12 Haunted House Movies And TV Shows That’ll Scare Your Socks Off – Looper

Since Jay Anson published his bestselling book, “The Amityville Horror” in 1977, there has been a glut of film and TV shows based on the Lutz family and the gruesome events at 112 Ocean Avenue. While they vary in quality, it was the first film in 1979 that set the bar for the ones that would follow. 

One of the biggest selling points of Stuart Rosenberg’s version of “The Amityville Horror” was that it was purportedly based on real events — an idea that terrified audiences back in 1979. Nowadays watching a movie involving demonic possession is routine, but 30-something years ago — with the exception of “The Exorcist” — it wasn’t, particularly if you were compounding the cinemagoers’ dread with the disclaimer that it was all factual.

Of course, the only hard and fast truth regarding “The Amityville Horror” was that before the Lutz family moved in, Ronald Joseph DeFeo Jr. was responsible for killing both his parents, his two brothers, and two sisters at the house in 1974 (via The New York Times). The Lutz family was aware of this before moving in but thought they could handle it, however, ABC News reports that the family left 28 days later. Any haunting that was said to have happened at the address is widely disputed, however, George Lutz insists it is true — and even believed the house could have driven DeFeo to kill. This idea remains the scariest aspect of “The Amityville Horror,” and watching it unfold is an undeniably tense and harrowing experience.