The Amityville Horror
By Jay Anson
How I wish I hadn't been told The Amityville Horror was bunk. Knowing that this "based on a true story" book was really based on lies made reading it a tedious and distasteful experience. With no haunting to believe in, my attention turned to Jay Anson's writing. I found it serviceable, but he does use an extraordinary amount of exclamation points.
According to one of the children, some actual paranormal events may have taken place in the home, but the circumstances were minimal compared to the book's slam-bang ghostly happenings. Had the book been billed honestly, as fiction, I would have enjoyed it more. But the novel would have needed a different voice if that had been the case. Anson tells the story in a dry, documentary style.
Some of the supernatural events were spooky and would have been frightening if I hadn't been thinking, "this is all a lie." George's 3:15 a.m.m trips to the boathouse, for instance, were great fun. He awoke every night with an irresistible compulsion to check the locks. This is the kind of low-key detail that I find frightening, mostly since I would be terrified to go outdoors behind my house in the middle of the night. Harry, the watchdog who was always fast asleep on the job, made these nighttime scenes memorable and amusing.
Another aspect of the book that I found rewarding was the increasing tension among the family members. Before moving into 112 Ocean Avenue, the Lutz' seem to be a prosperous, outgoing, busy family. But once ensconced within the walls of their new home, they become dysfunctional. George's personal hygiene goes downhill, the kids begin to argue for the first time in their lives, and Kathy can barely bring herself to leave the house to go grocery shopping. I wanted George to stop tending his fire almost more than I wished the haunting to stop. The characters' responses to a haunting is almost always the most interesting part of the story, and as with other books we have read during this RIG, the characters turn against each other to some extent.
Why did the couple invent this story? Anson goes into great detail about how the Lutz' obtained the mortgage and deed for the property. I confess I could not follow all of it, but I remember that the couple didn't have full title to the house at the time they moved in. Might this have been the reason for their sudden departure? Did it make financial sense for the Lutz' to abandon the home after only twenty-eight days?