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Are renters spooked by ghost house?

Landlord sues family over tales of haunting

Mysterious Voice Recorded At TR Home (4/25/12): What appears to be a child’s voice is recorded by a Press reporter in the Toms River home that a family claims is haunted. STAFF VIDEO BY THOMAS P. COSTELLO

Written by

Erik Larsen

IS THIS VOICE A GHOST?

Staff writer Erik Larsen interviewed the family at the house they say is haunted. When he transcribed the digital recorder, he discovered an unidentified child’s voice.

TOMS RIVER — No one among the living may ever want to reside in the house at the corner of Lowell and Terrace avenues again.

That is the fear of the landlord who has filed a new complaint in state Superior Court against a couple who fled the three-bedroom ranch in the middle of the night after living there for just one week, because they say the house is haunted.

Dr. Richard Lopez, the well-known orthodontist in Ocean County who owns the property, has filed a lawsuit against the family in the amount of $15,000. Among other issues, he contends they have stigmatized the property and diminished his ability to rent or sell the house in the future. Their story has received international media attention since it was first reported in the Asbury Park Press on April 13.

Josue Chinchilla and Michele Callan, who are engaged to be married, moved into the home March 1 with Callan’s teenage daughter and 6-year-old son.

After the family settled in, they said they would come home and find their clothes and towels ejected from closets and strewn over the floors. Doors would creak open and slam closed in unoccupied parts of the house.

At night, footsteps could be heard from the kitchen after everyone was tucked in, and unintelligible whispering seemed to fade in and out of thin air, according to the couple.

The most disturbing phenomenon, they claim, was the sound they heard through the vents to the basement — the muffled din of something being dragged through the cellar.

The family left the house March 10 and moved to a motel room in Point Pleasant Beach, where they have been living since, after Chinchilla claimed he felt an invisible hand on his arm, and then saw sheets slide off the bed on their own. Callan also said that at the same time, she saw a dark apparition in their bedroom.

The family has since filed a lawsuit against Lopez demanding that he return their $2,250 security deposit, claiming he had at first verbally agreed to release them from their one-year lease and refund the deposit after the couple told him about their experiences. But, on reflection, Lopez later had an office assistant call Callan to explain he had changed his mind.

The matter is on hold while the family and Lopez consider an offer to air their case on the television program “The People’s Court,” which has offered to cover all fees and judgments regardless of who wins if the parties agree to sign a contract to settle the matter on the show, Callan said.

David A. Semanchik, attorney for Lopez, said real estate agents acting on behalf of his client will be legally bound in the future to disclose to all prospective tenants that previous residents claimed the house is haunted.

“Plaintiffs have made claims concerning the property which are unfounded and which have led to media attention,” Lopez’s counter-claim reads. “Upon information and belief, the value of the property has decreased as a result of plaintiff’s action and statements.”

Callan said her family has been hurt by the attention, too. She said she understands there is a large part of the public who have either read about her family’s ordeal or have watched them on television programs such as ABC’s “Good Morning America” and have posted unflattering comments about them online.

“Why would we make up such a story?” Callan asked. “We left a three-bedroom house for a one-room motel one week after moving in. We spent $2,000 on new furniture from Value City, we paid $4,000 on a security deposit and rent after moving in. For what, one week?”

Everyone knows about the large, beautiful house that sets right on the shore on Ocean Ave. in Amityville, New York. Was it real or a hoax? Most people seem to think that it was just a hoax, but most famous paranormal investigators still maintain the house is haunted by an evil presence.

In November 1974, Ronald DeFeo murdered his entire family, shooting them all with a .35 Marlin Rifle. According to DeFeo he was being controlled by evil spirits and heard voices. He was sentenced to six life sentences. A year later Kathy and George Lutz moved in. They moved out after a month. They made incredible claims of black ooze coming from toilets, doors blown off hinges, unexplained teeth marks, a pit to hell in the basement, and of course the bleeding walls. It was a little too sensational for most people to believe.

But there were some remarkable things that did have some truth. Goerge Lutz did look very much like Ronald DeFeo. So much it is literally scary. The stories that the Lutz’s told sounded like previous cases of demonic possession, but many claimed they were just rumors.

The stories spawned numerous books, movies, and a cult following. There are stories about the property being built on Indian Burial grounds, an Indian sanitarium, or even a supposed witch living on the property from Salem Massachusetts. None of the claims have been proven.

Recently the house has been occupied by new owners, they have reported nothing unusual.

Posted via email from Urban Legends Online

You shouldn’t play with dead things.

A group of kids decided to spend a night inside a fun house so after the fair closes and everybody leaves, they break inside. It’s full of the usual thrills and chills and things designed to terrify the children and adults who venture inside. The macabre maze makes it difficult for the group of kids to get around and eventually among the startling surprises they come across a hanging corpse.

Suddenly, a prankster int he group shoves one of his friends to scare him and they accidentally bump into the dead hanging man, knocking it’s hand off. The kids pick the hand up off the floor and shake it at each other jokingly, but soon realize the hand is very old and very real. The hanging man isn’t a prop at all, but a real dead body. All the kids run in terror out of the house of horrors.

Afterward they notified the police and when detectives came upon the corpse, they knew then that it was real. The skin was stretched tight across its face as though the person had starved to death. The corpse was taken to a morgue for an autopsy. The autopsy results aided the investigation and it was soon discovered that the cadaver was an early nineteenth century train robber who was caught in the act and killed in a shoot out with the local town sheriff. Since no one claimed the body, it was taken to a mortician who then used it to advertise his business. He embalmed and preserved the corpse and stood it as a statue in a corner of his work place for public display.

When people started coming by just to see the dead man, he began to charge admission. Some showmen from a freak show attraction got word of the mummy, and convinced the mortician that they were relatives of the dead man. He reluctantly released the corpse to them, who then began to display the corpse in their own show. It traveled the country as the REAL DEAD OUTLAW, but after the freak show disbanded it was traded to a pawn shop dealer who then sold it to a props collector. The props collector offered it to an associate who used it to decorate the fun house.

Jason Qualls from Elkhart, Indiana

Posted via email from Urban Legends Online