How do we understand the reputation of the Amityville Horror House?

25/10/2025 18 min

Listen "How do we understand the reputation of the Amityville Horror House?"

Episode Synopsis


If I ask you to think of a famous haunted house, will your mind wander to a white Dutch Colonial house, with quarter-round windows lit from within to look like red eyes? Yes? Then the reputation of 112 Ocean Avenue has done its work, aided and abetted by The Amityville Horror.

Even if that wasn't the first house you thought of, Amityville's reputation stretches before it, ready to snag your attention at the first opportunity. After all, the design of the house reappears intermittently, as do elements of the haunting. A presence that hates Christian icons? A child's invisible friend that takes a dislike to a parent? Items going missing around the house, reappearing elsewhere, if at all? The fact the haunting apparently contains ghosts, poltergeist activity, demonic shenanigans and possibly even a portal to hell just adds to Amityville's towering reputation.

Let's explore this reputation in this week's episode!

I also make a mistake at 10mins 15secs by saying the Lutz family left in March 1976. They left in January, but that's the joy of recording live!

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