Dayton Daily News from Dayton, Ohio • 42

Page 1-0 Sunday, July 29, 1979 nu mi Mil iTim (ft 1 I 1 1 1 1 jf i ir TTh TFv UN -iH II )n it- mvV if 55 1 '1 -YxVY i I -ty. If rv if lr.i"..n, JE Dayton Daily News By HAL UPPER Daily News Entertainment Writer Lorraine Warren struggled against the unseen force pressing against her body like a rush of water. She climbed to the second floor, praying, and entered the first room to her left. In its center she was overcome by the silence of death and a chill that struck her, she said, to the marrow. She turned to a newsman standing nearby and shuddered, "I hope this is the closest to hell I ever get." LORRAINE WARREN, a clairvoyant, had no way of knowing, but less than two months before, a Catholic priest blessing the room was ordered, "Get out," by an invisible demonic force which has since become known as the 'Amityville In February of 1976, Mrs.

Warren and her husband, demonologist Ed Warren, were contacted by New York's Channel 5 reporter Steve Bauman and asked to investigate a three-story Colonial-style house in Amityville, Long Island. Bauman told the couple that supernatural forces had forced a family from the residence and requested their professional evaluation of the situation. What he didn't tell the Warrens was that: The family was able to endure only 28 days in the house. A mass murder had occurred there when 24-year-old Ronald DeFeo took a high-powered rifle and methodically shot to death his parents, two brothers and two sisters. The grounds contained the remains of settler John Ketcham, who had been forced from Salem, accused of practicing witchcraft.

Settlers moving to the area in the 1600's discovered a pen on the grounds where the Shinnecock Indians put their sick and insane to die of exposure. The Indians, it seems, believed the spot was infested with demons. WHAT RESULTED from the Warrens' investigations and Bauman's special Tea O'clock News reports was the bestseller The Amityville Horror by Jay Anson. From that comes the movie of the same name, which opened Friday at the Beaver Valley, Salem Mall and Dayton Mall cinemas. "Granted, there are some theatrical liberties that must be taken when making a movie," said Ed Warren.

'The Amityville Horror' isn't a documentary. But we've seen the picture and feel the film company has done a responsible job." The Warrens, who write a weekly column in the national tabloid, The Tattler, and who host two weekly television shows on psychic phenomena, were speaking from their Connecticut home. Ed had just returned from London, where he is studying the demonic possession of two teenaged girls. He was planning to accompany his wife on a lecture tour through Pennsylvania. "Amityville is unusual In terms of its notoriety," he said.

"But in my work, we find this type of possession takes place much too frequently." THE 52-YEAR-OLD demonologist has 1 Heat could damage Chines i ill i i il i 4 rN-S "We met George Luti in a pizzeria about four blocks from his house," said Ed Wat-ren. "The man was so frightened that he wouldn't meet us with the key at th house's front door." ACCOMPANYING THE Warrens on their first visit to 112 Ocean Ave. was the Channel 5 news team, two psychics and George Kekoris of the Psychical Research Institute in Durham, N.C. "Well, by the time we got to the house it was dark," Ed Warren continued. "Since like wandering around a house alone, I went to the basement when Lorraine and the camera crews went upstairs.

"I turned on the lights and was immediately aware of the cold. I realized it wasn't a natural cold but a 'psychic cold' which penetrates the very marrow, of the bone. "Then I had a suffocating feeling and felt an enormous amount of pressure on my body which seemed to be forcing me down to the basement floor. This is what I was looking for evidence that something was there, that it was intangible and most likeljr diabolical." Lorraine was upstairs at that moment, irj the sewing room where the priest had been threatened by the unseen voice and where thousands of flies had gathered almost daily through the Lutzes' tenure. SHE RUSHED PAST the reporters and into Missy's room, which, she said, "felt lik? an oasis a port in the middle of a storm." She toured the remainder of the house, stop ping at the first floor sun porch, which had been converted into a bar area.

V. "I clasped my, hands very tightly because in that room I felt very depressed. I could see figures, bodies, all covered with something white," she told the group. Unknown to Mrs. Warren at the time was the fact that police had used the sun porch, as a make-shift morgue before the six DeFeo bodies were removed from the house.

I' An infared photograph taken by a professional photographer in the room later showed a ghostly image hidden in the an-' tiers of a stuffed animal behind Lorraine Warren that of Padre. Pio, a stigmata that the Warrens prayed to for protection at Amityville. 5 Two seances were held that evening. At; the first, Lorraine Warren clairvoyantly "saw" the entity which she said manifested itself in the house. "IT WAS NOT HUMAN, nothing of this world.

It was most definitely of a negative nature right from bowels of the earth," she recounted. "It was as if you had taken hot, shiny tar and poured it on an icy surface. And if you watched, it would go out in all reaching out Of course it was all syro-: bolic, but I was in a trance state." Psychic researcher Kekoris became vioV lently ill and had to leave the seance. Mike Linder of WNEW-FM later said he felt sudden numbness, a kind of cold sensation And both psychics, Mary Pascarella and, Mrs. Albert Riley, were visibly shaken.

See OWNERS, Page 3-D. 15Uh Century Ivory .1 1 1 AN EERIE CHILL filled certain rooms of the house, but George and Kathy knew old houses were drafty. They were shocked when they discovered exterior doors torn from their hinges, but they reasoned that gusts of wind were responsible. The Lutzes, however, couldn't ignore the horrible odors, the presence of thousands of flies or the desecration of a crucifix in the room where the priest heard the words "Get out." Sounds of a marching band would awaken George almost nightly at 3:15 a.m. the exact time that Ronald DeFeo had murdered his family.

Kathy began levitating in her sleep and one night awoke with the wrinkled face of a 90-year-old woman. It disappeared within minutes, but by the end of the week, she had developed horrible sores in a line under her breasts. The Lutzes' daughter. Missy, began talking of an invisible playmate an angel named Jodie. When she invited her parents to meet her new friend, the Lutzes saw two pig's eyes staring at them through a second floor window.

Kathy hurled a chair at the animal and the next morning, they found hoof marks in the snow. ON THE LUTZES' final night at 112 Ocean George awoke to the sounds of the marching band and the slamming of bureau drawers opening and closing on their own volition. He felt the trampling of invisible hooves on his body just as his two sons ran into the bedroom screaming that a monster was on the third floor. Leaping from his bed and running into the hallway, George saw a giant white-hooded apparition at the top of the stairs. He spun around, awoke his wife and daughter, and fled the house with his family.

The Lutzes never returned to the house to collect their clothes or furniture. They have since moved to California and will no longer discuss the Amityville Horror. Betty Dietz Krebs done psychic research for 34 years. During that period, he said, he has witnessed 42 exorcisms and has documented more than 2,000 cases concerning the supernatural. He and his wife support themselves lecturing about psychic phenomena.

"Forty-five minutes after I walked into that house, I had all the proof I needed that something diabolical was concerned," he said. "I have feit evil of that intensity only once before in my entire career." The Warrens are not a part of the movie. "The Amityv'Ue Horror" is an account of George and Kalhy Lutz who moved into 112 Ocean Ave. on Doc. 18, 1975 and fled 28 days later in terror.

The Lutzes bought their dream house with full knowledge that less than a year before, Ronald DeFeo had massacred his family as they slept. But the price was $80,000 far lower than usual in the neighborhood. When the unexplainable began, the Lutzes looked for rational explanations. They didn't want to give up a good investment. ul art institute in costly make, director.

"We grumbles Cincinnati art works, Art skyrocketing to and "THE "are the century. Saving fuel could be costly museums with delicate art By BETTY DIETZ KREBS Daily News Arts Editor Setting the thermostat at 78 could be the most move art museums ever were required to says Bruce Dayton Art Institute can't very well put a sweater on a painting," Betty Zimmerman, assistant director of the Art Museum. The winter setting Is supposed to be 65, some five degrees lower than ideal for she points out. works, most of them irreplaceable as well as in value, are perhaps extremely sensitive temperature and temperature changes, Evans Zimmerman point out. MOST CRUCIAL examples," says Evans, paintings on wood panels, 15th and 16th That's No.

1. Probably No. 2 for us Japa- nese screens of paper on wooden frames. The frames would just split down the middle." While the Dayton Art Institute collection does not Include a large group of Ivory carvings, ivory is extremely susceptible to damage. The problem with metal is that some of it may rust.

Paintings on canvas on stretchers are more elastic than those on wooden panels, the museum director points out. "Every painting we have had to have re- Pg 2 D..