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Hans Holzer, 'Amityville' writer, dies
William Grimes, New York Times

Saturday, May 2, 2009

Hans Holzer, whose investigations into the paranormal took him to haunted houses all over the world, most notably the Long Island house that inspired "The Amityville Horror," died Sunday at his home in Manhattan. He was 89.

The death was confirmed by his daughter Alexandra Holzer.

Mr. Holzer - who wrote more than 140 books on ghosts, the afterlife, witchcraft, extraterrestrial beings and other phenomena associated with the realm he called "the other side" - carried out his most famous investigation with the medium Ethel Johnson-Meyers in 1977. Together they roamed the house in Amityville in which a young man, Ronald DeFeo Jr., had murdered his parents and four siblings in 1974.

The house had become notorious after its next owners claimed to have been tormented by a series of spine-chilling noises and eerie visitations, set forth in the best-selling 1977 book "The Amityville Horror: A True Story," written by Jay Anson.

After Johnson-Meyers channeled the spirit of a Shinnecock Indian chief, who said that the house stood on an ancient Indian burial ground, Mr. Holzer took photographs of bullet holes from the 1974 murders in which mysterious halos appeared.

Mr. Holzer went on to write a nonfiction book about the house, "Murder in Amityville" (1979), which formed the basis for the 1982 film "Amityville II: The Possession"; he also wrote two novels, "The Amityville Curse" (1981) and "The Secret of Amityville" (1985).

Hans Holzer was born in Vienna, Austria, and developed an interest in the supernatural when his uncle Henry told him stories about ghosts and fairies. He studied archaeology, ancient history and numismatics at the University of Vienna but left Austria for New York with his family in 1938, just before the Nazi takeover.

After studying Japanese at Columbia University, Mr. Holzer indulged an infatuation with the theater in the 1950s. He wrote sketches for the short-lived revue "Safari!" and the book and music for "Hotel Excelsior," about a group of young Americans in Paris, which opened in Provincetown, Mass., and proceeded no farther. He also wrote theater reviews for the London Sporting Review.

He earned a master's degree in comparative religion and a doctorate in parapsychology at the London College of Applied Science. He went on to teach parapsychology at the New York Institute of Technology.

In 1962, he married the Countess Catherine Genevieve Buxhoeveden. The marriage ended in divorce. In addition to his daughter Alexandra, of Chester, N.Y., he is survived by another daughter, Nadine Widener of New York City, and five grandchildren.

In pursuit of ghosts, Mr. Holzer began investigating haunted houses and recording the testimony of subjects who believed that they had had paranormal experiences. This field research, usually conducted with a medium and a Polaroid camera, provided the material for dozens of books, beginning with "Ghost Hunter" (1963).

Mr. Holzer called himself "a scientific investigator of the paranormal."

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