The Amityville Horror
By: Jay Anson / Narrated By: Ray Porter
Length: 6 hrs and 28 mins
If you’ve got an active imagination—Yowza!
My 7th grade English teacher introduced our class to The Amityville Horror by Jay Anson, and I don’t know whatthehell the man was thinking. Freaking out a bunch of 12 and 13 year olds, all on the cusp of puberty—of our awakening of telekinetic powers (some of us, you know who you are!)? I went on to read, and just now I listened to the audiobook.
Okay, so, like, I’ve got a really active imagination, and while Ray Porter’s narration is a tad flat, what he reads can really spark some creepy thoughts and feelings. Y’all know I work the graveyard, so imagine being alone, in pretty much darkness, listening to things about red piggy eyes in the black of night, cloven hooves marring the soil beneath the window, flies swarming a room that smells of excrement, people’s personalities being taken over to where they fight to the death with siblings, or to where they beat their kids with a strap and wooden spoons.
Oh, and don’t forget the hidden room in the basement, the one that’s painted all red and reeks of the stench of blood. Maybe it’s just me, but I was really getting twitchy as I listened to it. Like I said, I first read the tale when I was 12, and now, 40 years later, I’m still getting creeped out by it? Boy, it aged well!
The best thing about it is that it’s edited well. There’s no filler of thoughts, and feelings, and the blah blah blah of daily life. There’s no backstory on the Lutz family; it’s simply the 28-day nightmare of their time on 112 Ocean Avenue. The most you get of Kathy (or is it Cathy?) is of her doing the 70’s thing: not eating but subsisting on coffee, cigarettes, and transcendental meditation. The most you get of George is that the kids aren’t his and that when he’s overcome by the house, he has a tendency of not bathing or shaving for days, preferring to obsess about burning logs in the fire and to go out at 3:15 every morning to check on the boathouse.
Mostly, the book is about presences that hug and squeeze you, windows that fly open, letting the freezing Amity air whoosh in (and for as high-rent a place as Amity is, they sure do have some really crappy weather!), levitating while asleep, a demonic presence that keeps you from running away and that turns you into a total a-hole whilst it has you, a priest who runs fevers, vomits, develops sores and blisters just for phoning you, a ceramic lion that leaves teeth-marks when you crash into it. A voice that booms, “Get out!” when you try to bless the house, crucifixes that turn themselves upside down, and a spirit that tells your kids, “Soon you’ll be here to play with us forever.”
Yeh, yeh, yeh. Maybe it’s just me. After all, I was doing my shift, all alone, was running down the stairwell and suddenly thought, “Gee, wouldn’t I be freaked out if I turned the corner and there was an ax-murderer there waiting for me?” So NATURALLY, when I turned the corner, there was the vision of an ax-murderer there waiting for me. I’m suggestible is what I’m saying.
But if you’re looking for a creepy time that might have you sprouting goosebumps, The Amityville Horror is short, decently narrated, aged well, and like I said: It has those red piggy eyes, boring into the spongy, weakest part of your psyche.
Oooooh, spoooooky!
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