Shadow Travels: A House In Amityville

     I won’t lie; the place used to give me nightmares.

     I watched the original movie portrayal of the Lutz family’s experience here on a dark night in the 1990s, and I was lucky to have my older sisters and a few friends present. Upon further research I often found myself getting unfriendly dread and sensations that I was not alone.

     The idea of being helpless in bed while someone of your immediate loved ones decided to stand over you and end your life was a haunting proposition in its own right. The possibility that otherworldly evils forced you into it added to the freaky factor.

     The Lutz encounters are probably the most debated case of fraud in paranormal history, but that does not change the fact that only one member of the family that dwelled there previously is still alive- and he is serving life in prison for the six members who are not.

     Mass murder of bizarre circumstances took place in the walls of the beautiful Dutch colonial by the river, and that itself can create a storm of energy that is unable to rest in death.

     Layers of fascination built over the years as I discovered the famous “ghost boy photo” that was captured during an investigation that followed the Lutz family’s hasty abandonment of the house. This was done by the Channel 5 news crew with Ed and Lorraine Warren in attendance. It is possibly the only source of credible evidence that supernatural things dwelled in the house. Others claim that the photo has been debunked.

     This does not erase the fact that George and Kathy both passed lie detector tests, and they went to their graves saying that the accounts were true. Their sons have come forth corroborating the stories.

But no reports of further paranormal occurrences plague proceeding residents. And why would they want to stir the fire since the town seems disturbed by an overwhelming amount of visitors and gawking tourists like myself? These are people with much less respect- people who have taken pieces of the house, the grass, the personal space of private owners. Some have even been known to ring the doorbell. Can’t say I wasn’t tempted.

     The quiet town does not associate itself with the terrible things that happened on Ocean Avenue. You will find no stores with ghostly memorabilia, but you will find a fence around the horror house yard and plenty of ‘No Trespassing’ signs to keep you going on your way.

     I was drawn there after years of reoccurring dreams that saw me going up the stairs and into a different room each time. The rooms were always dark as I was pulled into the blackest section where something awaited me. Growing older, the dreams changed. I was no longer pulled or forced into these places, rather I would charge forward on my own accord to face off with whatever hostile beings dwelled in the black corners.

     I suppose being an adult has its advantages sometimes.

     On that note, I made it a point to not have to dream anymore. It was the day after Halloween, and I was determined to make it a reality.

     After heathens of New York traffic, I cruised into Long Island late in the day. Charming signs welcomed me into Amityville, and I was relieved to have a while to breathe on less busy roads. The buildings and houses gave the homey feeling of a quiet area. It was not long before I took a right turn onto Ocean Avenue. One STOP sign later, I beheld the place that consumed my mind for so long.

     Formerly addressed as number 112, it is in an upscale neighborhood with people going for walks and groups of kids riding bikes. ... Little bastards who would not take my picture in front of the house.

     The home looks unique from all the others and is by no means isolated. The black-cloak decoration of a witch stretched across the house face under famous windows that have been remodeled from when they looked like the eyes. I found it ironic that Ronald DeFeo Jr. claimed a black-hooded figure handed him the gun that he used to slaughter his family.

     The sign that used to be in front of the house is long gone from the place, much like the idea that the sign used to convey when it read High Hopes.

     I turned around, parked my rental in the business center on the corner, ordered a pizza, and went for my walk. Leaves of all colors made rattles on the street.

     My heart pumped as loudly in my chest as the leaves that made scraping noises along the street. It was not long until I stood before it, smelled the New England air, and hoped to get no hassle from neighbors. I took a long stare at the place and wondered, like most people do, why each member of the DeFeo family was found face-down in bed, why none of them were awakened by the sounds of gun blasts, and why zero neighbors heard anything out of the ordinary aside from the dog barking.

     I internally criticized how it would not be a surprise for neighbors to notice me and cause trouble, even though they were unable to notice more than five rounds of high powered rifle blasts in the middle of the night. But then I fell back into wonder at other claims about the house.

     George Lutz claimed that the night he and his family fled, it sounded like a storm inside the house. And I believe it was Hans Holtzer who mentioned that some entities are able to encapsulate sound like a force field trying to keep secrets.

     I certainly know of hauntings where noises of chaos, destruction, and broken dishware turn up no mess at all. It is a phenomenon all its own, and I always wonder what type of entities are able to manipulate sound so intensely. How is it possible to convince our ears that we hear something? It must be equally possible to convince unwanted ears that they hear nothing.

     To top off the strangeness, Lutz often said he was drawn to the fireplace repeatedly at the infamous 3AM hour- the same hour said to be when the DeFeo family were executed.

     From the other side of the river, I took a picture of the house with a red sunset in the background. Another surreal moment of accomplishment. ... And, yes, it was fantastic pizza.

     The house on Ocean Avenue in Amityville, Long Island is on the market as of the moment this is written. If you happen to score the purchase, please let me in for a sleepover. I assure you a night of utmost respect and quietness. Nothing paranormal happens there anymore, anyway.

For more Shadow Travels like this one, follow me on Facebook, Instagram, and Youtube
And don't be afraid to check out some works of paranormal fiction on my website and my Amazon Author Page....

Was that the past??...a paranormal experience

Photo courtesy from the web page of the USS Hornet museum

A year ago fellow teammate Scott Wolf and I (Jennifer Furgerson) experienced a phenomena neither one of us could fully explain away. Each year our team, or sometimes only a few team mates attend the paranormal conference Grey Ghost in Alameda aboard the USS Hornet aircraft carrier. The conference is your typical meet and greet, along with speakers from TV shows and other paranormal areas and then an investigation later that evening of all areas of the ship. Many have had their share of paranormal experiences ranging from having their hair messed with, being poked, and even seeing full body apparitions. After a long night of roaming the ship, we go to the bunks/cots/bedding we have been assigned to. The area we were in was on the second deck aft(rear) and port(left) side of the ship. Among our area were an array of men and women almost taking up every bed. Some had gone to sleep early (2 am) where others climbed into bed somewhere around 4 am. The lights are turned off and its not very quiet with all the different people snoring, or mumbling in their sleep. After awhile one tend to get used to the ambient sounds and eventually drifts off to sleep. 

This is where our story begins.

Scott's Experience
  "Strange experiences are common when you are a paranormal investigator. Many cases leave you with something that you can't quite explain. Most times you try to think through it logically and move on. Sometimes, like the experience Jennifer and I had aboard the USS Hornet, there is just no logical explanation for what transpired and the experience is one that is etched in your memory forever.

  After a long day of enjoying the conference and a long night of investigating, I decided it was time to head down to my bunk to get some sleep. My team mates were still investigating, but I was exhausted and could barely keep my eyes open.

  I made my way, through the dark, to my bunk. All lights were off and everyone around me was asleep. A few die-hard investigators were still up, but they were in other areas of the ship. Except for the snoring, it was quiet.

  The bunks were three high and there was very little room in-between. For some strange reason I chose to sleep in a middle bunk. Since I am extremely claustrophobic, this was a terrible choice! I figured I was so tired that I would just fall asleep and sleep the few hours I had left before they woke us up to depart the ship. Things didn't quite work out that way.

  I fell asleep and woke up probably about 30 minutes later, in a full panic from the closeness of the bunk above me. I tried the best I could to block it out of my mind and soon fell back asleep. As soon as I would fall asleep I would wake in a panic. It was a cycle that repeated throughout the rest of the night.

  At one point I awoke, but not from the panic I experienced before. I heard a strange commotion happening around me. As I opened my eyes I noticed something strange. The lights, which were off when I went to sleep, were all on. I looked around and there was no one sleeping in the bunks around me. My first thought was that it was morning time, everyone had already left the area, and some how I slept through it. I sat and thought about it and knew there was no way that could happen because the others I was there with would have woke me.

  The commotion grew louder. The sound of heavy footsteps were all around me. As I listened to what sounded like people running in all directions, my first thought was how rude it was for people to be coming back from investigating, turning on all the lights, and running around like a bunch of fools! It made no sense!

  I turned my head to look at the bunks across from me. Since I was in the middle bunk, I could only see what was in-between the top and bottom bunk. I could see what looked like the torsos of dark figures as they ran back and forth in the open walkway. They never shouted or spoke, they just ran frantically. All you could hear were their footsteps.

  As soon as it began, it was over. I looked around and the lights were off. There was no more running. All I could hear was the sounds of the people sleeping around me. I was tired and at the time I just figured it was a bunch of rude people trying to get back to their bunks to go to sleep. I drifted off to sleep unable to fully process what I had just witnessed, but also too tired to care.

  The morning came, the loud speaker blared that it was time to get up, and the lights came on. I gathered my things and made my way up to the hanger deck where everyone would gather for breakfast. I was still dead tired from not sleeping very much. What happened never even crossed my mind. The only thing on my mind was getting on the road so I could get back home and take a nap.

  Jennifer was already on the hanger deck. She was full of energy. She told me about the rest of their time investigating. Then, she told me about this crazy experience she had during the night. I was listening, but what she was saying didn't really kick in. It wasn't until I had exited the ship and started walking to my car that what had happened to me started coming back.

  I thought about it the entire drive home. It consumed me. I wished I would have been able to talk to Jennifer about because it seemed like we experienced the same thing. One person's personal experience ends up being just a great story, if you don't have anything to back it up. Two people experiencing the same thing, is much harder to ignore. Later that night I would send Jennifer a message and we talked about our experiences.

  It's now been a year since that experience. I still think about it all the time. Jennifer and I still talk about what happened and try to figure out what the heck we experienced. Our team mate, Faye, was there and she didn't experience it. In fact, she had a recorder running the entire time and didn't capture anything that sounded like what we experienced. The only thing that could be heard was snoring.

  Did we somehow travel back in time? Did only two of us experience a residual haunting?  I guess our experience, much like many things in the paranormal field itself and the strange happenings on-board the USS Hornet, will remain a mystery!"

Jennifer's Experience
  "I honestly thought I had experienced this phenomenon alone... I was out investigating on the second deck of the Hornet when I realized that it would probably be a good idea to get some sleep. It was after 4 am and I decided to head back to the assigned berthing area. Not to long after I closed my eyes and attempted to settle into slumber, the room we were in began to sound of a low murmur of voices and feet walking fast and hard on the metal floor. There was metal clanking, and loud banging. All I could think was "what the hell are the people doing while so many of us are sleeping".  It began to irritate me, I rolled to my left side (since I was against the wall). Upon opening my eyes, I see the lights were on, but instead of the normal brightness of the lights, it was an odd glow of pale yellow.

  I was puzzled about the lights being on and from where I was laying I could see people walking very fast heading from one end of the room to the other. Who ever these people were, they needed to get into the next room quickly then back out again. All I could see from where I was laying were people from the waist down. The row of beds obscured the rest of their bodies. I could see that each person wore dark blue high water pants and dark shoes. In what seemed like a mater of minutes, the lights went out and the people that were running were just gone. They had vanished and the room went dark again. I turned on my back and closed my eyes trying to make sense of what I just saw. Moments later while laying there with eyes closed attempting to relax, I hear foot steps approaching. They stopped right in-front of where I was laying. At this point I just wanted sleep, and I was ready to roll over and tell whom ever it was to please leave me alone. I rolled, opened my eyes to find that it was still dark, andno one was there.

  Come morning, everyone received that lovely wake up call of reveille and then the announcement of sweeping your bunk area. In other words, wake up, clean up your area, pack up your gear because you are all heading to the mess for breakfast.

  My teammates Faye and Scott  joined up with me in the hanger bay and we all started to recant our experiences, our irritations, and especially what I had witnessed. I was very excited about what I saw, and I kept repeating that I know I was not dreaming. Faye was quick to point out that the light switch was right next to where she was sleeping, and was the only one who asked how to turn on an off the lights. We continued on to breakfast with those images still fresh in my mind.

  It was not till later that day, on my way home, that I remembered something crucial to this odd event. I received a message from Scott asking what I remembered, and the realization that we both recalled that everyone who had been sleeping in this berthing area were no longer there to be seen. I do not know why I had not thought about it before. It baffles the mind to think that maybe I was pulled into the past, or perhaps the past was repeating at that moment. Either way it does not explain why we did not see the people who were sleeping in the same area.

  Faye was recording audio that night while the room slept, but told Scott and I that none of the noises we heard or from what we saw ended up on her recorder. Once again Scott and I are baffled. So what really happened to us? We both experienced it at the same time, but did not know it till the next day. We both could describe what the people looked like, yet I saw the bottom half, while he saw the top.

  This has stayed fresh in my mind, as I am sure it has with Scott. We both have talked about it over the year. We have looked at pictures from different time periods to see if we could pin point the time of the past we had seen. I have asked docents and other people who have stayed aboard, if they ever experienced anything like this. So far our phenomenon is currently unique to the ship."

For more information click on the links below...

USS Hornet Muesum

USS Hornet overnights

The Queen Is Elegant

When you are an enthusiast for paranormal places and happen to be visiting Southern California, pretty much the main hotspot you will find in any online search is the Queen Mary- a luxury ship that has been docked in Long Beach for decades. Now a hotel and museum with classy rooms, timeless hallways, and so many exhibits to see, there is plenty of room to get lost and find yourself... or something else.
Music from an older era plays in the lobbies, helping to lend an antique feel to the environment. Stairways and corridors go on for hours, and one can easily find themselves in places they did not expect.

Some of us leave with fantastic experiences to store in the memory banks. Others leave in the middle of the night.




The lights of Long Beach are incredible from the bow. There is plenty on the surface to discover.  Preserved quarters of the captain and his mates, along with old communication rooms can be found in random places along the deck. There are perfect locations to watch sunset, smell a cool ocean breeze, and see where past ceremonies have occurred- such as this pavilion near the rear of the ship.

But upon further searching, I found that the room in which I had the least interest became the spot where I felt the most overwhelming energy.
A sense of fear pervaded my mind and body the moment I stepped into that darkness. A dim, greenish light shined in water down below where you could see the large propeller at rest. Around it were coins and floating dollar bills, as if people considered the room to be a wishing well. Perhaps it was my phobia of enclosed areas filled with water, or perhaps the stories of men who died in the propeller's grinding twist are not legends after all.
The moment I went around to the next entryway and exited back into the museum, I felt immediate relief.

Although the entire ship is said to be haunted in one way or another, the area where most evidence has been recorded would be the first class pool- said by some to be a gateway for entities. Now off limits for safety reasons, it was saddening to not be granted access and witness this area in all its eerie glory. The pool is currently under renovations to be returned to its original state and may open some time in the next year. Fingers crossed.
In the meantime, all we have to indulge our fascination is the locked doors leading inside.

I explored all night and could not decide if I should be happy or worried that people seemed to disappear after 1AM. When I finally did retire to the room I woke up hours later in one of the most chilling cold spells I have ever suffered. My travel companion had to wrap around me to stop the shivering, and even she became frozen trying to warm me.

What an amazing feeling when it subsided.

The next day we were allowed access to the infamous B340- a room surrounded by rumors and no shortage of paranormal tales involving death, poltergeist tampering, and activity so prominent that guests are no longer privileged to stay. We found a gutted, empty room. And we were not allowed to hang around long.

The paranormal tour was intriguing. It included the tale of a security guard who still works his shift there, even after a small child held up its arms then walked right through him.  The tour guide also mentioned ghosts in a front lobby area, the aforementioned propeller room, and the spirit of a man who was crushed in the engine room #13 door.

  It wasn't just the comfy accommodations and their cool portholes that allowed me to leave smiling the next day. It was not the surreal experience of a place that has long been on my bucket list. It was the thought and further realization of this strange world that, many times, the most elegant and gorgeous places also have plenty of ghosts to hide.

Have you visited the Queen Mary? We'd love to hear your experience.  Comment below to tell us all about it....

You Decided to Become a Paranormal Investigator, Now What? Part I

You never miss an episode of your favorite paranormal TV show and you decide that it is time to find out what this paranormal stuff is all about. Maybe you are seeking answers about experiences you have had or maybe you just think it would be fun to go on investigations like you see on TV, either way you decided you want to become a paranormal investigator, now what do you do?

I don’t claim to have all the answers, but I have been doing this for over seven years. I have helped train a lot of investigators and they turned out to be very good at what they do so, I must have done something right. I am hoping this series provides some helpful information to all the people out there who have decided to become paranormal investigators. Not everything in this blog is going to work for everyone so, even if you take away one good piece of information, my mission would be complete.

Your first step to becoming a full fledge paranormal investigator, forget everything you have seen on TV! Ok, not everything. You probably learned about EMF, EVPs, and what a K2 does. Keep that in your nugget, but dump the basic premise of a paranormal investigation that you saw on TV. 

What you see on TV is for entertainment mostly. Sure, I would bet they do catch some EVPs and every once in a while they catch something on camera, but If you go into your very first investigation thinking you are going to see a shadow person dart in front of you, a door close by itself, or a book fly off a shelf, you are going to be sadly disappointed!

If you have never been on an investigation before, you need to understand that investigations don’t last an hour like you see on TV. An actual investigation can last anywhere from 4 to 10 hours. Add in a preliminary investigation, evidence review, and maybe follow up trips for further investigations and you’re looking at well over 14 hours! Not all of them are like that, but you get the point.

 What I am trying to get at is that investigations are very time consuming. If you have a client they are going to expect you to wrap everything up within a short time frame. They want answers to what the heck is going on in their home and they don’t want to wait for a month.

If you have a family or significant other, now would probably be a good time to sit down and discuss the new hobby you have decided to begin. It will be important to have their support down the road if you decide to join a very active team. If you are like many of us, they will probably look at you like your crazy when you tell them that you have decided to become a paranormal investigator. Don’t worry, it’s normal. They may never completely understand why you do what you do, but they will eventually understand that it is something that is important to you.

At this point you are probably itching to do an investigation. You may have even thought about doing some EVP sessions, in your own house, just to see if you can capture your first paranormal evidence. Don’t do it! Never investigate in your own house! If you don’t have any activity, in your house, you may be inviting it in. If you already have activity, you may make it much worse. Much worse!

It’s also not a good idea to attempt to go out and investigate on your own. Paranormal investigations are not just a fun past time. They can be serious business both spiritually and from a safety aspect. You always want to have a buddy with you in case you hurt yourself and you need help or if, by chance, you encounter a nasty spirit that doesn’t want you around. Not only do you not want to go out alone, but you don’t want to go out unless you are armed with the most important item an investigator can carry with them, knowledge! 

The best thing you can do to start your journey to becoming a paranormal investigator is learning anything you can about the paranormal and investigating. There is a wealth of knowledge available, on the internet, about paranormal theory, photography, recording EVPs, conducting investigations, steps to protect yourself on an investigation, and equipment. You can also go to your local library and find a good number of books on the topic.

Terminology is also something else that is very good to learn. When we have a new investigator join the group we like to sit down with them and first go over some important terminology to see what they already know. If the new investigator doesn’t know much we send them home with a list of terms to go over. 

It is important that investigators understand things like the difference between an intelligent haunting and a residual haunting. Terms like apparition and poltergeist are some other terms you should be able to understand among many others.

If you take the time to learn everything you can, I guarantee you that when you meet a group ,for the first time, you will impress their pants off when they find out that you already have an advanced knowledge on the subject. A dedicated investigator in training is great! A dedicated and knowledgeable investigator in training is awesome!

It is very important that investigators are able to discuss equipment and theories when on a case. Often , clients will notice your equipment or ask questions. You don’t want to have to tell the client that you can’t explain how the equipment works and why you are using it or why you believe something may be happening in their home.

Please check back. Part II will be coming soon!