo’s lawyer, William Weber, admitted that he, along with the Lutzes, “created this horror story over many bottles of wine.” The house was never really haunted; the horrific experiences they had claimed were simply made up. While the Lutzes profited handsomely from their story, Weber had planned to use the haunting to gain a new trial for his client. The Lutzes also later admitted that virtually everything they had said about the haunting-and everything in The Amityville Horror-was pure fiction.
Their account was likely influenced by another fictionalized story-that of The Exorcist. In fact, it is not much of a stretch to suggest that The Exorcist strongly influenced the Amityville story; The Exorcist came out in December 1973. Many of the myths surrounding The Exorcist film and “real story” came about because of “the mystic twaddle Blatty gave out to the press while pushing his book” (Kim Mohan quoted in his book Nightmare Movies, p. 43). Blatty had a career and book to promote, and was not above embellishing the story with partly (and wholly) fictional elements. Of course, the film was not a documentary, but Blatty strongly suggested that the film stuck more or less to reality. Demonic possession and hauntings were very much in the public’s mind when the Lutzes spun their stories of demonic activity a year or two later. The Lutzes must have had a good laugh at the expense of the mystery-mongering ghost hunters and self-proclaimed psychics, who reported their terrifying visions and verified the house’s (non-existent) demonic residents. Apparently, it was all their imaginations.
To this day, the fact that The Amityville Horror story was an admitted hoax is still not widely known; as they say, the truth never stands in the way of a good story.
Details for this article were taken from Joe Nickell’s fine investigative piece “Amityville: The Horror of It All,” in the January/February 2003 issue of Skeptical Inquirer magazine. See also Stephen and Roxanne Kaplan’s book The Amityville Horror Conspiracy and “The Amityville Horror Hoax” in the May 1978 Fate magazine by Rick Moran and Peter Jordan.
By Benjamin Redford
“Paranormal Activity,” a horror film now in limited release across the country, tells the story of a young couple who move into a typical suburban house but are soon disturbed by a supernatural entity that delights in scaring them in the middle of the night. The pair (one a skeptic and one a believer, in true “X-Files” fashion) use a video camera aimed at their bed to document the strange forces that disturb them when they are trying to sleep.
The micro-budget 2007 movie features a small cast of unknown actors. Much like “The Blair Witch Project,” to which the film is being compared, “Paranormal Activity” trades on its cinémavéritérealism, the conceit that you are seeing real documentary footage of what happened– scary scenes and all.
“Real” ghosts aside, the film is realistic in some ways.
The film’s tag line, “What happens when you sleep?” is especially appropriate. Ghosts, abducting aliens, and other mysterious entities are often experienced at home at night and in bed — not during your lunch hour while buying cat food and ground beef at the supermarket.
There’s a psychological reason why these experiences often happen at night: We are more likely to be tired, drowsy, and sleeping. Medications, and even simple fatigue, can create mild hallucinations, what psychologists call waking dreams and hypnagogic experiences. They are harmless and common (especially as we drift to sleep), but can impair our perceptions and create experiences that never happened.
For example, during one haunted house investigation I conducted in Buffalo, N.Y., a man told me that a ghost had kicked his bed as he fell asleep. He had no other explanation, and firmly believed he had been attacked by a ghost. My investigation revealed that the “kicking” he experienced was actually his leg twitching as his body entered the first stages of sleep. He was completely unaware of this, and when awoken by his leg spasm, he interpreted the jerk as a ghost kicking his bed.
Ghost hunting
The film is also realistic in its depiction of how people come to believe their house is haunted. For much of the film, the “paranormal activity” that the couple experience consists mostly of minor household disturbances: doors open on their own; pictures fall off the wall; lights turn on or off, etc.
While these things can seem mysterious, there may be perfectly rational explanations: breezes can slam doors, vibrations or soft drywall can send hung pictures crashing to the floor, electrical problems can turn lights on and off, and so on [My editor presently has a vexing problem with a newly installed, complexly wired fan/light in his home office that turns off mysteriously, but can be turned back on, in an otherwise ghost-free home].
Hoaxing is also a problem; many instances of “paranormal activity” have been traced to pranking children or troubled teenagers seeking attention.
The film is very typical of “real” hauntings, in which the ghosts never do anything obviously paranormal or unexplainable. This of course raises an interesting question: If ghosts (or demons or other undead entities) exist, why can’t they make their presence more obvious? Why do they limit themselves to mundane phenomena that can be explained by ordinary means, instead of doing something spectacular and unmistakably supernatural? Especially in a movie!
Why isn’t paranormal activity clear and obvious? Like the White House suddenly turning into marshmallow goo in front of the world. Or an amputee’s limb growing back. Or a person being able to turn invisible at will. These would be verifiably paranormal events, completely without scientific explanation.
Floors creaking, lights flickering, and doorknobs rattling? Not so much.
Take a ride on the spooky side and find ghost tours in these five Arizona cities. Wichita
On a fuzzy green screen, you see a T-shirted man pointing a small electronic recorder toward a murky corner.
He swivels his head toward the camera, his eyes glowing like orbs.
“This is where a figure of a small girl has been sighted on numerous occasions,” the man says in a hushed voice. “We’re hoping she’s in the mood to answer some – holy (bleep), something touched me!”
The frame jumps and blurs before focusing on the man’s face and his look of shock.
And it’s largely ghost-hunting theater, according to one of Phoenix’s longtime paranormal investigators.
‘It never happens like that’
“Most of that stuff on TV is bunk,” Vincent Amico said. “It never happens like that.”
Amico has the experience to back up his claim. He’s been investigating the paranormal for 15 years, and in 2014 he and his wife started AZ Paranormal Investigations and Research Society. Amico also leads tours for Haunted Historians, which attracts fans of the many ghost-hunting TV shows.
And that’s where these un-reality shows pose problems, he said. Those fans expect to see evidence of the afterlife, from an empty rocking chair moving by itself to shadowy apparitions coalescing in corners.
Such eerie incidents are extremely rare and easily fabricated.
“A guy says he felt something touch him, or you hear a door slam off camera,” Amico said. “That’s the easiest stuff to fake. There’s no way to prove he wasn’t touched, or that someone off camera didn’t slam the door.”
Specter-chasing TV shows caught on in 2004 with SyFy’s “Ghost Hunters,” which lasted 12 years before broadcasting its last episode in October 2016. Similar shows followed in its glowing green footsteps, including Travel Channel’s “Ghost Adventures” and “Haunted USA.”
Following the formula
The recipe is the same. Investigators equipped with cameras and various ghost-detecting devices spend a night in a hotel/house/abandoned warehouse said to be haunted. Before the sun rises, they’ve seen/spoken with/found evidence of the afterlife. Everyone goes home shaken.
Amico said the shows are misleading at best, fake at worst. A typical paranormal investigation takes several visits over weeks or months, he said, and 99 percent of that time would set off every tedium monitor in the place, if such a thing existed
The “night in a haunted house” scenario is necessary to keep viewers interested, though it’s highly unlikely that’s how the investigation unfolded.
Jay Yates, who with his wife Marie have been featured on several TV and radio shows dedicated to paranormal investigations, said that in some cases cameras are set up weeks before the ghost hunters themselves arrive.
“I wish that ghosts showed up on demand but it doesn’t work that way,” he said. “Many of these ghost-hunting shows are not evidence-driven, but more based upon experiences from the cast and crew, not concrete evidence always.”
Amico also takes issue with the way hunters interpret those static-filled electronic voice phenomena (EVP) recordings.
Viewers are familiar with the setup. The experts either place an EVP recorder in an empty room (the recording is analyzed later) or use it to “interview” any spirits interested in chatting. Since ghosts have no vocal cords, they use their energy to electrically manipulate sound that can be picked up by EVP recorders, paranormal investigators say.
In most cases, words are almost impossible to make out amid the static and buzzing, and may be nothing more than background sounds, Amico said. That changes once ghost hunters put words to those sounds, interpreting them as voices from beyond the grave.
‘It’s all about suggestion’
A fluctuation in static, for example, can be translated as, “Get out.” Or “He’s here.” Or any number of things, most of them eerie.
“It’s all about suggestion,” Amico said. “Let’s say he tells everyone he hears, ‘Help me.’ When it’s played again, that what you hear. ‘Help me.’ But it’s only because he planted it in your head.”
The on-screen investigators also can manipulate devices that detect changes in the electromagnetic field, believed to indicate the presence of spirits, Amico said.
The electromagnetic field (EMF) sensor features a series of lights that illuminate one after another. The more lights, the stronger the electromagnetic change.
The problem, Amico said, is that something as simple as a cellphone can disrupt the field and make the EMF sensor light up like a Christmas tree.
“I remember one time they showed the device starting to light up, and the guy holding the device had a huge watch on his wrist,” Amico said. “When they cut back to him, the device was lit up and the watch was gone. It was clearly two different times.”
Then there are those who believe everything about investigations are bunk. They watch the shows so they can shake their heads in utter disbelief while wondering how anybody could buy the existence of the paranormal.
“People can believe whatever they want and it makes no difference to me,” Amico said. “A paranormal experience is by definition is something that can’t be explained. I’ve experienced a lot of things I can’t explain.”
Paranormal TV shows
The popularity of ghost-hunting shows, as well as those that tell supposedly “real” tales of hauntings, continues to be spirited. Here are a few to check out.
“Haunted Live”: Members of the Tennessee Wraith Chasers descend unannounced on sites said to house wraiths. The action unfolds live. Wait, a ghost show that’s live? Isn’t that a bit ironic? 8 p.m. Fridays, Travel Channel.
“Ghost Adventures”: Zak Bagans leads his merry crew of spirit chasers into some of America’s most haunt-filled hotels, houses and dives. 7 p.m. Saturdays, Travel Channel.
“A Haunting”: Various entities, none of them well-meaning, inhabit masks, clay figures and other objects in this series that re-enacts hauntings. 7 p.m. Thursdays, Travel Channel.
Destination America: Not a show, but a TV channel and a website that embrace all manner of paranormal shows. The lineup includes “Ghost Brothers,” “Haunted Towns” and a trio of shows whose names start with “Paranormal” (“-Lockdown,” “-Survivor” and “-Witness”). Stream the shows at www.destinationamerica.com.