Magick Mind, Night 1

(March 31, 2005)

Hosts: Dr. Ed Craft and Tamara Thorne

ED CRAFT: Alright, hello, folks, and welcome to Magick Mind Radio. Of course, I'm your host, Dr. Ed Craft, and tonight we have with us my regular Thursday night co-host, author Tamara Thorne. Tamara, how are you tonight?

TAMARA THORNE: I'm great, how are you?

ED CRAFT: Doing fine. It's great to have you tonight.

TAMARA THORNE: Oh, I'm glad to be here.

ED CRAFT: We've got a great show in store for you folks out there tonight. Tamara is well aware of what's going on tonight and I think she's just as enthusiastic about it as I am.

TAMARA THORNE: Oh, yeah. [laughs]

ED CRAFT: [laughs] Of course we are live here with you tonight on the IBC Radio Network and I want to thank you all for being with us and encourage ya'll so I'm going to mention this right here and right now to stick around right after our show is APSR Radio with Dr. Jimmy Lowery followed of course by the Lou Gentile Show ­ so you guys be sure and stick around ­ we've got about a 6 hour block of paranormal talk radio for you. And tonight's guest, of course, is George Lutz.

That's right, folks, you heard it here: George Lutz. Of course anybody who has ever ­ ever read the book or seen the original movie ­ is the ­ actual individual who lived in the Amityville house. And, of course, the newest movie is coming out tonight and there's a lot of controversy over the original much less what is now coming out. And we actually have the individual who lived it and told the story, here with us tonight to talk more about it, of course, he's going to be discussing a little bit about the horrifying events that occurred to him and the family during those 28 days that they actually spent in the Amityville house ­ we'll be touching on that. And, of course, we're going to be discussing a lot of the information as far as truths and falsehoods and things of that nature ­ and its one of those things where a lot of people have claimed at this point that the entire event was a hoax.

The question here we're trying to answer tonight of course: was it or wasn't it? And I think after you walk away from tonight's conversation, you are going to have a different outlook on things. So, without further ado, how are you doing tonight, George?

GEORGE LUTZ: Fine. Thank you, Ed, how are you?

ED CRAFT: Doing great. Welcome to the show.

GEORGE LUTZ: I'm glad to be here.

ED CRAFT: Well we're glad to have you. You know, I'd ask you to give you a brief history, but I think everyone on the planet, at this point, is pretty much familiar with the Amityville house. Basically, just in a nutshell, you want to tell us ­ you know, kind of what led up to the events that occurred in the house from the point that you guys actually purchased the house until 28 days later? Just a brief run-through.

GEORGE LUTZ: We ­ Kathy and I were combing households, we each owned a house on Long Island ­ this is back now in 1975 ­ and we sold those two homes and purchased the Amityville house after we had looked at, oh, somewheres around fifty homes by then. We'd actually try to go to contract with a house about a month before this in Lindenhurst, and when that deal fell through, we answered an ad, went down and saw this house, and it was perfect. It didn't need repairs like so many of the other homes that we had seen and Kathy fell in love with it as soon as she walked in.

The realtor that showed it to us was actually showing us other homes and hadn't expected that we would seriously be interested in this home. One of things she did tell us was that the murders of an entire family, six members of the Defeo family, had occurred there a year before. And she asked us if that would make any difference to us.

ED CRAFT: So you were aware of that fact before you purchased the house?

GEORGE LUTZ: I'm sorry, I can hardly hear you.

ED CRAFT: You were aware of that fact before you actually purchased the house?

GEORGE LUTZ: Oh, sure, before we actually toured it ­ before we actually walked in, she told us. She said, I don't know whether I should tell you this now or after you've seen it. But she was kind enough to tell us before we went in and we went in with that knowledge.

TAMARA THORNE: Its law now pretty much everywhere ­ you have to tell if there's something like that but back then, it wasn't, was it?

GEORGE LUTZ: No, I think that it ­ I don't know whether this is really what happened but I think this was part of the law changing.

TAMARA THORNE: Ah.

GEORGE LUTZ: This story.

TAMARA THORNE: That makes sense.

GEORGE LUTZ: It was not law then ­ it wasn't even considered [he laughs] something that mattered. And now certainly it is. In any case, we saw the house, we fell in love with it, we asked the children if it would bother them to live there ­ they were with us at the time. We spoke with her at length ­ some length ­ at least about the price and the terms. We understood that it was in an estate sale ­ it was in the estate ­ and we went home and talked about it some more.

TAMARA THORNE: Is an estate sale why it was cheaper than normal for a house that big?

GEORGE LUTZ: The house should have ­ I believe at one point it was on the market for a hundred ­ or the asking price may have been ninety or a hundred thousand dollars. It was probably realistically worth a hundred and ten.

TAMARA THORNE: Which was a huge amount.

GEORGE LUTZ: It's a large amount of money back then, in '75.

TAMARA THORNE: Yeah.

GEORGE LUTZ: Now it doesn't relate but at the time the difference between a hundred thousand dollar house and a hundred ten thousand dollar house would make a real difference in anyone's budget at that point ­ or most people's budgets. The, uh ­ whatever it was that the house was for sale for and, I'm sorry, that it just escapes me today what that was but I believe it was ninety thousand and we made an offer eventually of eighty and they took it. We applied for a mortgage at a bank ­ the first bank we applied for the mortgage at, we got commitment for sixty-thousand dollars. We put down at the closing ­ the day we moved in was the day we closed on the house ­ we put twenty thousand dollars cash down and an additional four thousand cash and we purchased some furniture from the Defeo family ­ their dining room set for example and some bedroom furniture, none of the mattresses or anything like that ­ and we had, there was a, for some reason, they filled the oil tank which I still remember today was somewheres around an additional thousand dollars. So it was about twenty-four thousand dollars out of pocket that day, and moved in.

One of the things that a friend of mine had cautioned me about was that I had to get the house blessed because of the house that it was, when I told him what house we were buying ­ the Defeo house ­ and so, he made me promise to get the house blessed by a Catholic priest. I was Methodist so this was not something I even understood that you did. Kathy was Catholic. I asked her about it, she said yes. The only priest that we knew was one that I had met earlier that year ­ or probably the year before, I'm sorry ­ that'd be Fr. Ray, Father Pecoraro ­ he was an Ecclesiastical judge ­ a canon lawyer for the diocese there in Rodfield Center, in National County.

And I called him and asked him if he would come and bless the house, and he said sure. And so he showed up shortly after we arrived there with trucks and friends and moving vans and whatever to move in and he went about blessing the house. When he got done, he asked us what we were going to use one particular bedroom for on the second floor and we told him that it was going to be a sewing room and he said, "Oh, good, I felt something in there. I was uncomfortable in there and I really wish you wouldn't use it as a bedroom." We thought it was kind of a strange thing for him to say but, since we weren't going to use it as a bedroom, it wasn't really alarming it was just strange.

TAMARA THORNE: Have you even thought about, you know, the fact that the murders were there ­ had you even joked about haunted...

GEORGE LUTZ: Tamara, could you say that again, please?

TAMARA THORNE: Had you ­ since you knew that there were murders before you moved in, did you even joke about ghosts or anything like that? Being in the house? Had it even occurred to you?

ED CRAFT: That's a good question, George, did you...

GEORGE LUTZ: I don't think we ever joked about that. I don't think we ever found that to be funny, and I really think we considered ourselves real well-formed skeptics.

TAMARA THORNE: Yeah.

GEORGE LUTZ: There's a line in the first movie that ­ was not our own ­ but its one that Jim Brolin said that I've always agreed with, in that this is how we thought then ­ and it goes something like "Houses don't have memories."

TAMARA THORNE: Oh.

GEORGE LUTZ: And ­ it just ­ if it wasn't going to bother the kids ­ for Kathy and I it was fine.

TAMARA THORNE: That makes a lot of sense.

GEORGE LUTZ: But there was a ­ there was ­ we asked each of the children individually and collectively, I mean we had family meetings about this, because this was a big purchase and there was also putting together an offer that would work for us financially. Having the two ho ­ our two homes sold ­ really put us ahead financially because this was on the water and we would no longer have docking fees at our boat yard, at the anchorage, for all the things that go along with that ­ just have a boat house and just pull the boat in and it had its own garage.

TAMARA THORNE: Yeah.

GEORGE LUTZ: So, just money-wise, we were actually ahead and it was a practical move in that sense.

TAMARA THORNE: It amazes me it wouldn't bother kids, but they must not have been hooked on ghost stories ­ I would have, you know, been horrified if I was little.

GEORGE LUTZ: It just wasn't a family issue. I believe ­ I've thought about it since then, of course, and I believe that even if one of them had misgivings, and they had been able ­ in some sense if they had expressed those ­ I don't recall that they did, I don't think there was any doubt in anyone's mind that this is where we wanted to live.

TAMARA THORNE: I think a lot of kids don't really react that way ­ some do, some don't.

ED CRAFT: Uh, well...

GEORGE LUTZ: I don't think the word "ghost" ever came up with any of this, with any of...

ED CRAFT: Well, George, how did you first find out about this?

GEORGE LUTZ: Ed, I'm sorry, I'm still having trouble hearing but...

ED CRAFT: Okay, I'll speak up a little ­ its hard when we are on the line like this ­ how did you first realize, okay, you've experienced some incidents in the house ­ when was the first time that you got someone to actually come in there and find out what was going on? When did you make an effort to go back and say, "Alright, we're out of the house now, let's find out what's going on and how it can be fixed"?

GEORGE LUTZ: We did that before we moved out. One of my tenants in the office building that I had was someone that who was a good friend for a number of years. She had explained to me sometime much earlier that she had been born with what's called a caul ­ C-A-U-L.

TAMARA THORNE: Yeah...

GEORGE LUTZ: It's a mask of skin over her face and from the time that she was a little kid, she was always quite sensitive compared to most people to energies and spiritual things. And she offered to come over and visit with us and we had... One of the things we found there, Cindy ­ I'm sorry ­ Kathy always referred to the house as "charming" and in hindsight after moving out of there and moving out of New York, that became a very applicable word. The house put on a real facade of beauty and comfort and, even, solitude, in a sense.

TAMARA THORNE: So it attracted you?

GEORGE LUTZ: It was incredibly attractive. And when you think about ­ when you do any research of any of the articles that have been written by the past owners ­ they are so quick to defend the house. They are so quick to say how much they love the house. And it's a strange use of words sometimes with regard to this...

ED CRAFT: Well, now, that's a good question and one I've actually received ­ since you guys have moved out, why has no one else reported anything in that home? Why do you think that is, rather?

GEORGE LUTZ: I'm not sure that is true. And there are a number of reasons for that. One of the most vocal families to live there after us are the people that bought it, I believe, for somewheres around sixty thousand dollars, a year and a half or so after we abandoned it. And, we didn't just abandon it ­ we left the house, did not go back, and I'll add this to this so this makes a little bit more sense, maybe ­ we left everything there ­ furniture, clothing, food, whatever. On Easter Sunday in 1976, friends of ours went in and gathered up the food and clothing and donated it to the Salvation Army. On Mother's Day of '76, we got on a plane and landed in San Diego with our dog Harry and the three children, Kathy and I. We paid the mortgage on the house through June or so of that year ­ we were not able to decide what to do with it but one of the things we knew we couldn't do with it was sell it to another family. And at that point we gave it back to the bank.

The month prior to giving it back to the bank, an auctioneer, who was a friend of the family went in ­ professional auctioneer ­ and auctioned off the boats and tools and furniture and everything that was there ­ the antiques, personal records, it didn't make any difference, it all went in the auction. And I think we netted out of that something around $2,000 or less from that sale ­ it was just a fire sale, get it and, you know, get it gone.

ED CRAFT: Okay, well now, I'm gonna play Devil's advocate...

GEORGE LUTZ: Pardon me?

ED CRAFT: I'm gonna play Devil's advocate here...

GEORGE LUTZ: ...that's okay...[unintelligible] to answer your question, but go ahead and do that.

ED CRAFT: I have to do this because you know this is the list of questions I'm getting and we got such a limited time and I'm trying to throw them out for you. Alright, if you guys only netted two thousand from what you had in there ­ now, what have you made since you came open with this story and Hollywood got involved in it? Now that's the big "what-if" ­ I'm sure you get asked this all the time...

GEORGE LUTZ: No, no, that's okay. We netted from the movie, for example, I think on a gross basis somewhere around $300,000. The author for the book ­ who were the producers on the movie netted about $20 million. Our deal with Anson was supposed to be 50/50 ­ obviously that didn't work out. That's kind of beside the point. When you take the $300,000, you take out taxes, and you take out the lawyer's fees, the legal fees through the years just to get to that point to receive those royalties, my guess is that we probably had about $80,000 spend-able.

I should go back and explain a little bit more about the sale of some of those belongings. It was a balance ­ which was our only outstanding ­ we owned our cars and motorcycles and all that, but we did have a balance on the boat, and I think that balance was $14 or $16,000. So the gross amount from the sale also paid off the boat. So what we netted was the money that the check actually that came to us. Okay, did that make sense?

ED CRAFT: Yeah, yeah, I'm sure its just going through a lot of people's minds who have heard the hoax theory versus whatever "oh, this was all made up just so he can make a buck." You see where I'm going with this? Because I know you've been presented with it before ­ but I think the people out there need to hear it and hear it from you ­ find out what's really going on rather than just heresy.

GEORGE LUTZ: Oh I would have the same questions if the tables were reversed so I don't mind that at all.

TAMARA THORNE: I would like to know ­ you know, the story, and how you ended up having to leave all of your belongings. How it got that bad?

GEORGE LUTZ: Well, the problem here is that there are about four questions in my mind that needed answering so I'm not sure where to...

ED CRAFT: Yeah, unfortunately, it comes and goes. I think maybe in the second half of the show ­ we got a break here in about two minutes and take a break but when we come back, if you don't mind, George, maybe just going down this list I've got here and anyone out there who is listening to us on the internet in particular can join us in the chat room and shoot their questions right at ­ do you mind that?

GEORGE LUTZ: Not at all.

ED CRAFT: Give everybody the opportunity to ask those questions and to get them out and I'll shoot them right out there for you but there is just a whole list of things coming up and I have some questions of my own and I'm not letting you off until I hear them ­ either on air or off but I want to hear the answers. [they both laugh]

[break]

ED CRAFT: Alright, folks, we're back, here on Magick Mind Radio ­ of course my co-host tonight ­ I'm Dr. Ed Craft and my co-host is author Tamara Thorne and with us is our very special guest, very pleased to have him with us tonight, is George Lutz. Many of you are familiar with him, if not his story ­ The Amityville Horror ­ he is the actual individual who lived in the home and experienced these happenings.

George, before the break, we were talking about a number of things and jumping from subject to subject because of all the confusion and the overload here. I do want to point out one thing before we get back into this and that's for all of our radio affiliates out there tonight [off-topic talk excised] But before we do that, George, I have one question I'd really like to get into and that's, we've heard about ­ what's that?

GEORGE LUTZ: Can I interrupt you for just a moment?

ED CRAFT: Go right ahead.

GEORGE LUTZ: There are people that will want to get through and won't be able to and they'll be able to reach our website, amityvillehorrortruth.com ­ and in there they'll find a number of documents that'll help understand this a little bit better and there is a forum in there that has a Q&A section and there's also a chat room ­ and there's a normal chat ­ if you want to call it normal ­ every Thursday night and I believe that starts at 7pm Pacific Time so people can go, they can actually connect to amityvillehorrortruth.com, they'll see a button they can click on for a forum and they can get a lot more questions asked in there as well.

TAMARA THORNE: So great.

ED CRAFT: That's a great piece of information for anyone who has questions that we don't get answered out here tonight. Well, George, most everybody is familiar with the old movie and I think its just sort of that re-birth trend that seems to be going on now where all of the old stuff seems to be coming back in new form. You know, just like the Charlie's Angels and all of this stuff. It's the same story being re-told now in a different way...

GEORGE LUTZ: You are talking about the 1979 movie.

ED CRAFT: Right. What's your involvement with this movie? In particular, the one that is just now coming out?

GEORGE LUTZ: One way to word this would be the only involvement at all would be the fact that MGM sued me when I questioned their right and content ­ what they were doing to do a remake.

TAMARA THORNE: That makes sense ­ that's Hollywood.

GEORGE LUTZ: I had my attorney write them a letter asking them to please explain to us where they thought they had the right to make this movie and what they were doing. And in June of last year, they sued me in federal court here. And they didn't just go and find a normal law firm, they went and found the largest law firm they could find in the state of Nevada.

TAMARA THORNE: What did they sue you for?

GEORGE LUTZ: It's a motion for declaratory relief asking the judge to declare that they do have the right to make a remake and ­ the suit continues, of course ­ when they sued me, the interesting thing that came up was that there were a lot of issues that I had with MGM ­ accounting issues. I'll give you one small example. Normally, Kathy and I received on a yearly basis somewheres between ­ anywhere from $180 to maybe 3 or $400 a year in residual payments from The Amityville Horror, the original movie. The original deal that was done for that movie gave us no control, no input. We had a consulting contract that was done ­ what we had thought would help make that movie more accurate, but they chose not to allow us on the set when they were making the movie or be involved with that process.

When it came time for that movie to be released, I asked for a screening of it and I did get to see the movie before it was ever put into a final cut version. They had wanted me to do publicity for the movie and as part of an agreement to do that I had them take out ­ agree to take out, and they actually did take out certain things in there that I considered to be absolute beyond [unintelligible] I guess is one way to look at it. And so when that was done, I agreed to go out and talk about the movie. But when that contract was done for that movie, one thing Kathy and I insisted upon and got was the sequel rights ­ that meant they got to make that movie and no others.

They do have ­ the original people that we did that contract with did have the right to make additional remakes, but the remakes had a definition that included the language that we put on amityvillehorrortruth.com ­ that's a completely separate ­ I'm sorry, on amityvillehorror.com ­ that's a completely separate website from amityvillehorrortruth.com. On amityvillehorror.com, there is an MGM section about the remake and the language is on there and basically what is says is any remake has to contain the same basic characters depicting the same basic events. Its very specific language and what they have done here now with this new movie is, our belief based on all kinds of things, is they have made Amityville Horror remake alternate universe. This is a completely different set of events and depictions and characters and on and on.

So, the lawsuit continues as a result of different things that we have learned and all kinds of things ­ and as I was saying about the accounting, all of a sudden on the exact same day that they filed suit here in Las Vegas against me, they prepared and sent a new accounting for the yearly statement for this. And all of a sudden it went from a one-page sheet to seven-pages, all of a sudden it included all kinds of new information and the payment was ten times the normal amount that was going to start for, now, twenty-five years. So something was wrong here and something is wrong in a lot of different ways.

TAMARA THORNE: So the fact that you can actually keep a lawsuit going ­ you know, fight it ­ shows you that there is stuff going on that they are having problems with. It's a big company, big lawyers against one person?

GEORGE LUTZ: Yeah, basically, one person. Tamara, the interesting part of that is we've actually lost some of this, we filed a counter-claim against them bringing up these issues. One of the things that happens is when you sue on a contract, then things that would have been historically closed, you wouldn't have access to them in some matter ­ all of a sudden, there is a law that says, oh, well if you're going to sue on this portion of the contract, you get to go look at these other things and bring those up as issues again. So we had lost some of that ­ those things that we had brought up ­ but we had saved them for appeal.

This is a very serious thing to me and this is not the kind of thing you just say, yeah, do as you wish. This is my life, this depicts my children ­ Kathy passed away last year and thank God she won't see this version but when you are talking about live people and true events, this is not something you take lightly and I don't take it lightly so whatever I have to do, financially or otherwise, to fight this I certainly will.

TAMARA THORNE: That's understandable. It's based on things that have to deal with you ­ rather than just characters. Authors get very upset about characters being messed up in movies, so when its you, that's quite legitimate...

ED CRAFT: Well, I think there's ­ in the beginning of the show, I came out and asked the question regarding the total from the first movie and book in a vague number, as far as what kind of income you had received from telling this story, and when you stop and you look at this point the difference of trying to fight this stuff income wise is, in other words, I made this off of the first round now this is what I'm having to shell out ­ its sort of like Michael Jackson losing his farm because of his stuff, you know what I'm saying? It doesn't weigh even ­ you don't even break even in the long run, you still come out on the short end of the stick.

GEORGE LUTZ: Let's not overlook the fact that the book sold a lot and there was additional income from that. But this was never a decision ­ to go public ­ this was never a decision made about money. We didn't have a contract signed with Prentice-Hall ­ the original publishers ­ until less than 30 days from the book's release date in 1977. We left that house in January of '76 and the book was released in September. The contracts were actually signed August 30th, 1977 ­ that's more than a year and a half later. This was never about money...

TAMARA THORNE: No.

GEORGE LUTZ: You don't leave your stuff behind and think that maybe this will work out some way financially. You never know its going to be a movie or that its going to have off-springs that get worse 25 years later again.

ED CRAFT: Well, I'm going to, again, you know how I tend to change shifts because I have so much going on, and such a limited time, I'm going to shoot one at you and this is my own.

GEORGE LUTZ: You have to speak up, please.

ED CRAFT: Alright, this is my own question ­ I want to know this question and have wanted to know it since the book and the whole nine yards. Okay, the red room was depicted originally as a gateway to hell, so-to-speak, and here we have the book describes it as a little different and then later on we find out its nothing more than just a little storage room under the stairs. What was so drastic or serious about this room that you would even mention it in your original telling of the room?

GEORGE LUTZ: I don't think that the book was depicted anything different then what's been found out later. I think the red room was always quite accurately depicted in the book. Its not even, its hard to call it a room, it's a space, and it was hidden behind a book case and it was painted red. When you get past all of that part, Kathy found it by accident when she was setting up the washroom downstairs. Its under the staircase ­ it doesn't show up on the house plans. Harry, our black lab, backed out of there. It was the first time I ever saw him cower away from anything. He wouldn't go near the room. Ed Warren, when he came in to investigate the house as a demonologist ­ the Warrens are quite well-known especially in New England. His wife, Lorraine, is a light-transmedium. Ed visited the house twice. His first time there was with alone with his wife and Laura DiDio ­ she was a news assistant that Channel 5 WNEW, I think it was, in New York City at the time. Ed had an attack of tachycardia there where his heart...

ED CRAFT: Okay, we'll we've got to cut away ­ I apologize ­ we're a little over here. We're gonna cut away and I'll be right back, okay?

GEORGE LUTZ: Okay.

[break]

ED CRAFT: Alright and we're back ­ back from break ­ we've had a real interesting show tonight. Our guest tonight of course, is George Lutz ­ probably most well-known for his telling of 28-days living in the Amityville House there on Long Island, New York, I believe. George, given the limited time because we're going to have to wrap things up here in just a minute...

GEORGE LUTZ: We just got started...

ED CRAFT: I know, it seems like we just got on the phone to be honest with you ­ I mean, things are just flying tonight. I would like to go ahead and ask you ­ what do you think about the actual movie that's coming out now? What's your opinion of that?

GEORGE LUTZ: Well, I think they sued me to shut me up and I think that they knew damn well what they were doing ­ that it had nothing to do with the original book. They have continually made statements through movie stars and their own producers that they went back and did research and are trying to stay more truthful to the book and you've got to ask them what universe they live in or what things they were reading. This is ­ when I say this is now Amityville Horror Remake Alternative Universe, this is as about as intentional an infliction of defamatory material as I could imagine someone could put together.

We were not allowed to contribute to this or help make this accurate. We were not asked to be involved in it. What these people have done they have done using the name, to trade on the name The Amityville Horror. They use words like "based on a true story," yet what they have done is based on some kind of combination of events from the Halloween movie, The Shining movie, Poltergeist II and Nightmare on Elm Street. I mean, they didn't even have an original idea to make this thing.

ED CRAFT: Alright, now during break you and I were talking ­ this last break real quick ­ you want to fill them in on what we were just talking about besides that? The ­ actually, it slipped my mind looking at this...

GEORGE LUTZ: The red room?

ED CRAFT: No, no, the ­ actually, we'll have to get back to it to be honest with you at this point ­ any of you guys out there ­ that's a good point, though ­ the red room and all of these questions and facts about the original case and the new case ­ all of this stuff, all the input, and all of the information and documents are available to anyone who wants to look them up. And I'm going to encourage you ­ if you really want to get to the facts and hear both sides ­ or the other side of the picture as well, go to www.amityvilletruth.com ­ now that's amityvilletruth.com. Also, go to www.amityvillehorror.com Either one of those will give you a wealth of information and the Amityville Truth site actually has a forum in there where you can discuss things with other individuals and you'll see a lot of the same questions asked over and over again and you'll be able to see the responses to those as well...

GEORGE LUTZ: One of the things we have on amityvillehorror.com is the copies of the original, confidential ­ so they are stamped and that's what it says ­ lie detector tests that we took with Chris Gugas back in 1979 as well.

ED CRAFT: Right, that was the other thing, that was it ­ so the lie detector tests are there. And I want to thank you for being with us tonight, George.

GEORGE LUTZ: Thank you.

ED CRAFT: We've got to call it a night tonight because we're running out of time here but I want to thank you and I want to thank all of the listeners out there for being with us here tonight on Magick Mind Radio and of course a very special thank-you to my wonderful co-host and an individual I couldn't live without ­ author Tamara Thorne. Be sure and check her works out too, just click on her bio, we'll get you over to her site. Be sure to tune in again tomorrow night from 5 to 6pm eastern time. Until then, happy hunting.

Magick Mind, Night 2

(May 12, 2005)

ED CRAFT: Without going into a lot of detail, I do wanna give you a little history on our guest tonight. He's been on our show before, and we're glad to have him back tonight. Our guest is George Lutz. And many of you probably know his name by heart. He is actually going to be discussing the horrifying events that occurred to him and his family during their 28-day stay in the infamous house in Amityville. He's also going to be discussing some of the unusual photographic anomalies that have appeared in photographs of the house on Ocean Avenue. Some 30 years after the incident, itself, most people have actually come under the impression that the haunting was actually a hoax. But really, was it?

So George is going to be here tonight, and share some of his experiences with him ­ with us ­ as well as some of this new photographic anomalies that have come to light tonight. How are you tonight, George?

GEORGE LUTZ: I'm doing fine. How are you, Ed?

ED CRAFT: Doing great. Like I said, I've got these lovely ladies helping me out and keeping me straight, so I think we're on a good road tonight. [laughter] Are you saying we're all in trouble tonight, Tamara?

TAMARA THORNE: Maybe.

GINGER STEWART: She's being good, can't you tell?

TAMARA THORNE: I am.

ED CRAFT: I can tell. She's biting her tongue. I know what she really wants to say. [laughter]

GEORGE LUTZ: What does she really want to say?

ED CRAFT: I won't go there on the air.

GEORGE LUTZ: Oh.

GINGER STEWART: Yeah, you don't wanna go there, George. [laughs]

TAMARA THORNE: I've been watching "Deadwood" too much. You don't wanna go there. [laughs]

ED CRAFT: So we should have a lot of fun tonight; but George, can you share with us just a little bit, briefly, about some of the things that have occurred specifically to you in the home when you were living there?

GEORGE LUTZ: Back in 1975-1976? Is that what you mean?

ED CRAFT: Yes. Yes.

GEORGE LUTZ: Some of the things that occurred to us, briefly... Umm... We moved into the home thinking that this was where we were going to live for quite a while, if not for years and years. We had no intention of leaving the house or it didn't occur to us that there would be anything wrong with the house in any manner ­ be it psychically or otherwise.

We bought the house for $80 thousand. That was an excellent deal. We put $20 thousand down. We got a $60 thousand mortgage. Paid an additional $4 thousand cash at the closing. Moved-in. Had the house blessed by a priest, who was a friend of mine. He asked us not to use a particular bedroom that he was uncomfortable with ­ which was the 2nd floor sewing room. We reassured him that we weren't going to use it as a bedroom. He didn't say any more about that. He left. We continued to move on into the house and 28 days later we left.

When we left, it was because, in part, certainly, of his help. In talking with us over the phone about some of the things that had gone on during the last almost month that we were there. It wasn't like from the moment we moved-in there were terrible things going on ­ but as time went on we began to individually doubt some of the things that we were hearing and seeing and experiencing ­ and smelling, even.

We had friends come over, for example, and tell us that they heard the same footsteps, as we sat in the kitchen ­ up overhead, and all the children were asleep in their beds ­ and yet you could hear these footprints ­ the footsteps ­ walking around on the floors over us.

GINGER STEWART: But the kids wouldn't hear them, though.

GEORGE LUTZ: No, no. They'd be asleep.

GINGER STEWART: Yeah.

GEORGE LUTZ: Our youngest daughter had a playmate there that we thought would be some kind of imaginary friend. Our youngest son had had imaginary friends when he was younger, and it wasn't an unusual idea ­ except that she had different messages from this person, this thing, that she called "Jodie." And they were statements that were unusual. They were things like "Jodie says we are always going to live here" and Missy had questions for us like "Do angels speak?"

When we found a picture ­ 3 years later after moving out ­ of a boy that was taken during one of the investigations... There were 5 separate investigations of the house...

ED CRAFT: Now this is after you moved out?

GEORGE LUTZ: Pardon me?

ED CRAFT: The investigations were after you moved out?

GEORGE LUTZ: Yes sir. Some of them were years later, and they've only come to light recently.

The... Forgive me, there are so many different thoughts running through my head at the moment, that I don't know which things to pick and choose from to do this rather quickly.

ED CRAFT: Well you just keep going with it, and we'll keep listening. [laughter] How's that?

GEORGE LUTZ: By the time we left Kathy had turned into an old woman at one point. She had levitated off the bed a few inches and slid away from me. Even after we left the house and moved into Kathy's mom's house, we both experienced a levitation together. And that was a rather pleasant experience. What happened in the bedroom when she did that was not. That was most frightening. She was actually sliding away from me.

We were asked about this when we took lie detectors years later, and that was certainly one of the ­ the fact that this had happened more than once ­ was something that we wanted to establish at that point.

ED CRAFT: So this actually occurred to you, or to Kathy, in the house; but it occurred to both of you after you had moved out already?

GEORGE LUTZ: Yes. Yes. And that's one of those things that gets confused in this, sometimes, when people talk about it or the, for lack of a better expression, the so-called "experts" about this, that weren't there and weren't involved in any of the investigations, that weren't involved in anything. They talk about it, and its...

When we put up the website ­ amityvillehorrortruth.com and amityvillehorror.com ­ on amityvillehorror.com we put up the actual lie detector tests and the credentials of Chris Gugas, the fellow that gave the test.

ED CRAFT: Was this an independent... I'm sure this was an independent test that you had done.

GEORGE LUTZ: Yes. It was done... Actually the movie company asked us if we would mind ­ wouldn't mind ­ doing it, and we said we'd be glad to do it. The fact that we didn't have to pay for it was excellent. What they wanted to do was to be able to use the tests for marketing the first movie. And the agreement was that no matter how the test came out, that's what they would make public.

So they eventually did some kind of an article in one of the ­ "National Star" or something, whatever it was ­ and that it was published in there.

GINGER STEWART: Now do you still have experiences today with whatever may have followed you from the house?

GEORGE LUTZ: Oh, I don't think of it that way at all. Today I had a very normal day. [nervous laughter] Except for a few ­ 15 minutes or so ­ we were talking before we got on the air today. [laughter]

I'll give you an example. Two weeks ago I was at a convention called HauntCon in Dallas, Texas. Its run by some friends of ours. And one of the fellows that we know from a haunted house attraction in North Carolina called "Deadly Shoals" ­ one of the owners of that, Johnny, came up and we spent some time talking. And we were sitting there, and we were looking at this one particular picture, and we started finding faces in the picture. This is a picture taken 30 years ago by Newsday. This isn't one of our own photographs ­ this is one that the newspaper went out after ­ I believe this is the day after the murders in the house in 1974.

ED CRAFT: Ah, let me go ahead, and for anyone out there by their computer right now, if you'll click ­ go to our website www.magickmind.net ­ below George's photograph there is a link, okay, to a flash player, but you'll have to cut and paste that link into your web browser, and it'll take you to the flash page where this link is at. Where this photo is.

GEORGE LUTZ: Actually, Ed, its a picture of the house, isn't it? Not a picture of me?

ED CRAFT: Right, right, right. Well, the picture of you ­ the link on my site is below your photo.

GEORGE LUTZ: Oh, okay. I'm sorry.

ED CRAFT: And it will take them to the photograph ­ to the link of the Flash program that we're talking, discussing here ­ and where this photograph comes from.

GEORGE LUTZ: I had trouble playing that Flash program on a couple of different computers of mine that ­ the firewall settings were too high. I actually had to shut the firewall off on one of them for the Flash to play. And that may help some people that have a little trouble with it.

ED CRAFT: Well that way you guys out there can follow along with what George is talking about right now.

GEORGE LUTZ: So are we still back in 1975-76?

ED CRAFT: We're wherever you want to take us [laughter] because I think this is interesting enough ­ we all want to just sit back and listen to this one. Everybody out there wants to know more. What happened then, I think, there's a lot of confusion over what happened then ­ but, at the same time, there's a lot of confusion over what's going on now, as well.

GEORGE LUTZ: We have, what, 45 minutes left, maybe, to talk about all the different things that have...

ED CRAFT: Right. That's why I'm saying, I'm gonna let you ­ I'm gonna let you go ahead. If you wanna talk about this photo, 'cause I think this is interesting. I think a lot of people would enjoy seeing what it is you're talking about, and following along with these pictures and seeing the images that are there.

GEORGE LUTZ: Well Johnnie and I were looking through different images that I have of the house. We have a picture book that we have always wanted to put out. A picture book done from the investigation ­ one of the investigations done by the Warrens. This is the second one. This is March 6, 1976. This is when a number of different investigators came together for a whole day in the house. And its the way we left the house. When we left we did not go back and get our things ­ we left our clothes and food and furniture and personal belongings, everything there. Boats.

ED CRAFT: Now didn't ­ didn't you guys...

GEORGE LUTZ: This is... I'm sorry, go ahead.

ED CRAFT: Just to clear up an issue, didn't you guys go back in and get some family pictures or something, was about the only thing? Or did you take that out with you?

GEORGE LUTZ: No, we didn't get the family pictures. What we did get is some personal records. My grandfather had given me a cedar chest that he had built. And on, this would be Easter Sunday, 1976. A couple of friends went back into the house and got the food and the clothes and gave those to the Salvation Army, and brought out the chest for us with some personal items. But that's the only things that we took from the house.

ED CRAFT: But you actually didn't ­ you didn't even go back in there and get these things.

GEORGE LUTZ: No, I gave them the key.

ED CRAFT: They did it for you, in other words.

GEORGE LUTZ: Right, and one of them was ­ a good friend of mine, Benny Montana who owned Nassau County Harley Davidson. He was murdered a week later. He's the only fella that ate any food that day in the house ­ he was told not to. Not that you can say that that's why he died ­ that would be improper. But it is another event that took place back then. He was murdered by his girlfriend.

ED CRAFT: And this is ­ how long ago ­ how long after going in there and doing that did this occur? I mean what are we talking ­ a period of years?

GEORGE LUTZ: When he died?

ED CRAFT: Right.

GEORGE LUTZ: No, within two weeks.

TAMARA THORNE: Wow.

GINGER STEWART: Wow.

ED CRAFT: Wow. Yeah. Let me throw the third "wow" in there, because that is "wow."

GEORGE LUTZ: I don't believe that he died because he ate the food, but it is one of...he was easily one of my all-time best friends, and he's still missed, and to forget that he did that for me ­ went in there that day and got those...took care of the stuff for the Salvation Army and got our personal things and then died as a result, in some manner or another, two weeks later, is just not something that I forget.

GINGER STEWART: Did you have any qualms about giving the stuff away, you know, because it was tainted by the house?

GEORGE LUTZ: No, that... This was Father Ray's suggestion ­ he was the priest that helped us. We didn't want the things, and we asked if it would be okay to donate the stuff, and he said, "Absolutely, no problem."

TAMARA THORNE: And you just wanted to be rid of that chapter of your life.

GEORGE LUTZ: Well, the balance of the contents of the house, we didn't decide on until, I think it was April or May of that year. We made the payments... We moved to California on Mother's Day of '76, and we made the payments through, I think August ­ July or August.

People have made statement like we had money trouble, and its just such a misrepresentation of the whole event to say that we somehow committed some kind of fraud by telling our own story. And then they'll say things like we had money trouble and that's why we got a book deal. Well we...

TAMARA THORNE: I think that a lot of people forget that it was so traumatic for you, that you didn't even want to go back to the house.

GEORGE LUTZ: Well there's more than that. There was no signed contract for any book deal until August of 1977. Five weeks, four weeks ­ whatever it was ­ before the book was actually published. There was no contract with Jay Anson, the author of the book, until August of '77.

We made the payments on that. We lived in California in a rented house, a condo for a while and a hotel for a while, first ­ a motel. We made the payments on the house continually for another 6 months and then had an auctioneer go in and get of the boat and the furniture and whatever was left in the house, and auction that off and then we gave the house back to the bank. We couldn't take the responsibility of selling it to someone else.

TAMARA THORNE: But what did you feel would happen if you walked back in and, say, got your boat?

GEORGE LUTZ: I went back once. This was with a parapsychologist by the name of Dr Heffernan. He brought with him a young woman who was a transmedium, and he represented to me ­ this was on Palm Sunday of '76 ­ he represented to me that we would smell flowers and that we would know that the house was "cleansed" and that the flowers would be violets. I did not smell that, so I was incredibly distrustful of that, and it was just one of those ­ that's the only time that I did go back.

TAMARA THORNE: Now what about the room under the cellar stairs.

GEORGE LUTZ: The red room.

TAMARA THORNE: Yeah.

GEORGE LUTZ: We called it "the red room" because there's no other way to describe it. Its not really a room, its more like a small, enclosed maybe "closet" kind of area ­ but it was made out of cinder block, it was all painted red. There were odors that came from there. There was no pipe access to explain why the odors were there. The fact that the room was painted bright red was really rather strange.

Kathy called me at work one day ­ after we had moved in ­ and she was moving things around in the basement to get the washroom area set up for herself. We had two washers and two dryers down there, and she had loads of wash to do with 3 kids. And she was moving things around. She found this bookcase that moved and the room was behind it. That's the area where we took our black lab, Harry ­ and took him down there and he just cowered. He backed away from it. He didn't want to go near it.

TAMARA THORNE: They know.

GINGER STEWART: Yeah, they do. They do.

GEORGE LUTZ: What's interesting about the room is it didn't show up on the house plans, when we got ahold of those. It wasn't part of the as-builts of the house.

TAMARA THORNE: So there's no way to know who built it or when.

GEORGE LUTZ: Well actually there is some research that a friend of mine, Scottie Gee, did. He's an incredible graphics guy that's helped-out with doing stuff over the years; and he's done quite a bit of research. He was one of the producers on the "History's Mysteries" documentary that ­ 2-hour documentary ­ that was done about this. And he found one of the owners had evidently had this constructed for potting purposes, or some kind of ­ to plant seeds or something. But it never made sense to me that somebody would do this without any natural light.

TAMARA THORNE: The only thing that would make a little sense is if maybe if it was a darkroom of some sorts.

GEORGE LUTZ: Well it was in the dark.

ED CRAFT: Well guys... Hold on folks, I gotta interrupt you. We gotta take a break right here. We're about to run over. We'll talk some more in just a moment.

[break] [off-topic talk excised]

ED CRAFT: Tamara and Ginger, before we left, you were asking George some questions.

TAMARA THORNE: Yeah, I was gonna ask him if there was enough room in the basement room, under the stairs, for equipment such as darkroom equipment ­ maybe that was the reason for it.

GEORGE LUTZ: It wouldn't have been practical. You'd have to have... For two people to get in there, you'd have to have ­ they'd have to be really good friends.

TAMARA THORNE: So there wasn't enough room for equipment, let alone another person, for it to be used for that purpose.

GEORGE LUTZ: It wouldn't have been practical.

GINGER STEWART: My brother had a really tiny darkroom.

GEORGE LUTZ: And before we go any further, we might want to get to this picture, only because of the time.

ED CRAFT: Yeah, yeah. Let's go ahead. Let's go ahead and do that now, George.

GEORGE LUTZ: Okay, how do we describe getting to this? If you run the Flash player, and its the second image that comes up of the house.

ED CRAFT: Okay, so for the listeners out there, if you cut & paste that link that's below George's picture on our website. Just cut it and paste it into your address bar. It will take you to the actual Flash Player there and it'll ­ what you do is you run that program. And it will come up with a more modern view of the house, and you want to stop it in the 2nd view.

GEORGE LUTZ: If you scroll down ­ on my screen, what I had to do was, when it comes up is that you have to scroll down with the slider so that you get to the bottom of the picture and you'll see that where you can pause the picture.

ED CRAFT: Okay, so everybody that's doing this now, go ahead and set it up so that you can ­ and get it paused so that you can see what we're talking about here. As George goes along and explains to us where these images are.

GEORGE LUTZ: Now this is a Newsday photograph that's 30 years old or so. This is after the murders. I have no way to be absolutely sure that this is the next day, but I assume because of the crime scene tape that this is...

ED CRAFT: Shortly thereafter...

GEORGE LUTZ: Probably November 14th or 15th, 1974.

ED CRAFT: Okay, so we're going to assume that everybody's had time to pause that now ­ and as we go along, George is going to explain to you what to look for ­ in which window pane, in which part of the house as well.

GEORGE LUTZ: Now to get the best picture of this ­ this is... Newsday owns this picture. This is a copyrighted picture of theirs. I believe you can buy the picture from Newsday.com, but I'm not absolutely sure of that. This is a three-quarter, I guess you'd call it a three-quarter front and side view of the house; and as the picture comes up in Flash, it gets brighter and brighter, clearer and clearer, and then all of a sudden it goes away and goes to the next part of the Flash movie. So it may take a couple of times of letting this play through and then coming, you know ­ you can right-click and rewind ­ start it over and you can start if from the beginning again, and then you'll see that you can get the best resolution of this by waiting for it to get lighter as it does for the last moment before it switches.

That'll give you the clearest picture of this particular picture. The house is all black and white there. The crime scene tape is on the bottom. There's a sign that says "High Hopes." And you can see in the very bottom of the picture, there are the statues that the DeFeos had put up, in my understanding, about a month before the murders. And we'll go on to the 2nd floor window ­ this is the easiest picture to see immediately ­ so this would be the 2nd floor, right-hand window. This is the master bedroom window of the property ­ and the lower half of the window frame...

ED CRAFT: The darker ­ the darker section of the window.

GEORGE LUTZ: Yes. And there is a ­ I don't know how to describe this other than a very good likeness of a face, peering out from there. A rather distorted face, as you zoom in on it. And if you go in and out ­ if its hard to see, you can go in and out with the zoom and see this a little bit easier. Another way to do it is, for personal use, is you can print this picture and then use a magnifying glass or rescan it.

ED CRAFT: Now George, I'm almost seeing two faces in that bottom pane.

GEORGE LUTZ: Well there is one on the right that's very large ­ it takes up half of the lower half of the window ­ the right hand. And then on the left, there, is another partial mask, it looks like.

ED CRAFT: Well now that one almost looks like someone with their hair parted in the middle.

GEORGE LUTZ: I'm not seeing what you see now.

ED CRAFT: Its in the lower ­ in fact its cut-off by the railing in that lower left-hand section. It looks like someone with their hair kind of feathered like they used to wear it in the 60s, or I mean in the 70s, parted in the middle, but its cut off by the rail, itself. Its in that far left-hand side of that bottom frame ­ or window pane, rather.

GEORGE LUTZ: Okay, that looks almost like another head to me.

ED CRAFT: Yeah, its the top portion of a head. The mouth is where it cuts off because of the railing.

GEORGE LUTZ: Okay.

ED CRAFT: And it looks like the hair is feathered.

GEORGE LUTZ: I hadn't ­ I haven't seen that before. This is ­ the face I'm referring to ­ or the part of the face ­ is on the upper left hand lower half of that window.

ED CRAFT: Yeah, the really large one.

GEORGE LUTZ: Yes. No, no ­ I'm still in the lower half of the window...

ED CRAFT: Right. This one's pretty large, too. I mean its much larger than the one I was talking about.

GEORGE LUTZ: Okay. Yes it is. Its much larger than the first one I've seen. And then the upper half of the window has a number of faces. It just depends on, again, your resolution and how clear this is for your computer.

There's a very, almost square, kind of, looking face ­ and even part of the window sash looks like it makes the mouth ­ and the nose would be the [unintelligible]. And that one's easier to see, again, by "in and out" with the zoom.

TAMARA THORNE: Yeah, that makes a difference.

ED CRAFT: It almost bleeds over into the one below it. It almost looks like they've got, there's a goatee there or something. [laughter]

GEORGE LUTZ: Could be. And then there, in the upper right hand of the whole, of the entire window, so that we're at, we're in the upper half of the window, upper right hand panel ­ there are 3 panels across the top ­ very top of the window. There's another face ­ its kind of sideways ­ and there's a mouth and a nose and two eyes that are easy to see. Its kind of gone sideways there.

ED CRAFT: And that one ­ that one's really large.

GEORGE LUTZ: Pardon me?

ED CRAFT: That one's really large.

GEORGE LUTZ: Yes. It takes up most of that entire pane.

TAMARA THORNE: What do you think it all means?

GEORGE LUTZ: Then if you look to that center, upper one, there are two faces in that. The upper half and the lower half each have two separate visions.

ED CRAFT: Okay, I see the one on the right.

GEORGE LUTZ: Are you in the center pane now or not?

ED CRAFT: Right.

GEORGE LUTZ: Okay. There's one in the top half, and then there's one in the lower half of that same pane. The lower-half one is more like a ­ almost hairless.

ED CRAFT: Its much smaller, yeah.

GEORGE LUTZ: Much smaller.

ED CRAFT: Almost skull-like.

GEORGE LUTZ: Yep.

TAMARA THORNE: Yeah.

GEORGE LUTZ: What's interesting about these is that they are layered. They appear to be images layered on top of images, almost like so many different trying to look out the window ­ so many different... whatever these are...

TAMARA THORNE: Do you have any idea what they are, or what they mean?

GEORGE LUTZ: [laughs] These are 2-weeks old for me, so every time I look at these, I see something new.

ED CRAFT: So this is something you're experiencing ­ you're checking out for the first time as well, pretty much.

GEORGE LUTZ: In many ways, yes. This is... I mean I've looked at these before, but I have never seen these images before.

TAMARA THORNE: Oh wow.

GEORGE LUTZ: And this is a 30 year old, 31, almost 31 year old, picture. This isn't...

ED CRAFT: Its something I'm sure you're well-familiar with at this point. You probably looked at it a million times, and that's what's so ironic ­ I find ironic about it, or mysterious about it ­ is that you've seen these ­ I'm sure you've seen these photographs out there...

GEORGE LUTZ: I have not seen this...

ED CRAFT: ...but you've never, you've never noticed any of this stuff.

GEORGE LUTZ: I have to thank Johnnie for finding these, you know.

TAMARA THORNE: He's got a good eye.

GINGER STEWART: Yeah.

GEORGE LUTZ: He really did. He went to a ­ when I was down there they have a charity event that they run ­ and I was down there last year and they went out one night to a cemetery and they asked me if I wanted to go, and I said, "Of course not." [laughter] And he took a tape recorder with him and asked some questions in the cemetery and got some answers on the tape. And he's a scary guy. I mean he's really, he's pretty good at some things.

If you go to the upper right-hand eye-window ­ that would be the next floor up ­ third floor.

ED CRAFT: Where the attic is?

GEORGE LUTZ: Yeah.

ED CRAFT: Well, the ones everybody, I'm sure, is familiar with on the house.

GEORGE LUTZ: Sure. Each of the larger panes on that window each have faces that are rather easy to see ­ they just take a little bit of time. And then as you spend more time with the lower one, for example, there are actually two separate faces that I see now, but doesn't necessarily mean someone else is seeing them. And then there are two more in the middle pane and at least two more in the... Well, yeah, two more easily in the...

TAMARA THORNE: You know that top attic window is the one that I saw one in.

GINGER STEWART: Yeah, that one is pretty easy to see.

TAMARA THORNE: Yeah.

ED CRAFT: Yeah, I'm looking at that one now, and its pretty clear.

GEORGE LUTZ: Each of those panes. And as you go in and out, you get ­ if you change your focus and you let it come to you ­ then you'll see some, there are faces that go sideways that are made up of other faces.

ED CRAFT: They kind of bleed in to one another at points.

GEORGE LUTZ: Exactly. That's what I mean about "layered." Its not like you could ­ I don't know how you'd begin to create these.

ED CRAFT: Okay, we ­ guys, guess what?

TAMARA THORNE: Break time!

ED CRAFT: Yep, its that time. Its break time. Hang on.

[break] [off-topic talk excised]

ED CRAFT: George, you were telling us about some of the photo ­ the images in this photograph ­ but there's one very interesting one to note that is not in the window panes.

GEORGE LUTZ: Oh yeah. This is outside. This is in the backyard. You have to... You have to actually zoom in on the black area to the right of the house, in the backyard.

ED CRAFT: The wooded area, kind of, back there?

GEORGE LUTZ: Yes. And there is, or what appears to be, a guy with a kind of strange hat in the white area in the center of the black area back there. The wooded area. And as you go in and out, you can actually see him...

ED CRAFT: Looks like he's got a hat on.

GEORGE LUTZ: Yeah, standing right there. Looks like a tossled, a tassled hat of some kind. Strange hat.

ED CRAFT: Something like someone would have worn during the 30s or something ­ you know ­ like men used to walk around in their fedoras and things. The older ones.

GEORGE LUTZ: Well its interesting. My webmaster found this ­ Tim Yancey. He emailed me about it. I hadn't seen this until this morning when I got the email and looked.

ED CRAFT: There seem to be images all ­ I mean, or, well I don't know what else to call them ­ all over the place in this thing.

TAMARA THORNE: Yeah.

GEORGE LUTZ: Well you know what, each of the side windows have them. Some are much harder to see than others. The front sunroom is just replete with them, and it is...

ED CRAFT: Now what I'm seeing in that front room, right above that "High Hopes" sign, there looks like half a face right, and I mean literally right above it in the center of those two windows, on the far left hand side.

TAMARA THORNE: Oh yeah.

GEORGE LUTZ: I see that. A smile and ­ what looks like a smile ­ and an eyebrow. An eye.

ED CRAFT: Yeah, it looks like half a face peering out through it, and you know the window frame is actually blocking half their face.

GEORGE LUTZ: Yeah.

ED CRAFT: That looks clear as a bell.

GEORGE LUTZ: In the center window, the two left middle ones, look like people sideways. And that actually looks like a couple in the lower part. In the upper right one, there, there's another face. And then the easy ones to find are the right-hand sun window ­ sun porch window ­ left hand, upper half ­ there's a face right in the middle of that one. Its very easy to see.

ED CRAFT: Those are incredible. I mean, and these things are ­ some of... Now you do really have to honestly look for some of these things.

GEORGE LUTZ: Yes you do.

ED CRAFT: But some of them, you know, when you start looking, actually jump out at you, almost.

GEORGE LUTZ: The zoom really makes it easier to find some of these things, and the clearer the picture, of course, the easier it is to do.

ED CRAFT: And all you guys out there can check this out. The archive from tonight's show, of course, will be up on our website. Just, uh, and I'm gonna leave that link attached to it, so that you guys can cut & paste that and go and play with this and see what you get. But I'd like to invite all our listeners out there to do your own little experiment here ­ go ahead, take a look at this, and freeze that frame with that picture. Look around on it. Zoom in and out like George is talking about, and let us know. Email myself, Tamara or Ginger, and let us know what images you find in this photograph. See how many we can come up with and where they're located. That would be, I think, very interesting. The more the merrier on this one, I think.

GEORGE LUTZ: [laughs] That's certainly one way to look at it.

TAMARA THORNE: Make sure you give us the locations, too.

GEORGE LUTZ: A little description on how to find them. Yeah.

ED CRAFT: Well George, I gotta thank you for being with us. We're out of time.

GEORGE LUTZ: Oh, you're welcome, Ed.

[off-topic talk excised] [show ends]