Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from how Stuff Works
Speaker 1: dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.
Speaker 1: There's Charles w No nonsense, let's get down to business. Bryant,
Speaker 1: there's Jerry. What's going on with this thing? Rolling? And
Speaker 1: again it's me Josh. Put the three of us together,
Speaker 1: you get Stuff you should know. The late two thousand
Speaker 1: and eighteen edition, which is tense. It's Josh doctor nonsense. Clark.
Speaker 1: You have a degree in nonsense, that's true, and a
Speaker 1: little I have a minor in tom foolery. Oh man,
Speaker 1: how are you doing? I'm well, how are you good?
Speaker 1: So I had to clear my throat. I had a
Speaker 1: little garlic chicken in it really kind of attacked my
Speaker 1: mucus memorane. Just fall chuck. Yeah, Halloween's almost here and
Speaker 1: it's finally lie cooling off a little bit. Yeah, I know.
Speaker 1: It's been a hot one, although the sun is still
Speaker 1: blazing hot. Yeah in the sun, if it's in the shade,
Speaker 1: maybe after sundown and the winds blowing big, you're you're
Speaker 1: in there. It's fall time for real. I'm wearing my boots,
Speaker 1: got a flannel shirt on. I might as well be
Speaker 1: on a hay ride wearing my pumas my my favorite
Speaker 1: murder shirt. Nice. Yeah, that's a great shirt. The toxic
Speaker 1: masculinity ruins the party again. What a great shirt. Yeah.
Speaker 1: They actually follow through with great show quotes and put
Speaker 1: them on T shirts. Smart and sell a ton of them.
Speaker 1: That's smart. Yeah, that's the way to do it. We try.
Speaker 1: The key is selling a ton of them, that's right,
Speaker 1: and having the good quotes. I feel like we we
Speaker 1: ran out of good quotes seven years ago. That is
Speaker 1: not true. Chuck, watch this you ready? It's showtime. What
Speaker 1: do you think that's good? How about this? There's no
Speaker 1: business like show business. Oh that's a good one too.
Speaker 1: You could write a song out of something like that.
Speaker 1: It's not show friends, it's show business. Well look, wait, wait,
Speaker 1: before we start, I want to address the ten people
Speaker 1: who are still listening at this point, I would like
Speaker 1: to announce the birth of my new website. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: called the Josh clark Way dot com. How much did
Speaker 1: it weigh? Uh? It weighed nothing because it's a website.
Speaker 1: But there was a lot of blood, sweat and tears
Speaker 1: put into its um gest station and delivery. And our
Speaker 1: friend Brandon Reid who's such a great guy and a
Speaker 1: listener on the podcast. UM put it together through his
Speaker 1: business Innovate with an E built this awesome website. It's
Speaker 1: super eighties, super poppy. I'm very proud of it. And
Speaker 1: I'm starting a newsletter just to celebrate the whole thing.
Speaker 1: And it's called The Josh Clark Way. Did you look
Speaker 1: it up? Just now? I'm trying but it's not loading.
Speaker 1: Oh what elves, we're cutting all this part out anyway? Oh,
Speaker 1: wait here we go. Isn't it beautiful? Well, it's still voting.
Speaker 1: It's because of my old phone. It's not because of
Speaker 1: your I appreciate that. My my phone just can't handle
Speaker 1: your website. I went, there's so much to my website.
Speaker 1: It's like, oh, there you are clark Way dot com.
Speaker 1: And um, I also want to say you me help
Speaker 1: me with the site too, so big ups and thank
Speaker 1: you to you me and Brandon for helping me put
Speaker 1: this thing together. So anyway, I just wanted to say,
Speaker 1: welcome website. Oh, I got a new fun thing to
Speaker 1: do to hang out on my website. Sign up for
Speaker 1: the newsletter to while you're there, Oh this is great, Okay,
Speaker 1: you're ready. I'm glad I have this in my life.
Speaker 1: Now you're ready to get started. Maybe I'll get a
Speaker 1: website one day. You should get a website. It's like
Speaker 1: the new thing. Everybody's sitting one. So um chuck. We're
Speaker 1: talking fall here, which means there's only one word that
Speaker 1: comes to mind every fall. Pumpkins. No. The other word
Speaker 1: candy corn, no, diarrhea. No. Amityville. Oh, and specifically towards
Speaker 1: the Amityville Horror, which is, from my money, one of
Speaker 1: the greatest horror movies of all time. Yeah, one of
Speaker 1: the great ones. And being a kid in the nineteen
Speaker 1: seventies when this stuff was going on and famous, Like
Speaker 1: even as a little youngster, I remember being terrified at
Speaker 1: that paperback in the drug store when I would go
Speaker 1: by the paperbacks and the look of that house just
Speaker 1: terrified me. If the house looked any different, it would
Speaker 1: be the story would have had fifteen percent less spread.
Speaker 1: Or did the house end up looking creepy because of
Speaker 1: the lore. It's just a colonial know that house looked creepy. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: if somebody, if somebody didn't say this house is haunted
Speaker 1: by the way look at it, you'd probably be like, oh,
Speaker 1: that's an interesting looking house. But yeah, you put just
Speaker 1: even the hint of a haunting to it, and that
Speaker 1: house was buil for it. Well, it looked like it
Speaker 1: had eyes, which was one of the key things. It's
Speaker 1: a colonial, but it's one of those colonials that is
Speaker 1: situated sideways on the lot. So from the street you
Speaker 1: saw the side of the house, the chimney running down
Speaker 1: the side of the house, and those two I like
Speaker 1: windows on the top floor on either side of the chimney.
Speaker 1: It's just amazing. Yeah, it was a Dutch colonial to
Speaker 1: be specific. Yeah, and if you Google maps that thing. Now,
Speaker 1: first of all, it is not any longer one twelve
Speaker 1: Ocean Avenue. It is now one oh eight Ocean Avenue
Speaker 1: because the owners, at some point, whoever owned it, I
Speaker 1: think two or three years ago, successfully lobbied to have
Speaker 1: the address officially changed. It took them that long to
Speaker 1: I don't know how long they had to battle, but
Speaker 1: they changed it by four digits. Like they'll never find
Speaker 1: an exactly. So I went and looked on the Google
Speaker 1: images and of course now it looks it's bright and
Speaker 1: sunny and has a lovely yard, and it's in the
Speaker 1: middle of a lovely neighborhood and there's a a Chevy
Speaker 1: in the driveway and an SUV and it just looks
Speaker 1: like any other house. But it's still you know, if
Speaker 1: you monkey around with Google, you can see that image.
Speaker 1: And there are big signs all over like no trespassing
Speaker 1: and and they need him. Believe me, people, just I
Speaker 1: feel sorry for homeowners since the lets is yes, I
Speaker 1: don't feel sorry for them though, No, I don't either,
Speaker 1: because they made up a bunch of malory. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: one way to put it. But let's we'll get to
Speaker 1: that part later. A right, Let's let's set the scene here. Yeah,
Speaker 1: true horrific thing didn't ocur there. Yeah, and I think
Speaker 1: that kind of gets swept under the rug a little
Speaker 1: bit overlooked, you know. November, Ronnie Butch DeFeo Jr. Killed
Speaker 1: the other six members of his family, his own family,
Speaker 1: his mother, his father, his two sisters, Allison and Dawn,
Speaker 1: and his two younger brothers, Mark and John. He's the
Speaker 1: older brother, killed his whole family nine, twelve, thirteen and
Speaker 1: eighteen ages. That is just I mean, this is one
Speaker 1: of those crimes that rightfully has gone down in American history.
Speaker 1: Is one of the worst. Yeah, and and yeah, like
Speaker 1: you said, rightfully, this guy was a bad, bad dude
Speaker 1: from the outset. He denied doing anything when he he
Speaker 1: ran into a bar called Henry's Bar in the little
Speaker 1: town of Amityville and I'll bet too, and he said,
Speaker 1: somebody's just killed my family. And all the barbed patrons
Speaker 1: were like, I gotta see this. And they ran to
Speaker 1: one twelve Ocean Avenue with Ronnie de Feo and they
Speaker 1: found all six members laying his face down on their
Speaker 1: beds dead. I think their heads their faces resting in
Speaker 1: their their hands. Um. And Ronnie Defao said it was
Speaker 1: the mafia, yeah, which I think his family had some
Speaker 1: tie somehow. Did the mafia kid an uncle named Carmine
Speaker 1: And that's all you need right there. Yeah, but there
Speaker 1: was one, uh like a legit crime family that had
Speaker 1: some tie to his family, so maybe he just thought
Speaker 1: that was a good um an alibi or whatever. No,
Speaker 1: and he killed them with a thirty five caliber Marlin rifle,
Speaker 1: which did you look this thing up? It's like the
Speaker 1: the Old West, like lever action riding on a horse,
Speaker 1: you know, cowboys and Indians kind of gun. I expected
Speaker 1: the side bolt action carbon like a lee Harvey Oswald. Yes,
Speaker 1: that's what I would know. This is like a boom.
Speaker 1: That explains a lot, because one of the big mysteries
Speaker 1: that still remains is why didn't the other family members
Speaker 1: wake up? Well, that's a big I mean, I read
Speaker 1: a little bit into the case, and that's definitely one
Speaker 1: of these sticking points is because they it's not like
Speaker 1: they were all like three years old and fast asleep
Speaker 1: or something. I mean one of them was eighteen, and
Speaker 1: so this there are a lot of variations of the
Speaker 1: story because of that that one of the sisters helped
Speaker 1: kill the father, and then the mother freaked out, so
Speaker 1: Ronald killed her and like everyone was waking up, and
Speaker 1: I don't know, I mean, it sounds like he just
Speaker 1: he did it all himself. I also saw that he
Speaker 1: had said years, like a year after while he was
Speaker 1: being questioned, that he had drugged them all with barbiturous
Speaker 1: But I only saw that once. That would make a
Speaker 1: little more sense at least, because you can't silence to
Speaker 1: this kind of I mean, maybe you could have wrapped
Speaker 1: a pillow around it, but it's not like a handgun,
Speaker 1: you know. So he said it was the mob first,
Speaker 1: and then he said that he did it, but there
Speaker 1: was a really big caveat to that. He said that
Speaker 1: he had been hearing voices that were urging him to
Speaker 1: kill his family, and even during the murder, something was
Speaker 1: telling him to continue and just keep killing, kill him all. Uh.
Speaker 1: And he said he looked around and there was no
Speaker 1: one there, so I just assumed it was God telling
Speaker 1: me to kill. So I it and he killed again
Speaker 1: his whole family. And I read this article in Vice
Speaker 1: magazine from like two thousand and fourteen from some guy
Speaker 1: who said he spent like five years in prison with
Speaker 1: Ronnie de Feo and said, finally, after befriending him over
Speaker 1: a couple of years, he finally got to the truth.
Speaker 1: And the truth was he felt like his parents treated
Speaker 1: his brothers and sisters better than him. His parents didn't
Speaker 1: like the fact that he liked PCP and LSD and
Speaker 1: Heroin imagine that, and so he they got what was
Speaker 1: coming to him, basically, and he do it again. I
Speaker 1: mean he he I don't know this is an armchair diagnosis,
Speaker 1: but clearly if his reason is, uh, he liked my
Speaker 1: brothers and sisters more like he's he's has some sort
Speaker 1: of serious mental issues going on. For sure, um, but
Speaker 1: he did not want Apparently his attorney talked him into
Speaker 1: uh talking about God and voices because he was like,
Speaker 1: we can get you a plea of insanity and he
Speaker 1: was like, I don't want to do that. He's like,
Speaker 1: but you really should, and he goes, no, I don't
Speaker 1: want to do that. He goes, well, there may be
Speaker 1: a book deal in your future if he claimed this.
Speaker 1: He goes, I like books anyway. What are books again?
Speaker 1: There are things that make you money. Anyway. He's like,
Speaker 1: you know how you like carve out the middle of
Speaker 1: those things and you keep your heroine and PCP in there.
Speaker 1: That's a book. Uh so a real crime happened there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: in this house. Let's just say it was a faithful
Speaker 1: decision for him to say publicly that a voice had
Speaker 1: urged him to kill his whole family. Okay, that would
Speaker 1: come into play pretty soon after that, after Ronnie to Fay. Oh,
Speaker 1: I believe two weeks after he was sentenced a year
Speaker 1: after the murders, and he got sentenced to six consecutive
Speaker 1: life um sentences. He's still in jail. Oh yeah, he
Speaker 1: will be forever. I would guess, like he's alive. That
Speaker 1: was my point right, right, you're right. Um, about a
Speaker 1: year after that, just like a year and a month though,
Speaker 1: after the murders, a couple named George and Kathy Lutts
Speaker 1: bought this place. And they bought it for a song.
Speaker 1: It was eighty grand at a time when eighty grand
Speaker 1: was a pretty good deal for a six bedroom Dutch
Speaker 1: colonial in Amityville, New York. Yeah, and so there were
Speaker 1: a couple while they were a couple with a couple
Speaker 1: of kids, um well three I think nine year old Daniel,
Speaker 1: seven year old Christopher at the time, five year old Missy. Um. Well,
Speaker 1: we'll get to their financial situation a little bit in
Speaker 1: more detail later, but um, the thought was that George
Speaker 1: could run his even though it was kind of a
Speaker 1: lot of money for them, it was a good deal
Speaker 1: on the house and George could run his business out
Speaker 1: of the house so save on office space. He had
Speaker 1: a couple of boats. This house came with a dock.
Speaker 1: He's like, I don't have to pay marina storage fees,
Speaker 1: like you almost they almost had to buy the house.
Speaker 1: It sounded like financially speaking, right, it was just too
Speaker 1: good of a deal to pass up. Yeah, So um,
Speaker 1: they bought the house did you say they were looking
Speaker 1: in the thirty to fifty range originally, so it was
Speaker 1: a stretch for him. But again, that's how good the
Speaker 1: deal was. Um. So they buy the house and they
Speaker 1: move in, and um, apparently almost immediately things started to
Speaker 1: get weird. Right, So Cathy was a Catholic, and um,
Speaker 1: what do you do when you're a Catholic and you
Speaker 1: buy a new house. You invite your priests over to
Speaker 1: come bless the house. I guess in the seventies in
Speaker 1: New York you did well. I didn't know if that
Speaker 1: had anything to do with the I mean, did they
Speaker 1: know that the murders had occurred there and just sort
Speaker 1: of didn't care. Yeah, I'm glad you brought that up. Yes,
Speaker 1: And I don't know that they didn't care. Supposedly, George
Speaker 1: Lutts later said that like after they said we're interested
Speaker 1: in this, when the realtor was like, wow, let me
Speaker 1: just tell you one little detail. Just six big horrific murders, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: just a year ago. Sorry, we haven't cleaned up the
Speaker 1: blood yet. Um. So they they apparently took a second
Speaker 1: to think about and talk amongst themselves like is that
Speaker 1: really bothers this is such a good deal. And they said, no,
Speaker 1: the deal wins out over any superstitions we have. So yes,
Speaker 1: they knew, um. And I don't know if they hired
Speaker 1: they were brought the priest in because of that or
Speaker 1: just to bless the house. But they brought the priest
Speaker 1: and to bless the house. And you can burn a
Speaker 1: little sage, or you can call in a priest. I
Speaker 1: think they had to ramp it up. Uh. They called
Speaker 1: in father Ralph uh peccarero, and he came in. And
Speaker 1: this is how the story goes, and we'll just sort
Speaker 1: of tell it as it happens. Supposedly. I think that's
Speaker 1: a great idea before we start pooping all over it. Um.
Speaker 1: So he comes in blesses the house. Uh. Supposedly, he
Speaker 1: feels in one room in particular, a very cold chill.
Speaker 1: He said, even though it was winter, it was shouldn't
Speaker 1: have been this kind of cold. And he hears a
Speaker 1: strong voice, a masculine voice, shout and get out, and
Speaker 1: then his car started acting. We heard apparently the hood
Speaker 1: flew open and smashed the windshield. Doors are unlocking and
Speaker 1: opening it. And he didn't even have one of those
Speaker 1: kinds of horns. The car installed. Um, and this is
Speaker 1: just the very beginning of And if you've seen the movie,
Speaker 1: a lot of this stuff that we're talking about was
Speaker 1: portrayed in the film. And it's Rod Steiger getting shouted at.
Speaker 1: He's great, Like flies where there shouldn't be flies. Crucifix,
Speaker 1: crucifix is spinning. Um. What a pig Well, smell of
Speaker 1: rotten eggs in this hidden room that wasn't on any blueprint,
Speaker 1: the red room. The pigs. So there was a pantom
Speaker 1: like pig beast with glowing red eyes that would look
Speaker 1: in on the family from the outside and leave cloven
Speaker 1: hoofprints in the snow. And little five year old miss
Speaker 1: You would be like, oh, that's just my friend Jody,
Speaker 1: which makes it ten times area way scarier. Like I
Speaker 1: would rather have my kid say I don't know what
Speaker 1: that is, I'm scared, rather than that's just Jody. You know,
Speaker 1: Jody's been suggesting things. Um. What else they claimed? I
Speaker 1: think the dad claimed to see uh, Butch Dafeo's face
Speaker 1: in a wall. He would wake up every every night
Speaker 1: or a lot of nights, at three fifteen in the morning.
Speaker 1: Supposedly when these murders took place, the kids started acting
Speaker 1: funny classic movie haunting stuff. Yeah, it was a very
Speaker 1: weird situation for him. Things were tense. They were all
Speaker 1: like they had like hair trigger tempers. They were all
Speaker 1: yelling at each other, apparently very uncharacteristically. And supposedly George
Speaker 1: Lotts I've seen him described as a ex marine who
Speaker 1: was an expert in karate, which again, this is the seventies,
Speaker 1: so everybody was into karate back then or a black
Speaker 1: belt sure, and um, he he was like a no
Speaker 1: nonsense kind of guy. No nonsense right, yeah, like me.
Speaker 1: So he's like, what's going on? And um he goes
Speaker 1: to the uh the local Amityville Historical Society and says,
Speaker 1: I want to know everything you have on one twelve
Speaker 1: Ocean Avenue And it got quiet in the room and
Speaker 1: the guy was like, come with me. So he George
Speaker 1: finds out that their house is probably built on Shinnecock
Speaker 1: Indian land. That was a big one. Yeah, not only that,
Speaker 1: but supposedly where uh, this Native American tribe used as
Speaker 1: a sick bay for the um for the mentally insane,
Speaker 1: is how they put it. Um And this is where
Speaker 1: they would just keep all of those people where they
Speaker 1: were just sort of left to die there, so it
Speaker 1: was haunted by them. It was the kind of place
Speaker 1: where they just get dropped off and the people kind
Speaker 1: of backslutely wait like okay, take care, see you later,
Speaker 1: and they would die. And no one wants to be
Speaker 1: treated like that. So of course anyone who has left
Speaker 1: to die right there are on that land like that
Speaker 1: would obviously haunt the land. There was some other There
Speaker 1: was some other legends about what was behind it too.
Speaker 1: There was like a m as abandoned cemetery pretty straight
Speaker 1: up on the nose. Yeah, there was a Salem witch
Speaker 1: guy that supposedly sacrificed animals, John Ketchum, And there actually
Speaker 1: was a John Ketchum who lived somewhat in the area
Speaker 1: around that time, but right he'd never been accused of
Speaker 1: being a witch. And then I saw an interview with
Speaker 1: a guy named Hans Holzer who's a bona fide para psychologist,
Speaker 1: and Dr Holzer says that it all started in ninety
Speaker 1: eight or nineteen o five when the original house there
Speaker 1: was a house that was built in the seventeen twenties
Speaker 1: that was moved. When that house was moved in nineteen
Speaker 1: o five, it disturbed an Indian chief's grave, Native American
Speaker 1: chief's grave, and somebody played with his skull like it
Speaker 1: is a soccer ball, and he's been mad about it
Speaker 1: ever since. And that is what drove Ronnie to Fayo
Speaker 1: to kill and that is what terrorized the LUTs Is.
Speaker 1: And that's the whole problem. Everybody just calmed down. That's it. HM.
Speaker 1: So there's a little bit of a little bit of
Speaker 1: peace falling into the puzzle. They're figuring it out, but
Speaker 1: it's not making anything better. In fact, everything is getting
Speaker 1: worse like this. This stuff is getting worse and worse
Speaker 1: and worse. And finally everything culminates on this one stormy
Speaker 1: night when they're their door blows open, blows off of
Speaker 1: the hinges outward into the street I believe, or no,
Speaker 1: into the house. I can't remember which way, but blown
Speaker 1: off of the hinges is like a two pound door,
Speaker 1: and the windows, the iconic eyeball or eye windows blow out,
Speaker 1: some of the glass somehow blows in. It's just an
Speaker 1: enormous explosion of energy, and the family leaves. They just
Speaker 1: left the house after like twenty eight days supposedly, Yeah,
Speaker 1: well no, they definitely, they definitely left the house. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but neighbors say they left in ten days. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: one of the two. But they're still The point is
Speaker 1: their discrepancies all over the place. We'll get to those.
Speaker 1: We'll get to those. But they left, and this is true.
Speaker 1: They left all of their possessions in this house and
Speaker 1: just fled. And that part is true. Never went back.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, unless they had a sneaky little moving team
Speaker 1: with a U haul in the dead of night, go
Speaker 1: back and get our stuff. From what story, there's stuff
Speaker 1: got auctioned off? Yeah, I mean they left it. They had,
Speaker 1: They grabbed some clothes and they took off into the night.
Speaker 1: And um, which will go on later to be one
Speaker 1: of the key selling points that this really happened, because
Speaker 1: people that were on their side were like, why would
Speaker 1: they do that on just the gambit of this being
Speaker 1: a hoax that would eventually make the money. Would they
Speaker 1: really leave all their stuff behind? Could anybody be that foolish?
Speaker 1: Let's take a break and we'll find out. Right after
Speaker 1: this stop you should stuff, you should know, all right,
Speaker 1: So they get the heck out of Dodge, they leave,
Speaker 1: They contact an author named Jay Anson. Oh even before that, well,
Speaker 1: I was going to get to the attorneys over right.
Speaker 1: So uh, Princess Hall as the publisher. In nineteen seventy
Speaker 1: seven released The Amity a Horror was a huge bestseller.
Speaker 1: Uh forty two weeks on the best seller list by one,
Speaker 1: so it's six and a half million copies. They were
Speaker 1: all over the country plugging this book, and we're the
Speaker 1: letses were household names there, like on every talk show
Speaker 1: you could imagine. I want to underscore that inn There
Speaker 1: was a family from New York who claimed to have
Speaker 1: been driven from their home by a supernatural evil force,
Speaker 1: and they were international celebrities for it. Yeah, reason number
Speaker 1: five million and eighty why the seventies were just awesome. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like that's what you could be famous for. Was saying
Speaker 1: like ghosts chase this out of our house, and everybody
Speaker 1: be like, that's a great story. Should we jump ahead
Speaker 1: and talk about that attorney? Yes? Great? So what was
Speaker 1: the guy's name? Bill Webber? Yeah, this is where things
Speaker 1: get really hinky, is that Bill Webber is an attorney
Speaker 1: and he's the one that sort of gets every I
Speaker 1: think he's the one that saw dollar signs initially and
Speaker 1: gets a team together for this book and starts saying
Speaker 1: to everybody, including de Fao. Hey, we can all make
Speaker 1: some money if we if we do a book here,
Speaker 1: Dao has got to get a cut though. The lets
Speaker 1: Is were like, what you're gonna pay the murderer and
Speaker 1: he was like, yeah, it's my client, and they said,
Speaker 1: we're not We're not down with that plan. Yes, but
Speaker 1: this came after they had formed basically a business relationship,
Speaker 1: but not even in an attorney client relationship, straight up
Speaker 1: business relationship with William Webber, like, how can we make
Speaker 1: money off of this? So the way that the world
Speaker 1: heard about these things going on at one twelve Ocean
Speaker 1: Avenue for the first time ever was at a press
Speaker 1: conference that the letz Is held at William Webber's office.
Speaker 1: That was when the world was introduced to the idea
Speaker 1: of this amitieval horror, even before the book ever came out.
Speaker 1: Um for anyone, at least not locally right right? So, um,
Speaker 1: so Bill Webber and the lets Is they they had, Yeah,
Speaker 1: they had kind of like a tentative, tenuous relationship. And
Speaker 1: when Prentice Hall came along and Jay Anson came along.
Speaker 1: I don't know if Jay Anson poached them or Prentice
Speaker 1: Hall poached them, but whoever was involved with the Amityville
Speaker 1: horror book, got the lutz Is away from William Webber
Speaker 1: and his book idea and proposal, and he got cut
Speaker 1: out of the deal. Just put that in your bonnet
Speaker 1: and smoke it and save it for later, Okay. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and supposedly left because again they didn't want to give
Speaker 1: Dafeo a cut, or they just wanted a bigger cut themselves.
Speaker 1: At this point, it's a it's a it's all about money.
Speaker 1: But jumping back or forward, I can't remember where we
Speaker 1: are in time, but they're they're all over the country,
Speaker 1: all over the news. This would have been about, Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're on MERV Griffin. Uh, there's They had a ghost
Speaker 1: team of ghost hunters come by from Channel five in
Speaker 1: New York w p i X and had people posted
Speaker 1: in the house overnight taking all these photographs. There's one
Speaker 1: now very famous photograph of uh, and it's creepy looking.
Speaker 1: But you take a picture of anyone in black and
Speaker 1: white in the dark poking their head around a corner,
Speaker 1: and it looked creepy. So let me I want to
Speaker 1: comment on that picture. You have you seen it? It
Speaker 1: is creepy. Um. The the it's chalked up to some
Speaker 1: of the paranormal investigators, one of like one of the
Speaker 1: men who was at that w p i X seance
Speaker 1: fest at the house, um getting in in front of
Speaker 1: the camera. Yeah, they're saying that one of the uh
Speaker 1: Paul Bart's that it was just one of the ghost hunters.
Speaker 1: So that was a grown man whoever is in the
Speaker 1: picture as a kid just playing his day. There's no
Speaker 1: there's no confusing that for a grown man. I think so.
Speaker 1: So unless he was had a boyish face, I think
Speaker 1: it's a very bizarre picture. I mean no, I think
Speaker 1: it's bizarre and supposedly was taken with infrared film in
Speaker 1: the dark. And again it doesn't look like a man,
Speaker 1: which is that's why the eyes are glowing, right, I
Speaker 1: think that explains that. It's the fact that it's clearly
Speaker 1: the face of a boy. Are you going under the
Speaker 1: Josh clarkway dot com again? I'm trying to find that
Speaker 1: picture again. It's clearly the face of a boy, that's
Speaker 1: not a man's face. That's the thing that sticks out
Speaker 1: to me. Yeah, I mean it certainly looks like a boy. Man,
Speaker 1: it is creepy and also so so it's got to
Speaker 1: be a boy and that's what it looks like to me.
Speaker 1: And this picture was debuted in the vight by George
Speaker 1: Lutt's on the MERV Griffin Show. But they could have
Speaker 1: set that up. Could have been They could have and
Speaker 1: and we were saying, have you seen the con drink?
Speaker 1: I think I've seen parts of it. But that's the
Speaker 1: real life couple. Yeah, Edin Lorraine Warren. Yeah, who hooked
Speaker 1: up with these? I mean this is where they got
Speaker 1: their start kind of right, kind of. They basically had
Speaker 1: like an occult museum. They were like a psychic and
Speaker 1: psychic investigators in Connecticut. And the guy Marvin Scott, who
Speaker 1: was the anchor who investigated the the Amityville Horror for
Speaker 1: the w p i X local Channel five station, he
Speaker 1: invited them to come out to this seance and it
Speaker 1: was like a series of sciences that they filmed. And
Speaker 1: you can actually see this look up w p i
Speaker 1: X News eleven Marvin Scott Part one and it's like
Speaker 1: retrospective of this case and it has some of the
Speaker 1: footage from the seance, but it also has an interview
Speaker 1: with George and Lorraine Warren and they're basically like this
Speaker 1: was real. This is obviously real. And during these seience
Speaker 1: is supposedly the psychics started to feel sick. Lorreen Warren
Speaker 1: said she felt an evil presence from the bowels of
Speaker 1: the earth in the house. And then that picture, that photo,
Speaker 1: that famous photograph was taken. So um, I think the
Speaker 1: Warrens are the ones too that had said why would
Speaker 1: they leave all of their stuff behind? And they also said, well,
Speaker 1: we would not be involved, that this was some sort
Speaker 1: of a hoax, right exactly. Don't you know who we
Speaker 1: are proof positive? Right? Yeah? But the yeah, the real
Speaker 1: life warrants were. They did investigate the Amityville House in
Speaker 1: the early seventies or mid seventies, early on after the
Speaker 1: story broke. You also know it was the seventies because
Speaker 1: they were featured on Leonard Demi's Great Show in Search
Speaker 1: of which we both used to love, and of course
Speaker 1: they covered that in nineteen seventy nine. Supposedly got the
Speaker 1: priest on there, even though he wanted to be kept anonymous,
Speaker 1: and he or whoever it was, um kind of reinforced
Speaker 1: this cold room get out, uh scream, Yeah, it just
Speaker 1: went just double down on it. His face was hidden
Speaker 1: and in the book, I think the j Anson book,
Speaker 1: there were three source materials that came out about this story,
Speaker 1: all within a couple of years of each other. There
Speaker 1: was a Good Housekeeping article which is hilarious. There was
Speaker 1: the Jay Anson book, and and then there was a
Speaker 1: ring book, and then there was the movie. Yes, in
Speaker 1: those three are like the source material for what everybody
Speaker 1: knows about the Amityville legend. But what Leonard Nimoy pointed
Speaker 1: out is that you know, this movie was, it's huge,
Speaker 1: everybody loves it. But what a lot of people don't
Speaker 1: know is that it's a true story. He says, it's
Speaker 1: a true story. The book said it was a true story.
Speaker 1: But Leonard, I just I just I expected more from
Speaker 1: Leonard Nimoy than that. He says, unequivocally, it's a true story.
Speaker 1: That's because that's what the script that teleprompter said. Well, anyway,
Speaker 1: that was a great episode of In Search of Anyway. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So in nineteen seventy nine, the very famous film adaptation
Speaker 1: of this book comes out um starring James Brolin and
Speaker 1: Margot Kidder as the lets Is, and it was a big,
Speaker 1: big hit, eighty million dollars and domestic release, which was
Speaker 1: I didn't do the conversion, but a very good haul
Speaker 1: for ninety nine one of the smash hits of that
Speaker 1: year for sure. I think it was close to probably Yeah.
Speaker 1: Good money, Yeah, I mean this is back in the
Speaker 1: time when like movies didn't routinely make a billion dollars
Speaker 1: in an opening weekend. This was like that was a
Speaker 1: ton of cash. Yeah. There were a lot of really
Speaker 1: bad sequels that, no doubt, just kind of throughout the
Speaker 1: whole legend of the house and just did whatever they
Speaker 1: want with that name. Have you seen any of them?
Speaker 1: I haven't. I haven't seen any of the sequels, Nor
Speaker 1: did I see the remake recently with Ryan Reynolds. Yeah,
Speaker 1: did you see that? I don't remember the original movie
Speaker 1: that much, And to be honest, I don't know if
Speaker 1: I ever saw it all the way through. I mean
Speaker 1: I was way too young to see anything like this,
Speaker 1: so it would have been it's still around the burning.
Speaker 1: I know. That's the whole point though, is I would
Speaker 1: have had to have seen this years and years later.
Speaker 1: I don't know that I ever did. It's worth seeing.
Speaker 1: It's a great horror film. Like I've seen a lot
Speaker 1: of the parts. James Little Miss for Jody's Friend is
Speaker 1: a little creep show. And who played Jody. I don't
Speaker 1: know who played her, but like, yeah, the kids did good.
Speaker 1: Rod Steiger was the priest. He was great. I remember
Speaker 1: seeing that scene so definitely seen parts of it. Brenner
Speaker 1: was the good O voice. Was he really sorry that?
Speaker 1: It was kind of believaul Uh, they actually didn't shoot
Speaker 1: at to that Ocean Avenue house though, Um, of course,
Speaker 1: you know with a movie like this, the laure is
Speaker 1: kind of usually not true, and the laura was that
Speaker 1: they the crew was too scared to shoot there. It's
Speaker 1: not true. They couldn't get a permit. So they shot
Speaker 1: at eighteen Brooks Road Tom's River in New Jersey and
Speaker 1: built a a superstructure around the house to make it
Speaker 1: look like the other house, which was just like a
Speaker 1: couple of hours from there, right to the town of Amityville.
Speaker 1: Said no, we don't want anything like this, no publicity
Speaker 1: like this. Please, this is a tragedy. We like our quiet,
Speaker 1: sleepy town the way it is. No, we're not giving
Speaker 1: you a permit to shoot here. Yes, so, um, but
Speaker 1: Tom's River was like bring it. Yeah, nobody knows about us.
Speaker 1: Who's Tom anyway? We don't know you ever River. So
Speaker 1: the movie like you said it was a huge smash hit,
Speaker 1: and it's just like the Lutzes were already kind of
Speaker 1: household names. That changed everything, and that that the Amityville
Speaker 1: horror became part of American popular culture. Like, yeah, it
Speaker 1: was cemented into it. And it was also cemented in
Speaker 1: that this is based on a true story. Maybe the
Speaker 1: movie blew it a little out abortion as movies will do,
Speaker 1: but the Lutzes were driven from their house by an
Speaker 1: evil spirit and a lot of this stuff was true.
Speaker 1: Isn't that nuts? Yeah? And it was that period in
Speaker 1: the late seventies where, like we talked about it with
Speaker 1: the Bermuda Triangle was a big deal and water beds
Speaker 1: were huge. Water beds were big. But I feel like
Speaker 1: there was just there wasn't as much stuff. There wasn't
Speaker 1: as much content. If that's just the bigger deal like Amityville,
Speaker 1: like you said, it was part of It wasn't just
Speaker 1: oh that horror movie, like it was spoofed on Johnny
Speaker 1: Carson and it was like it was all over the place.
Speaker 1: It was like part of the fabric of America. But
Speaker 1: I wonder if people bought into and thought about this
Speaker 1: stuff like you were saying, because there was like nothing
Speaker 1: was grabbing their attention every thirty seconds or over over here,
Speaker 1: look over here, we're here, Like a could like really
Speaker 1: kind of ruminate on something and let it like Stu. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like now a show can win Best Show Emmy Award.
Speaker 1: You're like, I've never even heard of that. Too much stuff,
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff out there. But is that better
Speaker 1: or worse? Um? Like, I feel like it's it's It
Speaker 1: is true that things can just change and they're not
Speaker 1: necessarily worse or better. But I also believe that it
Speaker 1: is possible for things to get objectively worse now, whether
Speaker 1: like they are not right now, who knows. I don't
Speaker 1: think anybody's ever lived long enough to be like, I'm
Speaker 1: a thous and years old and it is way worse
Speaker 1: these days than it was five years ago. Now, are
Speaker 1: you talking about entertainment content or just general culture everything
Speaker 1: being alive? See, I think, uh, entertainment wise, it's better
Speaker 1: because yeah, I mean back then, it was just like
Speaker 1: everyone got obsessed with Amy Deville because it was the
Speaker 1: only thing around obsessed with and it wasn't even great,
Speaker 1: you know, but it was here. Just take this schlocky
Speaker 1: thing and obsess over it. But you're saying it wasn't
Speaker 1: great compared to today's standards, but back then, like it
Speaker 1: was great. It was something that like you could maybe
Speaker 1: you could basically put on like a cloak and wear
Speaker 1: around for a year and really really be into the
Speaker 1: Amityville horror rather than you know, like, um, the cameraman
Speaker 1: missed that shot by like an eighth of a nance.
Speaker 1: Like that's the critical detail that people have today, and
Speaker 1: I think it keeps us from enjoying stuff like they
Speaker 1: used to be able to in the seventies. That's I
Speaker 1: think that's my point. Plus, we're all doped up. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of grass, but really terrible grass. That's
Speaker 1: one thing that's gotten better is the grass, from what
Speaker 1: I understand. All Right, so maybe we should maybe we
Speaker 1: can take a break now and then we can start
Speaker 1: poking holes in this thing. Start sounds good? Yeah, you
Speaker 1: should should know, all right, So I insist we have
Speaker 1: not booked any holes yet. There's some dents in there
Speaker 1: that we've kind of put our fingers in. I've just
Speaker 1: been snidey laughing at everything we say, like yeah, right, um,
Speaker 1: but here's some of the holes, and there are quite
Speaker 1: a few. I kind of mentioned before. Um neighbors say
Speaker 1: that they left like a week and a half enter
Speaker 1: their stay in this house, let's just said twenty eight days,
Speaker 1: so right out of the gate, you got a discrepancy. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And and the kind of what the thinking was and
Speaker 1: still is to some people is that they couldn't afford
Speaker 1: this house. Didn't take them long to realize it, and
Speaker 1: so they cooked up the story. Yeah, but imagine figuring
Speaker 1: that out in ten days. That's a little weird. Well,
Speaker 1: and I also don't know how that would get them
Speaker 1: out of their mortgage. Just defaulting on it because it's haunted, Yeah,
Speaker 1: just walking away like can't get blood from a stone.
Speaker 1: Go take the house if you want it back. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but could they claim that that it wasn't disclosed? If
Speaker 1: it was disclosed, like, how could they literally get out
Speaker 1: of the mortgage? I don't know, man. I think like
Speaker 1: I think, if you if you stop making payments, if
Speaker 1: you don't care about your credit, and I'm not sure
Speaker 1: what it was like in the seventies, but if you're like,
Speaker 1: I'll take this hit for seven years on my credit
Speaker 1: right away and just walk away, like then you don't
Speaker 1: have to make payments anymore, that's that's what I think happened.
Speaker 1: But I don't think that they were able to do
Speaker 1: that because they started making money from their story, and
Speaker 1: everyone knew that they were making money from their story,
Speaker 1: so people wanted their money from them, Right, that's incredible.
Speaker 1: The great show from eighties. Did you used to watch that? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I watched the episode that this was on, But did
Speaker 1: you watch it as as a kid? A great, great show?
Speaker 1: And on this show? Sorry, it was really positive. Do
Speaker 1: you remember it seemed pretty upbeat. Well, it's called that's incredible,
Speaker 1: not like that's uh crappy. The cameraman missed that shot
Speaker 1: and it was I think it even had an exclamation point,
Speaker 1: didn't it. Yeah, at the end of the title. So
Speaker 1: that's incredible. Barbara Comarty owned the house at the time
Speaker 1: of this episode, walks them through and shows like close
Speaker 1: up so the hinges of that front door and these
Speaker 1: windows that are still sealed, was like, these things didn't
Speaker 1: blow No. She she went out of her way to
Speaker 1: make sure that everyone knew that this stuff hadn't happened,
Speaker 1: and ironically, she exaggerated the facts that the skeptics pointed to,
Speaker 1: so everybody was exaggerating their case on either side of this.
Speaker 1: But look, let's also said though that no, no, there
Speaker 1: were pictures in the newspaper of that front door blown out.
Speaker 1: Have you seen the picture? Well no, like, I didn't
Speaker 1: think anyone could find it. It's a screen door that's
Speaker 1: kind of like hanging open. I'm not kidding. That's the
Speaker 1: picture from what I understand. All right, so it's all
Speaker 1: falling apart. Then, oh yeah, it's all fallen apart. It
Speaker 1: has fallen apart big time. Apparently. George Lotts died in
Speaker 1: two thousand and six and to his dying day said
Speaker 1: that all of this is true. He said, yeah, man,
Speaker 1: the book got a bunch of stuff wrong. The movie
Speaker 1: got a ton of stuff wrong. Because, um, I think
Speaker 1: the Ryan Reynolds dream make of the movie was supposedly
Speaker 1: build this. This is way more um true to the book.
Speaker 1: The original movie kind of created its own stuff, which
Speaker 1: is why it's viewed as one of an additional source
Speaker 1: rather than just part and parcel with the book. Um.
Speaker 1: So George Letz would say, all these people got all
Speaker 1: these details wrong, but this this stuff we said happened
Speaker 1: really happened. Part of the problem is some of the
Speaker 1: stuff that they said happened was like levitating off the
Speaker 1: bed and looking at each other going can you believe
Speaker 1: we're levitating? I saw an interview where he said that
Speaker 1: in public on camera. Um, he really like, kudos to
Speaker 1: him for sticking to it. Yeah, I would say a
Speaker 1: deathbed is a perfect time to be like, guess what everybody,
Speaker 1: because then everyone would be like yeah, no, no, thank you, guys,
Speaker 1: knew no s. I love that. This is a family show.
Speaker 1: So George Lutz went went to his grave saying, no,
Speaker 1: this is this is for real. William Webber, Bill web Were,
Speaker 1: the attorney, did quite the opposite of that. Well, he said,
Speaker 1: and of course Lutz will paint this is probably painted.
Speaker 1: This is sour grapes because Webber was cut out of
Speaker 1: the money deal. But as soon as they left and
Speaker 1: and made their own book deal, he started barking that
Speaker 1: this is all b s. This is a hoax that
Speaker 1: we made up to. He totally did that. Um. He
Speaker 1: said that over about three bottles of wine, he and
Speaker 1: George and Cathy lutts Um concocted the story out of
Speaker 1: whole cloth and then had a smoking night of love,
Speaker 1: making three of them on their water bed. Jeez took
Speaker 1: a sexy turn all of a sudden sure, so um, yeah,
Speaker 1: Bill Webber he said that. He said, Hey, I was
Speaker 1: just looking to get another trial from my client, who
Speaker 1: I think was innocent and insane. Um, what the Lutzes
Speaker 1: were doing was going after money. But you can also
Speaker 1: look at it like Ronnie to fay O was the
Speaker 1: greatest thing that ever happened to Bill Webber's career. He
Speaker 1: even said at the time, like, I'm giving Ronnie to
Speaker 1: Fayo a cut rate because the publicity from this case
Speaker 1: is more worth more than anything Ronnie Deafayo could ever
Speaker 1: give me. So the idea of reviving interest in the
Speaker 1: case would probably help his his caseload as well. Who knows.
Speaker 1: The point is William Webber hired a guy named um
Speaker 1: Paul Hoffman, I think his name was, and he wrote
Speaker 1: the Good Housekeeping article. And when that Good Housekeeping article
Speaker 1: came out, the Lutzes were like, you're gonna scoop us.
Speaker 1: We're gonna sue you for invasion of privacy because you
Speaker 1: stole our story, which is pretty rich because they were
Speaker 1: using the courts like if you have a life story
Speaker 1: and some lawyer comes along and hire somebody to write
Speaker 1: that story. Yeah, that's invasion of privacy if you make
Speaker 1: that story up with said lawyer and then screw that
Speaker 1: lawyer over and he goes off his own way. Yeah,
Speaker 1: using the courts for that is pretty um, I don't
Speaker 1: want to say ballsy gutsy. Yeah. And speaking of lawsuits,
Speaker 1: I mean, we won't go through the myriad lawsuits, but
Speaker 1: there were it felt like more than a dozen lawsuits
Speaker 1: over the years. Yeah, they sued Webber. Webber sued them.
Speaker 1: That people are suing everyone, People are suing cops. Cops
Speaker 1: were suing the family, the crol Marty's were suing the
Speaker 1: lutz Is for even making the thing up in the
Speaker 1: first place. And to me, this is what is sort
Speaker 1: of proof positive that the whole thing is rotten to
Speaker 1: begin with. Sure, when the lawsuits start flying, Yeah, everyone
Speaker 1: had their hand out. This father Peccarero in court documents
Speaker 1: said that you know what, I never went there and
Speaker 1: blessed the house and heard this voice. I actually kind
Speaker 1: of just had a phone call with them. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: maybe and the guy, one of their daughters yelled, get
Speaker 1: out right in the background, she was talking to a doll.
Speaker 1: I think it had a dog, Harry, but it creeped
Speaker 1: me out. Nonetheless, I always wanted to be played by
Speaker 1: Rod Steiger, so I went for it. Uh but yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, it just it all sort fell apart. So
Speaker 1: there's you know, in cases like this, people are like, well,
Speaker 1: the Catholic Church is shutting that guy up. They don't
Speaker 1: want to talk about the truth that there are some
Speaker 1: demons here. Um. But the priests really confounds things. Not
Speaker 1: because it's like it was a Catholic church really trying
Speaker 1: to keep this quiet, more like, why did this priest
Speaker 1: lie so overtly on in search of Well, he may
Speaker 1: have had some skin in the game. Maybe maybe so
Speaker 1: maybe you're right. I don't know. But the the warrant said,
Speaker 1: in addition to him, you know, experiencing that in the house,
Speaker 1: it followed him throughout his life, and that he was
Speaker 1: once in a hotel room with a rabbi in Florida
Speaker 1: and a lizard demon from the house appeared to him.
Speaker 1: There that's the quality of quotes you can expect when
Speaker 1: you have the Warrens on your interview show. I love it.
Speaker 1: I love that we're treating in search of as if
Speaker 1: it was this, you know, I mean, it was it
Speaker 1: was great, but it was lucky TV for ten and
Speaker 1: twelve year old boys in the eighties. Sure, like I'm sure.
Speaker 1: I mean that probably wasn't even the priest. He probably
Speaker 1: just hired a guy. No, No, it was the guy
Speaker 1: who in court documents that was the guy on in
Speaker 1: search of But they blacked his face out right, But
Speaker 1: I mean, like they that's the guy. That's the guy.
Speaker 1: He was revealed later on. The guy on in search
Speaker 1: of was revealed later on to be Father Pecarrero, and
Speaker 1: he was on in search of back before anyone ever
Speaker 1: knew the name Pecuerero. He was called in the book
Speaker 1: father man Queso. But as far as I know, that
Speaker 1: is the same guy, and that he was just on
Speaker 1: TV lying to his teeth that's what I saw. Or
Speaker 1: he could have been just handed a script by Nimoy's team.
Speaker 1: It's possible. It was the seventies and America went will
Speaker 1: believe anything you say. A couple of years ago, actually
Speaker 1: just last year, in two thousand seventeen, it was sold
Speaker 1: for about six hundred grand the house, which is a
Speaker 1: couple of hundred less than they were asking for it.
Speaker 1: They're asking around eight And apparently it's not had nothing
Speaker 1: that only had to do with the price le ring
Speaker 1: was because of the pain and the rump to live
Speaker 1: there and have people constantly coming by. It wasn't like
Speaker 1: forget that there were six people murdered here, forget that
Speaker 1: this house has green news and flies and devil pigs
Speaker 1: coming out of you know, looking through the window. It's
Speaker 1: the real problem is Google Earth and now people can
Speaker 1: just say, oh, let's go by there and take some photos.
Speaker 1: There it is. It's at one. Oh wait, they must
Speaker 1: have moved it. That still cracks me up. But yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the that's the thing. That's why the house is
Speaker 1: still selling for less than it ever was before. And
Speaker 1: the Lutz has claimed that they didn't make much money
Speaker 1: on this and that, you know, like we never got
Speaker 1: rich and what little money we made kind of went
Speaker 1: out the door with court fees and legal fees. I
Speaker 1: don't know if that maybe utterly true. Who knows it
Speaker 1: says that they did. He did admit to getting about
Speaker 1: a hundred grand from the book and another hundred from
Speaker 1: the film. That's not that much money, no, but this
Speaker 1: is money. Those those some money. Yeah, but it's not
Speaker 1: like kickback and retire money. Sure, you know. Um. One
Speaker 1: of the probably the most telling thing about the ltz
Speaker 1: Is story being a hoax, the whole thing being just
Speaker 1: one big hoax. Is that no one, no other person owner,
Speaker 1: anybody who was associated with that house after the Ltz
Speaker 1: family left, ever reported anything even remotely supernatural like this nothing.
Speaker 1: And of course Lorraine Warren had a pretty good explanation
Speaker 1: for that, which she said, well, then, obviously one of
Speaker 1: the exorcisms was successful, because that's the only way. That's
Speaker 1: the only way to explain why the hauntings went away,
Speaker 1: and like it, that's the only way to explain it.
Speaker 1: The ltz Is also never called the ops that one,
Speaker 1: which was a big whole people poke into it, like
Speaker 1: if all this stuff was going on, like at some
Speaker 1: point you're gonna go to the police, and even if
Speaker 1: it's ten days and not, you're not just gonna just
Speaker 1: quietly be haunted by the demons of hell and not
Speaker 1: not sweat it with a cops. Sure, at least call
Speaker 1: them once and be like, you guys do anything about demons. No, Okay,
Speaker 1: it's even if it's a frank call. Uh, what do
Speaker 1: you think? I mean, this is getting a little philosophical,
Speaker 1: I guess, But do you think what do you think
Speaker 1: about bad juju in a in a home where six
Speaker 1: people were murdered. Like I'm a I'm a totally agnostic
Speaker 1: nonbeliever in any thing like that, But part of me
Speaker 1: also thinks that, like, if you brutally murder six people,
Speaker 1: there's got to be some change in the energy in
Speaker 1: the air, which sounds hokey pokier than anything I've made
Speaker 1: fun of. Um, I think, so you know, um, what's
Speaker 1: the Josh clark way dot com, what's the what's the
Speaker 1: word placebo? I think it's a placebo effect. Okay, so
Speaker 1: you know that something happened here, and if you didn't
Speaker 1: know anything, you would never notice anything. Probably not. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't think that there is a change to the
Speaker 1: energy or the air or anything like that. I think
Speaker 1: there are cues that we can find where even if
Speaker 1: you didn't know, um, you could be like there's a
Speaker 1: shadow over there, something like that, and you can freak
Speaker 1: yourself out, even in a house like that that you
Speaker 1: didn't know it was haunted or said to be haunted.
Speaker 1: But I think if you know a house is said
Speaker 1: to be haunted, if you are just your brains working
Speaker 1: overtime and you're gonna produce those things that you think
Speaker 1: you see that, but my my imagination is just dead
Speaker 1: and gone. So who knows. If you do believe stuff
Speaker 1: like that, then that's that's fine with me. I mean, sure,
Speaker 1: you're not hurting anybody with that. If you're taking money
Speaker 1: from people to exercise stuff like that, then I have
Speaker 1: a problem with you. But um, I don't think a
Speaker 1: lot of people are out there doing I think most
Speaker 1: people believe one way or another. You know. Interesting, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I want to know that boy is in the picture.
Speaker 1: It's Jody the pig demon. Uh. If you want to
Speaker 1: know more about the Amityville horror, you can type those
Speaker 1: words into the internet. Actually, you can type it in
Speaker 1: the house stuff works and it will bring up an
Speaker 1: article by our own former own Matt Hunt. I remember
Speaker 1: that guy. He wrote the Amityville article on the website.
Speaker 1: What's he up to now, any of you? I don't know,
Speaker 1: And he's continuing his investigation into the Amityville horror. He
Speaker 1: was never heard from again. Right. Uh, since I said that,
Speaker 1: it's time for a listener mail, I'm gonna call this
Speaker 1: follow up on the Homelessness episode. We re ran that
Speaker 1: one for selects God a better response this time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was really looking out for somebody. But I guess
Speaker 1: they learned the lesson or else stop listening to us
Speaker 1: by now. Yeah. Well, and I set it up too
Speaker 1: because it was my pick with like, hey, this is
Speaker 1: what happened last time, you know, I dare you are
Speaker 1: right in this time it's exactly right. So this is
Speaker 1: how this is from a woman who said that a
Speaker 1: homeless man saved her dog. It's a pretty great story.
Speaker 1: My sister and I were taking our three dogs for
Speaker 1: a walk down main street in our city one day
Speaker 1: and we stopped dressed on a bench for heading for home.
Speaker 1: That realizing it, I had accidentally let one of the
Speaker 1: laicious slip out of my hand. Unfortunately, Sephia noticed her
Speaker 1: leash was free at about the same time I did,
Speaker 1: decided to up and chase after something. My sister and
Speaker 1: I jumped to grab her, but the speed of two
Speaker 1: clumsy humans is no match for a spry young dog.
Speaker 1: She ran down the sidewalk. This is like a nightmare
Speaker 1: for me, and she ran on the sidewalk. A few
Speaker 1: pedestrians reached down to try and grab her, which frightened
Speaker 1: her enough that she ran from the sidewalk into the
Speaker 1: busy street. Four lanes of traffic going in both directions.
Speaker 1: Sprinting to try and catch up. I watched in horror
Speaker 1: she ran out into the street, shair. I was about
Speaker 1: to see my dog get killed by an oncoming car.
Speaker 1: I was right about then that a homeless man that
Speaker 1: we had previously seen around town rode up on his
Speaker 1: bicycle right in the middle of the road, keeping himself
Speaker 1: between my dog and the cars flying by. But weren't
Speaker 1: for him doing that, she would surely have been run over. Uh.
Speaker 1: Finally caught up, was able to catch her attention call
Speaker 1: her thankfully. She ran right into my arms and I
Speaker 1: looked up to thank the hero would save my dog,
Speaker 1: and he was nowhere to be seen. What was it
Speaker 1: a dream? That's me talking. Uh. He had put himself
Speaker 1: in harm's way to save my dog's life and then
Speaker 1: just quietly ridden away when he saw that she was safe.
Speaker 1: I don't know his name, never saw him again to
Speaker 1: thank him. Sepia is now ten years old. It's because
Speaker 1: of that nameless man that she has lived to see
Speaker 1: that old age. And that is Ali from New Hampshire.
Speaker 1: That was a great story. I love it. Thanks a lot, Ali,
Speaker 1: Thanks for sharing that one. See everybody we told you.
Speaker 1: If you want to send us an email like alidad
Speaker 1: or get in touch with this, you can go to
Speaker 1: our website Stuff you Should Know dot com. I also
Speaker 1: have a website called the Josh Clark Way dot com
Speaker 1: if you want to check it out, and you can
Speaker 1: send an email to Chuck, Jerry, and Me plus Frank
Speaker 1: the chair guest producer Roll everybody. Send that email to
Speaker 1: Stuff Podcasts at how stuff works dot com for more
Speaker 1: on this and thousands of other topics. Is it how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com