New York's infamous Amityville horror house is up for sale. The "legendary" Long Island home first acquired an unsettling reputation in 1974 after Ronald "Butch" DeFeo, Jr. shot and killed his family in the house while they slept. Subsequent owners, George and Kathleen Lutz and their children, claimed to have witnessed the home's key holes supernaturally oozing slime, beds levitating, and flies swarming in eerie, preoccupied ways. The Lutz's nightmarish story first became a best-selling book, then a kitschy but enduring 1979 horror film — and now, despite a reassuring remodel (the house's spook-eye windows replaced with standard rectangular models), a key talking point as Sotheby's International Realty hopes to find a new buyer. (Watch one fan's tribute to the Amityville horror house.) Here, a by-the-numbers look at one of America's most shiver-inducing abodes:
$1.15 million
Current asking price for the Dutch Colonial house
$55,000
Selling price of the house in the years after the murders, according to The Wall Street Journal, although one report says the Lutzes paid $80,000
5
Number of bedrooms in the house
3.5
Number of bathrooms
3:15 AM
Time at which George Lutz claims to have woken up every morning while living in the house — approximately the same time the killings reportedly occurred
"Hundreds"
Number of pills the Lutzes say they found strewn on the second floor when they moved in
28
Number of days the Lutzes lived in the house before fleeing in fear
$86,432,000
U.S. box office earnings of the original film
7.3
Percentage of the original movie's gross earned by the second sequel, 1983's Amityville 3D
100
Approximate number of factual errors researchers discovered in the claims made by author Jay Anson and the Lutzes about the house. While the Lutzes stuck by their horrific claims, Butch Defeo's lawyer eventually admitted that he and the Lutzes "created this horror story over many bottles of wine."
112
Original Ocean Ave. address of the house
108
Address that former owners James and Barabara Cromarty secured in an attempt to protect their privacy from visiting fans of the book and films
4
Number of owners the house has had since the killings
13
Number of years since the house last went up for sale (in 1997, it changed hands for $310,000)
9
Number of feature films released about the killings, including the 1979 original, The Amityville Horror, seven sequels and one remake
11
Number of books published about the incident; the most recent, 2008's Mentally Ill in Amityville, purports to tell the "true story"
6
Number of DeFeo family members killed in the house by Ronald DeFeo, Jr., including both Defeo's partents, his two brothers and two sisters
25-to-life
Sentence Defeo received for the murders, which he is currently serving at the Green Haven Correctional Facility in upstate New York
Sources: Newsday, CNN, WSJ, Live Science, Telegraph
