White Noise Paranormal Radio

(Feb 20, 2009)

RICK MORAN: Oh, I'm just an old man who lives on a ranch in Texas. Actually I live on a dog ranch in Texas. That could be a whole show in itself.

Ah, let's see. Forty-odd years ago I was a journalist, and I was working for CBS in New York and was assigned, at that time – they had a bunch of magazines called the Popular Magazine Group. And one day I found myself being assigned to do a story about a haunted house. And I had always been intrigued by all that. And I wrote the story, and the next thing I knew I found myself as a staff writer for a CBS magazine called "Psychic World." And that started the ball rolling, and I've been doing it ever since.

QUESTION: So is that how, if you like, your journey into the paranormal began? By writing about these types of things? Or did you have an experience, yourself?

RICK MORAN: No, [unintelligible] before that, I can't say that I had any real personal experiences. My grandmother was from Scotland, and she was a great believer, and had many, many stories to tell about [unintelligible] Scotland. The other half of the family was Irish-American, who had come over before the Civil War here, and they didn't think too much about those things at all. The information was there – I just never really locked into it until I started writing about it.

QUESTION: So if we just sojourned to the now, if you like, just for now – a lot of your work you've done through the Association for the Study of Unexplained Phenomena. How did you come to be involved with starting the ASUP?

RICK MORAN: Ah. Well, in the beginning, as I said, I was writing for CBS, and made a friend with a fellow by the name of Scott Rogo – the Scott Rogo, who is probably one of the most prolific writers on the paranormal at the time – and we had been down at Duke University for a while, and wrote about out-of-body experiences and psychokinesis and good stuff like that. And as the story goes, we would sit around sometimes at night and we would debate who should be the person out doing field work. Scott felt that they should be only learned professionals with PhD's with a long list of lab credits, and I argued that it probably would be better off if he left it to people who had some training as investigative journalists or police officers, because they are trained observers. And we argued about that for literally years.

Back in New York, one day we got a telephone call from some people at the Psychical Research Foundation at Duke, and they said that they had just gotten their hands on an advanced copy of a book that was claiming that all the claims in the book of paranormal activity in that particular house in New York was true because the PRF had been there and had done an interview with the folks and good stuff like that.

They obviously said that wasn't true. It was true that somebody from PRF had been invited there, but they were kind of bushwhacked. They were invited to show up one night, and they did, and that was the now-historic night when Ed and Lorraine Warren and Dr Holzer¹ and everybody else who was [unintelligible] to the great throne of knowing everything there was to know about paranormal, showed up for the TV shows and talked about what happened to George and Kathy Lutz in Amityville.

At any rate, when the book was in its proofing, they actually sent a copy to Duke. And Duke said, "What can we do about that?" And they said, "Well, you know, nothing much." They said, "Well, would you be willing to go in and look at the claims that are being made about Amityville and create a laundry list, if you would, and prove or disprove what they're saying happened.

And in fact we did that. And it didn't take too terribly long. What I did was, I had reached out to some friends who I had worked with in the past – a fellow by the name of Paul Hoffman who had worked for the New York Daily News at the time; a couple of other researchers who had helped me out in doing some [unintelligible] research – and we all got together and took on this project of looking at Amityville as a group. And thus was born the Association for the Study of Unexplained Phenomena.²

And the original work – there were over 120 claims of paranormal activity in the house, and we were able to disprove 120 of them.³ So that started the ball rolling, and its been rolling ever since.

QUESTION: So if, as you say, you've been involved in a vast number of investigations covering numerous subjects within the paranormal; but as you've just talked about, I'd like to concentrate on probably one of the most famous of them all, if I could for the moment. That would be your debunking of the Amityville Horror. I believe your involvement began during the DeFeo murders. And before we go into that, could you tell the listeners a little bit about the background of the family, themselves.

RICK MORAN: Sure. The DeFeo family had bought a house on what is called the Amityville River, which is actually just a little inlet off of the Great South Bay on Long Island. Lovely house. And the family moved-in. They're originally from Brooklyn. And there were claims that certain members of the family were involved with the Mafia. Ronnie DeFeo Jr, who's the son – the eldest son in the family – did everything he could to propagate that. Everybody in the neighborhood knew him as being a wise guy, as they would say; but in fact Ronnie didn't have any particular claim to fame with the Mafia, except that his grandfather had a car dealership where a lot of Mafia-type personalities would go in and buy their cars there. But that's neither here nor there.

Ronnie was a wild child. We're talking about a period in American history where the drug culture was quite prevalent, and everybody was experimenting with everything. And Ronnie spent most of his time walking around stoned on one type of drug or another. His oldest sister Dawn – his younger sister, but the oldest of the girls, Dawn – was not happy in living with the DeFeo household. She felt that her father was a brute and was stifling her. And as the theory goes, Ronnie and Dawn hatched a plot to do away with Mom and Dad and live happily ever after.

Unfortunately things got out of control, and on the night in question – and this is my theory,⁴ and Ronnie DeFeo isn't saying that I'm wrong – Dawn killed everyone in the household, and then she went down and announced it to Ronnie, who was totally stoned watching a TV show on TV in the living room. And he was watching a movie called "Castle Keep." And he vaguely remembers somebody coming down to him in a black hooded garb and gloved hands – and that was pretty much what he claimed to remember when he was first interviewed.⁵ But what happened after that, I believe, is that Ronnie was totally blown away by the fact that Dawn had actually shot her younger sister and her two younger brothers. And Ronnie then shot Dawn.

At any rate, the first that I learned about this was [when] one of my editors called me up and said, "Go out to Amityville, they just had a mass murder." And when I showed up on the scene – I was there – Paul Hoffman was there from the Daily News. As I said, he was one of the founding members of ASUP. Joel Martin, who was news director for WBAB radio on Long Island – who was also an ASUP member – was there, covering for his newspaper. And what we were looking at was either a gangland hit, you know, or something else gone awry. After talking to police on the scene – unofficially – the local police said, "Ronnie probably did it because he's crazy."

And so my first introduction to Amityville was the murders. Sometime after that I went out to take some photographs of the building in daylight, and the officer who was guarding the front door was a personal friend of mine. He said, "Do you wanna see the place?" So I was actually in the house, you know, long before the Lutzes even thought about buying the house. At that point it was a gruesome scene, but I felt nothing that would suggest that there was anything paranormal going on there.

QUESTION: So as you say, there is some sort of [unintelligible] I can get to that perhaps Dawn actually killed some of the family. What, if any, is the evidence for that theory?

RICK MORAN: Well the strongest piece of evidence for it – the first and most important piece is that in the autopsy, in post-mortem, Dawn had powder burns to her right shoulder and powder marks on her right hand, which would be consistent with someone who had fired a rifle.⁶ That was number one. Number two – and this didn't come to pass for several years after this whole incident – I was in touch with an informant who worked for the Drug Enforcement Administration, who claimed that there was, in fact, somebody watching the house that night because Ronnie had said that he was running drugs off the Great South Bay in his speedboat – and then they had a boathouse that doubled as a garage, and that's how they would transfer drugs and take them into New York City. And they put somebody watching the house.⁷

Now unfortunately that's anecdotal, you know, I mean I can't prove that or not; but the person that I interviewed claimed that on the night of the murder Dawn came out of the house, got into her car, made a left-hand turn, which would take her out to the end of Ocean Avenue, where they lived, which leads right out to Great South Bay. And as she returned a few minutes later – uh, when they were looking for the weapon, they asked Ronnie, "What did you do with the gun," and he said that he threw it out behind the house. Well they never found it there. And then they went diving at the other location – which is where Dawn would have been going if she made that turn and gone out to the end of the – there's no way to leave the point if you make a left-hand turn.⁸ And they found the rifle there.

Now the other [unintelligible] to that story is that Ronnie DeFeo was a gun nut, and he was really into gun safety. As a matter of fact he used to teach gun safety courses.⁹ When they got the rifle back out of the water, where it had been thrown, the rifle was loaded and cocked. Now Ronnie DeFeo would not have taken a loaded, cocked rifle and thrown it head-over arms to put it into the middle of that body of water.

QUESTION: Rick, from what I understand, he was actually an instructor of some sort, wasn't he?

RICK MORAN: Yeah.

QUESTION: When it came to guns...

RICK MORAN: Yeah, as a matter of fact, I did...

QUESTION: ...so he was well-versed in safe transport...

RICK MORAN: I did interview one fellow who Ronnie had beaten severely, because when they went hunting once the guy climbed over a rock fence with the gun in his hand rather than handing it over to someone until he climbed over without the gun. Ronnie took that kind of thing very, very seriously.

Later on, when I talked to Ronnie, Ronnie admitted – stuck by his story. He said, "I did throw that gun out that I used." I said, "Really?" He says, "Yeah." And he says, "It was a small handgun,"¹⁰ he says, "[unintelligible] went in back and I threw it out into the river." Well they weren't looking for a small handgun, they were looking for a rifle. And they found the rifle down where, allegedly, Dawn threw it. And unsafely, as a matter of fact.

So, you know, all pieces fall into place. Its as good a theory as any that I've heard. And certainly, the whole idea that Ronnie shot his two younger brothers just doesn't sit right.¹¹ It doesn't sit right to this day, you know. I'm in contact with Ronnie, who's still sitting in prison. And I think that, and the fact that the youngest daughter was killed, really bothers him. He's not particularly concerned about his parents being killed – he thought they were useless – but he really was not happy with the idea that the younger kids were murdered.

QUESTION: So as a former police officer and as an investigative journalist, in your view there is some more evidence that stacks up that it was Dawn who, in fact, killed the family, and not Ronnie as he's alleged.

RICK MORAN: Yes. Yes. And now I'll go so far as to say that among my peers at the time, that was the general consensus.¹² It wasn't just my idea. [unintelligible] they kinda came up with. I just proved it.

QUESTION: Just to let you know, we are experiencing a few technical difficulties this evening, as you've already guessed by the fact that we are about 20 minutes late going to air. We are on the air at the moment with Rick Moran who is an Amityville specialist. Expert, if you will. Former police officer, investigative journalist and all-around lovely guy. We do actually have, what it looks like, two callers on the line at the moment, so in a bid to get those callers, quick, because I do know that you've been trying to call-in for the past 5 minutes. We've been trying to answer your call, but unfortunately its not working, so Rick, if you don't mind, we're going to give this a go now and see if we can get these people on the line... [meaningless talk excised]

DAN (caller): Hello?

QUESTION: We can hear you.

DAN (caller): You can hear me?

QUESTION: I can hear you. You're on the air with White Noise Paranormal Radio. Who am I speaking to?

DAN (caller): Hi, this is Dan from Fullerton.

QUESTION: Well hello Dan. How can we help you.

DAN (caller): Yeah, I wanted to debate Rick about The Amityville Horror – about why he thinks its a hoax.

RICK MORAN: Oh, I know that its a hoax. I know its a hoax because – let me explain – I know its a hoax for one very good reason. After we had published what we found as a result of ASUP's study into this, I was asked to go on the talk circuit with Jay Anson, who actually wrote the book. Jay and I got to be very, very good friends, and he put it this way. And this is at dinner at 21 in Manhattan, the night we were doing the last program; and Jay looked at me and said, "You know what your problem is?" I said, "No," he says, "You're a journalist." And I said, "What does that mean?" And he says, "I'm a writer," he says, "I wrote this book because I wanted to make enough money to finish building my house in [unintelligible] so that I can retire. I'm a writer. I make things up. You're a journalist. You keep on looking for corroboration and proof. He says, "And you're never gonna have anything, and I'm gonna have my house in [unintelligible].

DAN (caller): So that proves that Jay Anson's book was fiction...

RICK MORAN: Right.

DAN (caller): But that doesn't prove that the Lutzes were faking the haunting.

RICK MORAN: The only part of the Lutz claims that I honestly thought held some possible weight was the story about Kathy waking up in the middle of the night looking into the mirrors. Because the bedroom had mirrors on two sides of it – the walls and ceiling. And she felt as if she was looking at a much older woman in the mirror. And I honestly believe that that happened, but I – as a student in the paranormal – I think I can explain it. I'm not saying that it isn't paranormal, but, you know, to then take the great leap and say, "Well, there was a demon in the house," and you're claiming the priest was thrown out of the house – was told to "GET OUT!" And Father Pecoraro was never in the house.

DAN (caller): Well he stated – on the TV show "In Search Of" he stated that he was in the house and he even stated that he felt a force slap him across the face.

RICK MORAN: Yeah, well you wanna know something – that's what he said then, but before he died he recanted that whole story.¹³

DAN (caller): Well when did he recant it? Because people don't even know if he's dead or not.

RICK MORAN: And the fact of the matter is – let me explain something to you. Allow me to explain something. Father Pecoraro got involved with this because he was Kathy Lutz' psychiatrist.¹⁴

DAN (caller): No, he was George's friend, not Kathy's.

RICK MORAN: No, he was Kathy's. You know, this is how the stories get bent out of shape.

DAN (caller): I agree. That's why I [unintelligible] George went... Hello? Hello?

RICK MORAN: Yeah, go ahead.

DAN (caller): George went to see the priest when he was getting an annulment from his first wife. That's how they met, and that's never been in dispute. So he wasn't Kathy's friend. He became Kathy's friend just because he was George's friend. But he was never Kathy's psychiatrist or anything.

RICK MORAN: Okay. Let's go back to the beginning, okay? George told a lot of stories, okay? And before George died, I asked him on a talk show, "George, when will it end?" And his answer was, "Whoever dies last wins."¹⁵

DAN (caller): And what talk show was that? I never heard that one before.

RICK MORAN: He has a lot of followers. I'm well aware that George has a lot of followers. I've had people send me emails saying, "How could you say such terrible things about Kathy Lutz?" I never said anything terrible about Kathy Lutz – I just don't think that they were chased out of the house by demons. I don't think that they were in the house at any time close to the number of days they claim they were. Okay?

DAN (caller): But is there one major factor that makes you think that it was a hoax?

RICK MORAN: The one major factor?

DAN (caller): Yeah.

RICK MORAN: Sure. Nobody else who's ever been in that house has had any paranormal experiences. Real paranormal experiences.

DAN (caller): Haven't there been other hauntings like that?

RICK MORAN: I beg your pardon? I beg your pardon?

QUESTION: Okay, it does appear that we've actually lost audio on that caller. So Dan, we do apologize. It does actually look like that the Blogtalk gremlins have permanently struck. Our switchboard is doing a multitude of things that I've actually [unintelligible] before. Well hopefully later we can take some more calls; but up to now we've gotten up to the Lutz part of the story; but I just want to take one little step back on for a minute, Rick, just so you can explain this, hopefully. Perhaps the most [unintelligible] paranormal incident involved with the DeFeo part of the Amityville story was Ronnie's account of the black hooded figure handing him the rifle on the night of the murders. So was this simply just kind of a drug-induced hallucination or something like that?

RICK MORAN: Well he admits that he was stoned out of his face while watching television. I don't doubt that what he saw was his sister walking over to him wearing what they called in those days a snorkel coat, which was a black or very dark blue nylon hooded coat, and a pair of gloves; and handing him the rifle and telling him to go do it. I don't doubt that for a second that that happened. I also think that he was so stoned that he couldn't get out of the chair, let alone get upstairs and kill anybody. And so Dawn did it.¹⁶

I don't think the original plan was for Dawn to do it; but I think faced with that situation, that's what she did. Okay? And the reason that she would have been wearing the snorkel coat and the gloves inside the house is real simple – she went out to the boathouse to get the gun.¹⁷

QUESTION: Yeah, I do remember hearing an interview with yourself on another show where – wasn't there someone who actually saw her wearing the coat around the time?

RICK MORAN: Oh yeah. As a matter of fact, that we can actually corroborate. The original claim was by the gentleman from the DEA that made the claim years later; but when we were doing the original investigation we talked to the neighbors. They told me that she wore a snorkel coat all the time.

QUESTION: So to your knowledge...

RICK MORAN: She was there all the time walking around like that. It gets cold on the Great South Bay on Long Island in the middle of the winter.

QUESTION: So to your knowledge, during the DeFeo's time at the house, there was no – prior to the murders – there had been no suggestion or anything of any paranormal activity while they were there?

RICK MORAN: No. And, ya know, the people turned around and said they thought that Dawn practiced witchcraft in the house – yeah, maybe. You know, she was a teenager – that was common enough in that day. Its common enough today. Do I think that she opened up some grand portal and go out, you know, get the Devil into her house? No, I don't think that that's even logical. Its no more logical than turning around and saying that you heard a brass band walking through your living room at 3 o'clock in the morning.

Its good fiction. Okay? Jay Anson wrote a great book.¹⁸

A lot of people turned around and say, "Well are you saying its all a hoax, its all a lie?" Well the Lutzes told the story, okay?¹⁹ And I will tell you this: when they were originally thinking about writing the story, the attorney for Ronnie – a fellow by the name of Bill Weber – asked around and said, "Who can write this story?" And one of the first people that he looked at was Paul Hoffman, who was a colleague of mine. And he invited Paul to the house – not THE Amityville house, but, you know, another location. George and Kathy Lutz were there, okay?²⁰ Weber brought out boxes and boxes of crime scene photos, and at one point Kathy is looking through these pictures – apparently it was the first time she had seen them – and she saw the – in those days you used to use graphite to mark fingerprints, you know, and they'd try to lift a fingerprint – and she said, "Oh, look at that, it looks like green slime all over the walls," and then, you know, Weber just turned around and said, "No." He says, "They put the graphite on and then when they take a photo in color, you know, the strobe comes back as green," and she says, "Oh, okay..."²¹

And there was a whole series of photographs. And there was a picture looking out through the bedroom window, and you could see the two warning lights on the tower of the Coast Guard station in the distance. And George, you know, says, "Oh! For a second I thought I saw red eyes out the window!" You know. And [unintelligible] says, "No, those are just the lights from the tower." "Oh, yeah. Right. Okay."

And this went on in front of Paul Hoffman all night as they sat there looking at the photos and drinking wine. Now much later on, I mean, then they asked him all, you know, are you gonna write it, and he said, "No, I'm not gonna write it," you know, because they wanted to write it as a true story, and he says, "Well obviously its not a true story since we're sitting here making it up as we're going along."²²

And they found Jay Anson who was more amenable to the idea of writing the book as fiction. In fact, I never would have been involved with the book if it had just said "The Amityville Horror." But the original title of the book was "The Amityville Horror: A True Story." And it wasn't a true story – it was a work of fiction.²³

Now, do I think that Kathy Lutz saw herself growing old in the mirror, or possibly even seeing the reflection of Mrs DeFeo in that bedroom? It could be. I wasn't there. Okay. If you want to talk about anecdotal information, I can't tell you that it wasn't true, simply because I wasn't there; but there's nothing to prove that it did happen. And, in fact, when the road show was on its own and we were out there talking to the people, there were always jokes being made – off-camera there were jokes being made – and nobody was taking this seriously.

Unfortunately we now have generations of people, and the caller that you just had is typical of that, okay. He probably wasn't alive when this happened, but he will swear to me that he knows the truth, okay. And that's great. That's fantastic. You know, believe in what you want to believe in.

I gotta say one other thing. I have found myself stuck with a reputation of being a debunker. And I'm not a debunker, okay. And here, the last 25 years of my life I've been involved in very, very serious research into possible explanations of the paranormal; and we're doing a lot of very, very heady research now dealing with EVP's, dealing with, you know, the use of electronic devices to record voices in haunted locations. Full spectrum photography. IR photography. The use of the [unintelligible] camera. I mean I can go on and on and on. I mean ASUP now has 50 investigators just in Texas – and we're using heavy duty technology. And if you ask me "do ghosts exist," my answer is gonna be "yes." And if you ask me, do I personally believe that the human spirit can survive death and go someplace else, my answer is "yes." And I'm working as hard as I can – and my people are working as hard as they can – to be able to come up with scientific proof – you know, the empirical proof – to prove that all of this is a possibility.

Okay, so I'm not a debunker; but when it comes to Amityville, it was pure fiction.

QUESTION: So, that said, then, obviously your version is that this kind of – I know you mentioned the [unintelligible] no truth to it. If I can just get back to the list that you compiled – there were 100 discrepancies, if you like, that were between the book and the true story, so if you want to pluck away. Could you, perhaps, share a couple of the most glaring errors with our listeners, just to give them a chance to sort of...

RICK MORAN: Sure. Sure. Father Pecoraro is supposedly driving down the Van Wyck Expressway – a road that I know very well because I used to have to drive it everyday – and he's supposedly in the middle of this violent storm, and suddenly the hood of his car comes crashing back into what you'd call a windscreen, or a windshield, of the car and obliterates it. Interesting story, except that the car that Father Pecoraro drove had a hood that folded forward to get into the engine compartment. Therefore there was no way that that could have possibly flown back into the windscreen. Okay?²⁴

In the house, itself, there were several things in the book which are a little fuzzy after all these years, but there have been some changes to the interior of the house and unfortunately when Jay was writing the book, he was looking at an old set of floor plans, so he referred to certain doors which just didn't exist. He also maintained that the front door was wrenched off its hinges by the Devil as George and Kathy and the kids were running from the house for fear of their lives. In fact, that is a very, very heavy solid oak door, and it swings inward, therefore it could not have been wrenched forward out against the building.²⁵ Now there was a very flimsy storm door, and obviously it had not been latched – and, you know, that door was probably destroyed long before the Lutzes got there.

There were some real problems with how long the Lutzes were in the house. You know, the neighbors were all willing to sign affidavits that said that, you know, that they were not there for the period that they said that they were...²⁶

QUESTION: Well perhaps we can touch on that, because that seems to be a point of huge conjecture among Amityville enthusiasts, if you'd like to call them that. There are some reports that say that they were there for years. There are some reports that say that they were there for a week. There are some reports that say they were there for one or two months. I believe you actually had a contact with a mister, is it Ireland, who actually owned the property at the time?

RICK MORAN: Yeah. Yeah.

QUESTION: I don't know if you managed to get out of him exactly how long they were there for; and I believe there was also a little bit of an issue [unintelligible] matter of fact own the house at all, and what they were actually doing in the house. Maybe you can tell us a little bit about that?

RICK MORAN: Well there's all sorts of conjecture about that. It was noted at the time of the murders that Ronnie had claimed that in his drug business²⁷ – which he claimed he was in with his father – they kept large sums of money in the house. And several people heard that story. There was some conjecture that possibly George had hopes of going into the house and finding the money and leaving. I'm not sure that the money was ever there.

There was a strongbox behind the wetbar on the first floor, front of the building. The police had found that when they were doing the murder investigation. There was no lockbox inside of it, as Ronnie had said that it was, but there was the space was there for it.

There were all sorts of conjecture about hiding places in the house. Probably one of the best is the secret red room, okay. I have a favorite photograph that is of Stephen Kaplan – who is a bit of a jokester to begin with – and Steve and his wife and everybody from ASUP had been invited to come to the Amityville house by the new owners – after this whole thing had finished – for a Halloween party. And everybody shows up for this dressed Halloween party in all sorts of costumes, and Steve came in as Batman. And I've got this great photograph of Steve – who is about six feet tall – crunched down into this little tiny space which is painted red, okay, and that is the famous red room, okay. My problem is, its not big enough for you to stand up in, nevermind it being called a "room," its an access to pipes inside the house.²⁸

QUESTION: Slight difference, there.

RICK MORAN: And it was behind a wooden bookcase that they – and its a space under the steps – and it was used as a pantry. Now was it hidden? Nah, I don't think you'd call it hidden. I mean its just that it served no useful purpose [unintelligible] unless you put something in front of it to pile something up in. I mean it wasn't big enough to use for anything else.

There were allegations that they hid drugs in there, but there's nothing in the police reports that suggest that they found any residue. I think it was exactly what it was, you know...

QUESTION: It sounds to me like a large percentage of the facts are actually unsupported by any kind of evidence at all.

RICK MORAN: Oh yeah! I mean the bottom line is you can come up with a reasonable explanation – the common explanation – or you can let your mind run wild. And in this particular case, we know that George and Kathleen met with William Weber and with two different writers, and at two different times had what I would call "skull sessions," where they went through these photographs and went "Ooh! Blech! Eee!" You know. "That's terrible," you know, and said, "That looks like this and that looks like that," and all this good stuff, you know. And then, eventually, Jay Anson wrote a book.

And, you know, I also challenge folks to think about it. A lot of people don't read. A lot of them, you know, see movies; and they say, "Well the movie did this and the movie did that," and you know, its like, the movie isn't quite true to the book, either. But if you read Jay Anson's 2 great masterworks, okay, I would say they were "The Amityville Horror" – which was a great piece of fiction – and also I would suggest somebody get a hold of a copy of the screenplay of "The Exorcist," which he worked on.²⁹ And there are several things that are very common there. There are common side stories, okay, because it was written by the same man, you know. It was a great piece of fiction, and it should have been left at that.

You know, I got no problem with people making movies about it. I don't have any problem with people writing about it. As a matter of fact, I'll go so far as to say that if you were looking for a book about Amityville that at least could have been true, in part, I would suggest that you read the Hans Holzer book.

Now I'm not saying that anything in that book actually happened, either; but what I am saying is if you read the book, he doesn't digress into Never-Never Land, you know. Everything he says in there is plausible, okay. Did it happen? Well according to all the sources I have, it didn't. Okay? Did these things happen to George and Kathy Lutz, I'll never know, because if somebody says that it happened, you know, they're saying that it happened. But, in the case of the Holzer book, Holzer went into the family – the original DeFeo family – and what went on there. And interestingly, while – if you get to talk to Ronnie DeFeo Jr, you can talk about the Amityville book by Jay Anson, and he will start laughing. Bring up the Holzer book, he becomes really upset. Because the book talks about alleged things that happened in the house – abuses that happened in the house – and quite honestly I think that they were based in truth. Okay. And if you want to look at if from a paranormal perspective, everything that Holzer wrote about in that book could happen. I'm not saying it did happen, but it could happen, because you can look at that, you can look at a thousand other cases and you can say, "Okay, fine, what he's talking about here has happened here and here and here and here and here – in other cases, in other countries, at other times. But Amityville?

You know, I'd like one person to show me a case that has been studied by a legitimate group, okay – a legitimate research group – that says that they heard or recorded a marching band in the living room of the house at 3:30 in the morning. Its never happened before. So there's no reason to believe it happened now.³⁰

QUESTION: No. So, saying that, Rick, what – obviously I think I already know, but I'd like to get it from yourself – what are your opinions on the investigations there by the Warrens and by Hans Holzer when he went around the building?

RICK MORAN: I think Hans did what Hans always does. I've known Hans for a long, long time; and I'm not going to tell you that he's a friend, because he really isn't. His daughter and I are friends, but he, ya know...

Hans is a story collector. Okay? He goes in, he listens to the story and retells the story. He tells ghost stories. Later on in his later books, he then goes into theoretical material having to do with the paranormal, which is much more laudatory, I think.

Ed and Lorraine Warren. You know, I can't say much about Ed, you know. He's gone. He'd dead. Lorraine is a nice lady, but has a tendency to see demons around every corner. And that's her thing. That's her thing. I mean she sees demons. She believes in demons. I'm not saying that I don't believe in demons. I don't think that you find them in every case.

ASUP, at the moment, covers about 50 cases a year. Okay. And we're talking about heavy-duty investigations. We're not talking about "we'll stop by and see if they can't scare us with their story." We actually go in and spend several days and look at the cases and set up equipment, you know, and put $10,000 worth of electronics into the house, and good stuff like that. And we've had some interesting stuff, okay. In all those cases – 50 a year – and I've been doing this, as I've said, for about 40 years, okay. ASUP, itself, has probably done close to 1,000 cases. Okay? And of those cases we only have 3 that involve a claim of infestation by a demonic force. Okay? Three out of a thousand. I think that's a pretty good average. I think that is probably "the" average.

NOTES