Monthly Challenge/Globetrotters
The Basements Of Amityville And Massapequa New York
Coincidence that gave me goosebumps
Ahhh! New York…
Still holds the throne as one of the best places I have been. A place that captivated me, mesmerized me, enchanted me and…spooked me.
From having trembling knees in front of an immigration officer, a pounding heartbeat as I traversed a street in Queens at night, hearing the crackling sound of the wooden makeshift pavement going to the World Financial Center in the silence of the night and knowing that Amityville was for real.
The Amityville Horror was the first horror book that I read. And I promised myself that it will be my last.
The Amityville Horror was a book by American author Jay Anson, published in September 1977.
It was inspired by the real-life murders of the DeFeo family
On a November night of ‘74, Ronald DeFeo Jr. shot and killed six members of his family at their house at 112 Ocean Avenue, Amityville, Long Island, New York. A year later, he was convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to six terms of 25 years to life in prison. He died in prison in March 2021.
and based on the accounts and stories of George and Lucy Lutz and their three children who lived there for 13 months after the murder. They fled the house 28 days after, because of the terrifying paranormal phenomenon they experienced in that house.
Early 90s
I read the book in the early 90s. I can’t remember how I got the book. It was borrowed or was one among the old books I hoarded from a second-hand bookstore.
But I can remember how that book scared the hell out of me.
I was stuck on that one page that I can’t go on to the next one. For everything seemed to be real.
Today, that was the only thing I can remember in the book. Still vivid in my memory – the storage room under the stairs of the basement of the house.
Not owning a computer or having internet at that time, I did not know whatsoever about Amityville. I didn’t even know that the book was based on real-life murders.
Late 90s
In the late 90s, I traveled to New York with my sister and cousins M and C. We stayed in Queens.
One day, a friend of C, named J came to fetch us for a dinner at his house in Massapequa, Long Island.
It was my first time in NY. My eyes were on the road, reading every sign and name of the buildings. Then a road sign caught my eyes. It’s Amityville.
I was shocked. Blurting out – Amityville, as in the book? Is Amityville a real place?
The ignorant me had known that the place is for real. And I remembered how that book scared me.
Massapequa is only 3 miles away from Amityville.
After our dinner, J brought us to his house’s basement. And said, “ This was where Fr. C and the other 4 priests slept during their stay here”.
Cousin D is a priest. Together with 4 other priests, they went to New York two years earlier for charitable purposes.
“And this is where Fr. Rey died.”
His cause of death: Sudden unexplained nocturnal death syndrome (SUNDS)
“ A friend of George Lutz learned about the history of the house and insisted on having it blessed. At that time, George was a practicing Methodist and had no experience of what this would entail. Kathy was a non-practicing Catholic and explained the process. George knew a Catholic priest named Father Ray who agreed to carry out the house blessing (in Anson’s book, real-life priest Father Ralph J. Pecoraro is referred to as Father Ray Mancuso for privacy reasons).”
Fr. Rey was only 35 years old at that time. So young. Two of the worst ways to die – you’re just starting your vocation and in a foreign land.
So… It was Father Ray Mancuso in the Amityville Horror book and Father Rey with a surname starting with the same letter M in Massapequa…hmmm.
What a coincidence. A bizarre coincidence.
I got goosebumps. It was the first week of March. The winter cold aggravated the intensity of my goosebumps.
I asked Fr. C if they had seen the house in Amityville. He said “Yes, the house was so eerie. We were told not to take photos.”
And I don’t have any photos for this part of our trip, too.
The controversy of the book
Up to now, the accuracy and authenticity of the Lutz family’s stories are being questioned. No paranormal phenomenon of whatsoever was accounted for by all the succeeding occupants of the house. Though, some paranormal experts said that there were and are.
Basements
We don’t have basements here. We only have them in buildings that are being used as parking spaces.
The Korean movie “Parasite”, had clearly shown living in basements or semi-basement is a symbol of poverty in South Korea. They have become an affordable response to rapidly-growing housing prices.
In America, most tragedies, murders and deaths happened in the basement. Most dark secrets are hidden in the basements.
The basements of 112 Ocean Avenue, Amityville and Massapequa were no exception.
The four of us with the Twin Towers as our backdrop. One of our treasured photos in NYC. Two years later, the towers were gone. When I went back a few years later, they were called ground zero. And I faced another round of goosebumps.
