Jay Anson (1921–1980)

I thought I would start October with a 'horror' story, but this was just ridiculous. Based on a true story - well, the murders were real, I couldn't swear by George and Kathy Lutz's cliched 'haunting' - the Amityville urban legend has spawned a whole vault of terrible films, cashing in on the tragic fate of a whole family and 'excusing' the killer through tales of soured land and demonic possession.

What. Bollocks.

Here's what I think: the Lutz family bought a murder house for a song but show more found themselves in financial trouble and tried to make the most of a bad situation by claiming that they were living in a Hammer House of Horrors. I mean, every single 'incident' reported in this book is a tired old trope - the cold spots, the smell of blood, the slime oozing down the walls, the unseen forces, the levitating! Poltergeist did all this schtick with style. And why, if the reader actually believes any of this happened, did the family stay there for so long? Why the dependency on the family priest to fight the 'evil' - I though the story was set in 1976 not 1776? And why, most critically, has no other resident of the house, which is still standing and still lived in, reported any further supernatural shenanigans?

Look, this is a great story for a horror film, don't get me wrong, but I hate that the violent deaths of six people have been used to generate a mediocre horror franchise. show less

I read this a couple of weeks ago and forgot it ever existed. It's not a figure of speech. I literally forgot about this book and then randomy saw it on my selves and had some seconds of deep confusion before I remembered I read it as part of my horror book binge 12 days ago.

So, what was the problem with it? Mainly that it was very boring. Why was that? Well, it tried to pass off the described events as real, at every turn Anson took the opportunity to remind us that these are facts that as show more far as he knows are true.

Now I don't care if he actually believed in all of this, or he did it to add flavor to the book. Point is, I love paranormal horror, and religious horror, exactly because I'm unable to believe in any of it. Ghosts, demons, witches, souls, spirits, devils, gods, energies, etc, I truly and deeply believe in none of it. It is therefore purely make-believe for me, and this makes me able to imerse myself in the stories without having to worry that my entertainment is someone else's literal, horific experience.

So when you try to convince me there's undeniable truth in something I know is fiction, two things happen. Firstly, I feel the pressure one feels when someone pressures them into reading their palm for a few coins. Like watching an ad for call lines of astrologists and tarot card readers, where you call and are charged by the minute for someone to tell you your future. Pressured to give into a scam. And second, I feel immense pity. Because there are people who belive in all of this and are being exploited, or terrorized - it's always one or the other.

So, when you try to convince me that hauntings are real, it always ends up making me really sad, and I quickly lose my interest.

To all of this, add that Anson isn't a hidden gem of a writer, that he hasn't tried to do much more than narrate what he tries to sell as facts, and the story becomes boring. If you must write about a haunting based on actual events of people deluding themselves of paranormal sightings, then at least try to make it as fictitious as possible, give it some excitement, something. Otherwise we just read about charlatans and delusional people. And that's not what I signed up for. show less

Really? This is it? The great book that spawned a movie franchise and endless ripoffs?

A family out of their depth financially have a stressful move to a crappy new house with poor insulation and some bad smells. The house was sold cheap because someone got murdered there. They stay there for about a month before having worked themselves up in a lather about the place being haunted.
The author keeps insisting these are normal and skeptical people. Within that single month they have contacted show more a priest to do a blessing of the house, they've had a medium there to talk to the spirits, they've gone around the place trying to "bless" the house by randomly chanting the Lord's Prayer because that's how they imagined it should be done. They're talking about exorcisms. These are some amazingly credulous people, despite the author's insistence. Their 'encounters' often come in the form of dreams that bear a striking resemblance to books and movies like The Exorcist (book 1971, movie 1973) with floating off the bed, or Rosemary's Baby (book 1967, movie 1968) with hidden rooms and some mumbo jumbo about satanists. These events supposedly take place in 1975 which gives everyone plenty of time to know exactly what to expect from a spooky house from some of the most successful (and infinitely better) horror stories of that time.

If they aren't just lying outright, everyone involved is going hysterical and expressing what they've been programmed to see by popular media. It's also a product of its time, like the aforementioned books, in that it treats parapsychology as science, along with ESP and other spooky goodness. That didn't age very well, and neither did this book.

If anything it actually gets worse if you take it seriously. The suggestion is made repeatedly that this is the work of the devil and/or some demons and apparently can, from a phone line, slap a priest around with its evil power (apparently working for God gave him no power to even resist let alone fight this demonic force) but by the end of the book we find out these hauntings can be defeated by a new family moving in and rearranging furniture (as to explain nobody else ever having experienced anything from this same house). Oh sure. The devil haunts a fireplace but is ill equipped to handle a new set of chairs. show less

Review: 666 by Jay Anson
Rating: ★★★★★

I’m giving Jay Anson’s 666 a full five stars, not just because it’s a relentless page-turner—the first book I’ve been able to read cover to cover this year—but because it touches on a concept that is deeply unsettling to me: the idea that the paranormal is not just a random occurrence, but something dependent upon, or revealed through, architecture.

In Anson’s world, evil isn't just a shadow in the corner; it is built into the show more floorboards and the foundation. But as the story unfolds, the horror shifts from the structural to the philosophical, and that is where I begin to imagine this book may not be total fiction after all.

The Rule of Gold
The pivot point for me is the exchange between Paul Olson, the assistant rector, and Lawrence Fisher, the local coven leader. When Fisher explains the "Gold Rule of Fulfilled Desire," he isn't just talking about a spooky ritual; he is outlining a blueprint for the total erosion of morality through the accumulation of "power." Granted power is not clearly defined here, but I take it to be a measure of social dominance.

Fisher argues that the strongest rule is not the one we are taught in Sunday school, but the one that rewards the actor with an incremental increase in power every time a desire is fulfilled. This "energy" allows one to focus entirely on a new objective until, as Fisher puts it:

"Once you are strong enough, there isn't any law of God or man that you have to obey."

A Reflection of Reality?
This may seem far afield, but hear me out. Every day, we pull back the curtain on the "dark pasts" of powerful figures in our own society—individuals who, through immense political and financial leverage, have reached a level in this game that is seemingly beyond the reach of justice.

We see them engage in acts of shocking depravity that far exceed the banal indiscretions of the average man on the street. These aren't just "mistakes"; they are the actions of people who have lived by the Rule of Gold for so long that they have transcended the social contract. The guardrails of law enforcement, morality, social morays, and religious institutions suddenly operate at a different level as if the services those institutions serve to the common person are merely a distracting rouse.

I find myself asking: How have these people gotten away with sinister crimes committed over years, with increasing depravity, as if there were not a single law they had to obey? Anson suggests that when you focus entirely on the fulfillment of desire, you eventually overpower the traditional structures of "God and man."

Final Thoughts
Anson has written a fast, gripping read, but the real "ghost" in these pages is the realization that the Archangel’s "philosophy" isn't confined to a haunted house. Is it a chillingly accurate description of how power functions when it becomes untethered from consequence? Dear reader, please tell me another way to make sense of the current situation. This one keeps me up at night. show less