The Science of Miracles

by Joe Nickell

  One investigator, however, doubts whether this attack—or even this first exorcism—ever occurred, having searched in vain for corroborative evidence (Opsasnik 2000). In any event, the parents considered making a temporary move to St. Louis, where relatives lived. When this possibility was discussed, the word “Louis” appeared across R's ribs; when the question arose as to when, “Saturday” was seen plainly on his hip; and when the duration was considered, “3 weeks” appeared on his chest. The possibility that R was producing the markings was dismissed on the grounds that his mother “was keeping him under close supervision,” but they might have been done previously and only revealed as appropriate, or he might have produced them as he feigned being “doubled up” and screaming in pain.

  According to the diary, “The markings could not have been done by the boy for the added reason that on one occasion there was writing on his back” (Bishop 1949, 247). Such naïve thinking is the reason “poltergeists” are able to thrive. A determined youth, probably even without a wall mirror, could easily have managed such a feat—if it actually occurred. Although the scratched messages proliferated, they never again appeared on a difficult-to-reach portion of the boy's anatomy.

  In St. Louis, there were more poltergeist-type effects, whereupon Father Bishop (the diarist) was drawn to the case. Bishop left a bottle of holy water in R's bedroom but later—while the boy claimed to have been dozing—it went sailing across the room. On another occasion R's parents found the way into his room blocked by a fifty-pound bookcase. A stool “fell over.” Initially, Bishop and another priest, Father William Bowdern, believed R could have deliberately produced all of the phenomena that had thus far occurred in St. Louis, recognizing that stories of alleged incidents in Maryland were, while interesting, hearsay (Allen 2000, 61–76).

  Eventually Bowdern changed his view and was instructed by Archbishop Joseph Ritter to perform an exorcism on the boy. Bowdern was accompanied by Father Bishop and Walter Halloran (mentioned earlier as providing a copy of the diary to author Allen), who was then a Jesuit student. Bowdern began the ritual of exorcism in R's room. Scratches began to appear on the boy's body, including the word “HELL” on his chest “in such a way that R could look down upon his chest and read the letters plainly.” A “picture of the devil” also appeared on the boy's leg. “Evidently the exorcism prayers had stirred up the devil,” the diary states, because, after a period of sleep R “began sparring” and “punching the pillow with more than ordinary force” (Bishop 1949, 255–57).

  Soon Bowdern “believed deep in his soul that he was in combat with Satan” (Allen 2000, 117). R thrashed wildly; he spat in the faces of the priests and even his mother; he contorted and lashed out; he urinated. Reports the diary:

  From 12:00 midnight on, it was necessary to hold R during his fights with the spirit. Two men were necessary to pin him down to the bed. R shouted threats of violence at them, but vulgar language was not used. R spit [sic] at his opponents many times. He used a strong arm whenever he could free himself, and his blows were beyond the ordinary strength of the boy. (Bishop 1949, 258)

  The exorcism continued on and off for days. At times R screamed “in diabolical, high-pitched voice”; he swung his fists, once breaking Halloran's nose; he sat up and sang (for example the “Blue Danube,” “Old Rugged Cross,” and “Swanee”); he cried; he spat; he cursed his father; he mimed masturbation; he bit his caretakers. On March 18, there seemed a crisis: as if attempting to vomit, R said, “He's going, he's going…” and “There he goes.” He went limp and seemed back to normal. He said he had had a vision of a figure in a black robe and cowl walking away in a black cloud (Bishop 1949, 257–62).

  However, after the priests left, R claimed there were odd feelings in his stomach and cried out, “He's coming back! He's coming back!” Soon the tantrums and routine of exorcism continued. R seemed even more violent, hurling vulgarities, and he had spells of Satan-dictated writing and speech. For example: “In 10 days I will give a sign on his chest[;] he will have to have it covered to show my power.” R also wrote, “Dead bishop” (Bishop 1949, 262–69). Subsequently on April 1, between disturbances, the youth was baptized in the rectory.

  During all this time the markings—the random scratches and words—continued to appear on R's body. When there was talk of his going to school there, the boy grimaced and opened his shirt to reveal the scratched words, “No school” (Allen 2000, 46), a seemingly childish concern for truly diabolic forces. (The diary mentions only that “No” appeared on the boy's wrists.)

  Reportedly, on one occasion R was observed using one of his fingernails (which were quite long) to scratch the words “HELL” and “CHRIST” on his chest. It is unclear whether or not he realized he was being observed at the time. Earlier, the priests reportedly “saw a new scratch slowly moving down his leg” (Allen 2000, 180). This sounds mysterious until we consider that the boy could have made a quick scratch just before the priests looked—which they did because he suddenly “yelped”—and what they observed was merely the after effect of the scratch, the skin's developing response to the superficial injury. (I have produced just such an effect on myself experimentally, observed by Skeptical Inquirer's Ben Radford.)

  On April 4, the family decided to return to their Maryland home due to the father's need to work and the need to relieve the strain on the Missouri relatives. But after five days R was sent back to St. Louis and admitted to a hospital run by an order of monks. He was put in a security room that had bars on its single window and straps on the bed. During the days the teenager studied the catechism and was taken on outings, but at night the “possession” continued. There were failed attempts to give him Holy Communion, “the devil” at one point saying (according to the diary), that he would not permit it (Bishop 1949, 282).

  On April 18, R again announced, “He's gone!” This time, he said, he had a vision of “a very beautiful man wearing a white robe and holding a fiery sword.” With it the figure (presumably Jesus) drove the devil into a pit. There were no further episodes, and Father Bishop (1949, 291) recorded that on August 19, 1951, R and his parents visited the brothers who had cared for him. “R, now 16, is a fine young man,” he wrote. “His father and mother also became Catholic, having received their first Holy Communion on Christmas Day, 1950.”

  AFTERMATH

  Was R possessed? Or did superstition mask a troubled youth's problems and invite elaborate role-playing? Interestingly, Archbishop Ritter appointed a Jesuit philosophy professor to investigate the matter. According to a reportedly informed source, the investigator concluded that R “was not the victim of diabolical possession” (Allen 2000, 234). Without wishing to make a categorical judgment, Halloran states that R did not exhibit prodigious strength, showing nothing more than what could be summoned by an agitated teenager. As to speaking in Latin, Halloran thought that was nothing more than the boy's having heard repetitious Latin phrases from the exorcising priest. (On one occasion “the devil reportedly spoke school kids’ ‘pig Latin’”!)

  Nothing that was reliably reported in the case was beyond the abilities of a teenager to produce. The tantrums, “trances,” moved furniture, hurled objects, automatic writing, superficial scratches, and other phenomena were just the kinds of things someone of R's age could accomplish, just as others have done before and since. Indeed, the elements of “poltergeist phenomena,” “spirit communication,” and “demonic possession”—taken both separately and, especially, together, as one progressed to the other—suggest nothing so much as role-playing involving trickery. So does the stereotypical storybook portrayal of “the devil” throughout.

  Writer Mark Opsasnik (2000) investigated the case, tracing the family's home to Cottage City, Maryland (not Mount Rainier, as once thought), and talked to R's neighbors and childhood friends. According to their recollections, the boy had been a very clever trickster who had pulled pranks to frighten his mother and to fool children in the neighborhood. “There was no possession,” Opsasnik
told the Washington Post. “The kid was just a prankster” (Saulny 2000).

  Of course, the fact that the boy wanted to engage in such extreme antics over a period of three months does suggest he was emotionally disturbed. Teenagers typically have problems, and R seemed to have trouble adjusting—to school, his sexual awareness, and other concerns. To an extent, of course, he was challenging authority as part of his self-development, and he was no doubt enjoying the attention. But there is simply no credible evidence to suggest that the boy was possessed by demons or evil spirits.

  A Catholic scholar, Reverend Richard McBrien, who formerly chaired Notre Dame's theology department, states that he is “exceedingly skeptical” of all alleged possession cases. He told the Philadelphia Daily News (which also interviewed me for a critical look at the subject), “Whenever I see reports of exorcisms, I never believe them.” He has concluded that “in olden times, long before there was a discipline known as psychiatry and long before medical advances…what caused possession was really forms of mental or physical illness (Adamson 2000). Elsewhere, McBrien (1991) has said that the practice of exorcism—and by inference a belief in demon possession—“holds the faith up to ridicule.” Let us hope that the enlightened view, rather than the occult one, prevails.

  The bestselling book The Amityville Horror: A True Story was followed by a movie of the same title and a sequel, Amityville II: The Possession. Although the original event proved to be a hoax, that fact does not seem well known to the general public. Now a new book sheds new light on the sordid affair and reviews the multiple-murder case that preceded it. Written by Ric Osuna (2002), it is titled The Night the DeFeos Died: Reinvestigating the Amityville Murders (figure 53.1).

  The saga began on November 13, 1974, with the murders of Ronald DeFeo Sr., his wife Louise, and their two sons and two daughters. The six were shot while they slept in their home in Amityville, New York, a community on Long Island. Subsequently the sole remaining family member—Ronald Jr., nicknamed “Butch”—confessed to the slaughter and was sentenced to twenty-five years to life. Just two weeks after his sentencing, late the following year, George and Kathy Lutz and their three children moved into the tragic home where—allegedly—a new round of horrors began.

  The six-bedroom Dutch colonial house was to be the Lutzes’ residence for only twenty-eight days. They claimed they were driven out by sinister forces that ripped open a heavy door, leaving it hanging from one hinge; threw open windows, bending their locks; caused green slime to ooze from a ceiling; peered into the house at night with red eyes and left cloven-hooved tracks in the snow outside; infested a room in midwinter with hundreds of houseflies; and produced myriad other supposedly paranormal phenomena, including inflicting a priest with inexplicable, painful blisters on his hands.

  Local New York television's Channel 5 “investigated” the alleged haunting by bringing in alleged psychics together with “demonologist” Ed Warren and his wife Lorraine, a professed “clairvoyant.” The group held a series of séances in the house. One psychic claimed to be ill and to “feel personally threatened” by shadowy forces. Lorraine Warren pronounced that there was a negative entity “right from the bowels of the earth.” A further séance was unproductive, but psychics agreed that a “demonic spirit” possessed the house and recommended exorcism (Nickell 1995).

  In September 1977 The Amityville Horror: A True Story appeared. Written by Jay Anson, a professional writer commissioned by Prentice-Hall to tell the Lutzes’ story, it became a runaway bestseller. Anson asserted: “There is simply too much independent corroboration of their narrative to support the speculation that they either imagined or fabricated these events,” although he conceded that the strange occurrences had ceased after the Lutzes moved out.

  Indeed, a man who later lived there for eight months said he had experienced nothing more horrible than a stream of gawkers who tramped onto the property. Similarly, the couple that purchased the house after it was given up by the Lutzes, James and Barbara Cromarty, poured ice water on the hellish tale. They confirmed the suspicions of various investigators that it was a bogus admixture of phenomena: part traditional haunting, part poltergeist disturbance, and part demonic possession, including elements that seemed to have been lifted from the movie The Exorcist.

  Researchers Rick Moran and Peter Jordan (1978) discovered that the police had not been called to the house and that there had been no snowfall when the Lutzes claimed to have discovered cloven hoof prints in the snow. Other claims were similarly disproved (Kaplan and Kaplan 1995).

  I talked with Barbara Cromarty on three occasions, including when I visited Amityville as a consultant to the In Search Of television series. She told me not only that her family had experienced no supernatural occurrences in the house, but also that she had evidence that the whole affair was a hoax. Subsequently, I recommended to a producer of the then-forthcoming TV series That's Incredible, who had called for my advice about filming inside the house, that they have Mrs. Cromarty point out various discrepancies for close-up viewing. For example, recalling the extensive damage to doors and windows detailed by the Lutzes, she noted that the old hardware—hinges, locks, doorknob, and so forth—were still in place. Upon close inspection, one could see that there were no disturbances in the paint and varnish (Nickell 1995).

  In time, Ronald DeFeo's attorney, William Weber, told how the Lutzes had come to him after leaving the house, and he had told them their “experiences” could be useful to him in preparing a book. “We created this horror story over many bottles of wine that George Lutz was drinking,” Weber told the Associated Press. “We were creating something the public wanted to hear about.” Weber later filed a two-million-dollar lawsuit against the couple, charging them with reneging on their book deal. The Cromartys also sued the Lutzes, Anson, and the publishers, maintaining that the fraudulent haunting claims had resulted in sightseers destroying any privacy they might have had. During the trials the Lutzes admitted that virtually everything in The Amityville Horror was pure fiction (Nickell 1995; Kaplan and Kaplan 1995).

  Now Ric Osuna's The Night the DeFeos Died adds to the evidence. Ronald DeFeo's wife Geraldine allegedly confirms much of Weber's account. To her, it was clear that the hoax had been planned for some time. Weber had intended to use the haunting claims to help obtain a new trial for his client (Osuna 2002, 282–86).

  As to George Lutz—divorced from his wife and criticized by his former stepsons—Osuna states that “George informed me that setting the record straight was not as important as making money off fictional sequels.” Osuna details numerous contradictions in the story that Lutz continues to offer versions of (286–89).

  For his part, Osuna has his own story to tell. He buys Ronald “Butch” DeFeo's current story about the murders, assuring his readers that it “is true and has never been made public” (18, 22). DeFeo now alleges that his sister Dawn urged him to kill the entire family and that she and two of Butch's friends had participated in the crimes.

  In fact, Butch maintains that Dawn began the carnage by shooting their domineering father with a .35-caliber Marlin rifle. Butch then shot his mother, whom he felt would have turned him in for the crime, but he claims that he never intended to kill his siblings. He left the house to look for one of his friends who had left the scene and, when he returned to find that Dawn had murdered her sister and other two brothers, he was enraged. He fought with her for the gun and sent her flying into a bedpost, at which point she fell unconscious. He then shot her.

  Osuna tries to make this admittedly “incredible” tale believable by explaining away contradictory evidence. He accepts DeFeo's claim that he altered the crime scene and asserts that the authorities engaged in abuses and distortions of evidence to support their theory of the crimes. Even so, Osuna concedes that “Butch had offered several different, if ludicrous, versions of what had occurred” (33) and that he might again change his story. But he asserts that “too much independent corroboration exists to believe it was just anot
her one of his lies” (370).

  I remain unconvinced. Butch DeFeo has forfeited his right to be believed, and his current tale is full of implausibilities and contradictions. Osuna appears to me to simply have become yet another of his victims.

  ATTACK ON A NEW CONVERT

  On October 26, 2000, a Canadian radio broadcaster invited me to Southern Ontario to investigate a case of supposed demonic possession (mentioned in chapter 52). Interestingly, it also involved stigmata. Called to a suburban home in St. Catharines, we found a man and his girlfriend—she claiming to have experienced certain bouts of “possession,” none of which we witnessed. She also exhibited various superficial wounds, including a scratched cross that extended down her left arm. (Although such markings are not duplications of the wounds of Christ [see chapter 46], they are still often referred to by extension, as stigmata.)

  The couple was Catholic—he a devout doctrinaire sort, who appeared to us quite domineering. Contrastingly, she was a new convert who had been taking church instruction toward that end; she seemed, in a word, cowered. Indeed, she reminded me of certain other women I had seen, who had been battered or bullied, or who otherwise appeared to lack self-esteem.

  I have no doubt that she was indeed a “disturbed” person and may genuinely have experienced outbursts of hysteria. However, I suspect neither heaven nor hell had anything to do with her situation other than to stimulate her imagination.