When I was a kid I went on a summer camp trip to Adventureland, an amusement park on Long Island. I spent a couple of days working the counselors and my fellow campers, and I convinced everybody to take a side trip to the Amityville Horror house, a place I had longed to visit. That summer day, sitting in a school bus full of kids who had to pee and who wanted to ride roller coasters, the Amityville Horror house was pretty disappointing. It was just a big old house, even if the exterior remained the same from the movie.
But that exterior has been changed, as owners since then tried to reduce the number of schoolbuses full of city kids that showed up in front of their house. And now that famous house is for sale, and it can be yours for just a hair over 1 million dollars.
There’s real tragedy connected to the house – Ronald DeFeo massacred his family there in 1974. But the legend began when the Lutz family moved in, and they claimed that they were being not just haunted but flat out terrorized by demonic spirits. A book followed, then a movie, then a bunch of sequels (including one in 3D that nobody remembers) and eventually a remake that served mostly as an excuse to get Ryan Reynolds topless.
The haunting is probably absolute BS, completely made up by the Lutzes and unverifiable in any real way, but the Amityville Horror is now a part of American pop history, and if I had the money I’d probably try to snatch this baby up myself.