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Dec. 27, 2002 - Art Bell
02:47:49
Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell - Amityville Horror Case - George Lutz
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art bell
50:12
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george lutz
57:12
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richard c hoagland
20:53
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unidentified
Hi, Desert, and the great American Southwest Levitic Wall.
art bell
Good evening, good afternoon.
Good morning, whatever the case may be, wherever you are at all the time post covered by this incredible radio program called Post Ghost AM.
I'm Mark Bell.
unidentified
Glad to be here, even though I have the worst cold.
art bell
Last week when I was getting off the air Friday night, Saturday morning, I couldn't sleep, and I couldn't figure out why Sunday I knew, you know, sore throat.
Typical stuff, right?
Real sore throat.
Then the sneezing begins.
Then the spigots open and you're drowning in a sea snot.
And it's been that way, and then of course it went to my chest, and that's where it is now, residing in my chest.
And I've been drinking abnormally large amounts of spectrum, you know, and coughing up what appeared to be small, hopefully irrelevant organs and stuff.
And so that's my condition tonight.
I've got a hell of a cold.
In a moment, Richard C. Hoagland in the next hour.
George Lutz, the Amityville George Lutz, somebody I have always wanted to interview since I've been doing this program, the original real George Lutz from the Amityville house.
He's the family that moved in after the DeFeo murders, the Lutz family, and they're the ones that the movie was about in the book and everything.
And so tonight we'll get the real story.
A couple of things that are going on that are noteworthy, certainly.
In North Korea, I wonder if Ed Dames could be right, huh?
A defiant North Korea ordered UN nuclear inspectors out of the country Friday, said it would restart a lab capable of producing plutonium for nuclear weapons, so they're not even hiding.
But the UN nuclear watchdog said, its inspectors are going to stay right where they are.
The White House denounced the expulsions, but said that military action was not being contemplated.
I mean, here we have a country that has the means to build nuclear weapons, and they have just announced they're going to do it, and they're throwing out the UN inspectors to build nuclear weapons, and we are not contemplating military action.
Whereas in Iraq, we're doing more than contemplation.
We've ordered a major military force to the Persian Gulf in prep for a possible war with Iraq.
Why?
Because of perceived weapons of mass destruction building and storing and stuff, right?
So case A, Korea, we do nothing.
We don't even contemplate doing anything when they say they're doing it.
Case B, where we're not sure they're even doing it, we're going to have a war.
And then this.
Ushering in either a brave new world or a spectacular hoax, a company founded by a religious sect that believes in space aliens announced Friday, it in fact has produced the world's first cloned baby.
Caesarean section, they say.
Bridget Mulsier, that little French pixie that heads up that organization that I've interviewed in the past when they said she conceived, not Bridget, but the American, came on.
I did an interview with Bridget, and she talked about why they were doing what they were doing, what they expected.
Their expectations said they had it done.
unidentified
Now they say it's happened.
art bell
In a moment, Richard C. Oglin begins the no.
There is one important thing that I announce, and that is this is your final opportunity.
As you know, this Akith Rowland and the website, www.arpel.com, where there are some new ghost photographs tonight, Christmas-type ghosts.
Akeith has been with me for years and years and years and years and years.
And on Tuesday, with the ending of the current year and the beginning of the next year, which we will ring in with predictions and a review of predictions made last year at the same time.
But Keith, who's been with me all this time, and the Art Bell website go down forevermore.
Oh, who knows?
Maybe someday I'll bring it back up as a ham radio website or something.
I don't know.
You know, I own the domain.
So it's going down forever, and the new website takes over.
Now, you can get a commemorative set of CDs that memorialize this website and a lot of the stuff that was on it over so many years.
And this is about your last chance to do so.
Now, the way to do it is to go to artbell.com.
You can't miss it.
You know, it's your last chance.
These will not be for sale after the stroke of midnight or after the show.
Actually, at midnight on January 1st, they will go off sale.
You will not be able to get them.
Come hook or crook or whatever.
You can't get them.
So this is your last chance.
I suggest you go to artbell.com and scarf them up between now and the beginning of the new year.
Rushing toward us now, I might add.
Well, okay, here comes Richard C. Hoagland, a good friend for a lot of years on this program, a whole lot of years.
And he was at one time advisor to Walter C. Cronkheit, and he was an advisor to NASA, and he won the Instrum Science Award.
And he's been invaluable as a part of this program.
He will continue to be a part of this program.
And he was the man who watched with Walter as the U.S. went to the moon.
So we've been to the moon, and we're contemplating a trip to Mars to find out if so many things that Richard has talked about are true or not.
And we've done all this, and Still, we haven't conquered the damn common cold.
Maybe you could explain that one, Mr. Science.
richard c hoagland
Good evening, Art.
art bell
Good evening.
I've been thinking a lot about that, Richard.
I mean, here we are cloning a human baby, right?
If it's true, we still haven't conquered the cold.
richard c hoagland
Well, there are some things, but one has to take them very early.
It's the first sign.
I thought I was coming down with one a couple of days ago, and I took something called oxalocoxinum, which is a naturopathic remedy.
art bell
I don't know if I believe in all that, Richard.
I mean, yeah, you didn't come down with it, but maybe the answer is you weren't really coming down with it.
richard c hoagland
Well, it had all the symptoms.
We don't want to bore people with our symptoms, do we?
art bell
Well, I do want to know about why we haven't done anything about the.
Well, you're saying we have.
richard c hoagland
I'm saying we have.
You just have to look in the right places.
unidentified
Okay.
richard c hoagland
I'm sorry you feel bad.
art bell
That's all right.
richard c hoagland
You know, it's bizarre.
I was thinking all day after you'd called me and said, you want to do something tonight?
And I thought, what the heck are we going to talk about?
art bell
Well, we're about, you know, I mean, time is short.
richard c hoagland
Because, well, we've hit all the specifics.
Everybody knows the landscape.
What I wanted to do in the little time we have left, since this is our last show, is to be a little more philosophical.
I'd like to turn the tables.
I'd like to interview you on a couple of things.
art bell
Yeah, all right, fine.
richard c hoagland
Okay.
Like, you've been at this now in this incarnation of coast to coast dealing with the edgy stuff, the things at the edge of perception, the unknowns, the things we haven't nailed down, the things the mainstream says are crazy and kooky and other people know are not for at least 10, 15 years.
art bell
Closer to the 15 mark.
Yeah, that's right.
richard c hoagland
And what I wanted to ask, and I'm sure everybody wants to know the answer, is, Art, what do you think you've learned?
art bell
I've learned a lot, Richard.
unidentified
i mean you know i think i've learned Well, but then you used to be heavy into politics.
art bell
I used to do it on a daily basis until I got sick of it.
richard c hoagland
And then you realize something.
art bell
Well, that's because I realize there's more to life than the latest political squabble in Washington.
I mean, every other talk show host around the country has all they do.
The latest bull coming out of Washington.
Well, there's other things to talk about.
There's other things to life.
Yeah, that's what moved me to do this program.
You asked me what I've learned.
I've learned a lot, but how much do I know?
I don't have the answer to that one.
A lot of what I had thought would begin to happen, Richard, because of all the interviews and everybody I was exposed to, you and many others, a lot of that has begun to come true now.
So I'm seeing a lot of what I concluded through what I learned beginning to manifest itself now in the world.
But what I really know, absolutely, very little still.
What I really know, I just see a lot coming true that I thought would occur.
I don't know.
That's not a good answer.
It's the best I can do.
richard c hoagland
So you've connected dots.
art bell
Sure.
richard c hoagland
Things that you suspected might be possible, you think now are more possible?
art bell
That's, well, no, I think beyond that.
I think a lot of the things that I learned led me to believe that certain things would begin to occur in the world, and they are well underway, Richard.
richard c hoagland
Well, you've written two books, one with Whitley and a couple on your own.
Actually, three.
art bell
Actually, four.
The Art of Talk, The Source, The Quickening, and The Coming Global Superstar.
richard c hoagland
And obviously to write a book, you've got to do your homework.
unidentified
Yep.
art bell
A lot of work.
richard c hoagland
In terms of the global climate thing.
art bell
It's underway.
richard c hoagland
You definitely believe, as I do, it's underway.
unidentified
Yeah.
art bell
Yeah, I went on the NBC Today show and got laughed at and poked at by Matt Lauer.
And then one day, a year later, I got to poked back.
And that little nonsense aside, the fact of the matter is, anybody who doesn't know that climate change is underway simply isn't watching.
richard c hoagland
Well, what's interesting is it's climate change not just on the Earth, but as you and I have done shows, there's climate change on Mars.
art bell
You bet.
richard c hoagland
You may not be aware that there's climate change on Pluto, on the satellites of the outer planets.
There is a general warming occurring all over the solar system.
art bell
Now, that is interesting.
richard c hoagland
And the mainstream guys haven't a clue.
art bell
Oh, now you're onto something, Richard.
A general warming going on all over the solar system.
You're the first one to say that.
In other words, I understand that climate changes on planets and that there are cyclical things that occur.
We all know that.
That's a big argument we have here about whether our man's hand is involved in that or it's just a normal cyclical change.
But you're telling me a warming is underway all over the solar system.
Now that's news.
richard c hoagland
Now, in terms of things you've learned, you and I have discussed endlessly the Mars data that we've been probing and the physics that we think we have discerned from that data and the predictions that physics makes.
And we've talked on this program many times about the connection between the physics and the global climate models that you and Whitley wrote about.
Well, what's fascinating to me is to tie in the climate change that Malin is reporting on Mars with the melting of the CO2 ice caps at the South Pole at a rate which is phenomenal.
I mean, in a few hundred years, if the melting that they're seeing in these images from year to year keeps going, there'll be no ice cap left, no solid carbon dioxide ice cap.
art bell
Well, I was certainly aware of the warming on Mars.
I'd read a number of stories about that, Richard, but I didn't know about the other planets.
richard c hoagland
Well, a few years ago, I mean, we have Hubble in orbit, and it can take images of everything in our backyard.
They don't do it very often.
But it's very difficult to get data, even with Hubble, on Pluto.
Pluto, as you know, is way out there.
It's 4 billion plus miles.
Actually, it comes inside the orbit of Neptune for a period of time, and then it goes back out.
It's a very elliptical orbit tilted very significantly to the rest of the planet.
art bell
Yeah, it's way out there.
What evidence do we have there's warming on Pluto?
richard c hoagland
Well, a few years ago, the only way they can really discern climate on Pluto is by watching it pass in front of a star.
And what they do is they send teams to various islands or little tiny parts of continents where the shadow of the star, it's basically a spectral eclipse.
art bell
Spectral photography, I assume.
richard c hoagland
Well, you do photometry, is actually what it is.
What you're doing is you're watching how the star disappears as the planet overtakes it, and then watch what happens when it reappears.
On Earth, more familiarly, when you watch a bright star go behind the moon, there are some scientific things that you can discern about the moon.
For instance, this was one of the early ways that astronomers realized that the moon had essentially no atmosphere.
If the moon had an atmosphere and a star went behind it, you would see the star twinkle just before it disappeared because of the heat burblings of the lower atmosphere, even on a relatively low gravity world like the moon.
Well, there's basically no twinkle, so we know there's an upper limit on the atmosphere of the moon, which is like one millionth or something of the Earth's atmosphere.
Well, when Pluto a few years ago went in front of a fairly bright star, they got a good look at the twinkle of the star going in and coming out, you know, ingressing and egressing.
art bell
And of course they spectrally red than what Pluto has been doing.
richard c hoagland
Well, what you can do is you can map the twinkles to models of how planetary atmospheres will affect starlight.
art bell
So was it twinkle, twinkle, little global warming or what?
richard c hoagland
Well, it was twinkle, twinkle.
Mars had a nice Mars, Pluto had a nice fluffy atmosphere for something so distant and so cold.
art bell
Oh, isn't that interesting?
richard c hoagland
But it was inside the orbit of Neptune, so it was expected because it was closer than the eighth planet.
And its atmosphere is mostly, you know, carbon monoxide and nitrogen and methane, things that warm up at very, very cold temperatures and are still gaseous.
Well, a few weeks ago, there was another opportunity.
And Pluto went in front of another set of stars.
And they recorded those observations.
Now, Pluto has been receding from the Sun.
It is now beyond Neptune, moving out to its farthest point from the Sun.
And when a planet moves that far away from the Sun, it gets a lot colder.
Because out there, the Sun is almost like a bright star.
It is so damn dim.
i mean for billion miles that uh...
art bell
so if we were out on pluto looking back at uh...
richard c hoagland
good old soul it was brilliant star but it would it would actually What was bizarre about the observations is that even though Pluto is moving away and should be a lot colder, it's warmer.
The occultation of this star showed the atmosphere was fluffier.
There was more activity.
art bell
Yeah, how could that be?
No.
richard c hoagland
Exactly.
art bell
You know, first jump I would make, Richard, I mean, the only common thread locally would be what?
The sun.
The sun getting hotter, the sun getting brighter, the sun changing in some way, causing changes in all the planets that it shares relative space with.
That's what, you know, the first thing that's happening.
richard c hoagland
The problem with that is it ain't happening.
The sun is doing exactly, except for the sunspot cycle, which is very, very minor, the sun is radiating exactly as much heat and light as it always has.
It's not getting brighter.
It's not being an expanding variable.
It's not doing any of the weird stuff that would cause these progressive changes, warming, all over the solar system, from Earth all the way out to Pluto.
art bell
Well, what other commonality is there, Richard?
richard c hoagland
It's the hyperdimensional model.
I mean, you and Witt touched on it when you talked about cyclic changes.
art bell
Yes.
richard c hoagland
That instead of global warming on Earth being due to civilization and technology and burning of fossil fuels, there may be long-term intrinsic changes in climate.
But that's really not answering the question.
It merely says it's nature, but it doesn't explain what nature does.
What we've been trying to do is to apply this physics to these changes and predict that, in fact, these changes are due to a general change in the energy pass-through, if I can use that word,
of the whole solar system, and that this is being triggered by the movements in the model of unseen planets far beyond Pluto that have not been generally discovered or acknowledged yet.
But they will be.
art bell
That's part of, I mean, I know it's not Tuesday night and you're not talking about what people popularly call Planet X or no.
richard c hoagland
Well, it might.
art bell
Maybe.
richard c hoagland
It might be a case of mistaken identity.
Because in our model, there has to be at least one, probably two more big guys out beyond Pluto orbiting the sun to account for a lot of other factors that we've published on our website, EnterpriseMission.com.
art bell
Well, there does seem to be mainstream evidence that there is something out there.
They think it's a large planet or a burned-out sun or something.
richard c hoagland
From several years of observations, they've looked at comets.
There's this peculiar pattern of comets that appear to be triggered to come into the inner solar system on a periodic basis, and they're attributing that to some relatively massive object out there.
Well, we're saying that there are two.
And the way the physics works is that when you get planets in phase, meaning at certain angles, the energy goes up.
When planets are out of phase, meaning at other angles, the energy goes down.
The planets that we're not even seeing are getting in phase, which changes the amount of energy that comes through the solar system.
art bell
Is it related to momentum, Richard?
richard c hoagland
It is.
It's called angular momentum.
It's related to the underlying Reality of physics, which is that things are not static.
They're actually in flux.
They're actually vibrating.
There's actually a resonant phenomenon.
Things are.
We can speak of waves.
We can speak of invisible waves in the ether.
art bell
Yes.
richard c hoagland
And these tend to connect us to a higher set of dimensions.
art bell
People would say, you can't have invisible waves in the ether.
But then, of course, they're sitting there listening to their radio right now.
Do you see any beam coming into your radio?
No.
Very good.
richard c hoagland
Anyway, so yes, you and Witt are onto something.
Not only is the global warming taking place on this planet, but we now know it's taking place all over the solar system.
And that, of course, means since the sun is not changing visibly, what has to be doing it is something that is not in the mainstream textbooks.
art bell
All right.
Hold it right there, Richard.
We're at the bottom of the hour.
So the angular momentum of something sort of almost unseen out there is doing all of this.
unidentified
And it's getting warmer everywhere from the high deserts.
art bell
I'm Mark Bell.
unidentified
Well, I think it's time to get ready to realize just what I have done.
I had been on the hand of my hair.
Oh, did you be there?
The heart is on fire My soul is on fire Where are those happy days?
They seem so hard to find.
I tried to reach for you, but you have lost too much.
Whatever happened to my love.
I wish I hadn't face to mind.
The pace of the room So when you hear me, darling, can't you hear me?
It's always The love you gave me, nothing else can save me It's always When you're gone, how can I even try to go on?
When you're gone, how can I even try to go on?
Rechart Bell in the Kingdom of Nye.
From west of the Rockies, dial 1-800-618-8255.
East of the Rockies, 1-800-825-5033.
First-time callers may rechart at 1-775-727-1222.
Or use the wildcard line at 1-775-727-1295.
To reach out on the toll-free international line, call your AT&T operator and have them dial 800-893-0903.
So when you're near me, darling, can you hear me?
It's so easy.
art bell
Top of the evening or morning or whatever, everybody.
Richard C. Hoglifford's here.
Want to remind you, Tuesday is coming, will be the last for me.
During that program, we will extract from the Bell Family Hall the predictions you all made last year.
We will take new ones for next year.
And who knows, if they invite me back, I'll review them with you, and we'll take yet more.
So this really isn't goodbye.
Bear that in mind.
It's just sort of en revoir, and I'll hand it over to George, and then from time to time, I will be back.
So it's not really goodbye.
It's just sort of a real serious hiatus.
Stay right there, and we'll be right back.
Once again, Richard C. Hoakland from the mountains of New Mexico.
Richard, welcome back.
richard c hoagland
The snowy mountains of New Mexico.
art bell
Yeah, I bet.
Hey, there's another one on the way, and I understand they had, you know, like 70 mile-an-hour winds up on the coast of Oregon, California, up there, Washington, I don't know.
richard c hoagland
Hyperdimensional weather.
art bell
Yeah, the weather is very serious, and it's not going to get better.
It's going to get worse.
richard c hoagland
It's going to get more extreme.
Yeah.
And that is, you can take that to the bank, so plan accordingly.
Okay, continuing with our interview, Art.
unidentified
Sure.
richard c hoagland
in terms of our artwork what do you think you've learned uh...
art bell
richard you know a lot of times You know, these damn things are rocks.
And then on several occasions, you would present me with photographic evidence that I think even a complete idiot couldn't miss.
And for example, the latest one, what I call The City, is inescapably true.
So, Richard, you have amazed me.
Sometimes you've driven me nuts.
Sometimes you have, I thought you were just like wrong.
And then sometimes you have just absolutely set me back on my butt, you know, to the point where there was no, it was undeniable.
There was a city.
There is a city below the surface on Mars.
There is a city.
richard c hoagland
I've done my job.
art bell
Nobody who looks at that can deny it.
I'm sorry?
richard c hoagland
Oh, I've done my job.
art bell
Well, I guess you have, yeah.
richard c hoagland
Well, you know, it only takes one white crow to prove that all crows aren't black.
art bell
That's true.
richard c hoagland
And out of all the photos, you know, if even one rings your chimes, I won't say Bill.
art bell
Yeah, you know, you found the crow.
richard c hoagland
If even one is inexplicably bizarre to the point where it demands more answers, we have done our job.
Do you know that that set of images, that infrared image that was released to us under the most bizarre circumstances this summer, has elicited more over-the-top reaction from our enemies probably than anything that we've been involved in since 1998 when you and I went through this summer?
art bell
Yeah, I'm not surprised, Richard.
That is way over the top.
I mean, it's a damn city.
Of course, it elicited a lot of reaction.
richard c hoagland
Well, it should.
And oddly enough, I think in a strange way, and I'm going to move into the next area of this with a segue that I hope you'll appreciate.
I think it can potentially begin to help us understand why we are moving hell-bent for leather toward war with one nation on this planet when, as you pointed out a moment ago, there's another nation half a world away which has got them, is making them and bragging about them.
art bell
And throwing out the inspectors.
That's right.
We're not even contemplating military action while we build up, ready to tear into Iraq on the possibility that they might have them.
I mean, it doesn't make sense.
richard c hoagland
Here's the segue.
Apart from the hard data that we've presented, what are your thoughts on the ritual model that we've been talking about for years?
art bell
I've always had a big problem with that, Richard.
richard c hoagland
Well, tell me why.
art bell
The ritual aspect of it.
In other words, I'll go this far, Richard.
I think that there is a connection to ancient Egypt, but I don't think it's as complex a connection as you have drawn over the years.
Remember Old Navy?
richard c hoagland
Of course.
How could we ever forget that?
art bell
You know, it's a pretty wild episode.
So I think there's some sort of connection.
When you look at what's on Mars and you look at Egypt and you don't see similarities, well, then you're not looking.
Okay.
So I go that far, but, you know, you drew some cases where we launched on certain dates because of ritual connections and all the rest of it.
And I don't know that I bought off on that.
You asked, I'm telling you.
richard c hoagland
No, no, I absolutely want you to tell it the way it is.
art bell
Well, I'm doing it.
richard c hoagland
Well, all right.
The Egypt connection to me is striking and was totally surprising, not to the extent that the resemblance of the stuff on Mars looks like the stuff in Egypt, but that there appears to be a group of folks, guys, who are ritualistically following an ancient religion that was attached to the stuff in Egypt.
That, to me, that has surprised the hell out of me.
And the more I have burrowed into this, the more I probed, the more surprised and astonished I have become because this is supposed to be the 21st century.
This is supposed to be, you know, people looking at things and behaving scientifically not according to an ancient, ancient religion.
And yet that's what the pattern, we talked about pattern recognition early in the program, that's what it's all about.
art bell
Well, Richard, with regard to ancient religion, yes, there probably was one.
I think the Egyptians knew things, perhaps through some sort of religion that may have been formed around it or may have been the basis of it, who knows, that we still don't know.
Things that we have not yet learned again, things that may be contained in a library under the Sphinx or somewhere else on the planet, I'll be damned if I know.
But yeah, they knew something that we don't know again yet.
richard c hoagland
Meaning they had access to carefully preserved records of some sort.
art bell
Yes, and I think they had the ability to manipulate some sort of physics that we yet have not deciphered.
richard c hoagland
Okay, well, that brings up, of course, the question of the pyramids.
unidentified
Yes.
richard c hoagland
And have you found your piece yet?
art bell
No, you know, Richard, I have not.
richard c hoagland
You have got to.
art bell
And I tore drawers open.
I mean, obviously it's here somewhere, but Richard, in the years that I've been in this wonderful home with my beautiful wife, we have accumulated...
It is now to the point where the cars, you have to manipulate them extremely carefully while going into the garage lest you hit what is now occupying the garage, which is almost half of everything we've had.
I mean, it's unbelievable how much we've accumulated.
I cannot bring myself to throw things away.
It is here, Richard, but I don't know where.
And when I'm retired and I have time to go through all of this stuff, I'll find it.
richard c hoagland
That means you're starting Tuesday, right?
art bell
Well, maybe Wednesday.
I'm going to start it with Zoom.
Yeah, no kidding.
richard c hoagland
Okay.
Anyway, back to the Egypt thing, because if there is a piece of technology that's inexplicable, and we've described what that piece did with a radium watch and all that.
art bell
It should be noted, by the way, that the piece that I got, and you know how I got it, I did not personally bring it out of Egypt.
Do you hear that, Zahi?
I did not do it.
And Richard, there were other pieces that came out of Egypt.
So the one I have is not the only one.
unidentified
That's right.
richard c hoagland
In fact, after we did our last show, some folks emailed me and offered me pieces of what they've got.
And that is in process, and obviously we will report what happens in future programs.
But getting back to the Egypt thing, were you aware that Egypt, you know, ancient Egypt had a major enemy in the same time frame, circa, you know, 3,000, 4,000, 5,000 years ago?
art bell
Yes.
richard c hoagland
And it was a place called Sumer slash Akkadia slash Babylon, the Babylonian Empire?
art bell
Yes.
richard c hoagland
You know, of course, what the capital of the Sumerians, Akkadians, Babylonian Empire was, don't you?
art bell
What was it?
richard c hoagland
The current city known as Baghdad.
art bell
Yes.
richard c hoagland
You know that Saddam Hussein firmly believes he is the reincarnation of Nebuchadnezzar.
art bell
He does, in fact, yes.
richard c hoagland
And he has been doing an extraordinary program of restoring ancient sites and temples, funding archaeology, rebuilding palaces And esplanades, and you know, they used to talk about the glory that was Rome.
Well, this is much, much more ancient.
This is almost to the dawn of written civilization.
art bell
You know, Richard, I hope that you bring up a very interesting point, and I hope that somehow Saddam has not uncovered some information about a physics that we have yet to understand and don't want to be surprised by when our bombers head over Baghdad.
richard c hoagland
Well, this is one of the reasons I raise this, because when you begin to look at the record, and I had a very interesting thing happen over the holidays.
I got a book for Christmas.
Mike, you know, Robin's son, gave me a book, a book I've actually wanted to read, and I've had time to read it, and I've actually taken the last week off, you know, and done a few other things, Christmas stuff and family stuff, and had time to read this book.
It's called Bush's War by Bob Woodward.
It was published this fall, and it was supposed to be the first 100 days of the Bush administration.
Well, after 9-11, he changed, Woodward changed the theme to look at what happened after 9-11 and the preparations for Afghanistan, etc., etc.
And when going through this book, I have seen the most remarkable pattern, more dots, which may not answer the question, why are we hell-bent for leather to go to war with Iraq, but I'm hoping it will raise questions.
art bell
Do you imagine that it could be possible, Richard, that we understand that they might have uncovered or be close to uncovering something in Iraq that we must have and or slash must keep out of their hands?
richard c hoagland
Given the secretive nature of all of this, I could not say no to that proposition.
What I think is more likely is that in this coming year, I mean, you have been doing a commercial now for several months regarding the upcoming Mars opposition in August of 2003.
art bell
Yes, sir.
richard c hoagland
When Mars will be closer than it has been, and you keep reading that number, it's not 50,000.
It's closer to 75,000 years.
art bell
Either way, a long time.
richard c hoagland
Well, the reason that that is important is because that number is referenced in some bizarre channelings that were done in Kentucky some 25 or 30 years ago in connection with Mars.
That 75,000 years and this cyclic apparition of Mars, when it comes closer than it is at any other time, and we're not talking by a lot, we're talking by maybe half a million miles, but it's literally symbolically closer than it has been for an immense period of time.
75,000 years is three processional cycles.
That's an immense amount of time.
If there was a group following these rituals, following the symbolism, following their connection with them.
This would be very important.
And what I find inexplicable in terms of mainstream reactions is how we can have a country like North Korea, which is obviously led by a madman, obviously very destabilizing, obviously intent on doing some very nasty things, obviously has the technology to do it, is starting reactors to process more fuel so they can basically begin to build an assembly line for weapons.
And we have absolute unequivocal proof this is going on, whereas on the other direction, in Sumer, all we have is the Shira and Kimra, Kimara and Mirrors of he's the bad guy, he's the bad guy, we must take him out.
We must take him out.
art bell
And your explanation, Richard, is every bit as good as the non-existent explanation given by our administration, which is none at all.
richard c hoagland
None at all.
Now, back when you and I lived through the Cuban Missile Crisis.
art bell
That's right.
richard c hoagland
And it was one hell of a crisis.
art bell
Richard, I remember I was in the Air Force.
I remember picking up the red phone and listening to the DEF CON level and the air on the back of my neck went straight up.
I thought we were going to war.
richard c hoagland
Well, we were.
We were a hair's breadth away.
And we now know from the meetings that McNamara and others have had with the Russians that if Kennedy had caved in to the Joint Chiefs and had invaded, the Russians had, I forget how many thousand tactical nuclear weapons in Cuba already armed and waiting.
Not the ones sitting on those missiles that we were worried about, but other nukes that we didn't know about.
The warheads had already been sent.
What would have happened is we would have triggered World War III instantly.
unidentified
Yes.
richard c hoagland
And we would have incinerated civilization and we would have been back to square one.
art bell
Yeah, I believe that is pretty well agreed upon by most scholars who've now had a really good look at what really did happen.
I think you're right.
richard c hoagland
So it was only Kennedy's careful forethought and understanding of the scope of what was at hand that forestalled the most horrible tragedy that could have befallen mankind.
Contrast that with what we're doing now, where on no evidence at all, I mean, Kennedy had Stevenson go to the UN and lay out before the world the evidence of those missiles.
art bell
I saw it live.
richard c hoagland
We have zero evidence laid out in public that Saddam Hussein, nasty bad guy that he is, rotten father that he is, has anything sending our young people in to die for him that would ask us to poise the world on the brink of oblivion when you have a billion Muslims who will look at this as basically the crusades all over again.
art bell
I'm with you.
richard c hoagland
An assault on the Islamic world.
art bell
I'm with you.
What could possibly be so important to risk?
richard c hoagland
I'm saying we have to look at the symbolism and this deep trail we have found that even if you don't believe all the pieces, and I will give you one stunning example, you know that We have connected this with the numbers.
There are numbers that keep coming up over and over and over again.
I'm reading Bob Woodward's book, and I'm reading about the meeting between Bush and Putin in Crawford, Texas last fall.
When Putin came over and they spent two or three days at the ranch, and Bush decided to sign a nuclear de-escalation treaty where we reduced to X number of warheads.
Well, I was looking at the numbers and I could not believe what I saw because against all his key advisors, particularly Rumsfeld, Don Rumsfeld, who's the head of the Defense Department, was arguing strenuously in these NSC meetings that Woodward got the minutes of it.
And I don't know how he did it, but he got some astonishing first-hand information as to what was going on in this critical period of history.
Rumsfeld is arguing against going to the Soviets and writing a treaty.
Bush says we're going to do it, and he did it.
In the treaty, it says that by 2012, I thought was a fascinating date to choose.
art bell
It sure is, yes.
richard c hoagland
We will reduce warheads on both sides to between 1,700 and 2,200 nuclear warheads.
Now, if you add those two numbers and divide by two, you get 19.5.
art bell
See, this is the one area where...
The number thing, I don't know, may be full of it.
richard c hoagland
uh...
art bell
the other part of it maybe genius because they're sure as hell is no explanation viable explanation for what we're about to do with our young men and women uh...
putting them at risk for god knows what when we've got another nation doing what we claim we're going into cure over there when we don't even So I alternate, and I have all these years, between thinking you're full of it and you're a genius, and you're probably both, just like me.
I'm full of it, and, you know, maybe I have my moments.
richard c hoagland
Well, my friend, it has been a lot of fun going over this stuff with you all these years.
I look forward on special occasions to doing it again.
I'm glad to hear that you're not totally retiring from the field because my gut tells me, in terms of prediction, that 2003 is going to be one hell of a year that's going to make a lot more dots come together.
Unfortunately, I don't think we're going to like the shape of some of the dots.
art bell
Well, Richard, nobody ever totally retires from radio.
It just doesn't happen.
It just doesn't happen.
But, you know, so I'll get in.
I'll make my appearances every now and then, I hope.
You know, if they invite me in, I'll be here.
In the meantime, for all the years that you've been with me, I want to thank you.
richard c hoagland
It's been a pleasure.
art bell
It really has been a pleasure, Richard.
Take care, my friend.
richard c hoagland
You too.
art bell
Good night.
richard c hoagland
Good night.
art bell
All right.
Coming up in a moment, somebody that I've ought to interview.
I've really wanted this interview my entire career.
Father Malachi Martin said that the Amityville house, the Amityville house from the Amityville horror, was one of the most haunted places in America.
He said that on my program.
In a moment, we're going to talk to the man who suffered through all of this with his family, George Lutz, from the high desert.
This is Coast to Coast AM.
I'm Art Bell.
unidentified
This is Coast to Coast AM.
The white bird dreams of the aston tree with the dying leaves turning gold.
The white bird just sits in the cage, rolling on.
White bird must fly, or she will die.
White bird must fly, or she will die.
The sunsets come, the sunsets go, the clouds will fly, the earth will fall, and the young bird's eyes do always grow.
And she must fly, she must fly, she must fly.
Call Arkbell in the Kingdom of Nye from West of the Rockies at 1-800-618-8255.
East of the Rockies, 1-800-825-5033.
First-time callers may rechart at 1-775-727-1222.
And the Wildcard line is open at 1-775-727-1295.
To rechart on the Toll-Free International line, call your AT ⁇ T operator and have them dial 800-893-0903.
This is Coast to Coast A.M. with Art Bell from the Kingdom of Die.
art bell
It is indeed.
Good morning, everybody.
Well, this is an interview that during the course of my career, I'm really quite surprised I've never done before.
It's almost odd that I've never done it.
Fortuitous that I'm about to.
I saw, like everybody else, the movie The Amityville Horror.
And isn't it odd that the man involved in that happens to be just over the hill from me in Las Vegas?
George Lee Lutz was born and raised on Long Island.
His birth, was any indication, was meant to be different from the beginning.
Seconds after delivery, doctors raced him into surgery and mended a large crack in his skull, one that should have killed him.
His mother often said that she thought his miraculous recovery was a sign that he was destined for something special.
At a very young age, George displayed a remarkable mechanical aptitude.
At the age of 12, he modified a hobby kit hydroplane, adding his own custom-designed water ski jets.
That was only the beginning of a lasting love for boats, canoes, rollboats, runabouts, sailboats, almost anything that would float on the water.
Later, the fascination grew to include cars, and today George can remember the color, interior, design, make model of every car he's ever owned.
That's a bunch.
At 19, he volunteered for the Marines.
My parents were Marines, so he volunteered.
And later went on to earn two degrees with honors at an FAA course that led then to a job in Boston as an air traffic controller, one of the high-stress jobs in the world.
His father's death, a short time later, took him back to New York to run W.H. Parry, Inc., the family's land surveying business.
George, who was born and raised Methodist, who always considered himself more of a devout realist, married for the first time in 1972, divorced in 73.
Short marriage.
During the process of his annulment from his first marriage, George met Father Ralph J. I believe it's Pegrero, Pegrero, we'll get it, a Catholic priest, an ecclesiastical judge within the archdiocese of the church with whom he quickly forged a strong and lasting friendship.
In 1974, after years of profitable business management and years of enthusiasm and training in the martial arts, George met Kathy Connors, who had three children from a previous marriage.
A year after George and Kathy's first date, they were married.
And soon they began searching for a house of their own.
A nest, right?
By the summer of 75, they thought they had found their dream home, which happened to turn out to be a two-and-one-half-story Dutch colonial in the quaint Long Island community of Amityville.
Little did they know that a legend was about to be born.
In a moment, the truth, the real truth, behind that legend.
All right, here from Las Vegas, Nevada, just over the hill, is George Alotz.
George?
Hi, Archie.
Hey, welcome to the program.
george lutz
Thank you.
art bell
great to have you uh...
you're not on uh...
uh...
george lutz
I'm on a hard line.
art bell
Oh, you're on a hard line.
Okay, good.
george lutz
I've got a bit of static tonight.
art bell
Yeah, I hear that.
I hear that.
I hope it doesn't get us.
All right.
What are you doing in Las Vegas, by the way?
george lutz
Right now, I'm repairing computers and restoring old cars.
unidentified
Uh-huh.
art bell
Old cars, your love.
george lutz
It's what I enjoy the most, but I have what's called fibromyalgia, so there are times when I just can't do the work.
art bell
I understand.
Well, all right, George, maybe we'll investigate the possibility of another line or another telephone.
It was good.
I wonder what happened.
george lutz
I'm not sure.
art bell
Yeah, that's odd.
There's no other phone line open, is there?
george lutz
No, not in this house.
art bell
All right, let me try this and reset this and see if that helped.
All right, anyway, George, it's hard to even know where to start, except all my life.
You know, I saw the movie, and all my life I've been hearing about Amityville.
And in fact, a man that I interviewed, who's now passed away, of course, Father Malachi Martin, said to me in the course of an interview that the Amityville house was one of the most haunted places in all of America.
george lutz
This was a live interview you did with him?
art bell
It certainly was.
Yes.
george lutz
So I assume hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people heard this.
art bell
Oh, absolutely.
unidentified
Sure.
art bell
Yeah, absolutely.
Of course.
And so I'm not sure where to begin all of this with you, except, I guess, you know, in the bio there it said that you and Kathy had just married and you were looking for a brand new house to live in and it's the nesting thing.
You know, you get married and you get a family and you want to go and you want to find a place, you know, to have that family and then that's what you were doing.
george lutz
Well, we both had homes.
We each had our own home.
unidentified
Oh.
george lutz
So the idea was to sell both homes and get one that we could look at as both of ours.
unidentified
Mm-hmm.
art bell
That's right.
Something new and something that belonged to both of you.
george lutz
I'm not sure Kathy liked my house or I liked hers either.
No.
So it was one of those, let's go find something we both like.
art bell
Yep, makes sense.
george lutz
And she had three children.
And so it really made sense to put them both up on the market and then whichever one sold first move into the other one.
And then as soon as that was sold, hopefully we would have found another house by then.
And it did work out that way.
art bell
Yeah, do you remember how old the children were at the time?
Roughly?
george lutz
I believe Missy was not in kindergarten yet, so she would have been like four.
And then Chris and Danny would have been seven and nine, I believe.
art bell
Okay.
george lutz
I'm sorry, it's too long since I've tried to remember those things.
art bell
Yeah, a long time ago.
Well, you're going to be trying to remember a lot.
That's been now a long time ago.
george lutz
Hopefully I'll do better.
art bell
And by the way, folks, George has a cold, too.
We both have colds.
So bear with both of us.
It's tough to think clearly.
It's tough to do anything when you're in the middle of one of these monsters.
How we've gone to the moon, done all this other stuff, now even cloned the first human, according to the Raelians, and we still can't cure the common cold, George, doesn't make sense to me.
george lutz
That's pretty amazing.
unidentified
Yep.
art bell
All right, so you went to look at the house at 112 Ocean Avenue in Amityville.
All of you, I presume, or just you and Kathy, all of us.
Even the children, huh?
george lutz
Yes, and we had a criteria.
That was we were trying to find a home on the water because I had a boat then that wasn't trailerable, really.
And it was important to have the boat close by rather than travel back and forth to it since we tried to use it as much as we could.
art bell
Okay, well, you knew, I presume you knew, about the DeVeo massacre, that six people had been murdered in that house.
I mean, that's a very serious thing to have occurred.
george lutz
We didn't know this when we first went to see the house.
We knew it after the realtor told us after we'd toured the house.
art bell
It was a pretty good price, right?
george lutz
It had been on the market for, I believe, $100,000 or so, and by then it had been reduced, if I remember correctly, to $90,000.
We made an offer of $80,000, and they accepted it.
art bell
Really?
What do you think, George?
What do you think market value was for that house then?
Real market value?
george lutz
Well, the house was 4,000 feet.
It had a boathouse that would take easily a 36-foot boat at the time.
It had a two-car garage attached to that, a heated pool, a full basement.
My guess would be then realistically $125,000 would have been not unheard of.
art bell
All right, then, so at some point, you must have asked yourself or the realtor, hey, how come, maybe after you consummated the deal, how come it's so cheap?
Or when did you find out six people had been murdered there?
george lutz
After she showed it to us, and it was obvious that Kathy had fallen in love with it, and I liked it very much, she said, I don't know if I should have told you this before I showed it to you or after, but this is the house the DeFeos were murdered in.
And we kind of looked at it like, what do you mean?
And then she reminded us of the news stories that had been a year earlier and the trial that was just, I guess, in the process of starting or was going on.
art bell
All right.
For those who don't remember, can you tell us about the DeFeo murders?
I mean, this DeFeo fellow said that he, I think at the time, he claimed that he heard voices telling him to kill his family, right?
george lutz
Ronald DeFeo was eventually convicted, yes, of killing his mom, dad, two brothers, and two sisters.
And for that, while they were in the sleep, while they were asleep.
art bell
Went around with a shotgun and dispatched them, I think?
george lutz
It was a Marlin.36 caliber rifle.
art bell
Yeah, okay.
george lutz
And he's now serving, I think, six consecutive life terms, supposedly with no possibility for parole, but a hearing comes up every year or so.
art bell
I imagine the house had been cleaned up.
There was no sign of the massacre that had occurred there.
george lutz
Oh, no, no, no, nothing like that.
The house showed like any house would.
art bell
And, George, you're looking at it, and you're looking at the water thinking, oh, my God, yes, right?
george lutz
Oh, yeah, we weren't looking for an $80,000 or $90,000 or $100,000 house, but we were certainly in the $60,000 to $70,000 range when we considered we had two homes that sold for over $40,000 each.
and the just the fees on keeping our boat and a marina back then sure really made that the difference uh...
very well as far as money went and i had a successful business that have been my grandfather's and my father's so wasn't something that uh...
We went to one bank, got qualified there, and got the mortgage right away.
Didn't have to go around and shop for a mortgage or apply anywhere else.
art bell
That's interesting.
george lutz
we walked in with a little over twenty thousand dollars down so we ended up with a sixty thousand dollar mortgage did did the uh...
art bell
family Look, this horrible thing happened here.
Can you handle that fact?
Do you love the house?
Do you still want to move in?
george lutz
Oh, sure.
We asked the kids if this was going to bother them, because if it was going to be an issue with them, then we would have certainly walked on considering the house.
They were all fine with it.
art bell
Was there anything at that point?
I mean, none of the children nor Kathy nor anybody said, look, what if it's haunted or anything like that?
I mean, that never really even entered your psyche, or did you even consider that?
george lutz
Not considered in that way, no.
art bell
No.
george lutz
It was, you know, look, you're going to have the same bedrooms that these kids had and they were killed here.
Is that going to be a problem?
You know, that kind of thing.
We asked them and we talked about it at length as a family.
It wasn't a snap decision by any means.
We went back and saw the house a number of times.
One time Kathy and I even went down in my boat to see it from the water, see if we could find it.
South Shore isn't always the easiest thing to get up into the little rivers and whatever and find a house along there.
art bell
Did you and Kathy have enough from your other, the sale of your other houses to afford the $20,000, the down payment?
george lutz
Oh, yeah, sure.
art bell
Okay.
unidentified
Are you a religious person, George?
george lutz
That means something different to everybody.
Back then, I think absolutely not.
I believed in the Lord's Prayer, that kind of thing.
I was a non-practicing Methodist.
But today, what I believe is my own personal beliefs, and there are some things that I believe are pretty unshakable and have been proven to be so over the last 25 years.
art bell
And Kathy?
george lutz
Very.
I would consider Kathy very religious.
art bell
Okay.
george lutz
Kathy has a ministry that feeds thousands of people in Phoenix every year, homeless people.
art bell
Uh-huh.
Then you met this, and you're going to have to help me with his name.
Father Ralph, is it?
george lutz
Father Ralph Pecorora.
art bell
Pecarora, okay.
When did you come in contact with him and under what circumstances?
george lutz
He was an ecclesiastical judge.
He sat in the diocesan office for the Catholic Church there in Rockville Center as a judge, ruling on various cases that came subject to church law for the Catholic Church.
My first wife that she had applied for an annulment meant that I had the opportunity to go in and be interviewed if I wished about that annulment process.
And I didn't understand it at the time, and so I went down and met with him.
He called me and invited me in to do that.
I really didn't think it was a necessary thing.
I really didn't care whether she got an annulment or not.
I wasn't really sure that an annulment was proper, but the end result is that's how I met him.
unidentified
Okay.
art bell
What kind of man was he?
george lutz
Extraordinary.
art bell
In what sense?
george lutz
He read and spoke nine languages, had an equivalent degree from, a law degree from Oxford.
He met you on your terms.
You didn't have to go to him.
He was friendly and smart, and he took his time to explain things to me why it was important that this annulment be granted and once the conditions the church considered it to be proper, properly so.
But more than that, he I didn't realize at the time that there was something unusual about him in the sense that he's an ecclesiastical judge.
I just forget that was his job.
I realized the kind of degrees he had or the intellect involved in doing such a job or how you get to do that.
art bell
So I guess you all became fast friends through this process.
george lutz
Good friends.
And talked on the phone maybe once every 10 days, seven days, sometimes two weeks.
But it was always going to be he was going to come to dinner, meet Kathy and the kids, that kind of thing.
unidentified
All right.
art bell
He ended up, anyway, you became friends.
And he ended up blessing this house, right?
george lutz
Yeah, and I should tell you how that came about.
art bell
I'd like to know how it came about, yes.
george lutz
One of my hobbies was building Harley's then, and a friend of mine, Jimmy Loscalzo in New York, had a Harley shop in East Northport, New York.
And Jimmy, when I told him what house we were buying, the DeFeo house, he said, you've got to get the house blessed.
And I said, what are you talking about?
And he said, you've got to get a priest and get the house blessed.
And I went home from that and asked Kathy about that.
And she said, oh, yeah, that's something you do if you're a Catholic and you buy a new house, you do that.
art bell
And especially in this case.
george lutz
And we didn't know any priests.
So Kathy was a non-practicing Catholic at the time.
And so I called Father Ray and asked him if he would do it.
And he said, yeah, sure, I'd be glad to.
Little did I realize that wasn't the kind of thing that I...
art bell
This was...
george lutz
No, this is before we actually moved on the house.
art bell
Ah, okay.
george lutz
This is one of those things you do supposedly as soon as you can when you buy it.
So it was coordinated that he would come in the day that we actually had the closing that afternoon.
art bell
Gotcha.
george lutz
So we were moving in when he showed up to do that.
art bell
And so boom, boom, boom, here he comes and begins, what, moving through the house to bless it.
I don't know how that's done.
george lutz
Well, I hadn't actually even seen him arrive, and I hadn't seen him since I had seen him in his office that I recall now when I think back about it.
It's the first time I'd seen him in months.
I talked to him quite a bit, but always on the phone.
So there he is going into the house, and I waved.
I was in the back of the truck unloading the U-Haul, and a number of our friends were there.
Even one of Jimmy's brothers was there helping unload the stuff and moving it into the house.
art bell
Sure.
george lutz
Moving day.
We were a little bit behind because after we'd closed on the finances, in New York, you do real estate a different way than you do out here.
You go to a closing, and they have their attorney, and the bank has an attorney or a representative, and you have your own attorney, and they all sit there, and they write everything up right then and there.
And the title company has someone.
It's a different process than it is anywhere else that I've seen.
Well, we had forgotten to get the key at the closing, so we had to go back and find the realtor and go back and get the key so we could actually get in the house.
And there are all these people waiting around to help us move in.
So he showed up, and we were quite behind time.
You know, it's starting to get dark.
It's November.
And so I waved at him, and he went on in, found Kathy, and went about blessing the house.
art bell
Which means, what?
You go from room to room, that kind of thing?
george lutz
Yes, he went room to room, said prayers in each room using holy water.
And I guess there's a house blessing that they do.
I'm not privy to the words.
art bell
Nor am I. But very interesting.
All right, stand by, George.
We're already at the bottom of the first hour.
It goes very quickly.
George Lutz is my guest.
He's the man, along with his family, who lived the real Amityville horror.
And as the night progresses, we're going to get that story as it really occurred with the time necessary, which you have with the luxury of radio to extract that kind of information.
So that's what we're up to this night.
George Lux is here.
I'm Art Bell, and this is Coast to Coast AM.
unidentified
Coast AM
Thank you.
If you could read my mind, love, what a tale my thoughts could tell.
Just like an old-time movie about a ghost from a wishing well in a castle dark or a fortress strong with chains upon my feet.
You know that ghost is me.
And I will never be set free.
As long as I'm a ghost, you can see.
If I could read your mind, love, what a tale your thoughts could tell.
Just like a paperback in the hole, the time the drugstore sells.
When you reach the part where the heartaches come, the hero would be hero of the day.
You won't be that but the game because the ending just too hard to take.
To reach art bell in the Kingdom of Nye, from west of the Rockies, dial 1-800-618-8255.
East of the Rockies, 1-800-825-5033.
First time callers may rechart at 1-775-727-1222.
Or use the wildcard line at 1-775-727-1295.
To rechart on the toll-free international line, call your AT ⁇ T operator and have them dial 800-893-0903.
This is Coast to Coast AM with our bell on the Premier Radio Networks.
art bell
Ghosts or the presence of evil seems most frequently to show up at places where great evil has been done.
Like the DeFeo murders, for example, six family members murdered, slaughtered.
That's one.
There are other occasions, but that's probably the most frequent.
With regard to hauntings, something evil around.
No question about it.
So the setup was there.
In a moment, we'll get back to George Lutz, who lived the Amityville horror.
Now, once again, from Over the Hill in Las Vegas, here is George Lutz.
George, okay.
So I guess we'll call him Father Ray.
george lutz
Yes.
art bell
Blessed the house, went room to room, blessed the house, and then came back and told you what?
george lutz
He was a bit uncomfortable in the upstairs back bedroom.
I wanted to pay him for coming.
He wouldn't accept payment.
Tried to give him a bottle of Canadian Club.
He wouldn't take that.
We invited him back for dinner.
He stopped and just said, he asked us what we were going to use one bedroom for, which was on the second floor in the back.
And that was evidently the bedroom where the two boys had been murdered.
art bell
So he told you not to use the second floor sewing room?
I've got a little echo.
Let me try to get rid of that.
He told you not to use the second floor sewing room at all or as a bedroom or what?
george lutz
Kathy explained she was going to use it as a sewing room, and that, he said, was fine.
There was something about the room that made him uncomfortable, and he managed to communicate that to us without any alarm or anything.
I really don't know how to explain this other than he asked what we were going to use the room for.
He said he felt a little bit uncomfortable there, and that's basically what he said.
art bell
And so you didn't really probe and want to know the exact whys and wherefores of the warning?
george lutz
No, he wasn't forthcoming with it.
It was like he wanted to leave.
And we weren't going to use it as a bedroom, so it wasn't an issue.
It was a strange thing for him to say, but it was like, okay, you have to leave, and that's all you're going to tell us, obviously.
Thanks for coming.
art bell
Good night, and see you later.
Really?
george lutz
We invited him back another time to come back for dinner.
And he said he would.
And that was it.
art bell
All right.
I've got somebody else here who had impressions of the house who's on the line I'd like to bring on.
Mary Pascarella was the lead psychic who investigated the house along with Ed and Lorraine Warren.
I've interviewed them in March of 76.
Mary is a professional psychic and time walker who picked up on some truly terrifying things when she visited your home.
She said the case had a profound effect on her.
It was the first time she had ever encountered something she could only describe as pure evil.
Pure evil.
george lutz
Art, I don't know that she's ever been interviewed about this.
art bell
Well, she is going to be now.
Mary, welcome to the program.
unidentified
Well, good evening, Lee, and how are you?
george lutz
I'm Harry.
unidentified
Hey, honey.
george lutz
How are you?
art bell
Where are you, Mary?
unidentified
I'm in Pennsylvania.
art bell
In Pennsylvania.
So you've never been interviewed in this fashion before about what happened?
unidentified
No.
We had a strange arrangement with that.
I'm very private about things that I do, and it was just something that I wasn't comfortable doing.
art bell
You are private because I'm pretty familiar in this field, Marion.
I'm not familiar with you.
So you obviously are very private.
Anyway, you went into the house at the behest of Ed and Lorraine Warren.
I've interviewed them.
And what happened?
In your own words, what happened?
unidentified
We went in at a time when the North Carolina team was out there from Duke.
And I had not met Lee.
When I go anyplace, I always say, don't tell me anything about the house.
And Ed called me one night and said, I have a case I'd like you to investigate.
And what is your impression?
And I said, I see a white house with a fan window.
And he said, okay, don't say anything else.
And yet, we'll get in the car and go.
And when we arrived there, there was a team there, and we could not go in.
And they went up and got pizza.
And I stayed in the car.
And then I walked out to the back of the house because I like to get feelings of things.
And when I got into the back, I had heard water.
And so I saw a pool.
I thought, well, that's it.
There's the pool.
There's the water.
And discharged that.
But while I was in back there, I usually say some prayers.
I'm Catholic, and I usually say some prayers before I go into a house.
It was my quiet time.
And I looked up into the window in the back of the house, and I saw the face of a young girl looking back out.
art bell
A young girl.
unidentified
Right.
And I had never, I knew nothing of the Fayos.
I hadn't met Lee.
I mean, I'm sorry, George.
george lutz
Either one works, Mary.
unidentified
Well, you're Lee to me.
So I had not met the family.
But because children were involved, and I'm a proverbial mother, I was only interested in doing the house because there were children involved in the house.
Of course.
So I looked up and I saw the face in the window.
It later became, it was the sewing room, I believe, that was the upstairs window looking out.
art bell
That would be the one Father Ray talked about.
unidentified
Right.
And at that time, we hadn't been in the house.
When you enter this house, it's very deceptive.
When I first went into the house, I said to, Ed, these people are really weird.
We're not even going to think about this.
This house is beautiful.
And the house was beautiful.
The Lutzes had decorated the house, so you walked in and it was a beautiful home.
It gave you no feeling, no sensation of anything other than a house.
That comes much later.
All right, but at some point.
When I went upstairs to the first thing that we did when we went in is there's a dining room to the right-hand side, and that had a table that had dishes and things.
Later, we cleared some of that.
When you go, there's a stairwell as you enter, and then when you go down, there's another stairwell that goes down to a basement area.
When you get into the basement area, there's a little laundry room off to your right-hand side of the stairs.
And then I looked to the left, and there was this large game room, and the game room had a pool table and family things where a family would enjoy themselves.
In front of you, there was a little door, and it was into a small, like a cold cellar.
You know, the old houses that had like a little root cellar.
art bell
Oh, yes.
unidentified
Yeah.
So you open the door and you go into a root cellar.
I never could really go into that room because it had an odor to it.
Now, you have to understand that I was under the impression that the house had nothing there.
But I investigate the house to see, because I walk time, to see what possibly could have affected it to cause people to be affected by the house.
And so we got to, the laundry room had some clothes that were on the floor.
So I'm Mrs. Queen by nature, and I picked up the clothes and threw them in and washing them, figuring maybe if there was an odor there, it might be the clothing themselves.
Because it was definitely like a dirty sock smell or something that had soiled.
art bell
A foul odor.
unidentified
Yeah, like just an odor.
And I'm one of these people that is very fussy and very clean.
And if there's a smell, I'll either find the source.
And as a psychic, if you say a refrigerator is in the air, I better be able to put my hand under it, or otherwise I'm not going to believe that there's a refrigerator in the air.
You know, you have to use logic.
art bell
Well, I know that sock smell.
My mom told me my socks could march the way to the washer by themselves when I was about 13 or 12.
It was awful.
unidentified
Well, I'll tell you, the Lutzes were impeccably clean, and the house was absolutely gorgeous.
I mean, what they lost, I'll never be able to replace.
That was for sure afterwards when you sit down.
And the reality is that there has to be something that drove them away because there was more truth in that house as you got to know it.
art bell
Well, I know the finances of all this, and the people who say this is some kind of farce or hoax are full of it because the money thing doesn't add up in any way you look at it, either before, during, or after.
None of it makes any sense unless.
unidentified
Oh, no, because that house had to have his possessions alone when you walked in.
You knew you were walking out.
I thought they were very affluent because they had collections of coins and things.
You know, he was a collector, obviously.
But that's a moot point right now.
art bell
What is important, though, and what I want to get from you is what you sensed finally in that house.
unidentified
Okay.
When you go up the stairs, from the first stair to the seventh stair, there's a cotton batting feeling, the feeling of wrapping.
And it's as though something terrible had happened on that stairwell.
And that was the first sense of something not quite right.
Going up the stairs to the sewing room, I walked in and I've been blessed with an imagination or a mind that can see time.
And there was a young woman in there, I'd say 15 or 16, with long brown hair parted in the middle.
And if you remember those little mumu dresses that had the Paisley things.
And she was crying.
And one of our jobs as one of my jobs is if you see something that's misplaced, you try to place it back.
So I started to say some prayers and said, go to the white light, because I knew that then I thought that was what the haunting was.
And so I said, go to the white light.
And at that point in time, it was as though the house did not want that soul released.
And you started to feel pressures and anger.
And then when you walk out to the hallway, I felt that I had given her the white light and she had gone.
In my mind.
art bell
But there was evil, real evil in that house?
unidentified
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
After the investigation, I could never go to the third floor.
When you walk down the hall on the right-hand side, there's a stairwell.
Well, I'm not allowed sometimes to do things because I'm one of these people that still believe in Bambi and the tooth fairy and things like that.
And so I'm not good with evil or bad things.
art bell
I don't think many of us have confronted pure evil directly.
Father Malachi Martin spoke of it many times, and I still even the concept of evil as an entity, as a pure thing, it will stay on the hair on the back of my neck straight up.
And I have a sense, but that's all.
I've never confronted it directly, nor do I wish to.
unidentified
Neither had I. And I had a group of friends.
I worked for the Diastenian Bridge Board at that time.
And I had a school.
And I had four priest friends, and whenever I went anywhere, they always gave me holy water and borrowed one of their Bibles and a cross and brought it with me just as a kind of a protection for myself.
Because you never know if you don't.
People don't understand that if there's good, there's evil.
art bell
Yeah, I understand that.
unidentified
You just don't touch it as frequently.
And because we're locked in a clock time, we don't walk the perimeters.
The one thing that I did know about that house was that it was not the original house.
I used to be an artist, and in my mind, blueprints will form, and I kind of sense when something's real or not real.
And the thing that I knew immediately, without having met Lee, was that this was a man that was protecting his children and his home.
It had nothing.
I don't even think he believed in us as psychic investigators.
I mean, not truly.
I think his main concern was the amount of money that he invested in the home and his children.
art bell
Yeah, that's the real world.
But bottom line, Mary, in your investigation, there was no question in your mind you had encountered in that house pure evil.
unidentified
Pure evil.
We had Channel 5 that was doing a seance, and I was to be the least psychic in that.
We had gotten to the point where the house had began to affect me.
And I had gotten up on the stairs, and I called down to Ed, and I said, Ed, I'm as sick as a dog.
Well, I had this little room upstairs.
I believe it was Missy's bedroom.
And that was my haven.
I could go there and feel perfectly safe.
Perfectly safe.
So I said to Ed, I'm going to lay down in the bed for a little while because it was either that I hadn't slept or whatever.
And so I began to say my prayers and I was saying the Our Father.
And as I was saying the Our Father, I looked out of the door and there was a young man that was with me taping.
And I looked out of the door and as I was saying the Our Father, there was a group of figures standing outside of the door saying the Our Father backward.
I thought, excuse me, but that doesn't sit well with me.
I'm also a stubborn person that says, don't threaten me because I'll stand up and my fists go up.
art bell
Mary, is there any question in your mind the DeFeo souls were trapped in that home?
unidentified
I didn't know about the DeFeos at the time, but I did know that in one of the bedrooms I sensed a young man who was crying as though he had done something really bad.
So I knew two things about this house.
I knew, one, that someone was forced into a position to commit something really horrible there.
Didn't know what it was, but did know that it happened.
That there was a force or an energy in that house that was subject to taking hold of somebody.
And I will say this now, and I'll say it till the day I die, that since we don't know what time is, and time in time is only a fraction of a second, that the energy in that house remains.
It may take 100 years of icon, but it will implode again.
And that house is purely evil.
I took the holy water and threw it outside to the figures.
I took the cross and I raised the cross and I said a prayer and I said, God is with me.
And I threw it.
Did you ever throw water on a fire?
And you get this kind of a little hissing sound?
Yes.
Well, that's what the sound was.
And the kid that was swinging, I thought he was going to faint.
But again, that's the house.
The house is deceptive.
It will take an innocent person.
And I believe Kathy was such a sweet and innocent child, a girl, a young woman, and it affected the house.
It affected curious children.
And Lee was the strength in that house, so the house could never really affect him, only make him angry and want to find out what was the matter.
art bell
You're very well aware the investigators, the investigators, Mary, caught a photograph when there was no child in the home, an eerie photograph that'll stand the hair on the back of your neck straight up, up at the top of that stairwell, caught a photograph of a child when there was no photograph of any, or no child in there to be photographed.
They got a photograph of what appears to be a ghost child.
I've got that on the website right now, www.arpel.com.
Is there any question in your mind that photograph is one of the Lutz?
Excuse me, not the Lutz, the DeFeo, the Deutsche.
unidentified
God forbid.
art bell
Yeah, God forbid, right.
The DeFeo children?
unidentified
I believe that since I was not allowed up on the third floor to where the children were, the boys, I believe, were, that it was probably one of those.
And do I believe they were trapped?
Yes, I do.
I think that the girl escaped into what may have been another room of haven, and that what father felt was a presence without being able to be aware that there was a presence there.
You know, us Catholics are trained in a very different way.
art bell
And Mary, you believe that house is going to, as you put it, implode again.
unidentified
Absolutely.
You get somebody that's very susceptible.
art bell
Mary, we're out of the thing you walk, time, and I've got to go.
But I want to thank you for calling in, and thank you so much.
unidentified
Okay, and I'm Tell Lee.
I'm on and listening.
art bell
All right, Mary.
Mary, Pastorella, George Lutz is my guest.
She walks time.
That was some strolls she took in that house.
I'm Art Bell.
unidentified
Time, time, time.
See what's become a queen.
Call.
Lark Bell in the Kingdom of Nye, from West of the Rockies, at 1-800-618-8255.
East of the Rockies, 1-800-825-5033.
First-time callers may rechart at 1-775-727-1222.
And the wildcard line is open at 1-775-727-1295.
To rechart on the toll-free international line, call your AT ⁇ T operator and have them dial 800-893-0903.
This is Coast to Coast AM with Art Bill from the Kingdom of Die.
art bell
Indeed, so my guest is George Lux, who lived with his family, the Amityville Horror.
Incidentally, I'd like to thank Dan Ferrins for helping to make all of this possible and assisting with some of the material from the History Channel's documentaries, which he did, on the Amityville Horror.
In a moment, we'll get right back to George Lutz.
George, welcome back to the program.
Hi, Archie.
You have described what happened in that house at Amityville, George, as, oh, I don't know, I guess kind of a three-ring circus.
Now, many, many in my audience have either read the book or seen the movie, and the movie, of course, dramatized the heck out of what happened, I suppose.
george lutz
That's a really nice way to put that.
art bell
Is it?
george lutz
It was very Hollywood.
art bell
Very Hollywood.
All right, but what's the real story, George?
What really did happen there?
george lutz
It didn't happen all at once.
When I think back on it now, I think my perceptions of it are different than they were then.
It seemed at times then that it just was like a rolling snowball that got bigger and bigger and bigger.
art bell
Well, nobody, no family pays that kind of money for a house, lays their life on the line, especially a place they love, and then flees a house, George.
It doesn't happen without some really serious stuff going on.
Movie or no movie.
Nobody does that.
Nobody flees a house without a significant reason.
What really happened?
george lutz
When we left the house, Art, I should tell you that we wanted to get the house fixed.
We really did not want to just leave or leave our stuff or give up on living there.
art bell
Of course not.
george lutz
And so when the opportunity came to put together the psychics that went in and investigate the house, the idea was that they would fix it.
art bell
Yeah, but there was obviously a lot wrong to fix, and that's what I want to know about.
I mean, what the hell happened in that house to even bring the psychics on?
What things?
george lutz
What made us leave, in other words?
art bell
Well, or even to the point where the psychics came in.
I mean, what began to happen in that house, George?
george lutz
By the last week we were there, it was nightly occurrences of noises, things like odors coming and going, or Kathy being touched from behind by some unseen person, or Missy talking to herself and asking questions like, telling us about her imaginary friend that wasn't so imaginary, it turns out.
art bell
Yeah, she claimed to have an imaginary friend, right?
george lutz
Yes, and she would come and ask Kathy questions like, do angels talk?
And Jodi is the name of the angel, and Jodi is telling Missy that we're going to live there forever.
Forever.
Strange things.
It's kind of off-putting.
Our dog Harry would not go in that room that Mary was talking about earlier.
The last night we were in the house was the reason not to stay there anymore.
And when we called Father Ray the next day, he asked what we were still doing there.
He was surprised that we were still even in the house.
And it hadn't even occurred to us to, even at that point, to just up and abandon everything and get in the van and leave.
That night, Kathy had levitated and moved away across, away from me on the bed.
art bell
No, no, no, wait a minute.
Slow up right there.
george lutz
Sure.
art bell
Kathy levitated.
Yes, and now you were both in bed?
george lutz
Yes.
art bell
And you were both awake or both asleep at the time or what?
george lutz
Kathy was asleep.
art bell
She was asleep.
george lutz
And she lifted up off the bed and went towards the wall away from me.
This is after she had turned into an old crone, a really ugly old woman that literally took hours and hours for it to go away.
art bell
In front of your Face?
george lutz
Yes.
And then later she did that again at her mom's house after we moved out of the house and moved in with her mom.
art bell
Oh my God.
You're sitting there watching your wife and she turns and like the picture of Dorian Gray, she almost instantly becomes an old woman.
unidentified
Yes.
art bell
And then that effect remains for hours?
george lutz
One time it was longer than just a few hours.
What happened, Art, was that these things in by themselves, for example, everyone in that house, all my kids and Kathy slept on their stomachs in that house.
After we moved out, we found out that the DeFeo murders, all of the whole family had slept on their stomachs.
They were all murdered in their sleep.
None of them got up.
None of them got out of bed or were awakened, evidently, by the sounds of the rifle going off, killing all six of them.
There were no drugs found in their bodies in the autopsy.
And they were all sleeping face down.
I was the only one that could not sleep face down in that house.
I never slept face down before that, and I sort of couldn't do it there.
art bell
Through all of this, George, did you ever question your own sanity?
I mean, we don't often look at our wives and see them become a 90-year-old woman instantly and then have that remain for hours.
I mean, we just don't.
Did you question your own sanity?
george lutz
Sure.
Many, many times in many different ways.
art bell
What about the effect on Kathy?
Kathy, was she questioning your sanity or her own?
Or were you beginning to understand it was the house?
george lutz
Kathy was damaged in a different way.
Each of us were affected in a different way.
And I think Kathy was damaged in a different way than I was.
And I think that for her, in so many ways, it was much harder for her to recover over the years and be able to put it in a place, so to speak, give it some distance.
Even after moving to California and then later on to Arizona, there were times when she was much more sensitive than I was.
art bell
Do you think she's all right with it now?
Has she come to terms now with it?
Or is it still a bad word haunting her?
george lutz
When we did a special for the History Channel two years ago, and that interview was some eight hours, and she was hooked up to oxygen.
She has a disorder, a breathing disorder called valley fever that is quite serious, quite debilitating.
And right now she's still in a form of a hospital that deals with respiratory diseases.
art bell
Yeah, I saw the oxygen tubes.
unidentified
Yeah.
george lutz
Well, she's had a relapse since then.
that was a very hard day for it was it So it was a long day for her.
And there are times when certain questions will come up and be worded in a certain way that are really, you can see the effect on her, sure.
But that happens to me as well.
It's not, this is not a comfortable subject.
It's not something that has a lot of humor in it.
And humor is the one thing that does make it less strong, less affecting of you.
art bell
Yes, I understand that.
I use it myself.
george lutz
It is a wonderful tool to deal with this kind of thing.
art bell
The movie, of course, dramatized the ooze out of the walls and the flies and all the rest of that.
george lutz
The flies were real.
art bell
The flies were...
Tell me about that.
george lutz
And they were there when the investigators went in.
Just on the back window, and that's the same window that Mary saw the, I guess you'd call it an apparition or a person from looking up at it.
Flies were always there.
art bell
They were always there.
george lutz
They wouldn't go away.
You'd kill them and they'd still come back.
art bell
Really?
So that part was real?
george lutz
Not the oozing out of the walls.
art bell
Not the using of the ones.
george lutz
But that was...
What really happened that I think they tried to draw that from, what really happened in the house was that there were keyholes, old-style doors.
This is a house that was built in the 30s and it had old-style keyholes.
art bell
I remember them, yes.
george lutz
We had drips that got longer and longer.
They were black.
They were almost like an epoxy.
And the longer we were in the house, the longer the drips came out of certain keyholes in the second and third floor.
art bell
Oh, so there was some basis in truth.
george lutz
Yes, but not the oozing out of the wall.
art bell
Not the oozing, but something.
george lutz
And then there was, there were, we would wake up in the morning and we would find this gelatin-like substance going from room to room.
And you would think, well, the kids got into jell-o or, you know, somebody did something.
But there was no jell-o in the house at the time, and the kids didn't do that.
And it was sticky and it was there.
It was there for the...
art bell
Just try and clean it up or?
george lutz
Well, it was like spots.
It wasn't like a big mess of some kind.
It trapped from room to room.
And Kathy would wipe it up.
art bell
And just move on.
So that was occurring every day?
unidentified
No, that would, I mean, you couldn't depend on anything.
george lutz
The one thing, thank God, is the lights didn't go out.
At no time did they, you know, they would flicker, but they did not go out.
art bell
They would flicker, though.
unidentified
Yeah.
art bell
So I guess I see what you mean by a three-ring circus.
All of this kind of thing was going on.
george lutz
Well, I'm sorry.
I strayed from where I was going before.
One of the things was that I would be laying there in bed on my back, and everyone else would be asleep, and the house would be quiet, and I'd be getting ready to go to sleep, and I would hear, or I would be already asleep, and I would wake up to a sound of musicians tuning up downstairs.
art bell
Really?
george lutz
And I would think that a clock radio went off and it was off the station or something like that.
And there is no clock radio down there, but that's the first thing that comes to your mind.
You wouldn't know what else it could be.
Go down there and there'd be no noise and the dog would be asleep right by the front door.
Harry was a big black Malamute.
He wasn't a shirking little princess.
He was a really cool dog.
He was in love with those kids.
He was gotten as a tiny puppy.
art bell
I don't know whether you've ever been asked this, George, but it's a logical question in view of the DeFeo slaughter.
Was there ever a time when you found your mind drifting to an awful place where you were perhaps being urged to or considered doing evil yourself, George?
george lutz
It's not a question I've ever answered in public.
Really?
unidentified
Yeah.
It's...
george lutz
I don't know that I'll answer you this straight out, okay, but what I will tell you is this.
The tool we mentioned of humor, I told Father Ray many of the things that went on for us, and he was the one that told me about humor.
That evil can't stand it, it can't be in the presence of it, it has no understanding of humor, it can't relate to it, and it drives it away.
And I had to learn the mental ability, if you will, to be able to think of something humorous when I would get a thought that I didn't like.
art bell
So you did answer it.
You did get them.
And that's how you responded.
george lutz
That's the only thing that's ever worked other than the rosary.
art bell
A kind of a defense.
Humor is a defense.
There's no question about it.
I mean, you're right about that.
It is.
And so you were strong enough to muster that up as a defense.
george lutz
Well, it was a very, it became an exercise, but it took years to get for it to be just an exercise and not something that was a real struggle.
art bell
I understand that you actually began to have some feelings of sorrow or caring about DeFeo, who's going to be in jail for six life sentences.
And the only reason that I could understand that you would begin to get those feelings is because you would understand perhaps a little bit of what he went through.
And that's why I asked you the question, George.
george lutz
There's no doubt in our minds, never has been any doubt after living there that a sane person doesn't do this to his family.
And someone with any kind of right thinking or ability to reason, that reason has been taken away or has been obfuscated in such a way, occluded or clouded or they've been separated from their reasoning powers in a way that most of us hopefully will never understand.
And there's no doubt in our mind that he was influenced by that house and that he was controlled, at least for a point.
He provided a service to that, if you will, that was so horrible that he couldn't live with it or realize it himself.
And without extreme long-term psychiatric care, he has no help of redemption of any kind in this life.
art bell
Do you think that his case should be reviewed for the reasons you're talking about right now?
george lutz
I don't know that what I think, I don't know that that matters.
art bell
It probably doesn't, but it's an important question.
george lutz
He's had his appeals.
They've failed.
I think that a disservice was done to him terribly years ago, that it wasn't a full-blown insanity plea, that it wasn't appealed on that basis, that it wasn't an absolute, that he needed psychiatric care and still does.
I think it's inhumane to think that, okay, they got the guy.
He did it.
Yes, physically he did the murders, but spiritually, emotionally, no.
I don't believe that he's in a pure sense responsible for that as a human being.
I think that he needs help, and I don't think that anyone cares enough to try to get it for him anymore.
We did what we could, and we tried a number of different ways, and his attorney, William Weber, wanted to do a book and make money off him and signed Ronald Litheo up for a 5% cut of whatever book that his lawyer did, you know, put together.
So it became obvious that these people were not going to try to help him.
art bell
The final night that you spent in that house, you've never talked about it.
You've always refused to talk about the last night in the house.
george lutz
Why?
What happens, Art, is when you do that, the worst of it comes back.
It's not like it disappeared.
It's not like I can detach myself from it and just talk about it like what I did yesterday.
You feel it.
Not all of it, thank God, but it comes back and it's not a pleasant experience.
I was laying there in bed.
Kathy levitated and I had to grab her to keep her from going off the bed.
art bell
There is no question in your mind, George, you weren't dreaming this.
You weren't asleep.
I mean, it's an obvious question.
There's no question, yes.
george lutz
No, there's no question.
We were so very pleased three years later to have Chris Gugas come along and give us a polygraph test, each of us, in his office with Michael Rice.
art bell
I was not aware that had been done.
george lutz
Yes.
And one of the questions, well, it's a long process.
It's not like you walk in, strap on the machine, and go.
Oh, yeah.
You have to agree to the questions.
They have to run a baseline.
They do a physiological workup to get within that baseline so that they can get the real responses.
Chris Gugas had taught the use of the polygraph.
He was considered number two and number three man in the world at the time.
He had taught the use of the polygraph throughout the world for the armed forces, for the army, for their intelligence people.
He had been instructed personally by the head guy at the FBI.
art bell
So that was one of the questions he asked?
george lutz
One of the questions was, did you levitate?
One of the questions was, did Kathy turn into an old woman?
art bell
And you answered them all and went sailing past the polygraph.
george lutz
Absolutely.
Later, those findings were published in the National Star of All Things.
It was one of those things where the movie company was getting ready to release the movie and they wanted to do this.
And these are expensive tests.
art bell
Oh, I'm well aware.
george lutz
They were willing to pay for it.
And we said, get us the best there is and we'll do it.
Otherwise, we're not interested in doing it with someone that just got out of school.
You get five questions.
They have to be yes or no.
And that, you know, you get one shot at doing this thing right.
It's not like you have to.
art bell
Well, George, you know, people who are lying usually don't agree to a polygraph.
That's for damn sure.
George, hold on.
We're at the bottom of the hour.
George Lutz, who with his family lived the Amityville horror, is my guest.
And tonight you're hearing the real story of what happened in that home.
From the high desert, I'm Mark Bell.
unidentified
Don't you love her, badly?
And don't you need her badly?
Don't you love her, wait?
And tell me what you say.
Don't you love her, badly?
Wanna be birthday Don't you love her, babe?
Don't you love her as she's walking out the door?
Like she did one thousand times before.
I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man Don't you love her ways?
Tell me what you say.
Don't you love her ways?
Don't you love her as she's walking out the door?
All your love, all your love, all your love, all your love, all your love is wrong.
To sing a lonely song of a deep-loved dream, seven horses seem to be on the mark.
To rechart bell in the Kingdom of Nye from west of the Rockies, dial 1-800-618-8255.
East of the Rockies, 1-800-825-5033.
First-time callers may rechart at 1-775-727-1222.
Or use the wildcard line at 1-775-727-1295.
To rechart on the toll-free international line, call your AT ⁇ T operator and have them dial 800-893-0903.
This is Coast to Coast AM with our bell on the Premier Radio Network.
art bell
Tonight, you're hearing what really happened at Amityville.
My guest is George Lutz.
Can you imagine, I'm going to ask in a moment, I want to go back to it.
Can you imagine looking at your wife and seeing her instantly becoming an old woman, a very old woman, a 90-year-old or better woman?
unidentified
She'll be on the Mars Ah-ha!
Ah-ha!
art bell
Once again, here's George Lutz.
George, when you saw Kathy become a 90-year-old woman or better suddenly, I can't even imagine what would have gone through your mind.
I mean, it would have been like, out of this house, now, gone, I'm out of here, running out of here, actually.
But to see that happen to your wife, apparently more than once?
george lutz
Yes.
art bell
Yeah, more than once.
I mean, what went through your mind?
Aside from questioning your own sanity, once you realized this really was going on, what did you think was happening?
george lutz
What occurs to me to answer you right now is that I'm thinking, how do we fix this?
What caused this?
But not putting it together with the house as such.
art bell
Did you think you were seeing your wife as an old woman, or did you think you were seeing something else?
george lutz
I had watched the transformation, so I knew it was her.
I wasn't going all of those, all kinds of other places, I don't think, in my mind.
It's so long ago now, Art, for me to try to tell you exactly what I was thinking then, I couldn't do it.
It wouldn't be right.
I'd be making something up that wouldn't do that.
Yeah, don't do what went through my mind then.
I know the main thing was, how do we fix this?
What caused this?
That's the obvious stuff.
art bell
All right, well, you obviously assigned.
george lutz
There's a revulsion that I remember feeling also.
I mean, this is not a pleasant thing.
art bell
Yeah, of course not.
And seeing somebody levitate in the air.
george lutz
But I don't know that you put it to the house.
art bell
Well, I can understand.
I mean, you love that house.
You were trying, I'm sure, in your own mind to think of anything else other than the house.
george lutz
Absolutely.
When the odors occurred in the basement, you go looking for broken pipes or leaks.
Absolutely.
When you have noises, you go try to look for the cause of them.
We'd be sitting in the kitchen at night, and the kids would be asleep, and you'd hear someone upstairs walking around.
So you'd go up, and you'd find all the kids asleep in the beds.
So you'd come back down, and a couple nights later, you'd have some people over, and they would hear the same thing.
Then you would know you weren't crazy, and then you would know that something's going on that you don't really understand.
But that doesn't mean you just get up and leave your house.
art bell
Aside from having a priest in, you did, you and Kathy tried to bless the house on your own, right?
george lutz
Yes, we did twice.
art bell
What happened?
george lutz
The.
Basically, we were told it didn't work.
We heard this chorus of voices, as it's been described, asking us to stop blessing the house.
We went around and opened the window in each room.
A friend of ours, and what I'm what I said earlier that you have people over and they hear the same thing, well, in the process of that, a fellow by the name of Bill Newcomb had come over and excuse me for just a moment, I have to cough.
art bell
I understand.
I've been doing it non-stop here for days.
george lutz
What a cold.
Yeah, yeah.
And he had had a similar problem in his house when he was in a house that evidently was haunted.
And he said, you go around, you do the house blessing yourself.
You go around, you open a window in each room, you say the Lord's Prayer, you tell whatever is there to leave, and then you close the window.
Well, that seemed like a reasonable solution, especially since here was someone that I had worked for.
And he had heard the footsteps, and he knew the kids were asleep.
So we did that.
My son Danny's hands were caught in the window in the sewing room, and they were flattened.
His hands were down.
art bell
Oh, my God.
george lutz
And the window had flattened the hands.
And immediate reaction is, we've got to go to the hospital, and we start to go get ready to go.
art bell
And what happened?
This window of its apparent own accord came slamming down on his hands?
unidentified
Yes.
george lutz
And didn't just slam down, was mushed in such a way that his hands were actually deformed.
They were flat.
So you get ready to go to the hospital, and he's screaming.
And everybody's running around getting their coats in, getting him downstairs, and trying to calm him down, which is pretty much impossible.
And you go to leave and look at his hands, and he's fine.
art bell
What?
george lutz
It didn't occur to us until much later that the house never really wanted us to leave.
We would always invite people over.
But we would go out of our way not to leave, not to go out someplace.
While we were there, we had enrolled in a re-upholstery course at the local high school.
art bell
That's what these colds do you, folks?
george lutz
I'm sorry.
That's all right.
And we never went to any of the classes.
I mean, Kathy went out and bought the material to recover the dining room set that we had bought from the DeFeo Estate.
But we never just don't go out.
art bell
That's a curious thing.
You did buy a number of things from the DeFeo Estate from the house, right?
Why did you do that?
Just because it was a really good buy?
I mean, what was the reasoning?
george lutz
Well, let's start with we had two houses.
Both of us liked each other's furniture.
We had garage sales at Kathy's house.
We had garage sales at my house.
Now we're moving into a 4,000-square-foot house, and we've got to fill it up if we can with some stuff.
They made us a deal we kind of couldn't sort of refuse.
And they had nice stuff.
It wasn't like this was blood-spattered or anything.
It was, you know.
art bell
Good stuff, yeah.
unidentified
Yeah.
george lutz
The dining room set was extraordinary.
The kitchen set was lovely.
Some of the dressers that were up in Missy's room were fine.
There was no reason not to buy all of that.
It was there.
art bell
Yeah, and really, if you're buying the house and you're walking into that and you know what happened, then what's the difference between that and the furniture or the whatever?
george lutz
Well, the mattresses weren't there, not anything like that.
I mean, we had our own beds.
It was one of those things that was decided at the closing.
What happened at the closing was that the people that ran the estate had filled up the oil tank, which was almost another $2,000 in cash that was needed right then and there, too.
So the actual cash out of pocket at the closing, including the furniture and everything, was about $24,000, something like that.
On the last night that we were in there, I wasn't able to get up out of bed.
There was a storm going on as far as we were concerned as a family in the house while we were awake.
art bell
A storm in the house?
george lutz
No, while we were in the house, there was a storm going on right around outside.
art bell
Okay.
george lutz
Big storm.
Later, it has been said that there was no storm there.
Well, we know what we experienced.
And as far as we're concerned, there was an incredible storm that night.
The boys' beds were being lifted up and slammed down overhead of me, but I could not get up out of bed to go up and deal with that or stop it or see what was going on.
art bell
What about Kathy?
george lutz
That's when Kathy was levitating and moving away from me and turning into an old woman.
Kathy was mostly asleep that night.
I had brought Harry, our dog, up and tied him to the master bedroom doorknob for him to stay there right there.
And he kept getting up, walking in circles, throwing up, and then going back to sleep again.
art bell
When you say you couldn't get up, you say you didn't sleep on your stomach, right?
george lutz
Right.
I could not get up out of bed.
art bell
You literally couldn't move?
george lutz
No, I could not move.
art bell
And this went on all night long?
george lutz
This went on for most of the night.
The bed was soaking wet.
And it was from sweat.
art bell
Prior to this night, had you been talking to Kathy at all privately?
I would assume you would have conversations with Kathy about what was going on aside from the children.
george lutz
Yes, and talking, and she would tell me what Missy would say to her.
And the boys were treating each other differently than they had before we moved in.
Everyone kind of went to their own spaces at times.
For each of us, we learned later was a different experience at times in the house.
It wasn't like we all experienced everything in unison or saw the same things or heard the same things.
art bell
Well, that's the next question I was going to ask.
Do you have any knowledge, George?
I asked you about your own state of mind and whether you were perhaps being pushed to do something awful or felt moments of that.
I wonder if since you found out that anybody else in the family was being pushed in one way or the other.
george lutz
You need to ask me that again a different way, if you would.
Sorry, I want to answer this in a way that I am assuming what you're asking me.
art bell
Are you now aware that anybody else in your family was being affected in a particularly negative way, perhaps to the degree that they might have done something awful?
And if you don't want to answer that...
george lutz
No, that's not.
The boys were little.
art bell
Unfortunately, in America, we live in a time where little boys have done some pretty awful things.
And so, you know, if there really was, if there was evil in that home, George, its effect could have been different on each and every one of you.
george lutz
It was different on each of us, Ark, but it wasn't, I don't think of it in those terms.
I haven't ever considered that that was a strong possibility.
One of the things we did, though, going back to your previous question, though, and this will probably help with this, is we tried to talk to Father Ray a number of times.
We got phone static, got hung up on, unable to call him from the house.
I would go to my office and I'd be able to talk to him and tell him what was going on.
We asked him to come back to the house to bless it.
You know, the blessing hadn't worked.
When we got through to him the next morning, after our last night there, and he asked us why we were still there, that's when it was slammed home.
We've got to leave.
He's not coming here.
He's not going to do anything, and we're not going through any more of this.
art bell
Well, did he ever break down and actually tell you what he really thought about that house?
Obviously, if he said, well, you're still there like that.
Yes, he did.
george lutz
But it was after we moved out.
art bell
Yeah, and what did he say?
george lutz
His words were almost parallel to Father Malachi's in some ways.
He said they knew about the house, meaning the archdiocese, the Catholic Church.
unidentified
Oh.
george lutz
That they knew that there had been things that had gone on when the Defeos were there.
The Defeos had had masses said there, which may have very well triggered what went on for them, just like having the house blessed did for us.
When I heard, and I never heard the words myself on your show that Father Malachi said, but when I heard that he said the church knew about this, that was not a surprise to me.
It was a surprise that he said it on the air live, because the church has denied and denied and denied the existence of evil in that house at that time.
art bell
Well, George, Father Martin admitted and said a lot of things that the church as an organization would not be willing to.
Father Martin was close to a couple of popes.
He was way up in the Catholic Church at one point.
Father Martin said some things about the church in the Vatican itself that I'm sure the Vatican would have preferred he not say.
george lutz
I considered that truly a heroic act when I heard that, because the church has gone to great lengths in different interviews and at different times to deny that there was any validity to this case.
And for him to say that and know it, and I've heard this from other priests privately over the years, but the church has never said, look, we knew there was a problem with the TeFaos in that house, and we believe that there's something really wrong there.
art bell
You know, it's a strange thing, George, when you think about it a little bit.
My wife is a non-practicing Catholic.
I'm not a Catholic, and I think I'm not very strictly in a church-religious way.
That's not me.
I think that I certainly believe in a Creator and so forth and so on.
But I think it's strange, George, that the church itself, which preaches that there is a God and there is a heaven and there is all the rest of it, seems, particularly in modern times, to be in denial about the opposite,
about evil, which so obviously, to even a halfway rationally thinking person ought to be, if you've got good, I mean, there seems to be an opposite to everything, then there's also evil in the world, and the church seems to be in official denial about evil.
You agree with that?
george lutz
I think of it in a different way.
I'm not going to say that I disagree with you.
I understand why you say what you do.
And I have no idea, really, why I'm more tolerant, maybe, than being so quick to condemn the Catholic Church like so many people are right now.
art bell
I don't know if this is really, I don't know if it's condemnation.
george lutz
I understand, but look, I'm a divorced Catholic.
I can't partake of the sacraments.
I became a Catholic after this, voluntarily.
At one point, I was a Eucharistic minister in San Diego, at the Mission San Diego de Alcula, which is the basilica in San Diego.
Nothing pleased me more than to be a part of the church.
But when I got divorced from Kathy, that was my ability to partake of the sacraments was gone.
And that hurt, and it still does.
I went to Mass for the first time on Christmas Eve, first time in something like 13, 12 or 13 years, this last week.
And it wasn't the same as going to a Mass that Father Ray said.
When you went to Mass with Father Ray, it was a joyous celebration.
And this was a serious Christmas Eve Mass, and there was nothing wrong with it.
It just, it was like the heart had gone out of some of it.
And I miss that.
And I will always support the church, the Catholic Church.
And if they have, for their reasons, done and said things that they believe are right and they can believe in their heart is true, okay.
But we have pictures Of apparently, what is a very good likeness of Padre Pio, who is now St. Pio, in the house appearing there on the side of a moose head that was my grandfather's.
And at the time that that picture was taken, Lorraine Warren is one of the psyches who was in the house, who's been on your show, was saying a prayer to Padre Pio, asking him to come and be with her in spirit there at the house.
This is during the investigation.
And so I don't, you know, the picture is more important to me than what the church says, what some priest says that wasn't there.
The picture means more to me.
And I hold Padre Pio very dear in my heart and always will.
art bell
George, the last night, the last night in the house, do you remember the time, the actual time of day you left?
Was it morning?
Was it nighttime?
george lutz
Somewhere it was around 4 in the afternoon.
art bell
Oh, in the afternoon, really.
So you had that horrible night where you couldn't get out of bed, and then you had all day long until 4 in the afternoon before you left that house.
What was that day like?
george lutz
Well, it's that idea that the house doesn't want you to leave.
Getting out of that house wasn't easy, even after Father Ray saying, what are you still doing there?
Get out.
Can't you go someplace?
He can go to Kathy's mom's house.
Go someplace.
Go to Lee's mom's house.
art bell
Did he think you could ever get back in, or did he mean leave and don't ever go back?
george lutz
No, he never.
I don't think we would have left if he had said, as silly as that sounds, I don't think we would have left if he had said to us, no, you're leaving and you're leaving your stuff and you're not coming back and forget it.
I don't think you could have gotten this out.
I think without him choosing the right words, that was one of those things about meeting him that was just so extraordinary about him.
He later went on and got a degree in forensic psychiatry.
He just knew what to say to move you, to get you to do what you needed to do even if you were in denial.
The only other priest I ever found like that was the Archbishop of Canterbury's exorcist, Reverend Neil Smith.
And that was years later when we did a book tour for the original book in London, England.
We met with him through a reporter for the New York Times, I'm sorry, for the London Times.
Her name is Danny Brooke, and she had even published a book on natural childbirth.
She was quite a well-known reporter at the time, and she introduced us, made arrangements to meet with Reverend Neil Smith, and he performed for us what some people would call an exorcism.
I call it more of a blessing.
But it was a rite of separation in the Anglican church, and it was a separation from the house, from the effects of the house.
He looked right at Kathy and said, you're still affected by this.
art bell
Did Father Ray think that if you didn't leave that house, somebody was going to die?
george lutz
Yes, he did.
art bell
Hold on, George.
George Lutz is my guest.
He, along with his family, lived the Amityville horror.
Tonight, you're hearing what really went on in that house.
From the high desert, I'm Art Bell.
unidentified
I'm Art Bell.
I can hear it calling all the time.
The times have come.
We're fucked now and we're gone.
Seasons don't feel the reaper.
Nor do the wind, the sun, or the rain.
We can be like this.
Come on, baby.
Don't feel the reaper.
Baby, take my hand.
Don't feel the reaper.
We'll be able to fly.
Don't feel the reaper.
Baby, I'm your man.
Ah, la, la, la, la, la, la, la.
Call a bell in the Kingdom of Nigh from West of the Rockies at 1-800-618-8255.
East of the Rockies, 1-800-825-5033.
First-time callers may rechart at 1-775-727-1222.
And the wildcard line is open at 1-775-727-1295.
To rechart on the toll-free international line, call your AT ⁇ T operator and have them dial 800-893-0903.
This is Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell from the Kingdom of Nigh.
art bell
The Amityville Horror, The Real Thing.
George Lutz is here.
He with his family lived the Amityville Horror, The Real Thing.
That's what we're talking about tonight.
We'll get right back to it.
Stay right there.
Don't fear the Reaper.
I don't fear death, but I do fear evil.
There's a big difference, I think.
Now, George, I'm going to revisit this again.
And I know you've never really answered this publicly.
When I asked you about your state of mind through this and whether you ever thought that you were perhaps on the edge or even considering, even flitting through your mind that you might do something bad, there was a story that you took your gun.
You had a gun.
george lutz
Yes, I'm sorry.
I can't get this to go off of speakerphone now, so I'm going to have to talk to you on the speaker.
I hope that's not.
art bell
Oh, that's really bad.
Let's see, just put it on hold and then pick up the phone.
Try that.
george lutz
Didn't work.
art bell
It didn't work?
george lutz
No, sir.
For the whole break, I've been trying to get this to go off the speaker.
I was on the speaker so I could make sure I got back here on time.
art bell
Oh, my goodness.
All right.
Maybe it's still following you from Amityville.
I mean, that shouldn't be.
george lutz
No, this is the first time it's ever happened with us.
art bell
So I'll tell you what I'm going to do.
I'm going to call your number back.
george lutz
Okay, if you hang up on me, then I'll just pick it up and it won't be on the speaker.
art bell
You got it.
george lutz
Okay, sorry about this.
art bell
That's all right.
Maybe something is following us.
Who knows?
Wait a minute.
I don't want to do that.
I don't want to do that.
Go away.
There we go.
Well, now is not strange.
My phone is acting strange, too.
Let's try this again.
Alright, let's give it a try.
This is really weird.
You never know.
You never know.
Sometimes just talking about these things seems to bring them on.
I've been concerned about that for years.
Let's give it a try here.
George?
Are we back on the phone?
george lutz
Yes, I am.
art bell
All right.
Oh, very good.
All right.
Let me try again now.
George, again, with regard to your state of mind, there was a story that you went to the Amityville Police Department and you turned in your gun, saying that you perhaps had an impulse to murder your family.
Is that a bogus story?
Or did you turn in your gun?
george lutz
I had a license to carry a firearm in Nassau and Suffolk counties in upstate New York, but not in the five boroughs of New York City.
art bell
Right.
george lutz
And the Sullivan Act in New York prohibits it, and it's a felony.
Right.
So we were going into the city, so the proper thing to do is to drop it off at a local police station.
That's what I always did.
Nothing else to that story.
art bell
So there was nothing about any impulse or any of the rest of it.
It was just you dropped it off.
george lutz
Right.
That's what you're supposed to do.
art bell
Were you ever concerned about the fact that you were in possession of a gun?
I mean, did that ever give you pause for thought?
george lutz
Well, it's a responsibility, but not in terms of the house.
art bell
Yeah, okay.
That's what I meant.
Yeah, not in terms of the house.
george lutz
No, I had a cash payroll for my business.
That's why I had one.
I had a license to carry, and it's not an easy thing to get.
art bell
I know.
All right.
you left the house four o'clock at one afternoon you just you left i mean did you think it did you Did you think, look, I'm leaving this house.
I'm never coming back.
I'm going to leave everything I own virtually in the house and just get in the car and go?
george lutz
No, absolutely not.
probably would not have left the house, or probably would not have...
My boats, motorcycles, everything was there.
Yeah, I know.
A little thing like the 16mm movies of my whole family.
I had just gotten them from my mom so that I could put them together and make a family movie from the time we were little kids.
All of that kind of stuff.
It just goes on and on and on.
No, we were going to Kathy's Mom's to stay there at Father Ray's direction, suggestion.
And that was the mission.
Just leave the house with the boys, a couple changes of clothes, and go.
Get the dog and go.
So that's what we did.
The world became very small there.
You didn't want to go out, and leaving the house was a problem.
And so to venture someplace, you had to form it in your mind.
I didn't go to the office anywhere near as often as I had before this.
I mean, before I'd go, you know, six days a week, sometimes seven.
I'd be lucky to show up three times a week while I was living in that house.
Really?
art bell
Really?
So it was having a profound psychological effect on you.
george lutz
It changed everyone's point of view about life and what was important.
Kathy always described the house as charming, and then she thought about it after we left and said, yeah, it really was charming.
It really charmed her.
art bell
So you intended what then?
When you left, you were going to come back?
In other words, you thought you would come back eventually?
george lutz
Oh, yes.
And for, let's say, the first week out of the house, the hardest thing for me was to drive past that exit and go on to Kathy's mom's house.
All my stuff is there.
art bell
And keep going, yeah.
george lutz
And there were a couple times when it was a real struggle to just mentally keep going to Kathy's mom's house and not stop and check on my stuff.
art bell
So, George, why didn't you go back?
What stopped you?
george lutz
I went back once with another psychic that's, his name is Dr. Heffernan.
He said that he cleared the house.
He said that we would It was a Sunday afternoon.
He had a little girl with him.
He went into trance.
He had someone else with him as well.
And he said we would smell violets and know that the house was cleared.
I didn't smell them.
I wasn't convinced.
And that was the last time I was there.
And when Laura DeDeo found the Warrens and got them to come down, she had wanted to get Hans Holzer to come, and he was busy at the time.
He went to the house later.
I met with them, gave them the key, but I would not go in the house.
art bell
Yeah, I heard that.
george lutz
The idea was to get the house fixed.
When they tell me the house is fixed, then I'll go back, but not until.
And when Ed Warren said this is, and he wanted, you know, they went in, Ed and Lorraine and Laura Dale went in the house.
Ed said he wanted to put more people together and come back with a team.
And we invited in the people from Duke University, from the Psychical Research Institute there.
And, you know, Mary maybe didn't make it clearer earlier this evening.
She had her own school where she taught psychic in Connecticut.
And after leaving the house, she moved to Florida.
She up and left.
The house affected her life so much that, well, they came in with the team and they all met and gave, you know, they still had the key.
And it was like, okay, go do what you're going to do.
And when Ed came back afterwards and said, I'm not going back.
I can't do this.
And you're going to have to get an exorcist to come in and exercise the house.
He's going to have to say mass in the house.
And basically, he'll be putting his life on the line to do it.
How do you go and ask someone to do that for a house?
So then the idea started to settle in that we're stuck here now.
We've got this, we've got everything there.
I've still got my business and we're living in Kathy's mom's house, but life can't continue this way.
art bell
Was there a profound change when you moved to your relative's house?
I mean, was there a profound relief?
Was it obviously at that point over or was something still with you?
george lutz
No, it kept going on.
It kept on, but it was different.
Kathy turned into the old woman again in front of her mom, which then gave a witness that was different from just me.
art bell
Sure.
george lutz
Kathy and I, when we took the polygyric tests years later with Chris Scugas, one of the things we wanted to make sure that got covered in the test was, is it true that you levitated at Kathy's mom's house after leaving the house inevitably?
And yes, we did.
And we levitated together that time, and that was a pleasant experience.
That was not scary or frightening.
We were talking to each other, and we were in the bedroom, and we shared a little single bed there, a little cot.
But that wasn't an unpleasant experience by any means.
art bell
George, does Kathy still talk about this or not?
george lutz
She did for the History Channel two years ago.
Right now, even getting up is a real problem for her physically.
But there is eight hours of tape that MPH has that we did that interview side by side.
unidentified
So I would have to say yes, of course.
art bell
When the current owners of that house now say that nothing is going on, that they believe the house is clear and everything's just spiffy and okay, do you buy that?
george lutz
I'm glad that they're able to say that, and I have no reason to think otherwise.
I'm not there.
I haven't been back there in 25 years.
Whatever's going on for them is their business.
They knew what they were buying when they bought it.
art bell
Well, by then, they certainly did.
george lutz
We gave it back to the bank.
Couldn't stomach the idea of selling it to another family.
art bell
You know, that's another thing that I think the audience should understand.
There have been allegations over the years that this was a hoax, that some big money-making affair on your part.
So you lost the house.
You had to give the house back to the bank.
And while people have made millions, I guess, on the book and the movie and whatever all else has come out about Amityville, the History Channel, I forget, or ABC, I can't recall which one, said, look, the Lutzes may have made a grand total of $300,000 minus, no doubt, attorneys' fees and a lot of other stuff.
george lutz
No, I think the $300,000 would be the spendable after the taxes and all the rest.
art bell
And even after attorneys.
george lutz
Yeah, sure.
There have been a number of lawsuits about this over the years.
What happened is we moved out in January of 76.
We bought it in November.
So 28 days later when we moved out, which is like a full cycle of the moon, which I don't know whether that matters or not.
But we kept it.
Eventually I sold my business.
I put it up for sale in the New York State Surveyor's Civil Engineering magazine.
And the first buyer bought it.
We wrote up a contract right then and there between the two of us.
A couple days later, his attorney and my attorney put it into a formal language.
Transferred ownership of my grandfather had died during that time and some of his furniture that my mom and my aunts did not want from his house, we got some of that furniture and I had one motorcycle that I managed to hold on to and salvage from the whole thing.
A couple people went in on Easter Sunday for us and got my grandfather's chest back out, which was just about all that we were able to get out of the house.
We donated the food to Salvation Army and that was it for that.
On Mother's Day of 1976, we landed in San Diego on a plane.
We gave the car away.
One of the last office cars that I had gave it to the guy that was at the ticket place where you show up at JFK and said, here, here's the keys, here's the title, you know, dance.
art bell
You were really cutting all ties, weren't you?
george lutz
Oh, it was gone, yeah, you bet.
I had one car still there that we had bought.
We got rid of the van because it developed a problem that wouldn't go away.
So I had bought a 1973 Thunderbird-eused car that we used, and then I left that at Father Ray's rectory, and we went on out to San Diego.
And we got off the plane there, and we had hotel reservations up in Del Mar, and we stayed at the Del Mar Inn for a couple weeks, and Kathy found a condo for us to rent over in La Jolla, and we stayed there for a while, and then I went back to get the car.
And meanwhile, Kathy had found a house out in Tierra Santa, and we moved there and rented a house for a couple years.
And then eventually we bought a house up in Carlsbad.
art bell
And at this point, do you think the effect of what had happened to you was gone or still in some way with you?
george lutz
I kind of always looked at it like it had a half-life.
I eventually came to believe that the half-life wasn't necessarily the same as it would have been for something radioactive, but that as time went on, it would go away.
It would get less.
It would get less.
There were many times when we really made an effort not to blame everything that went wrong in our lives on the house.
And so we would be asked and we'd say, yeah, you know, it appears to be over.
It's over.
For us, it's gone.
And then so many other things would go wrong.
I'll give you an example.
When we left New York, we didn't have a book contract.
Weber, DeFeo's attorney, had asked us to sign a book contract with him, and we refused because of all the, this was a really thick contract, and it was very disturbing.
This was a guy that was trying to get us to donate the house to his corporation and then take lie detector tests and if we failed the lie detector test then we were going to give him the house anyway and everything else plus he was going to get to say what we did with the rest of our lives with regard to the story and it was just beyond belief.
Plus he was going to pay DeFeo 5% of proceeds for murdering his family.
So a friend of ours hooked us up with Tam Mossman who's the editor for Jane Roberts books, the Seth Speaks books that Prentice Hall had published.
And Tam Mossman knew Jay Anson and had suggested him.
We met with Jay Anson.
We spoke with him.
We gave him research materials we had done on the house and some tapes that Kathy and I had done just to undo this.
We were sitting around talking about it at Kathy's mom's house afterwards, over the weeks after we had left the house.
And we said, look, we're not going to sit down and be interviewed about this.
You can do what you can from the tapes and then we'll try to correct whatever you write or help you out with that, but we're just not going to relive this.
We've done it once and we're not doing it again.
We did it for the tapes.
We went to California and a year and a half later, as the end of August in 1977 is when we actually had a book contract.
Then right after that, Anson sold the rights for the movie rights to CBS.
Without our permission, he just went ahead and did it.
And then AIP found out about American International Pictures, and what they did was they went and got the rights from CBS and came to us and said, we're going to make a movie.
And we said, how are you going to do that?
You don't have our permission to do that, and it's our story.
And so we had to renegotiate all of that.
And in the process of that, then we were finally able to get some control back over what happened with the story in the future.
Not then, but in the future.
So we got what's known as the sequel rights, which is very rare.
You just don't do that.
And it was just one of those things that just haven't to work out right.
Who was ever thinking of sequels then?
art bell
Oh, of course.
george lutz
Anson did a deal with us that it was about eight, nine years later that we discovered that he and Myron Saland, who he had worked for at the time at Professional Films, they became the producers for the movie.
And so far they've made about $22 million personally between the two of them.
art bell
So in other words, a lot of people have made a lot of money.
george lutz
Well, Anson and Saland, from this, the author of the original book, he made at least $10 million for himself.
art bell
Millions and millions.
And you've cleared maybe $300,000.
george lutz
We cleared after taxes and lawyers, yeah.
art bell
$300,000.
george lutz
And we've got the sequel rights, so no one can do anything with the Avenue Horror story in the future without our permission.
art bell
Which may, I guess one can hope will turn out well for you.
Who knows?
george lutz
Well, my attitude about it has always been one that not necessarily everyone understands or agrees with, but it's one I came to on my own, and that is that whatever exposes this stuff happens.
And we didn't know that.
And we learned that from the people that we were fortunate enough to meet along the way.
And people don't talk about it.
And we can understand why they don't, because we understood there'd be controversy, and we understood there'd be naysayers.
art bell
Oh, there's always those, George.
I've had them all the time I've been doing this program.
Stay right where you are.
We'll be right back.
When we get back, we'll try and pick up a few questions from all of you out there.
You've got the numbers.
We're here.
unidentified
2am, the figure is gone The figure is gone But still warm in my neck It's time to take a chance Yeah, there's a storm on the loose Sirenes in my head That's not the time that's concerned today.
Can I be cold?
My whole life spins into the frantic
Some bell with morning when I'm straight I'm gonna open up your gate And maybe tell you'bout Phaedra And how she gave me light
And how she made it in Some bell with morning when I'm straight Flowers growing on our hill Driving flies and gaffled tears
Learn from us very much Look at us but do not touch Phaedra is my name
To reach our bell in the kingdom of Nye From west of the Rockies dial 1-800-618-8255 East of the Rockies 1-800-825-5033 First time callers may reach out at 1-775-727-1222 Or use the wild card line at 1-775-727-1295 To reach out on the toll free international line Call your AT&T operator
have them dial 800-893-0903 this is Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell on the Premier Radio Networks.
art bell
It is.
George Lutz is my guest.
He with his family lived the real Amityville horror.
In a moment, we'll get back to him.
If you have a question, that's what our phone lines are for.
unidentified
So it's now or never.
art bell
I'm intensely curious about something, George.
You contacted me, and you obviously then wanted to do this interview.
I wonder why.
george lutz
You're going off the air, and I never have talked to you.
You have the greatest respect around the country around the world about these kinds of things.
art bell
Well, I surely appreciate your having contacted me.
george lutz
And there's another side to this.
And you and I spoke of this.
The part about Father Malachi Martin was very important to me.
I haven't been able to verify it with your archives.
It's just my inability to find the right program when he said that.
And when he exposed it for what it was, and that was very important to me.
But also over the years, there have been some, I don't know another way to put it, real loudmouthed people about calling this a hoax, and it's not a hoax.
And I've gotten to the point where I'm really tired of even hearing that.
art bell
Yeah, I never thought it was a hoax, George, for what that's worth.
george lutz
It's the kind of thing that has hurt my family for a long time, and I've gotten to a place mentally or spiritually with it all that just says, you know, bring it on because this is what happens.
This is the truth.
These things happen, and I understand why people don't talk about them when they do happen to them.
In my own opinion, I would do fictional books, fiction books based on fact and factual books, anything at all to expose the existence of this stuff, to get people to read about it and question it.
art bell
All right.
I've got somebody else you might know on the phone.
Joel Martin.
Joel was the Long Island correspondent for the Associated Press at the time of the DeFeo massacre.
The first reporter actually to arrive at the scene of those murders.
Joel, hi, thank you for getting to us.
You're on the air, Joel.
unidentified
Oh, good morning, Art.
art bell
Good morning.
unidentified
Thank you.
george lutz
Hi, Joel.
unidentified
It's time to talk to me.
Yes, hello, George.
george lutz
I haven't.
You and I have really never met.
unidentified
No, we're on the History Channel special together, and we talked on the phone years ago, but somehow we kept missing each other.
george lutz
We were on the Lou Gentili show with the Marie Club.
unidentified
Yes, I was on the Lou Gentili show recently as well.
george lutz
Yes.
unidentified
And as you know, I was the first reporter there that horrible night in November of 1974, and I saw one of the dead bodies and later was questioned by the DA, and then, you know, became involved with the side of the story that called it a hoax, as you just referred to.
And I, you know, had years and years of listening to Stephen Kaplan debate the Webbers and forgive me, the Warrens about whether it was true or not.
And I really have not the same opinion as Steve Kaplan had that it was a hoax, and I don't believe that at all.
What I wanted you to do, I was hopeful, was to clear up some of the questions I had because when I was there the first night in 74, I never thought the story would continue.
Then, five years later, I had that exclusive radio interview with Bill Weber, and he contradicted a lot of what you said, or at least, you know, raised doubts about it.
art bell
Joel, what do you want cleared up?
unidentified
What I'd like cleared up is what George Woods' opinion is of what Kaplan said, which was counter to what George said, and what Bill Weber said, which took issue with what George said.
And I don't want to argue it.
I would just love to hear George's opinion, simply because we haven't meant to talk about it.
art bell
All right, George?
george lutz
Actually, you can add a new one to that.
Someone that calls herself Geraldine DeFeo as well.
unidentified
And I understand that East to the Rockies called Toll Free, 1-800-825-5033.
george lutz
Did he interview you recently?
unidentified
He met me.
He and Geraldine did both meet me.
That's right.
george lutz
Did they interview you?
unidentified
Well, they asked questions, frankly.
It wasn't a formal interview where we sat down and they said, well, let's take notes.
It wasn't the kind of thing a reporter does.
But yeah, they definitely questioned me.
george lutz
And is she someone that you knew back then?
unidentified
Was he?
george lutz
Geraldine.
unidentified
It's interesting about Geraldine.
Geraldine claims to be married to Ronnie DeFeo.
Yes.
Geraldine's physical appearance today, to be kind, is not anywhere near what it looked like back in the 1970s.
Now, I don't know what her role was back in the 1970s, but if you ask me, do I recognize a girl who looks something like that back around the time when this happened?
Yeah, she does look like her.
But what she did or what her role was, you would know.
And those are the kind of things I was curious about getting answered, since I never believed, I never thought I'd fall into the story so heavily.
george lutz
Did you ever hear back then that she was married to him?
unidentified
Back then?
Yes.
No, no.
george lutz
Nothing like that.
unidentified
No.
george lutz
No one ever knew that.
No.
There was no, never brought up in the trial, not by Weber, no one.
No.
unidentified
so her all practical verses in the seventies she didn't exist for all practical purposes there was a girl who looked like that but it comes in the story she tells I never heard that story until much, much more recently.
But, you know, I recall the face, but that doesn't necessarily suggest that what she says is exactly what happened.
art bell
Well, Joel, you've obviously followed this story for all these years.
unidentified
Oh, God, yeah.
art bell
Are you...
I mean, do you think something happened in that house that took the Lutzes out of it?
unidentified
Yeah, you know what I think, frankly, I did not have the privilege of interviewing Malachi Martin more than one time, and I know you did many, many times.
art bell
Yes, I did.
unidentified
Yeah, yeah.
But I tend to agree with this concept that you mentioned before.
I don't know if you're referring to your own or Malachi Martin's.
I've been listening to it since this began.
It's fascinating, by the way.
I'm thoroughly enjoying it.
I think that if you say there's good, you have to say there's evil.
And I do think that if you fool around with things that you don't understand, you could be fooling around with things that are evil.
art bell
And do you think that's what happened to the Lutzes?
unidentified
Yeah, absolutely.
art bell
All right.
All right, Joel.
Thank you.
And I'm going to go ahead and disconnect there.
you want to go ahead and address anything uh...
george lutz
george do you want to Yeah, fire away.
They're individuals that came to us in different ways.
We sought out Weber, found out that he was the attorney for DeFayo, and so we contacted him through a friend of ours, Mimi Vetter, who worked as a receptionist, I believe it was, or an assistant of some kind at his dentist's office.
She got a hold of him for us.
We talked with him on the phone, told him that we had lived in the house, that we believed we had information that would help, get him help of some kind, help get DeFeo help, and we agreed to meet with him.
And he came over to Kathy's mom's a couple of Saturdays, and we sat and we talked.
At one time, he introduced to us a fellow who was supposed to be a criminologist who eventually did an article that was unauthorized that was published in Good Housekeeping magazine and another one in the New York Mirror, I think it was, in Sunday News Mirror.
Weber is a slick guy.
He's a guy that will say what he wants to to fit the moment.
It became obvious to him when we left for California and had our attorney, Frank Giorgio, notice him formally that our story was ours and we were not going to do a contract with him about a book and we didn't want anything more to do with that.
We weren't interested in dealing with him.
And they wrote back and acknowledged that and then he goes and he gets Paul Hoffman to do this good housekeeping article and Burness Hall wasn't even going to publish the book after that was done.
It wasn't that the article was inaccurate.
The problem was that that was done without our permission under less than honorable circumstances to say the least.
I mean this guy was represented to us as a criminologist helping Ronald DeFeo get mental help and instead he's a writer trying to make money for Weber.
art bell
Yeah still I can't for one second imagine that you would have two seconds of interest in helping in any way or feeling compassion for DeFeo unless you understood a very profound reason why you should feel that compassion.
And that could have only come from your experience in the house.
I mean where else?
george lutz
And this guy killed that.
I mean he just literally took that possibility of DeFeo not sitting in jail for no, and I shouldn't say no reason, but for no good purpose.
I mean he belongs in jail.
Don't misunderstand it.
But a mental jail, one where he can get some help.
art bell
Yeah, I understand.
And we're so short on time.
First time caller line, very quickly, you're on the air with George Lux.
Do you have a question?
unidentified
Hello?
art bell
Going once.
Going twice.
Gone.
Wildcard line, you're on the air with George Lux.
Do you have a question?
unidentified
Yes.
Okay.
i want to have to get the proof personal proof of evil in your life he resulted in a a really a personal proof of goodness I think we answered it the other way around.
art bell
But really, George, the fact that you experienced that evil validates the fact there's this good as well, right?
george lutz
Father A. taught me something very interesting that at first almost sounded sacrilegious in a way.
It sounded weird.
He said, you know, the thing about prayer is that it makes God say yes when he had said no all along.
art bell
That answers it, I guess.
Easter the Rockies, you're on there with George Lux.
Hi.
unidentified
Hi.
Do you think that your wife, you mentioned that she looked almost like a crone once or twice or several times.
Do you think, did she realize that that change was taking place?
Or was that just in your eyes that that happened?
george lutz
No, she realized that she could look in the mirror.
And when her mom was there, it was even, it was worse.
art bell
Yeah, remember, sir, her mother saw this as well.
It wasn't just George.
Right?
george lutz
Yes.
unidentified
Okay, thank you.
art bell
You're welcome.
You're very welcome.
West of the Rockies, you're on the air with George Lux.
Do you have a question?
unidentified
Yes, hello.
Hello.
Art Bell, this is my last farewell.
I'm a great fan.
art bell
Thank you.
unidentified
God bless you.
And probably the last time I'll be ever talking to you for the rest of my life.
So God bless you.
And I hope and pray that you're back will heal.
art bell
Thank you.
unidentified
And first and foremost, I heard a rumor that the property has a history of some kind of Indian burial ground or some kind of that the ground itself was either sacred or it had some kind of Indian connotation.
art bell
I actually heard a rumor that some Indian artifact or skull even had been found at that property.
Is there any truth in any of that, George, that you're aware of?
george lutz
When we first visited the Amazos Historical Society, we obtained maps and all kinds of information that we turned over to Anson that included that area as having been a place where there were Indians buried and that they were insane.
The ones they didn't know what to do with were, there was even a rumor at the time and printed in some of the stuff in the Historical Society that said they were chained to trees and left to die there.
Not the nicest of circumstances by any means.
When the Amitygo story was published, all of a sudden the Historical Society secreted that information away.
We've, through other people, have been in contact with previous curators that know of this and are willing to talk about it.
But as far as the town is concerned and the Amnibal Historical Society, no, that was never true.
What happened later was, and I was still talking about some of Weber, Weber invited Hans Holzer to come in and investigate the house.
Now, Holzer is on shows like Joel Martin saying, you know, this whole thing's a hoax.
But then he's calling up Hans Holzer to go in and verify that the house is haunted.
Pretty weird stuff when you put the two things together.
Why is this guy double-dealing this way?
art bell
How does the town of Amityville now handle all of this.
I mean, since.
george lutz
Well, they're not going to shut Holzer up, and Holzer says, without a doubt, you know, what happened there with Ethel Johnson-Myers when she went in trance was there's an Indian chief, and he's quite angry, and he's not going to go away until some things are restored back the way he thinks they should be.
Now, I don't know about that.
I wasn't there.
I didn't own the house at the time.
Weber made arrangements to go in with the bank, because we'd given it back to the bank by then.
The Historical Society has basically covered it up, from what I can determine, from what anyone else can determine since then.
art bell
In your opinion.
But now, the town of Amityville, I mean, they must have a Chamber of Commerce there at Amityville.
george lutz
How do they, we've never been there, our favorite people, that's for sure.
art bell
No, huh?
All right.
Wild Card line, you're on the air with George Lutz.
Hello.
unidentified
Hi.
art bell
Hi.
unidentified
Lee, you're obviously right about giving art the respect he's due.
I'm honored that he took my call.
I just want to say, Lee, this whole experience is obviously very personal to you.
But as I heard, and I listened very intently to the art school interview with you, I was kind of shocked when you got to the part that you said you and Kathy weren't together anymore.
and I was wondering if you can say when you divorced and why, if it had anything to do with this, or her turning into an old woman.
That just seemed kind of odd.
art bell
Yeah, but did the half-life of what happened and still maybe in some way present, do you think that had anything to do with it, George?
george lutz
The reasons we got divorced are really personal.
We went in separate directions with regard to our own personal lives and religion.
Our main interest, and we still talk is the kids and their lives.
And we're both very proud of our kids, all five of them.
And we went on and had two more children after we left.
Three of my daughters today are ministers.
art bell
Isn't that something?
george lutz
We couldn't be prouder of them.
And so the reasons we got divorced, they're our own reasons.
They're not something for the public, but we really just did go in separate ways.
art bell
And you don't think any of there was any residual effect that I mean, sometimes it's really hard to know what drives something, but you think it had really nothing to do with it.
Is that right?
george lutz
No, it's not right.
I will say this much.
We disagreed about exposing the house in that my own thoughts are and my own belief is that whatever exposes what went on there, whatever gets people to talk about this as a real problem that exists in the world, that's shoved under the carpet every moment that it possibly can be and in all kinds of ways and with all kinds of confusion, it should be exposed.
As far as Kathy is concerned, her point is that she only wants to deal with the non-fiction part and does not believe that fiction also helps to do that.
So we differ right there, and that wasn't the reason we got divorced, but when it comes to the house and disagreeing about some things afterwards, then that's part of it.
art bell
So there's really no part of all this that has not affected your life, is there?
george lutz
Yeah, I guess you could say that.
art bell
Even through your cold and all that, you've still got a good sense of humor, George.
Listen, we're out of time.
I really don't know how to thank you for coming and giving me this interview toward the end of my time on the air permanently anyway.
And so, George, thank you.
george lutz
Art, thank you for having me on.
And anyone that's interested in any more that they would like to find out about this, the Lou Gentilly show, LouGentille.com has an archive up for a whole Amityville week that we did earlier this year.
So that might help also.
art bell
All right, my friend.
Thank you, Art.
I appreciate the interview.
I appreciate how candid you have been.
And take care, my friend.
george lutz
I wish you well, and I'll send you what you asked for.
Thank you.
Bye-bye.
art bell
Good night.
Good night, George.
Good night, all.
And here's Crystal to take us out from the high desert.
Ta-ta.
unidentified
Midnight in the desert, shooting stars across the sky.
This magical journey will take us on a ride.
Filled with the longing, searching for the truth.
When we make it to tomorrow, the sun shines on you.
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