It has since been revealed that the book was a hoax from start to finish, dreamed up by the Lutzes for the sole purpose of making money. In a long review, Morris (1977–78) pointed out numerous problems with the claims in the book even before it was known to be a hoax. Moran and Jordan (1978) investigated some of the incidents reported in the book and found that the events described never happened. For example, a Father Mancuse is said in the book to have attempted to rid the house of its ghosts by using holy water. He is said to have had a mysterious car accident very shortly thereafter, and to have had his hands break out in a terrible rash. His own living quarters began to reek so badly that he and other priests couldn’t stand to live there. This entire story was made up, as Moran and Jordan show. Not only did none of these dramatic incidents happen to Father Mancuse, he never even entered the Lutzes’ house. Other incidents reported in the book also turned out to be fictitious when subjected to Moran’s and Jordan’s investigation.
In the summer of 1979 lawyer William Weber, who defended murderer Ronald DeFeo, revealed the origin of the hoax. Weber had been planning to write a book about the case itself when the Lutzes contacted him regarding their experiences in the house. Thinking that these might make an interesting addition to his own book, Weber spoke with the Lutzes at length. In a United Press interview in July 1979 (see Frazier 1979–80) Weber said, “We created this horror story over many bottles of wine that George Lutz was drinking. We were really playing with each other. We were creating something the public would want to hear about.” When Weber mentioned that the murders took place about 3 A.M., Kathy Lutz said, “Well, that’s good. I can say I’m awakened by noises at that hour… and I could say I had dreams at that hour of the day about the DeFeo family.”
Owners of the house since the Lutzes moved out have not noted a single incident of anything out of the ordinary. Barbara Cromarty, who lived in the house after the Lutzes left, said, “We know everything was a hoax” (Frazier 1979–80, p. 3). The Cromartys, however, were troubled by another type of manifestation: the curious people and crackpots who came from miles around to gawk or to look for ghosts.
Like UFO reports, it is not possible to track down and conclusively explain the real cause of each and every ghost report. Joe Nickell has investigated numerous reports of ghosts, as well as other paranormal phenomena. In several books (Nickell 2001; Nickell and Fischer 1988, 1993; Baker and Nickell 1992) he has reported the results of those investigations. Nothing paranormal ever turns up. What Nickell does find are misperceptions, hoaxes, wishful thinking and the considerale power of suggestion at work. His report on his investigation of the haunting of the Mackenzie House in Toronto (Nickell and Fischer 1988) is a classic in which he tracked down the real cause of this famous haunting. The report reads much like a Sherlock Holmes story and is just as entertaining. I won’t spoil things by giving away the ending.
Closely related to classical hauntings is the poltergeist, German for “playful spirit.” The two are sometimes reported together, as was the case at Borley Rectory. Some of the goings on in the “Amityville Horror” house would have been classified as poltergeists, had they not been revealed as part of a hoax. The vast majority of the thousands of poltergeist reports that have accumulated over the years are of mild, even humorous, events such as objects moving about when no one is watching, breaking of crockery, spontaneous small fires, and showers of pebbles and small stones, the latter often being inflicted on some particular adult such as a priest. Poltergeists, when they occur alone, are almost invariably associated with adolescent children. This association has led some parapsychologists (i.e., Fodor 1964) to propose that the approach of puberty and attendant increase in sexual energy and feelings in adolescents causes a release of psychic energy that is responsible for the poltergeist activity. This association between adolescents and poltergeist activity causes the more skeptical to reflect on adolescents’ well-known love of pranks and practical jokes—particularly when played on adults. Those who believe poltergeists are a paranormal phenomenon will quickly point to many cases, mostly decades old, that “have never been explained.” This is quite true, but is merely another example of the “irreducible minumum” argument used by UFOlogists and other proponents of pseudoscience to shift the burden of proof to skeptics. And, as usual, poltergeist reports are based entirely on eyewitness testimony. The case for their reality as anything other than teenage pranks is exceedingly poor.
In March 1984 a poltergeist occurrence in Columbus, Ohio, received nationwide and even worldwide media attention. Typically, the coverage was totally uncritical. In New York City, for example, WCBS-TV used the phrase “Poltergeist for real!” as the teaser for the story on the evening news. At the center of the incident was, predictably, a fourteen-year-old girl named Tina Resch.
Shortly after Tina, an emotionally disturbed adoptee, saw the movie
Randi, a well-known magician and fellow of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal, also came to Columbus with a team of scientists to investigate the case, but was denied entrance to the Resch house. Nonetheless, their investigation, reported in Randi (1984–85), revealed that Tina had faked the entire string of occurrences. Not only were the media easily duped by this fourteen-year-old girl, but also, in several cases, the media knew about the fraud but failed to report it.
The Resch poltergeist turned out to be so elusive that no one ever actually saw a single object even start to move of its own accord. This included the newspaper photographer, who found that if he watched an object, it stubbornly refused to budge. So he would hold up his camera and look away. “While Tina sat in a soft chair with two telephones within easy reach, Shannon (the photographer) looked away. When he saw a movement from the corner of his eye, he pressed the shutter” (Randi 1984–85, p. 224). One of the photos obtained in this way was distributed by the Associated Press and touted widely as proof of the reality of the phenomenon. Examined closely, the photographic evidence in this case strongly suggested that Tina was faking the occurrences by simply throwing the phone and other “flying” objects when no one was looking. Randi’s careful analysis of the other photos, many unpublished, of Tina and her flying phone strengthen the conclusion that she was faking. Interestingly, the editor of the
This refusal came only after Randi had uncovered even more direct evidence of Tina’s faking: She was caught faking on videotape. A camera crew from WTVN-TV in Cincinnati had been filming in the Resch home. While the crew was packing up to leave, a camera pointed at Tina was accidentally left on and recording. Randi (1984– 85) describes what the camera caught: “Seated at one end of the sofa, near an end-table, and believing the camera was no longer active, she watched carefully until she was unobserved, then reached up and pulled a table lamp toward herself, simultaneously jumping away, letting out a series of bleating noises, and feigning, quite effectively, a reaction of stark terror” (p. 228). This all was revealed when the tape was processed. When confronted with the evidence, Tina said she had only done it to get the television crew to leave.
Typically, this incident and Tina’s explanation led some to conclude that Tina only cheated “sometimes”; the rest of the time the paranormal phenomena were genuine. For example, Mike Harden, the reporter who first reported the poltergeist, wrote in the Columbus Dispatch that the same day that Tina had been caught cheating, the television crew had witnessed a true poltergeist occurrence in the form of a moving table. But WTVN crew member Robb Forest saw Tina move the table with her foot.
What of parapsychologist Roll’s statement as to Tina’s genuineness? It turned out that he, like others, had not actually seen any object start to move. In one incident, he was facing away from a picture when it fell from the wall. This took place upstairs in the Resch house and Tina had been up there, apparently alone, for half an hour before this event. As Roll was attempting to rehang the photograph, using a pair of pliers to drive in the nail, a small tape recorder flew some feet from the dresser where it had been left. The layout of the room shows that Roll had his back to the recorder when it made its short journey and, attending to the task of rehanging the fallen photograph, couldn’t have been watching Tina closely at all. Randi (1984–85) further points out that “Roll is myopic and wears thick glasses; he is a poor observer” (p. 233).
So, the Tina Resch case crashes in flames. But how many television stations and newspapers that initially reported it as verified evidence of the reality of poltergeists have informed their viewers or readers of the results of the full investigation of the case? Not many, as you might expect. Randi (1984–85) makes an important point in his
