What Happened to the Amityville House? All About the Infamous Home 50 Years After Murders and Alleged Paranormal Activity By Nicole Briese

The Amityville house at 108 Ocean Ave. in Amityville, N.Y., is one of the most famous haunted houses in history, but both its backstory and its current paranormal status have been hotly contested.

The five-bedroom Dutch Colonial home, which was built in the 1920s, per House Beautiful, first gained notoriety as the subject of Jay Anson’s 1977 novel The Amityville Horror.

Its legend grew with the release of a 1979 movie based on the book starring James Brolin and Margot Kidder that later spawned an extensive film franchise.

Though the home was the site of a gruesome mass murder in 1974, Anson’s book is centered on a series of strange occurrences that reportedly took place in 1975 that caused its inhabitants, George and Kathleen Lutz, to flee their new residence just 28 days after moving in.

“[People] ask if I think what the Lutzes told me is true,” Anson told Writer’s Digest in 1979. “I tell them that I have no idea whether the book is true or not. But I’m sure that the Lutzes believe what they told me to be true.”

Paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren, of The Conjuring fame, investigated the house in 1976 and confirmed its haunting in the 2000 documentary, Amityville: Horror Or Hoax. “This was no ordinary haunted house. On a scale of one to 10, this was a 10,” Ed said.

Here’s everything to know about the events that took place in the Amityville house, what happened to it after the alleged hauntings and who owns it today.

What happened in the Amityville house?

The Amityville House was a normal family home until 1965, when Ron and Louise DeFeo moved in with their four children, with another on the way. On Nov. 13, 1974, the couple’s 23-year-old son Ronald Jr. “Butch” DeFeo shot his parents and his four siblings — Dawn, Allison, Marc and John Matthew — to death at what he claimed was the command of “voices.”

“Once I started, I just couldn’t stop,” he reportedly said of the incident. Ronald Jr. was later convicted of all the murders and sentenced to six consecutive sentences of 25 years to life in prison, per A&E.

The house became even more famous for the events that occurred following the family’s murder than the gruesome crime that took place there, however.

As seen in the movie, George and Kathleen Lutz, who moved in with their three children one year after the DeFeo killings, claimed they experienced a host of paranormal activity during their time in the house, including levitation and temporary paralysis.

The Lutzes also claimed they saw green slime oozing from the walls, a door being ripped off its hinge and demonic presences in the home — most notably, a pig-like creature with red eyes that glowed from the “eye-shaped” windows.

George told ABC in 2016 that the scene in which a priest visits the home and is told to “get out” by an unknown voice was real. He claimed that Father Ray Pecoraro, who blessed the house on the day the family moved in, felt an unseen hand slap him.

According to George, the priest later became ill with flu-like symptoms, and his hands began to bleed.

Was The Amityville Horror true?

The validity of the events showcased in both the book and its subsequent film have been debated over the years.

George addressed the doubt surrounding his family’s story in a 1977 interview with PEOPLE, saying, “If we had tried to perpetrate some kind of hoax, I think we would have been much surer of when and how things happened, because we would have been inventing them.”

In 1979, he suggested that those who didn’t believe him weren’t close enough to the case, telling The Washington Post, “Our critics are people who’ve never been in the house, just people who read a book. No one who was ever in the house, who investigated it, ever called it a hoax. No one with any credentials who was personally involved ever called it a hoax.”

Ronald Jr.’s defense lawyer, William E. Weber, claimed to PEOPLE in 1979 that he and Lutz planned the book’s plot together. “I know this book’s a hoax,” he said. “We created this horror story over many bottles of wine.”

According to Weber, he also gave Lutz the idea for the demon pig that was featured in the book. “I told George Lutz that Ronnie DeFeo used to call the neighbor’s cat a pig,” he said.

Kidder, who played Kathleen in the 1979 film, also denied the hype. “I suppose I believe in the possibility of many things, but I think pigs snorting in windows is taking it a bit far,” she said.

George doubled down on his claims in a 2002 interview with ABC.

“There were … odors in the house that came and went,” he told the outlet. “There were sounds. The front door would slam shut in the middle of the night…. I couldn’t get warm in the house for many days.”

The former Amityville house owner claimed that he was awoken every night at 3:15 a.m., the approximate time Ronald Jr. is said to have killed his family.

George also told ABC that he saw his wife levitate and move across the bed. The couple’s children, however, had mixed beliefs about their parents’ claims.

Daniel, one of the sons, told the New York Post in 2012, “My brother and myself shared a levitation experience in our beds. We both woke up, and our headboards and footboards were smashing each other and banging off the ceiling.”

His brother, however, George’s stepson Christopher, admitted in a 2005 interview with The Seattle Times that the events were stretched to the point of fiction.

Kathleen died in 2004, while George died in 2006, according to the New York Post.

How is the Amityville house related to The Conjuring series?

The Conjuring movie series is based on some of the most famous investigations done by paranormal experts Ed and Lorraine throughout their careers.

While the Amityville house is not a focus of the films, it spawned its own franchise of more than 15 movies that can be considered Conjuring-adjacent.

The Warrens investigated the Amityville home in 1976, five years after visiting the Perron family house, which was the subject of the first Conjuring film.

“If you gave me one billion dollars, I wouldn’t go in that house again,” Lorraine has said of the Amityville house, claiming that she levitated inside the residence. “Terrible. Horrible. Horrible place.”

Who has lived in the Amityville house?

According to House Beautiful, the Amityville house was built for John and Catherine Moynahan in the 1920s.

In 1960, the couple’s daughter sold their home to John and Mary Riley, who lived there for five years without incident before selling the property to Ron and Louise. The couple ultimately met their demise at the residence at the hands of their son.

One year after they were killed in 1974, the house was purchased by George and Kathleen, who fled just 28 days after moving in. The Lutzes then sold the residence to Jim and Barbara Cromarty in 1977 for $55,000.

Though Jim and Barbara left the house for a time due to unwanted visitors who came calling after the release of the 1979 film, they were unable to sell the property early on, remaining there until 1987, per House Beautiful.

The home’s next buyers, Peter and Jeanne O’Neill, paid a reported $325,000 for the place. Over the next 10 years, they remodeled, swapping the houses’ infamous eye windows for a square shape and filling in the in-ground pool.

In 1997, Brian Wilson purchased the house for $310,000. According to the outlet, he made further changes to the property, adding a second sunroom to the back of the home and upgrading the boathouse.

The Telegraph reported that the house was listed for $1.15 million in 2010. Wilson ultimately sold it to Caroline and David D’Antonio for $950,000.

The house went up for sale again for $850,000 in 2016. It remained on the market until March 2017, when it sold to a couple for $605,000, per the New York Post.

Is the Amityville house still haunted?

While Fran Walters, a long-time neighbor of the Amityville house, told the New York Post that she doesn’t “discount the possibility” that the home is still haunted, its former owners have denied experiencing any unusual activity.

Barbara, who moved into the house with her husband James in 1977, told PEOPLE that “everything was a hoax.”

James expressed a similar sentiment to Newsday. “Nothing weird ever happened, except for people coming by because of the book and the movie,” he said.

The outlet also spoke to Jeanne, who lived in the house from 1987 to 1997. She said, “I loved it. It was a beautiful home.”

Its current owners have not publicly commented on the space.

Can you visit the Amityville house?

As the Amityville house is a private residence, public visitors are not welcome at the property, which was changed from its original address to deter fans from seeking it out.

Hundreds of horror buffs were able to get a glimpse of the property in 2010, however, when the home was opened up for a moving sale.

According to Newsday, the upper floors of the home, where the DeFeo family was killed, were open during the sale, though the basement and other areas were blocked off.