2021-02-01

TABLE OF CONTENTS

I—INTRODUCTION : THE “UNEXPLAINED”

-A—THE MALTESE FACTOR

-B—MY SOOTHSAYER DREAM

-C—THE HOUSE

II—MY GOOGLE® SEARCH FOR OTHER STORIES

-A—MY VIDEO LIBRARY

III—THE AMITYVILLE HORROR STORY

-A—FICTIONAL VERSUS TRUE STORIES

-B—IS THE AMITYVILLE HORROR A TRUE STORY?

—1—CAUSE AND EFFECT

—2—MY TWO ( FORMERLY THREE ) QUESTIONS REGARDING THE STORY’S  VALIDITY

—–a—WHY ONLY THE DEFEOS AND LUTZES AND NOBODY ELSE?

—–b—WERE HARD DRUGS INVOLVED IN THE MASS MURDER’S CAUSE?

—–c—WHY DID THE NUMBER OF FLIES CHANGE? (ANSWERED?)

IV—A POLICY OF WHAT TYPES OF VIDEOS I AVOIDED

-A—“LOW-LIGHT” VIDEOS

-B—“INSURANCE SEMINAR” VOICE ACTORS

V—INTERESTING SCRIPTS AND INTRIGUING VOICE ACTORS THAT I DID CHOOSE

-A—“A Haunting In Georgia”

–B—“School Spirit” and “Ghosts-R-Us”

–C—“The Queen Mary”

 

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I—Introduction : The “Unexplained”

In my life, I can honestly say that I have had experiences with the “unexplained”.

I’m not going to call them “unexplain-able“, per se, since I believe all occurrences do have an explanation behind the reasons they’ve happened; just because we less-than-omniscient human beings have not yet found the explanations, does not mean the explanations do not exist, in the first place, but simply that they have not yet been discovered and acted upon.

The three areas where I can expound on such experiences are in : [1] The death of a former landlord—who I wasn’t even that close to, personally, socially, or otherwise; [2] A precognitive dream I had; and [3] the odd occurrences in a house I grew up in, between 4th grade, and my sophomore year in high school.

A—The Maltese Factor

I forget the exact year, but somewhere between 1996 and 1998, I lived in an apartment on the old 39th Street in Lyons, Illinois.

Our landlord, was an elderly woman named Connie Maltese, who had to have been in her 80’s or better. She walked with a cane, and the clothes she wore seemed to have that late Civil War-era vibe to it, where, on occasion, she’d wear one  of those large-brimmed hats, which was impossible to “not notice”.

One day, our landlord’s daughter stopped by to tell us that Connie had passed away, and that she ( the daughter ) might be considering selling the 4-unit apartment building, ( since she had no interest in being a landlord ) and that, although she was not asking us to leave, per se, but rather, as a result of her selling the building, when the current leased expired, we should expect probable changes in the terms of the lease ( i.e., the rent—with the new landlords, whoever they ended up being).

With a new landlord, it was far more likely the rent would increase than decrease; and if we foresaw any problems paying a higher rent, then, while we’re still ahead of the game, we should consider starting a search to seek out a new apartment in another building that offered rents more in line with our budget.

Connie’s daughter had no idea of what a new landlord would charge us for rent; those decisions would be completely out of her hands.

If I remember correctly, our rent—although by no means, “low”—was probably advantageously lower than similar apartments in the area.

So, “heads up”, folks!

Anyway, literally only two or three days after being informed of Connie’s passing, I was at the grocery store ( the Jewel-Osco at Harlem and 39th Street in Stickney ) and I was in the dairy section walking past the eggs and approaching the shelves where the milk was at.

There I was pushing my cart toward the milk, and as I got within 10 feet, or so, of the shelving unit where the  full gallons were at, I got in front of the cart and started pulling the front of the cart behind me.

As I came to a stop, directly in front of the milk gallons, I momentarily looked up, and although it didn’t register at first, I saw a woman that looked exactly like Connie ( same age, same  clothes, same smile and facial expression, same hat—she was the only woman I knew that wore that kind of “Gone With The Wind” hat 130 years out of it’s normal time frame—etc; in fact, for all intents and purposes, it was Connie! )

There she was, only about five feet away from me ( two strides in her direction and I could have touched her ! ) in the middle of the aisle, with no basket, to lean on or shop with ( and I can’t see a woman of her wobbly physical state walking around a huge store like that without a shopping cart to put even “just a few” groceries into; and she certainly would not have walked, all by herself, to the back of the store to retrieve something as heavy as a gallon of milk, especially given her uncertain physical stamina in her obviously-weakened, walking-cane-dependent geriatric state ) , but, strangely, she was just leaning forward with her cane,  as though she was in motion walking, but she was completely motionless!

Just like a photograph. Completely frozen in time! No movement whatsoever!

She wasn’t looking directly at me, per se, but rather, just to my left, as though there was someone or some thing just to the left of my left shoulder that she was looking at, and she was aiming her walking direction directly at that person or thing next to me.

If I had thought of it, I should have looked to my immediate left to see who or what she was looking at. But I didn’t. In my caught-off guard moment, I just nonchalantly went about my business and continued doing my shopping.

Like I said, it didn’t register at first.

So, after ever-so-briefly looking at her, I turned to look at and reached for a gallon of milk, and as I pulled it off the shelf, it dawned on me that I had just seen Connie, and when I looked back up, there was absolutely no sign of her anywhere.

I looked around in all directions, but there was no sign of her in any direction.

There was no way she could have “disappeared” down one of the aisles in 1/16th of a second—not even an Olympic sprinter  could have traveled in any direction that fast!

When I realized what had just happened, I put the milk in the shopping cart, and just stood there motionlessly, myself, staring down at the floor, somewhat disturbed by the creepiness of the impossible vision I just had.

B—My Soothsayer Dream

In one of my posts titled “Strange Dreams“, I discuss a precognitive dream I had the night before an evening where my then-girlfriend broke up with me.

Not only did all the events in my dreams, have a direct correlation to the events of the following evening, they unfolded in the exact same sequence they occurred in the dream—or, should I say nightmare.

I’ll never forget the unsettling accuracy of that nocturnal prophecy.

C—The House

Finally, in one of my earlier posts “8650 W. 44th Place, Lyons, Illinois“, I elaborated on a house ( that is no longer in existence, since it had long since been torn down and two other structures—a single family dwelling and an apartment building—built in it’s place on the property ) where I had spent the last five of my elementary school years and the first two of my high school years in.

In that post, I mentioned how that house had an eerie component in that there were some strange occurrences that took place while we resided there.

Without rehashing those stories in their entirety here, suffice it to highlight two points :  [1] that my two German Shepherds reacted very uneasily when in the basement of that house—they didn’t seem to mind being upstairs, but their hackles would stand straight up every time they would reluctantly go into the basement at the “request” of either my brother, or myself, where our shared bedroom was; and [2] my dad ( on only one occasion ) had experienced hearing someone talking on the intercom, when there was no one home  besides himself.

II—My Google® Search For Other Stories

Despite how interesting those particular stories are to me, personally, this post is not going to be about those occurrences or that house, per se, but rather, about other places ( i.e., homes, museums, hospitals etc. ) that are also reputed to host disembodied spirits, poltergeists, and other paranormal phenomena.

Regarding such a topic, there are countless links on Google® to research from. 

In fact, when I typed in the word “hauntings” into the search box, Google generated 12,500,000 results.

Wow! 12 million results!

I really wasn’t convinced that I was going to have enough time to click and investigate every one of those links; nor—that even if I could—that I would be able to fit that many  stories into this post. That would make for a very long page, indeed.

The alternative, of course, was to limit this post to only a select few stories, which I found to be a far-more-feasible approach. 

But which links?

A—My Video Library

Well, one idea I had was to choose from those stories that I personally had video tapes on, that were also sourced online, as well.

And yes, I did say video tapes—as in VHS tapes.

Of course, I do have a DVD player, but I do not have a DVD recorder. I never had one; and I love to record every show that interests me, and that’s where my VCR comes in handy.

But I’ve always had a VCR since the early 1980’s, when they first came out; and when they did, I was a video-recording maniac! I recorded everything I could. My very first obsession was recording the syndicated reruns of M*A*S*H.

But that’s a different topic for a different post.

My point here is simply that the stories I decided to write about today, are those that I have VHS tapes on, but, that are also uploaded by someone else on the internet, whether that be YouTube or Facebook or wherever.

III—The Amityville Horror Story

The one video that I will not be focusing on in this post pertains to the well-known “The Amityville Horror” story ( not because of any “faults” in the story, per se, which is actually awesome from cover-to-cover as far as the book is concerned ) but because pretty much 100 percent of the videos (both, the Hollywood movies—i.e., the original with James Brolin, AND the re-make, with Ryan Reynolds ) and the pseudo-documentaries pertaining to that story, invariably add elements that are not found in the original book, written by the late Jay Anson. 

I find the act of adding into a movie elements that are not in the book to be a crime of sorts—and, an unforgivable crime at that!

The book, however, is actually pretty awesome!

I’m sure people who worship, say, Stephen King as the “master” of horror stories, will probably assert that the movie adaptations of his books never do his books any justice, and that’s certainly true in the case of the Amityville Horror story, as well. 

Once you have: [1] read the book, and then you have; [2]  seen either of the two Hollywood movies, you almost automatically become offended by the absolute crap the directors incorporated into the movies—that is, totally-invented elements that simply never happened as far as the book is concerned, because they can’t be found anywhere between the covers.

But hey! The movie has to “sell”, right?

Shame on you, Hollywood! You absolutely ruin 100 percent of the stories you modify—I mean, “tell”.

The picture above shows two books, because the original ( the one on the left) which I bought back in the 1980’s, had gotten misplaced over the years, and then I went to a used book store to replace the “lost” one.

However, within a few weeks of buying the second copy, I ended up finding the first copy in a box down in the basement, and now, I have two copies.

The second copy, obviously, has a different cover because it was published several editions subsequent to the original print.

As far as the story, itself, is concerned, I contemplated doing ( but have not yet commenced ) a graphical/pictorial storyboard of the book to highlight what I think are among the many cool parts of the book that neither Hollywood movie ever covered; nor, will such a post contain elements that never occurred in the book, the way the Hollywood movies so shamefully did.

A—Fictional Versus True Stories

Fictional books on horror from writers such as Stephen King or Clive Barker never really appealed to me ( in the slightest degree ) simply because they were fictional to begin with.

The authors, as far as I know, never claimed they were “true” stories.

If they had claimed they were true, I might have been interested in reading them. But to combine the fact that the book is openly presented as fiction along with the fact that it’s a thousand pages long ( especially in the case of King’s books ), is a double deal-breaker for me. 

Reading a book takes far more effort than watching a movie.

Ergo, it must be true to justify any amount of time invested in reading it.

Otherwise, I will read non-fiction, but not fiction. 

For me, reading a fiction book is out of the question since life is far too short to invest any effort in the reading ( beyond a page, or two ) about events that never actually happened.

I’d rather be educated with reality, than entertained with fiction.

B—Is The Amityville Horror a True Story?

Apparently, the Lutzes ( who told the story ), and Jay Anson, ( the author who wrote the book about the story ), certainly presented it as being true.

Surely, though, there was no shortage of detractors who claimed the story was an invention that the Lutzes deliberately fabricated for financial gain.

The Lutzes, of course, would not be the first people to claim such stories surrounding the scene of a horrific tragedy.

1—Cause And Effect

There’s obviously plenty of precedents where post-tragedy scary tales of ominous hauntings have been generated regarding places where terrifying events had previously taken place ( e.g., a man, woman or child dies under horrifying circumstances and the place where they died is the scene where unexplained and frightening events have posthumously occurred, which are then directly attributed to those people’s horrifically unnatural deaths ).

The house where the Lutzes resided certainly was no exception to that rule.

 

THE DEFEOS

 

 

Six of the house’s seven previous occupants,  ( The DeFeos :  a family of seven—two parents, three boys and two girls ),  were all murdered in cold blood in their sleep, by the oldest son, who shot them all to death with either a rifle or a shotgun.

The event of the mass murder certainly planted the seeds of all kinds of possibilities where ex post facto stories could be generated that perfectly fit in to the cause-and-effect narrative which is always at the core of post-tragedy paranormal events, such as hauntings —cause : people die unnaturally ; effect : they haunt posthumously.

 

2—My Two ( Formerly Three ) Questions Regarding The Story’s  Validity

a—Why Only The DeFeos and Lutzes and Nobody Else?

On the one hand, the fact that Ronald DeFeo claimed that disembodied voices goaded him into committing the murders certainly shows that the Lutzes were not the first to claim that paranormal events were associated with the property.

On the other hand, since not one person who has subsequently resided at the house has ever reported any paranormal events, shows that no “other-worldly” forces have been in force outside of the DeFeos and Lutzes occupancies of  the property.

Why only the DeFeo’s and Lutzes and no one else?

b—Were Hard Drugs Involved In the Mass Murder’s Cause?

In DeFeo’s case, it had been alleged that he was involved with hard drugs, and, if drugs like LSD were involved, it’s not entirely out of the question that he “heard” LSD-induced voices and he reacted according to those auditory hallucinations.

If the voices he heard were drug-induced, and not paranormally-generated, that would mean that the number of claims of supernatural origins would be reduced to just the Lutzes and not DeFeo, as well.

The fewer the number of supernatural claims, the more likely the claims of mystical involvement would be false ( although the reverse might not necessarily be true, since it is frequently the case that the greater the number of people who actually believe a “factoid”, the greater the likelihood that a certain degree of “group think” or mass hysteria might be at play; but, in this particular case, if the Lutzes were the only ones claiming a paranormal connection, that would certainly justify a degree of skepticism on the part of those the Lutzes attempted to convince their story was true ).

Of course, there is that one strange detail, though, that they say that George Lutz, the father, strongly resembled Ronald DeFeo, the murderer.

In fact, when George told people where he lived, he was often told by those familiar with the house and the DeFeos, that he eerily resembled Ronald. Especially when he walked into a bar that DeFeo had previously frequented. When George walked in to have a couple of beers, the bartender momentarily thought that George was Ronald.

Although that fact may not have any truly deep meaning to it, it is, nonetheless, an interesting piece of trivia.

As far as those who assert that the story is an elaborate hoax, I never really found any of their doubts convincing, since they never gave any specifics about what they doubted, like the two I just mentioned in the above paragraphs.

They always just opined that the story was “for financial gain”, which I always thought was vague on the lie-proving details.

But I have since laid to rest a third, potentially large, doubt of my own.

c—Why Did The Number of Flies Change?

It’s been a while since I read the book, but I seem to recall that they refer to an event where a rather large gathering of flies took place in a particular room—in the dead of winter, when flies are not otherwise normally present.

But if memory serves, the flies are mentioned only once in the book. I could be wrong—like I said, it’s been a while since I read it.

Yet, in countless interviews with Kathy Lutz, she seemed to have changed her story about the number of flies that gathered.

Specifically, in most interviews she would usually  claim that the number of flies that gathered was in the “dozens” or “around thirty”.

 

 

However, in one interview with David Hartman, the original host of ABC’s “Good Morning America”, she claimed that the number was over “a hundred”.

Initially, my thoughts were along the lines of “There’s a huge, noticeable difference between ’30’ and ‘100’, and I don’t think my characterization of such a quantity would vary that much if I was attempting to accurately relay my personal experience of an event to someone who’s interviewing me to get the facts of my story.’

In Kathy’s defense, though, if the flies incident happened on more than one occasion (which I don’t believe the author Jay Anson mentions more than once in the book), well then, it’s certainly possible that the number of flies that gathered could have varied that much, in which case, my doubts would be lessened.

Moreover, in the interview, Kathy did mention that it was not one, but two rooms that were affected by the ominously unnatural fly infestation.

But, if the flies incident did happen only once, then, it’s either 30 or it’s 100—it can’t be both; and I can’t see how someone who’s telling the truth, could remember the incident so inconsistently.

Outside of that one doubt, though, the Lutzes always seemed genuine and honest; and they even admit, in the Hartman interview, that the movie (of which only the original version of the movie existed at that time ) was not entirely accurate in its depiction of events.

In any case, enough of the Amityville Horror story, for now.

Let’s move on to a few other  stories.

IV—A Policy of What Types Of Videos I Avoided

A—“Low-Light” Videos

One particular form of video-related story-telling I avoid like the plague are those that use…ahem, “investigative” journalists who incorporate that ridiculously silly meme of “darkness”-based clips.

I’m not a videographer, or a film-maker, so, I’m not familiar with the official terminology associated with the type of videography that I’m referring to, but it’s that type of recording where they turn the lights off, and film under low-light conditions, as though that makes the video clip “more” unnerving or scary, or whatever other emotion they think they’re laughably and erroneously attempting to maximize.

The very nano second I see this kind of video, I roll my eyes, shake my head, and I feel as though my intelligence has just been insulted, and then I angrily change the channel.

But, I do believe in a presentation that dramatizes the details to make them seem more interesting or scary or unsettling. After all, it is supposed to be covering the details of a scary story.

B—“Insurance Seminar” Voice Actors

There are many videos on YouTube that simply read off the highlights of a story’s details with all the excitement of a lecturer reciting the bullet points of the pros and cons of various types of coverage at an insurance seminar.

Those videos are usually titled something along the lines of “The 10 Most-Haunted Places, in America”, where the script is intended to merely highlight the places mentioned, rather than focus on the details in any kind of frightening way.

I avoid those videos, as well. Way too boring for my liking.

V—Interesting Scripts and Intriguing Voice Actors That I Did Choose

In contrast, my goal in maximizing the “Ooh-that’s-interesting” factor in the telling of stories that are meant to elicit feelings of unsettling fear or uneasiness is to feature narrators with a gift for interesting voice overs, such as Robert Stack ( best known for his hosting of the TV series, “Unsolved Mysteries”,  1988-2002 ), Leonard Nimoy  (whose voice was naturally intriguing as was manifested in his hosting of the TV Series “In Search Of..” among other TV specials pertaining to paranormal-related topics ), and a few other lesser-known voice actors in the field of mysterious phenomena.

A—“A Haunting In Georgia”

But one of my all-time-favorite  accounts was narrated by neither of those two masters, but a man by the name of Anthony Call.

The documentary, titled “A Haunting In Georgia”, produced in 2002, pertained to a couple in Georgia (Andy and Lisa Wyrick ), whose (at that time ) four-year-old daughter,  Heidi, had experiences where she was befriended by the disembodied ( but, fortunately,  friendly and protective ) spirit of a long-since-deceased man by the name of James Gordy, who actually existed, but whom she could not possibly have known since he died decades before she was born.

There were also two other spirits she encountered , one with a bloody hand, named “Lon” ( whose name Heidi had erroneously thought was “Kahn”, and who turned out to be the long-since-departed [1957] uncle of her next-door neighbor ), and one other character whose obscured face and ominous persona understandably frightened Heidi.

But I don’t want to ruin the story for you with any spoiler alerts, so, I’ll post the link to the video below and let you watch the video for yourself.

A HAUNTING IN GEORGIA

 

B—“School Spirit” and “Ghosts-R-Us”

The following video focuses on three stories, all of which are good; but I only highlight two of them :

[1] “School Spirit“, which is actually the last of the three stories and begins at time marker 29:50 and continues on to 43:25, and talks about a Demolition company that was contracted to tear down the 75-year-old Metz Elementary School in Austin, Texas, only to encounter multiple apparitions of some of the school children that once attended the school ( the garb the young apparitions donned would imply the children were from the 1930’s era of the Great Depression ), who do not want the school tore down, and, in which one laborer loses his life in one serious tragedy in the process of disobeying the warnings coming from the delightfully-playful-one-minute-yet-sternly-serious-the-next, disembodied spirits of the children issuing the warnings; and

[2] “Ghosts-R-Us“, which, as you might have already guessed, is about a Toys-R-Us” store in Sunnyvale, California, that’s apparently “occupied” by the tortured soul of a long-since-deceased, emotionally-disturbed farm hand, by the name of Yonny Yohnson, who ( it is believed ) died from exsanguination, when he accidentally hit himself with an axe when he was chopping up firewood in anger after being rejected by his boss’s engaged daughter who was upset by love letters he had been pointlessly sending her prior to her wedding day. Employees of the store tell of their experiences of frightening paranormal events while employed at the store.

“SCHOOL SPIRIT”  &  “GHOSTS-R-US”

29:50                    &                   1:19

This above video was a part of a series that lasted only three episodes, and which changed not only:

[1]  it’s name—from “Haunted Lives” ( in the first two episodes ) to “Real Ghosts” ( for the last episode ); but also

[2] the actors doing the voice overs—from Leonard Nimoy ( in the first episode only ) to actor Stacy Keach ( for the second and third episodes ).

Why the changes?

I’m not sure on either the name or actor changes. But, once I watched the second and third episodes I noticed an immediate decrease in quality of the stories told and/or the scripts written. 

Specifically, although the stories of the second episode weren’t exactly “garbage”, per se, there was something missing in the “eeriness” department.

The third episode, however, crossed a line in that it contained stories that involved teens having a large part in the dynamics; and where teens are a core component of the story, there’s usually a “cheap thrill” component that accompanies their involvement.

Rarely is something involving teens as the main actors in a story, a quality product.

In one story, one college’s fraternity members held a seance to appease a deceased spirit that represented a past student who was refused entry into the fraternity, and by posthumously granting him membership ( via seance) , they essentially calmed his anger and they all lived “happily-ever-after”.

In another story, teen girl cheerleaders in the basement bathroom of a haunted building said something into a mirror that reacted in a “spooky” way, in a very cheap “Mary Worth” kind of way.

In both cases, the college fraternity and the girl cheerleader stories, it just seemed so “Freddy Kreuger/Halloween/Friday The 13th”-like in that the stories seemed to be targeted at the teen crowd, and I immediately was turned off by the arguably intelligence-insulting storylines of both tales. 

Nimoy is no longer among us, so we can’t ask him whether the producers fired him from the job, or he left voluntarily.

I’m pretty sure that if I was the voice over actor in the first episode, and I got a preview of how cheap the second and third episodes were going to be, I certainly would have left that position, since I would not want to be associated with that caliber of “journalism”.

C—“The Queen Mary”

Finally, from the golden tones of the late Robert Stack, host of the TV show, “Unsolved Mysteries”, comes the story about the boat The Queen Mary, where several employees share their personal experiences of encounters with those whose souls never left the ship, even though their physical bodies did—years ago!

I found it interesting that a woman who worked in the boat’s dining room had an encounter with a motionless apparition that was eerily similar to my encounter with my deceased landlord’s motionless apparition.

Watching that scene made me realize that my experience was not as isolated as I initially thought it was; maybe there’s some currently-unseen common denominator between our two cases.

In any case, I’ll leave you with these videos to watch.

If you’ve had unusual experiences, please feel free to share with any comments.

I hope you enjoyed this post and thanks for reading and watching the content provided.

Floyd Allen.

“QUEEN MARY”

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