The Amityville Horror

Jay Anson’s The Amityville Horror was published during a period when the lines between fact and fiction in popular literature were increasingly blurred. Following the success of Truman Capote’s “nonfiction novel” In Cold Blood (1966), there was a growing audience for narratives that presented real events with the dramatic pacing of fiction. Anson uses these techniques in the text to sensationalize the events presented in the novel, juxtaposing them against his own background as a journalist to add to the narrative’s credibility.

When The Amityville Horror was first published, it was presented by Anson as a nonfiction account, a claim bolstered by the front and back materials, in which Anson and others aver the truthfulness of its contents. The preface asserts it is “a documentary told by the family and the priest who actually experienced what is reported” (xi), and the narrative is presented with journalistic objectivity, complete with specific dates and times. This documentary style encourages the reader to suspend disbelief and accept the supernatural events as real occurrences, intensifying the horror.

Later, this claim to truth became the book’s most contentious and defining feature, sparking a public debate that continues to this day.