public

Heavily Investigated

Six people were murdered in their beds on a November night in 1974, and when the Lutz family moved in a year later, they swear the house already knew. Swarming flies in winter. A voice from nowhere whispering get out at the priest who came to bless it. Cold rooms with no business being cold. Within 28 days, the Lutzes fled — left everything, walked out, never went back. Stand outside that Dutch Colonial with its quarter-round windows staring down at you, and the question that lingers isn't whether they lied. It's what, exactly, made them run.

On November 13, 1974, Ronald DeFeo Jr. shot and killed his parents and four siblings while they slept at 112 Ocean Avenue — all found face-down, no signs of struggle. Convicted of six counts of murder in 1975, he later claimed demonic voices made him do it. The Lutz family bought the Dutch Colonial that December for $80,000 — furnished, bloodstains included. Jay Anson's 1977 book turned their 28-day stay into a franchise; DeFeo's lawyer later admitted the haunting was invented over wine. The house, quietly renumbered 108 Ocean Avenue, has been privately owned ever since.