The Ghost of Marco Polo's Wife

After Polo returned from Asia to Italy, he was imprisoned, due to his involvement in a war then occurring between Venice and Genoa.  However, there are rumors that persist to this day, nearly 700 years after his death, that Marco Polo was imprisoned for reasons other than involvement in the war.  According to these rumors, he was imprisoned on the orders of the church, because he had married a non-Christian, the daughter of Kubla Kahn, Hao Dong.

According to these stories, Hao Dong came back to Italy with Marco Polo, but found the people to be unaccepting of her due to differences in appearance, religion, and language.  She became increasingly alienated from all but those closest to her, and became an effective shut-in.  Her only solace was Marco himself, and singing - she is said to have had a beautiful singing voice.

When Marco was arrested, his sister went to Hao Dong and told her that Marco had been executed.  In despair, Hao Dong lit her clothing on fire, and then jumped out of the house's window, into one of the Venetian canals, drowning herself.

It is said that people traveling along the canals at night can hear her singing, as if she was not ready to forgive the treachery of her sister-in-law or let go of her husband even centuries after his own death.

Commentary:  I was delighted to discover this ghost story.  Marco Polo was, by any standard, one of history's great adventurers.  His travels to China are, quite literally, the stuff of legend.  It is open to debate how many of the more fantastic elements of his writings were due to his claims, and how many were due to a writer to whom Marco Polo dictated his narrative.  This writer, Rusticcello, was a writer of romances (generally adventure stories) popular at the court, and it is concievable that, even if Polo had said everything accurately, it might have been embellished.  It is also possible that Polo did the embellishing, and Rusticcello took faithful dictation.  We'll likely never know.

However, even the more mundane elements of Marco Polo's books are sufficient to show that this was a man who lived a life the likes of which most of us would only ever dream of.  He travelled the world during a time when it was rare to travel far from your home town.  He spent time in the court of China during a time when most Europeans were only vaguely aware that this place called "China" even existed.  And then he returned to Europe to tell his story.

Given that there is a good deal of confusion regarding how much of Marco Polo's story is true vs. hullabaloo, it is only fitting that a ghost story would be associated with him that is likely far more myth than fact.

The historical record indicates that Marco Polo married a woman named Donata Badoer as his first and only wife, with whom he had three daughters.  There seems to be little more than rumor to suggest that he was married to Hao Dong, indicating that it probably did not occur.  Still, medieval record-keeping being what it was...

It should also be noted that the majority of references to this story are found on the websites for walking tours, suggesting that it may be of a more recent vintage than it's proponents would like to think, and that it may be more a product of tourism than paranormal activity.  Also, the claim that Hao Dong had lit herself on fire seems more consistent with a 1960s/70s view of Asia (when footage from the Vietnam War showed protestors setting themselves alight) than the expedient suicide of a heartbroken 14th century woman (also, if you wanted to burn yourself to death, why would you then jump into water?  Seems like there could be more about the story said here, but I have yet to see anything of the sort). 

Anyway, there seems to be some parallels between this story and two of my other favorites: La Llarona, and Paganini's Phantom Violin.  On the whole, it's a good story.


Sources:  Discovery.com, HowStuffWorks.com, Stuff You Missed in History Class Podcast

Phizzel Goblin

Make sure to read the commentary after you read the story...

The Phissel family originated in Germany, and were caught up in the religious wars that caused chaos in Europe during the 17th century. It is said that, at some point, the family became cursed because of their involvement in the religious wars. The family was forced to leave Germany, and moved to Ireland, but the women of the family died during the journey. The men established themselves in Ireland, and eventually re-married and produced a few new generations of Phissels. By the 19th century, the spelling of the family's name had changed to Phizzel, and they found themselves in the midst of the potato famine. What remained of the Phizzel family, one man, his wife, and his son and daughter, headed for the Americas. The curse struck again, and the wife and daughter died during transit.

Settling initially in New York, the Phizzel men eventually headed to Missouri, finding a home in Cape Girardeau. Eventually, the elder Phizzel died, and the younger Phizzel, Jeremy, maried and had two children of his own: a son and a daughter. The family moved into a house near the river (which some stories say that Jeremy Phizzel won in a card game during which he might have shot one of the other players dead).

One night, Jeremy's son ran from the house, terrified. He had just witnessed his father killing his sister and mother, and had barely escaped himself. Jeremy ran after his son, shouting "come and join your sister!" The son led Jeremy on a chase to the edge of the river, where, thinking quickly, the boy through a branch in, making it look as if he had jumped into the water. His father dove in afterwards, surfaceing a moment later, still shouting "come and join your sister!" The river's strong currents quickly overcame the man, though, and he began to sink. The last sound that the boy heard his father make was a gurgling noise as he drowned, that sounded something like the word "goblin."

The boy, scarred from this experience, began wandering the river banks, subsisting on whatever food he could find. Although generally reclusive, he would sometimes jump out at people walking by on the river and shout "Come oand join your sister! Goblin, Goblin" and thus became known as the Phizzel Goblin. Though he must have died long ago, his father having chased him to the river's edge over a century ago, people still claim to encounter his spirit on the riverbank.


Commentary: The Phizzel Goblin is an April Fools Day joke concocted by Gene Fitzpatrick and Bryan Minogue of the excellent Hometown Tales podcast. Absolutely nothing in the story above is true, it was written for the April 1, 2006 episode of the podcast. However, if you didn't look at the date that the episode dropped, there is nothing in the podcast that would tip you off immediately. The story is a bit sillier than normal, admittedly, but it makes use of tropes from well-known urban legends and ghost stories: a family that has been cursed (a'la Dudleytown), a child with developmental disabilities (in this case probably purely psychological in nature, due to emotional trauma) growing up without parents (similar to a story known as "The Retarded Farmer"), and a location where one is likely to see a creature that wishes to get you (similar to La Llarona). Although someone listening to the episode may think that Gene and Bryan are "winking" at the audience, and they may very well have been trying to, the show is similar enough to their usual episodes, in which they discuss actual urban legends, bits of local history, ghost stories, etc., that it's not at all clear that they aren't simply recounting an actual urban legend in their usual delightfully goofy style. Even a few things that should be tip-offs (such as the fact that, despite settling in an area and presumably producing several generations, there was always just on Phizzel nuclear family) are common enough to ghost stories and urban legends that they didn't stand out as cues that the story was a joke.

In other words, if you were going to try to design an urban legend, you wouldn't be able to do much better.

And so, if one types "Phizzel Goblin" into Google, you will find message boards, urban legend sites, and Q&A forums where people are trying to find more information about the Phizzel Goblin. Enough people figured out that it was a joke that there aren't too many people who believe otherwise, but there are still occasional people who go looking for more information on this "legend" of the Mississippi River. In other words, the Phizzel Goblin is the funny cousin of the Blair Witch.

Mr. Fitzpatrick, Mr. Minogue...well played, sirs.


Sources: Hometown Tales Podcast...and as evidence that some people bought it, look here, here, and here

AC/DC and Satanic Reincarnation

This one is not technically a ghost story, but it does involve someone returning from the grave, is interesting and, I think, deserves to be listed here.

As a kid, probably around the age of 12, I remember talking with one of the other kids in the neighborhood as we walked to the store one day. A car drove by, windows rolled down, hard rock blaring from the stereo's speakers. The other kid, has name was Ryan, looked at me gravely and said "that's Satanic music."

Being the sort of kid that I was, I looked at him with a smirk, and made a smart-ass comment. He rolled his eyes, and repeated his claim that the music was Satanic.

So, I asked "Really? You don't listen to it, how do you know it's Satanic?"

We stopped walking, he turned to me, and said "my uncle used to listen to that kind of music. And there's this one band, AC/DC, where their singer died. The band had songs about going to Hell to party, and about how everyone should use drugs and talk to demons, and things like that. My uncle said that he was pretty sad when the singer died, but a year later, the group put out a new record*, and they had this new singer. But the new singer looked and sounded and acted just like the old one, and he was singing this song about how he was back! My uncle said that it was pretty obvious that the song was about how he had died, and then Satan broght him back to continue doing the Devil's work!"

I rolled my eyes, and we continued walking. But the story stuck with me, as evidenced by the fact that I still remember it now, 23 years later. I think that part of what gave it its staying power, as silly as I thought it was, was Ryan's insistence that the story of AC/DCs Satanic reincarnation was true, and the distress that it seemed to cause him.


Commentary: I grew up in a small town to the north of Modesto, California. Like most towns in California, the residents were primarily Christian, and many were from one or another fundamentalist church (that is, of the minority who routinely attended any church), and a few of these churches were known for their "bunker mentality" approach to the world, where anything not from the church itself was considered suspect if not outright evil, and likely to assault the "godly" (which was, of course, members of that church, and pretty much nobody else). As a result, it is no surprise that there were a fair number of people who were convinced that horror movies were evil, D&D was a Satanic primer, Secular Humanists were trying to take over the world and abolish Christianity**, and rock music was, quite literally, music from Hell itself.

In this context, it's not surprising that Brian Johnson, the singer that replaced Bon Scott, was thought by some who are part of this particular Christian sub-culture to be a satanic reincarnation of Scott sent by Satan both to tempt more to Hell and to provide Satan with a prominent mouth-piece on Earth. Of course, when you consider that Johnson was not only alive, but had an active musical career, well before Scott's death, this reincarnation hypothesis falls apart, but paranoid sub-cultures have never been known for their adherence to reality.

I don't know if Ryan really had an uncle who told him this, as I have since heard the story told by different people in different places. It's entirely possible that multiple people developed this particular hair-brained hypothesis, helped along by AC/DC's lyrics and the fact that both Bon Scott and Brian Johnson both sing as if they are in the pained and advanced stages of throat cancer. Regardless, it was one of the claims that tended to serve as "evidence" of a massive Satanic influence on the "secular world."

This is, in no small way, a continuation of the rumors of violin virtuoso Paganini's alleged Satanic connections, which were both part of his commercial success and fed the worries of the delusional paranoiacs of his day.

Ironically, while the rumor of Scott's Satanic reincarnation was developing amongst this sub-culture, AC/DC fans were busy pointing to difference between Scott and Johnson and arguing over who was better. Two divergent sub-cultures...so it goes....






*It was the late 80s. We still referred to music albums as "records" even though they were coming out primarily on CDs.

**I remember often hearing this as a kid. Weirdly, as an adult, I discovered that there really was a group that identified itself as Secular Humanists, was relatively small in numbers, with no actual political power, and possessing an agenda so mellow that it's hard to imagine anyone who actually knew it having much of an objection to it. These people were often confused when they were informed that they were actually in control of the world's governments.

The Holborn and British Museums Underground Stations

The London Underground station for the British Museum is abandoned, what is referred to as a "ghost station" and, appropriately, it is said to be haunted by a ghost of a long-dead Egyptian Princess. The station operated during the first three decades of the 20th century, opening in 1900 and closing in 1933, when other nearby stations made it redundant. As early as the 1930s, possibly even as early as 1900, stories began to spread about the station being haunted by a wailing spirit that appeared in a loin cloth and an Egyptian head dress. This spirit is said to be the ghost of an Egyptian Princess named Amen-Ra whose mummy is stored at the museum.

The spirit is said to appear late at night within the station, wailing and screaming in the now-dead language of ancient Egypt, possibly in anguish over the desecration of her grave. It has been stated that, prior to the station being closed, a newspaper offered a cash reward to anyone willing to spend the night in it, potentially facing a vengeful spirit. Nobody ever took the paper up on the offer.

The haunting didn't remain confined to the British Museum station. After the station closed, aspects of the haunting moved up the track to Holborn Station.

In 1935, two years after the station closed, a movie named Bulldog Jack, loosely based on the Bulldog Drummond stories, made use of the story, and had as a plot device a secret tunnel leading from the British Museum to "Bloomsbury Station" (a fictional station clearly intended to be the British Museum station). It is often said that, on the night that this movie opened, two women went missing from Holborn Station, and never-described marks were found in the British Museum Station during the investigation.

It has also been said that, late at night, one can still hear the Egyptian spirit screaming if one is standing down the tunnel in Holborn Station. In fact, this is used in Keith Lowe's novel Tunnel Vision as the main character uses the story to try to scare his girlfriend.

Holborn station is currently decorated with images of Egyptian artifacts, as a way of advertising its proximity to the Museum, but to someone who knows the ghost story, these decorations seem amusingly macabre.

Holborn Station also has another ghost story, though one with scant details. During World War II, disused parts of the station were converted into offices, a dormitory, and cantine for government workers who needed to be protected from the Germans' night-time bombing. In the 1950s these facilities were used to house migrants, and in the 1960s may have been used as part of a military emergency facility near Holborn Station (I have been able to find very little on this latter use). Over the years, these facilities fell into disrepair and decay, and became rather eerie (look here for photos). The abandoned offices began to earn a reputation for being haunted, though the descriptions of the alleged haunting seem to be unavailable.


The Platform at Holborn Station

Commentary: Okay, so first things first, let's deal with the mummy. There isn't one. Mind you, there are plenty of mummies at the British Museum, but none of them belong to a princess named Amen-Ra. In fact, Amen-Ra is an Egyptian god, not a princess. The assignation of the Amen-Ra name to the ghost in the station comes from an artifact called "the Unlucky Mummy" which is, in fact, not a mummy but a lid for a burial that indicates that the grave's occupant was a woman, but gives no other indication of her identity. It was suggested by museum workers in the late 19th century that the grave might have belonged to a priestess of Amen-Ra, and in the popular imagination the alleged priestess (who may not actually have been a priestess anyway) has been given the name Amen-Ra, even though her name in life was probably something more like the Egyptian equivalent of Theresa or Betty (maybe Akana or Ebio).



The object was purchased by the British Museum in 1889, and Akana or Ebio or Theresa or Betty has since been blamed for all manner of problems (including the sinking of the Titanic). This item is probably worthy of an entry by itself, and I suppose I should give it one, but back to the matter at hand...

The story of the tunnel between the museum and the British Museum Station is completely fictional, it comes directly from the movie as far as I can tell. However, as happens, many people have chosen to believe that the museum's denial of the story is an attempt to hush up the truth rather than a statement of the truth. This is, on the whole, odd given that, if such a tunnel did exist, then the British Museum Station would have been an ideal place to store artifacts during the Blitz, rather than routing them down to Aldwych Station, as was actually done.


At the Egyptian Room in the British Museum

The stories of the women vanishing and the newspaper offering a reward for anyone willing to stay in the tunnels appear everywhere that the ghost stories appear. However, few verifiable details are ever given (Which newspaper? What were the women's names?), and as such they can't be completely disproven - but the urban legend experts over at Snopes have noted on many occasions that unverifiable details in a story are often red flags that the story is more legend than truth. So, they are great for the creepy story (I intend to use them when telling the story), but may not be true. That being said, missing persons cases are not uncommon in large cities such as London, but that doesn't mean that they are connected to a ghost, and early-20th century newspaper publicity stunts were also not uncommon. So, perhaps these events occurred, but perhaps they did not.

The haunting of the dormitory areas of Holborn station are disappointingly mundane - there's just a general reputation, no details given, pretty much as you'd expect for a disused place that is run-down and creepy. This is really too bad, as it would be great to have more detailed stories about the place. Regardless, the area has now been renovated and no longer has its creepy atmosphere, mores the pity.



Sources: Internet, Underground History, Londonrailways.net, H2G2, Internet, Mysterious Britain, Wikipedia

The Aztec Skull

Updated May 12, 2010

There is a curious artifact sitting in the British Museum in London: a skull carved of rock crystal (a clear and colorless variety of quartz) that is purported to be from an Aztec site in Mexico. The skull was bought by the British museum in 1897 from Tiffany and Co., New York, who had bought it from French antiquities collector Eugene Boban, who in turn claimed to have bought it from an english collector who had bought it from a Spanish officer who had served in Mexico in the 1850s and 1860s. Like other similar crystal skulls, people claim that the British Museums Aztec Skull gives off energy and likely has psychic powers or properties, and may have healing powers. None of this makes it appropriate to a ghost story blog, though.

What does, however, make the Aztec Skull appropriate to a ghost story blog is the fact that it is claimed to move on its own, that museum personel allegedly insist that the skull be covered when the museum is closed because it freaks them out otherwise, and that various odd sounds and eerie feelings are tied to the skull. In other words, leaving aside the baggage that comes with it being a mystical crystal skull, it's also a haunted object.

If you look up "aztec skull british museum" via Google, you'll find all manner of web sites that, in addition to promoting the usual stories associated with crystals skulls (claims of ties to Atlantis, or aliens; claims of healing power; claims of magical properties) also tell of vague but eerie stories concerning this particular skull. These stories are consistent with what people describe when talking about haunted houses: the skull allegedly moves on its own, sometimes when nobody is looking and sometimes when someone is watching it through the glass of its display case. Nobody has ever caught this on film or video, but the stories persist. It is also claimed that museum employees insist that the skull be covered at night, when the museum is closed, in order to not see it move and to stave off creepy feelings often associated with it, though getting confirmation of this claim from the British Museum seems impossible. Also, it is claimed that museum employees, working after closing, report symptoms typical of those in haunted houses - feelings of being watched, unexplained sounds, sudden fear or general creepiness - when working in the vicinity of the skull.

Although the skulls are usually viewed as either odd baggage of the New Age movement's crystal power claims, or as elaborate hoaxes, the Aztec Skull, sitting in its display case at the British Museum, should be viewed as an object of interest for ghost story enthusiasts.


photo from the British Museum

Commentary: The story of the Aztec Skull is fascinating in and of itself. Bought by the museum in the late 19th century and documented as coming from a well-known French antiquities collector, the skull was thought to be a pre-Columbian artifact from the Americas. As time went on and more crystal skulls came to light, archaeologists and socio-cultural anthropologigists began to get suspicious.

Many of the cultures of Central and South America did manufacture carved skulls out of locally available stones. People living in the Americas during the 19th century discovered that European and North American museums were hungry for pre-Columbian artifacts, and would also carve many new ones, possibly including small skulls, out of whatever materials were at hand (sometimes including authentic, but less beautiful, ancient stone artifacts). These skulls were usually highly stylized in keeping with local traditions, however, and were quite different from the style of the crystal skulls of modern fortean lore.

The crystal skull craze began to pick up when Anna Mitchell-Hedges, daughter of adventurer and shameless self-promoter and teller of tall tales F. A. Mitchell-Hedges, produced a skull that she claimed to have found at an archaeological site in Belize while working with her father. The skull was mentioned very briefly in F.A. Mitchel-Hedge's 1954 autobiography, but it dodn't become well known until the late 1960s, when Anna began to tour it for profit. It, along with other crystal skulls that began to be better known, increased in public attention and popularity throughout the 1970s as a result of the New Age movement's belief in the alleged powers of crystals.

Many of the crystal skulls, including the Aztec skull, have been subjected to tests by numerous research institutions. The popular narrative holds that these tests have routinely shown that the skulls don't have toolmarks, that they are carved in such a way that would have been impossible without destroying the crystal, etc. etc.



Photos of the skull on display, taken May 2010


The truth is rather different. The tests have consistently shown that the skulls do have tool marks, and that these tool marks are consistent with European crystal-carving tools dating from the late 19th century through the modern day. Some folks claim that different researchers have performed tests on crystal skulls but are refusing to release the results or acknowledge that the tests have been done - which is usually code for "this is all nonsense, but we have to say something unfalsifiable as a way of saving face". In other words, the crystal skulls are fakes. Several, including the Aztec Skull and the Mitchell-Hedges skull, appear to have come from Eugene Boban, who probably bought them in Oberstein, Germany, where such crystal work was routinely done in the late 19th century. The others either are not submitted for proper study or have revealed similar results.


Me, looking dissaprovingly towards the Aztec Skull


Okay, so much for the legend of the crystal skulls. what about the Aztec Skull as a haunted object? Well, that's more interesting.

As said above, most of the symptoms of the skull's haunting are typical of haunted house symptoms - something with which Lononders would be very familiar. If I have to venture a guess, I'd say that, as the crystal skulls became the manifestation of the creepy side of the crystal power craze, the Britons working at the museum began to attribute the same sorts of symtpoms to the skull.

One thing that is missing, though, is the true and detailed history of the Aztec Skull. Yes, it was probably bought in Olberstein by Boban, but were there any interesting stories involved in its creation or existence prior to purchase? Probably not, but a ghost story collector wants to know.

Note: the skull is on display in the museum, but is hidden away in a corner, hard to find without help. If you'd like to see it, ask museum personnel to direct you towards it.


Sources: The British Museum, How Stuff Works, The Smithsonian Institute, Hometown Tales Podcast, Podcast, Internet, Internet

The Amityville Haunting

Most of us are familiar with the outlines of the story, after all, it has been part of our collective pop culture since the 1970s. On the morning of November 13, 1974, Ronald “Butch” DeFeo Jr. murder his entire family while they slept. He then attempted to hide the evidence but was eventually caught and convicted. He remains in prison to this day.

In 1975, George and Kathy Lutz bought and moved into the house with their children, but they stayed less than a month. After they left, they had a litany of eerie to terrifying encounters to recount. It started small, with objects moving, and sounds without sources, but eventually moved on to much larger and more menacing manifestations. George Lutz heard a phantom brass band marching through the house, the walls began to “bleed” a viscous slime, and the family began to see apparitions of ghostly people.

After a time, the manifestations went from ghostly to demonic. The family reported seeing a devil-like figure with glowing red eyes peering into the windows of their house. The youngest daughter had an imaginary friend named “Jodie” who she reported as looking like a cross between a devil and a pig. One day, after seeing the demonic figure peeking into the windows, George and Kathy found cloven hoofmarks in the snow outside of the house. George began to become violently angry, out of character for him. And clouds of flies would appear out of nowhere even on the coldest of days. A priest came to the house to perform and exorcism, and was told by a disembodied voice to “get out!” The priest was then followed back to the church by a menacing specter, and suffered from a number of different physical ailments.

The final straw came when a mysterious and unseen force began to rip doors and windows out of the walls, and the Lutz family fled in terror.

After they had left, the George and Kathy contacted Ed and Lorraine Warren, as well as the local television station, and asked them to investigate. The Warrens were considered by many to be the pre-eminent paranormal investigators of the day (but see commentary below), Lorraine was a psychic and Ed was a demonologist. The entered the house, took photos, looked about, and made careful notes of what they saw and, in the case of Lorraine, her impressions as a psychic. They concluded that evidence indicated that the family had left suddenly (for example, the fridge was stocked with food, not what you would expect if the family had planned on leaving), and that the house was definitely possessed by a demonic entity.

Further research showed that the ground on which the house was built was thought to be the home of evil spirits by the local Native American tribe, and prior to the colonization of the area by whites, this location was used as a dumping ground for the insane and diseased of the tribe.

And from there, the rest is history. Jay Anson wrote a book, chronicling the experiences of the Lutz family, and the book was made into a hit movie, which spawned numerous sequels that weren’t even claimed to be based on actual events (my favorite for sheer silliness has to be Amityville Dollhouse).
And with that, the true story of a real haunted house became known to the public, and the skeptics predictably refused to believe what was obvious right in front of them.

Commentary: What is written above is the story that most of the public knows, whether from Jay Anson’s book, from the movies, or from the fact that this story has been a big part of our pop culture for the last 30 years. And the story has many firm believers. In preparing for this entry, I came across numerous websites, essays, and articles in which supporters of the Lutz’s version of events rant about the “faithless” closed-minded skeptics who refuse to see what is in front of their face if it doesn’t jive with their pre-conceived ideas of how the world works.

But when you look into the story more, the truth is rather different than the commonly believed version of events.

For starters, William Weber, the defense attorney for Ronald DeFeo Jr., had contact with the George and Kathy Lutz, and even sued them for non-compliance on a book agreement that he had with them. Over time, a story came out that the Lutzes and Weber developed the haunted house story over a few bottles of wine in order to provide Weber with something to use to persuade a jury in a hoped-for new trial for DeFeo (remember, he doesn’t have to scientifically prove that ghosts or demons exist, just persuade a jury), and to allow the Lutzes something that they might be able to use (or sell in the form of books) in order to get out from under a crippling mortgage.

In addition, many of the details just didn’t work out. There are conflicting reports of how long the Lutzes stayed in the home, there are reports from neighbors that the night after they left “for good” they were back to hold a yard sale, there was no snow on the ground on the days when the cloven-hoof prints were said to be in the snow, and all of the original hardware was present and intact on the doors and windows that had allegedly been torn apart. Also, the police were never actually called, contrary to claims made by the Lutzes. Oh, and the priest who had attempted the exorcism? He says it never happened. And many of the elements that made it into Anson’s book seem to have been lifted from the film The Exorcist, which was quite the sensation at the time.

None of the subsequent owners or tenants of the house have had any supernatural experiences (though many have reported trouble with tourists coming to see the house (the house address has even been changed and the windows remodeled to hide from would-be curiosity seekers), a rather strange lack of behavior for a home supposedly ruled by diabolical forces.

What of the Warrens? While they were certainly a popular resource for those wishing to investigate the paranormal, and had a level of celebrity themselves, their methods were generally riddled with problems, and not reliable. In general, tracking down gaps in their logic and holes in their work has not proven difficult even for firm believers in the paranormal, and has proven very easy for those who question the existence of the paranormal.

In fact, the Warrens weren’t even the first investigators contacted by George and Kathy. That would be Stephen Kaplan of the Parapsychology Institute of America, who told the Lutzes that he’d be happy to look into the matter, but that if the story was a hoax, he would report it as such. He never heard back from George or Kathy.

And what of the claim that the house was built on a place of evil that had been used to house the sick and insane? Well, this seems to be an interesting riff on the “built on an Indian burial ground” chestnut that gets kicked around a lot. This part especially interests me because I am, by both training and occupation, an anthropological archaeologist and I work in North America – in other words, this is my turf. There certainly are areas that were considered “evil” or at least unwelcoming by the native peoples of the Americas, but there is no evidence that this location was one of them. And while it is not uncommon in many cultures to isolate the sick, there is little indication that this happened here. Moreover, what of the insane? The separation of the insane into separate “asylum” areas is not uncommon across the world, but neither is it necessarily the norm, and those asylum areas usually have things to keep the insane in – what I like to call “walls” – and there is no evidence of such a thing at this location. In other words, this part of the story appears to be complete fiction that takes advantage of the fact that most people have such a poor understanding of how the Native Americans lived that such a story sounds plausible to everyone except for actual Native Americans and anthropologists – who all regard the story as nonsense.

So, at the very best, being as charitable as possible to George and Kathy Lutz, a fair-minded person would have to conclude that whatever actually happened at the house, the story became heavily embellished afterwards, and the media circus that ensued pushed people to become more entrenched in positions that they took publicly.

On the other hand, many elements of the story contradict facts that can be verified, and those that don’t contradict verifiable facts are of the sort that they cannot be tested at all. There is a clear motive for a hoax, and evidence of an intentional push on the part of Weber and the Lutzes to do just that. I can no more prove that the story is a complete hoax than I can prove that there is not a teapot in independent orbit around the sun. However, if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, well…

In fact, even among those who firmly believe in hauntings and who investigate these matters, there seems to be a growing consensus that this story is a hoax. For most of these folks, the most interesting thing about the story is that something as flimsy as this has gotten the attention of the nation in the way that it has.

While it is sometimes true that those who are skeptical of something unusual are simply refusing to accept it because it doesn’t fit their world view, the facts of this case are pretty clear, and those who continue to espouse the “true haunting” account after sifting through the information that is widely available can be fairly said to be the closed-minded ones here.

To my mind, the most interesting thing about this story is not the alleged haunting, but the way in which stories spread through the media took on a life of their own and became "established fact" in the minds of many people regardless of what the true facts of the case were. In a purely logical/rhetorical sense, this is no different from how a particular political party's views become "obvious facts" for the party faithful despite evidence to the contrary, or how other news events become twisted in the public mind. The main difference is that this sotry is generally treated as nothing more than a "scary story", and as such belief in it is pretty harmless. However, it's good to keep in mind that the same things that got many people to believe in this rather obvious hoax also get people to believe things that can have a much bigger effect on their lives.

Personal Account: No, I don’t have personal experience with the house, and I have never been to Amityville. However, as a kid, my older sister loved horror movies, and I hated them. To be more specific, I was terrified of the movies.

On day, she and I were at home alone. Our parents had rented some movies for us – I don’t remember what I had, but she had Amityville 3 (AKA Amytiville 3-D , part of the early-80’s 3-D fad). She put the movie on, and seemed to enjoy it. I, on the other hand, cowered in my room, waiting for the movie to be over, occasionally slipping out to see what horrors were unfolding onscreen (these movies terrified me, but also kinda’ fascinated me), and what I saw when I ventured out left me feeling very frightened and disturbed.

Fast forward two decades, and I am now in my late 20’s, and have made my dark pact with Jabootu, demon prince of crappy movies. Amityville 3 is on the Sci-Fi channel, so of course I have to sit down and watch it. And, wow, it was bad. I mean, really terrible, not scary or creepy in the least, and nearly unwatchable due to poor performances and even worse writing.

All I could think as I turned off the television towards the middle was “THAT scared me? The only thing scary about this piece of cinematic offal is that someone was stupid enough to think that it would be a good idea to waste money making it!”

SOURCES: Internet , Magazine, Internet , Published Book , Internet , Internet , Snopes