Everyone knows this house. Even people who aren't into true crime or horror movies know this house. This house is freaking iconic for numerous hauntings and gruesome murder. This is The Amityville Horror House. This Dutch Colonial sits at 112 Ocean Avenue in Amityville, Long Island, New York. A beautiful home haunted by demonic spirits starting 1976 was nothing compared to the bloody seen that took place an early November morning in 1974. Ronald DeFeo Jr killed his entire family with a rifle in cold blood. This included both his parents, his siblings; 18 year old Dawn, 13 year old Allison, 12 year old Marc, and nine year old John Matthew. All execution style while they were sleeping.

So how does a 23 year old kill his own family in the middle of the night? Was he truly haunted by the demonic spirits of the house?

Usually a murderer will have something go entirely wrong in their childhood, ya know dropped on the head, kept in the basement, stuff like that. So naturally Ronald DeFeo Jr’s father was abusive and super controlling. And it saddens us that his mother completely succumbed to it. She faded into the background and never spoke up in fear of Robert Sr. [ladies, always speak up.] This led young Robert to have become troubled into his teenage years.

He turned to drugs and alcohol to help get through the tough times at home. He also started to develop an anger problem and lash out physically to members of the family, especially his father. He even went so far as to threaten his father with a gun. So what do the parents do to discipline him? ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. In fact, his mother and father give him a weekly allowance and gifts hoping it would appease him. By age 18, Ronal Jr. technically had a job a the family auto dealership but he literally never showed up.

But on this infamous day in November he did show up to work but left at noon because he was bored. [LOL]. he met up with some friends at a bar, constantly called his house to no answer and complaining to anyone at the bar who would lend him an ear. After wearing out the patrons, Ronal Jr. left the bar to go home.

According to the book American Mass Murderers by Valerie Plaze, Ronal Jr. re-entered the bar around 6:30am yelling that he needed some help at home because he thought his mother and father got shot. A few people at the bar then followed him back to the infamous house and was met with a horrifying scene.

All six family members were found in their beds lying face down. Through forensic testing, the victims were shot with a high powered rifle around 3:15am. The exact window of time Ronald Jr. was not at the bar.

When the police investigated the crime scene, a few things looked off to them. There were absolutely no signs of struggle on the bodies or evidence that were drugged. Zero neighbors were awoken by the sound of gunshots. The only reported noise coming from that house that night was the family dog barking into the night.

Ronald Jr, as the only surviving member of the family, was questioned immediately by the police. His alibi of being at work earlier that day and then at the bar all night began to crumble. They told him that the family has been dead since well before 6am. Ronal Jr. was immediately flustered and frantically changed his story. But that wouldn't be the first time. Throughout the whole Amityville Murder investigation, he would go on to change it several more times. At one point he claimed that a mob hitman killed his family and Ronald Jr. was made to watch. But that hitman had a solid out of state alibi and soon Ronal Jr. broke. He confessed to everything, killing his family by himself.

Ronald stool trial on October 14, 1975. His attorney mounted an insanity plea, saying that Ronald heard voices that told him to kill his family. However the prosecution argued that that was bullshit. Yes he was troubled, but he abused drugs and knew exactly what he was doing. The jury convicted him on six counts of second-degree murder and sentenced him to six concurrent sentences of 25 years to life. #waygone. And since he could not let it go and was in complete denial, he late on alleges that his sister Dawn killed their father, then the distraught mother killed all the other sibling and he Ronald Jr. killed his mother. Like how and in what world does that make logical sense? [psychopath math; pyschomath?]

Though the Amityville house is subject of many haunted, the only thing we do know about the DeFeos is that Ronal Jr. was present for the mass murder of his entire family in the house. But how do you know if the house is really haunted? Now Ronald Jr’s attorney, Weber, in the case of the murder was way more involved than expected. The next residents of the house, George and Kathy Lutz, for only 28 days approached the attorney with a horror story about the house. That it was haunted and made people do crazy things, but it was all a hoax.

Weber followed up with a lawsuit against the Lutzes for taking the story to a next level haunting and demanded profit for his contribution. He wants 60 million and they settled that he got $17,000 LOL.

Now it's up to you to believe if it’s haunted or not but we think it could be or at least the Lutz manifested some curse that followed the family. Both of their sons insist that there are paranormal entities that follow and haunt them.

So since its the holidays we couldn't think of a more perfect project that a haunted gingerbread house, so we recreated the Amityville House out of gingerbread.

We welcome….

The Amityville Horror Gingerbread House

Recipe inspired by Christine McConnell

Ingredients:

Cookie:

1 ½ cups unsalted butter
1 ½ cups brown sugar packed like a tight pair of jeans
1 ish cup of molasses, we used a little more than a cup
2 teaspoons of salt
4 teaspoons of cinnamon
4 teaspoons of ginger
½ teaspoon allspice
2 large eggs
7 cups all purpose flour

[feel free to downsize the recipe; this is what we needed for the entire house plus two cookies for snacking]

Icing:

3 ½ cups powdered sugar
3 large eggs white
½ cup cocoa powder, this is to make the icing dark, we started with this amount and then added more to achieve an almost matching color to cookie

Alright now that you have your ingredients…

Let’s bake this betch.

Prepare all your ingredients. This will save you stress when mixing.
In a mixer beat butter and sugar until creamy and fluffy.
Add in the molasses and eggs until mixed.
While that's going in the stand mixer, in a large bowl whisk together all dry.
Once they are all mixed slowly add dry ingredients to the wet until dough forms,. We had some trouble with a stand mixer and fitting it all in their so we worked in the dry ingredient bowl and kneaded ingredients until dough is formed.
Preheat your oven to 350 and get a shit ton of parchment paper ready. Yes we mean a shit ton, this thing is huge.
We made our gingerbread house out of cardboard to get all the structural issues out of the way, so we used those pieces as our cutouts. So rolling out chunks at a time onto a floured surface large enough for the piece you need, make sure its about ¼” thick. Too thick or thin will cause problems when putting together.
Before you cut out your piece, transfer slab onto a parchment lined cookie sheet. Using an x-acto knife, bake for about 5-18 minutes. 18 minutes for the larger pieces and 5 was more of our smaller pieces like the chimney and small rooms.
When everything is cooling on racks, make your icing. In a mixer whisk your egg whites until frothy then add sugar and cocoa powder. You do not want you icing to be runny but you don't want it too thick. The consistency is perfect when you life the whisk and it slowly falls into the batter before settling back in.
Time to build! Our advice is to do all the details before you assemble liek the shingles and outlines on the roof and windows. This is a lengthy process but just have fun! Does not have to be perfect.