A-Z Blogging Challenge: A is for Amityville

The Amityville Horror

"In December 1975, George and Kathy Lutz and Kathy's three children moved into 112 Ocean Avenue, a large Dutch Colonial house in Amityville, a suburban neighborhood located on the south shore of Long Island, New York. Thirteen months before the Lutzes moved in, Ronald DeFeo, Jr. had shot and killed six members of his family at the house. After 28 days, the Lutzes left the house, claiming to have been terrorized by paranormal phenomena while living there." (Wikipedia)

Article about the documentary by The Daily Mail's Tom Leonard

My Amityville Horror

After nearly 40 years of refusing to talk to the media about his experiences in The Amityville Horror house,  Daniel Lutz, the real-life son / step-son of Kathy & George Lutz, features in a new documentary My Amityville Horror. In the documentary, Lutz discusses the family's time in in the house, his step-father's occult dabbling and exorcisms performed by priests, among other things.

Whether or not Lutz is telling the truth (or at least believes that he is) is still up for debate, but he states that he "didn't want to be the Amityville Horror kid" and has tried to avoid it all these years. He also says that he wanted someone to believe him, which is understandable, but I can't help feeling that the dramatic music and shot styles used in the documentary just play on the horror movie aspects of the story and do little to further his credibility. Perhaps it's just done for the trailer, in order to lure in fans of the genre though.

This post is part of the A-Z Blogging Challenge, 2013.

Full list of A-Z blogs after the cut below!

Science Sunday: Lobotomies

Lobotomy was a misguided and now largely obsolete psychiatric treatment, in which the prefrontal cortex of the brain would be intentionally damaged by inserting a long pointed rod, called an orbitoclast, through the eye socket. The orbitoclast was then thrust into the brain with a small hammer, in an attempt to bring about a change in the patient's behaviour. 

The medical technique originally began as a neurological practice in 1935, and lasted well to the 1950's. The practice cost the lives of many patients that went through it, due to severing the connecting tissues in the brain that allegedly cause us to worry, in the hope of curing mental illnesses such as Alzheimer's and schizophrenia.

Rather than being cured, those that survived the quick and allegedly painless operation, often had negative repercussions, such as greatly reduced cognitive functioning or severe pain. There were, however, very occasionally some patients, such as 1940's French Canadian singer Alys Robi, who claimed that the lobotomy she was forced to undergo had actually been beneficial to her.

A still from the lobotomy scene in 'Sucker Punch'

Though highly traumatizing in reality, the procedure has inspired many intriguing cinematic scenes in film and television, such as those featured in Stephen King's 'Kingdom Hospital', William Butler's 'Madhouse', and more recently, Zack Snyder's 'Sucker Punch'.