THE AMITYVILLE HORROR, A PARANORMAL TRUE STORY

Today, The Grandma has visited Amityville, a village in the Town of Babylon in Suffolk County, on the South Shore of Long Island, in New York. The population was 9,523 at the 2010 census.

Huntington settlers first visited the Amityville area in 1653 due to its location to a source of salt hay for use as animal fodder. Chief Wyandanch granted the first deed to land in Amityville in 1658.

The area was originally called Huntington West Neck South (it is on the Great South Bay and Suffolk County, New York border in the southwest corner of what once called Huntington South), but is now the Town of Babylon. According to village lore, the name was changed in 1846 when residents were working to establish its new post office.

The meeting turned into bedlam and one participant was to exclaim, What this meeting needs is some amity. Another version says the name was first suggested by mill owner Samuel Ireland to name the town for his boat, the Amity.

The place name is strictly speaking an incidental name, marking an amicable agreement on the choice of a place name.

The village was formally incorporated on March 3, 1894. In the early 1900s, Amityville was a popular tourist destination with large hotels on the bay and large homes. Annie Oakley was said to be a frequent guest of vaudevillian Fred Stone. Will Rogers had a home across Clocks Boulevard from Stone.

Gangster Al Capone also had a house in the community. Congregants began holding meeting for St. Mary's Church in 1886, building a Chapel in 1888 by Wesley Ketcham under Rev. James H Noble and the church was consecrated in 1889, pre-dating the town incorporation.

More information: Classic New York History

Amityville is the setting of the book The Amityville Horror by Jay Anson, which was published in 1977 and had been adapted into a series of films made between 1979 and 2018.

The story of The Amityville Horror can be traced back to a real life murder case in Amityville in November 1974, when Ronald DeFeo Jr. shot all six members of his family at 112 Ocean Avenue.

In December 1975 George and Kathy Lutz and Kathy's three children moved into the house, but left after twenty-eight days, claiming to have been terrorized by paranormal phenomena produced by the house. Jay Anson's novel is said to be based on these events but has been the subject of much controversy; the murder case actually happened, but the house being haunted remains a matter of debate.

The house featured in the novel still exists but has been renovated and the address changed in order to discourage tourists from visiting it. The Dutch Colonial Revival architecture house built in 1927 was put on the market in May 2010 for $1.15 million and sold in September for $950,000, equivalent to $1.2 million in 2021.

More information: All That's Interesting

There are two different stories in horror: internal and external.
In external horror films, the evil comes from the outside,
the other tribe, this thing in the darkness that we don't understand.
Internal is the human heart.

John Carpenter