92. Amityville Buried This Haunting...But You Need to Know About It.
In 1977, The Amityville Horror put a haunted house on every bookshelf in the world. Within weeks, a second book appeared beside it, which seems to have been overshadowed. Yet it’s a truly compelling (and eerie) haunting case. Night Stalks the Mansion was written by Harold Cameron and Constance Westbie, and it records what happened to the Cameron family in the early 1960s, when Harold, a business executive with a wife, four children and a six-month-old baby, rented a house for $3,600 a year.The house itself is the Heilbron Mansion, just off West Rose Tree Road in Middletown, Pennsylvania, and what the Camerons met there has never had the audience it deserves.Footsteps climbing the stairs at night, and an intense cold that arrived with them. Two five-month-old chow puppies bought as guard dogs, who shrank back from a woman in the house in absolute dread. A basement window painted black, inside and out, hiding a room the family had never seen. Coffins in a crypt on the grounds, rotted down to fragments of cloth and dust, with skulls looking up at the torchlight.And beneath all of it, an older story. A girl of fourteen. A maple tree. A single pink dance shoe.I'll take you through the whole case, in the order the Camerons recorded it, and we'll come to the girl at the centre of it, whose story this house would not let go of.Have you ever lived somewhere that felt wrong before you could explain why? Let me know in the comments. I'm Peter Laws, and this is Into the Fog.EditorGerard Giorgi-CollArtwork and Research AssistanceSteph LayThis episode is based on Night Stalks the Mansion: A True Story of One Family's Ghostly Adventure, by Constance Westbie and Harold Cameron. You can find it on Amazon here in the US, and here in the UK.Image and Footage Credits Our special thanks to Andrew Fallon for kindly allowing us to use his remarkable footage of Heilbron Mansion following the 1987 fire. Andrew has helped preserve the mansion’s history by sharing a wealth of photographs and footage over the years through the Delco Memories Facebook Group. You can explore these and many other fascinating glimpses into the area’s past here. Cover of Night Stalks the Mansion: A True Story of One Family’s Ghostly Adventure by Constance Westbie and Harold Cameron: Stackpole Books, 2023, via AmazonPhotographs of Heilbron Mansion: Andrew Fallon, via Delco Memories Facebook GroupSale advertisement for the Claflin estate, later known as Heilbron Mansion: Andrew Fallon, via Delco Memories Facebook GroupHistorical illustration of Edwards House, later Heilbron Mansion: Rachel McClure, in H. S. Pearson, Middletown Township (1985), shared by Andrew Fallon via Delco Memories Facebook GroupCover of The Amityville Horror by Jay Anson: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1977, via Royal BooksNewspaper article discussing Kevin Giles’s plans for a second book: The Missoulian, 20 December 1980, via Newspapers.comHarold Cameron’s letter to Dear Abby: Star-Gazette, 2 June 1980, via Newspapers.comPhotograph of Heilbron Mansion following the 1987 fire: Andrew Fallon, via Delco Memories Facebook Group, used with permissionFootage of Heilbron Mansion during restoration, filmed in 1989: Andrew Fallon, via Facebook, used with permissionAnnotated Google Maps imagery of Ridley Creek and surrounding area, Pennsylvania: Map data ©2026 Google. Imagery ©2026 Airbus and Maxar Technologies. Have a genuine experience to share? Submit it here:https://bit.ly/ITF-YourStoryFind me: https://www.peterlaws.co.ukFollow me on Instagram, Twitter and more: @revpeterlaws