Excerpt from _Parapsychology: The Controversial Science_ by Richard S.
Broughton, Ph. D.; (c) 1991; ISBN 0-345-35638-1.


        Early in 1976 Jerry Solfvin and Keith Harary of the Psychical
Research Foundation, then in Durham, North Carolina (not to be confused
with Rhine's Institute for Parapsychology), took a phone call from a Mr.
George Lutz in Long Island, New York.  Lutz described a most bizarre
array of phenomena, which he felt were due to a demonic entity.  A
brutal mass murder had taken place in the house some years earlier; the
caller felt that this event must have some connection.  Solfvin and
Harary conferred by phone with Lutz several times over the next few
weeks, but they didn't believe the case merited a special trip.  The
phenomena seemed a little too bizarre - not at all like typical cases -
and anyway the events were over.  The family had moved out of the house
and the phenomena had stopped.  All they had to offer investigators were
their stories.

        In March Solfvin happenned to be in the New York area, so he
stopped in to visit the Lutz family.  Quite by chance that same
afternoon Dr. Karlis Osis, of the American Society for Psychical
Research (ASPR), and Alex Tanous, a psychic who had participated in ASPR
research for many years, were visiting as well.  At some point the talk
turned to the subject of the mass murderer, who was now in prison.  The
Lutzes produced a sample of the murderer's handwriting for Tanous to
examine.  The specimen was most interesting, but not what Tanous had
expected:  The sample was the murderer's signature - on the bottom of a
contract for the distribution of the profits from book and film rights
to the haunting story!

        Osis and Tanous went over to the allegedly haunted house but
didn't find much of interest.  Later that afternoon Solfvin also visited
the house, but by the time he got there, a television crew was already
filming and newspaper reporters were prowling about.  Since the
parapsychologists had nothing more than the family's claims, and given
the strong indications of a profit motive behind the whole thing, they
concluded there was nothing there to interest them.  Sometime later, on
a New York radio program, the lawyer for the murderer's family claimed
that the whole thing was a hoax - something that he had dreamed up with
the Lutzes - and now he was suing the Lutzes because they tried to cut
him out of the profits.  The Lutzes were of course countersuing.  None
of this stopped some folks from making a large bundle of money on the
story that became known as _The Amityville Horror_. [pg. 210]