This was the original Blair Witch!
I gotta start out by saying this: when I thought it was real (the first night) I had to turn my audible book off...it scared the crap out of me. When a priest is quoted from the get-go, and he challenges you to have an open mind, which anyone reading horror novels probably does, I be like..."this is real." Although, having said that, priests probably had more credibility back in the 70s...before the Watergate scandal....wait, they had a different scandal, anyways.
Once I did a little research, I found out the book wasn't true and it didn't scare me anymore. It kind of annoyed me to be honest.
The writing was fine, but I would say the biggest problem I have with the book was the characterizations. I never felt connected to the characters, probably because it was told, mostly, by the voice of a narrator. It was only surface deep with internal monologues.
Also, the characters were complete idiots! It started off pretty cool, but it quickly devolved into a family of dumbasses...poor kids are probably doomed to repeat the cycle. If my wife was floating, and she hadn't levitated in our prior home, I would leave. I wouldn't hide the fact from her, and let her sleep longer....I'd probably leave her ass floating and run out of the house immediately. (We're not getting along today).
On the positive side, I did enjoy the backstory of the home, and the guy who murdered his family there (I didn't like him, but the story was horrible and really created a sense of foreboding), and the pig. Not sure why, but I liked, Jody, the angel-pig. The other part of the book which made me feel terrible was when the parents beat the crap out of their kids on one of the first nights in the house. The author did a great job with the beginning of the book and building up the suspense, but it ended up getting too ridiculous at the end. When Kathy yelled at the kids for the green-slime in the hallway, all I could think about was the "KOOL-AID" pitcher that smashes into peoples home when parents aren't home and gave kids sips from his dry-wall laden pitcher. MMMMM. "Honest mom and dad, we didn't do it...a giant pitcher smashed through the wall...." (I heard a comedian talk about that once).
The priest with the hairy palms was a complete and utter wimp...I don't want to try to spell his name because I listened to the book. I wonder if his blistery palms were a symbol? I don't know why I found that humorous.
If I hadn't checked the book out on snopes, it would have scared the crap out of me. But, once I knew it was phony I didn't enjoy it any longer. The writing was fine, but a little distant and documentary-ish. So, in short, and thankfully the book was short, I can see why this book was popular back in the day, however, knowing it was a hoax ruined it for me.
I'm glad you felt the same way I did, and that nothing was lost from print to audio. There's always one moment in these stories when you cease to believe they are a.) in danger or b.) worth saving. The levitating mom was (b) for me. Look, if my wife is having a nightmare, I wake her up. If she's levitating, I take pictures. Granted, the Lutz's didn't have smartphones on their nightstand, but still, man, grab your Instamatic! What I don't do, is go back to sleep.
ReplyDeleteAmityville didn't do anything for me. It wasn't scary. It couldn't be when it was written witht the cold detachment of documentary writer.
Yes the narrative was lacking and because of the weak narrative we had the characters represented weakly, they did seem like idiots, and terrible parents, they were hard to care about and so what happened in the book and to the characters didn't matter.
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