The House Isn’t Haunted. We Are.
Forget the ghosts — Amityville ’74 digs into something scarier: the human mind. Director Joshua Eberhart turns America’s most infamous house into a mirror.
Carrollwood’s Amityville ’74 turns America’s favorite ghost story inside out
by Avery Anderson
The scariest thing in Amityville ’74 isn’t the devil. It’s denial.
Carrollwood Cultural Center’s new play doesn’t waste time on floating lamps or bleeding walls. Under Joshua Eberhart’s direction, it asks the far more unsettling question: what if the horror story we keep telling about demons and possession was really just a cover-up for the one we don’t want to tell — about abuse, addiction, and the kind of family silence that could curdle a soul?
Playwright Tommy Jamerson’s script drags the world’s most over-exploited murder house back to where it began: 1974, Long Island, 3:15 a.m. But instead of replaying the exorcism, Amityville ’74 stages an autopsy — of guilt, memory, and the stories we invent to make violence make sense.
“What drew me to this version was how it balances the supernatural and the psychological,” Eberhart says. “It’s not just about a house that’s haunted; it’s about people who are haunted.”
That line could double as the show’s thesis. The play flips between prison interviews and flashbacks like a true-crime fever dream, forcing the audience inside Ronnie DeFeo’s head — a place where every flicker of light feels like a confession. “Each scene feels like a memory being unlocked,” Eberhart explains. “Sometimes distorted, sometimes painfully clear.”
The effect is less The Conjuring and more Dateline meets therapy session. The stage itself becomes a crime scene for the human psyche: low-frequency rumbles you feel before you hear, bulbs that twitch like nerves, silences that stretch a breath too long. “The fear doesn’t come from what you see; it comes from what you feel,” Eberhart says.
And that feeling? Unease — not about demons, but about how quickly we hand evil a mask so we don’t have to see its face.
“It’s easier to say the house was cursed,” Eberhart notes. “That keeps us safe. It lets us believe evil is something outside of us.” But Amityville ’74 doesn’t give us that comfort. It points the flashlight squarely back at the audience.
Because maybe the real haunting isn’t in Amityville, or even in 1974. Maybe it’s in the American habit of turning trauma into mythology — of packaging pain as entertainment, then wondering why the ghosts never leave.
By the time the final blackout hits, you don’t leave Amityville ’74 screaming. You leave thinking. Which, let’s be honest, might be the most horrifying reaction of all.
If You Go
Amityville ’74
📍 Carrollwood Cultural Center – 4537 Lowell Rd, Tampa
📅 October 17–26
🎭 Written by Tommy Jamerson | Directed by Joshua Eberhart
Tickets and showtimes at carrollwoodcenter.org