Amityville Horror debunked by former resident

From The Seattle Times:

As a child living in the house made famous by "The Amityville Horror," he saw a menacing, shadowy figure approach him, and he remembers the night his bedroom window kept banging open and shut. But forget the green slime dripping from the walls: Many of the events in "The Amityville Horror" books and movies were exaggerated to the point of fiction, said Christopher Quaratino, the only one of three children who lived in the allegedly haunted house to speak publicly about it.

"So far there's been three representations of what happened in that house," Quaratino said. "And not one of them" — not the book, not the movie, nor a remake released last month — "is accurate."

Quaratino was 7 when his mother, Kathy Lutz, and her new husband moved the family into the Amityville, N.Y., house where Ronald DeFeo had killed six family members with a rifle the previous fall. The family moved out after 28 days.

Now 37 and living in Scottsdale, Ariz., Quaratino maintains the haunting was not a hoax. But he insists his stepfather at the time, George Lutz, brought the troubles on himself by dabbling in the occult and then amplified what paranormal incidents did occur to profit off books and movies about the house.

I'd hate to think any family was as stupid as the family in the latest movie version of the Amityville Snorer Horror. My review of it can be found here.