Do you remember Amityville?

I can remember seeing The Amityville Horror back in the 1970s and almost peeing on myself! It was more frightening than anything I had seen up until that time, but before I saw the movie, I read the book.

I have always been an avid reader but no more so than in my teen years. Back then there wa enough energy and time to read three to four books in a day (it also helped I was a fast reader). A friend of mine in high school didn't finish the book - it was too scary for her - so she let me borrow it. "Don't read it in the dark," I remember her saying with wide eyes. Right. Not read a book in the dark? Please! It was just a story and all stories could be read in the dark!

So, off I went, home from school. Homework came first (I was quite dorky that way) and then reading or playing cards or talking on the telephone. So, I started reading.

I remember being engrossed almost immediately. Images came alive. For several moments it didn’t seem like the story was happening to someone else, but to me.

I had just gotten to the part with the red glowing eyes in the window, menacing and foreshadowing terrible doom. I don’t know why, but at just that moment I raised my eyes to glance out my bedroom window and there were two glowing red eyes looking at me! And they moved!

A scream, of course, came from me then, which brought my Dad running, and my Mom. They wanted to know what was wrong. I looked to the window.

“Eyes!” I said breathlessly. My Dad looked out the window and then back to me.

“You mean the car going up the road?” Car? I looked out the window again, this time fully, and could see my red glowing “eyes” of the back of a car going up Stinnett road. Sheepish is not a good word to describe how I felt and wanted to ooze unseen into the floor. Dad, on the other hand, nodded, picked up my book from the floor and said, “Why don’t you come in the living room and read?” And I did just that.

Do you remember the first Amityville Horror phase America went through? I sure do. Fondly.