Read The Devil I Know: My Haunting Journey with Ronnie DeFeo and the True Story ofthe Amityville Murders for Free Online Page A

the altar, blessing the tablecloth in a ritual of music and dance, and preparing offerings for the spirit like liquor, cigars, coffee, money, and fruit. I had my own way of preparing: listening to Jim Morrison.
    For a few nights before the séance, I couldn’t sleep. News of my talents had spread quickly, and many people had come to our door curious about the young medium with the power to conduct the dead. But it wasn’t the pressure of my odd rising stardom that was keeping me up. It was the nightmares.
    I would constantly feel myself running from a creature that made hideous animal sounds. I would run down a series of endless steps toward a constantly receding hiding place, the wind stinging my face as I struggled to reach it. The ground shifted from concrete to mud to sand, and with every step I felt myself sinking as the creature gained. Soon I could feel a claw swiping at my legs, accompanied by the sound of howls coming from faces that were nearby but shrouded.
    Finally, I would reach the shelter, a windowless space with the sensation of a tomb. Through the thick walls I could still hear the painful moans, which now merged with the animalistic growls that had pursued me.
    I crouched in the corner of the room and began to sob. As one will in dreams, I tried to break out of it, wish myself back into reality. But something was pulling me back. I saw myself look up. My face was somewhat my own, but not completely. “Mommy, I’m scared,” I said. I couldn’t know it then, but it wasn’t my face at all. It was Joanne’s.
    I tried to leap into the dream from that outside place, tried to break down the walls of logic and consciousness to rescue the crying little girl in the corner of the room. I didn’t reach her, but something else did, and began to drag her down. Down she went, through the floor, into darkness. The last thing I would see was her face vanishing downward, followed by an upward spurt of blood. I screamed.
    The nightmares alone were not the source of my anxiety. It was exhausting for a twelve-year-old girl to have to regularly invite, hold, and deliver the spirits of the dead. “It’s your cross to bear, Jackie,” Mary would say. “Learn both sides of the Bible. Those who want and those who need.”
    The sensation is hard to describe. Plus, I was only starting to become familiar with it. The spirit would enter me like a sudden wind, a kind of rush containing the adrenaline but not the pleasure. A flip-book of snapshots would roll through my head, a lightning series of images of a life I didn’t know.
    At some point—I couldn’t predict whether it would be quick or slow—I would experience their deaths. To be their proper conduit, I needed to open myself fully. I would face their last moments, suffer their last breaths. Ifit had been a murder, I became both victim and killer, feeling fear and bloodlust together.
    I was a powerhouse of energy, sometimes conducting energy among three people at once. When the spirit had been fully taken in, it could then be released and passed along. I would have answers, and the spirit would have solace. Hopefully.
    That night, a family of five quietly filed into the room and took their seats. I didn’t know any of their names, and I preferred it that way. I had learned not to interact any earlier than I had to. It wasn’t yet dark out, but that didn’t matter, since the room had no windows.
    I could sense their fear as they passed me. A woman dressed in black handed my mother a picture. With tears in her eyes, she said, “Please, Momma, I need to feel him and see him.” Though I wasn’t allowed to call Mary “Mommy,” she was “Momma” to everyone else.
    My mother looked at me and said, “When you’re ready, Jackie. Bring this young man through.” She put the picture down at the head of the table, where I sat, then took her own spot off to the side. She lit three black candles and three white, and I started moving around the room. I picked up the