In 1978, I had just finished a round of radio and television talk shows, playing counterpoint to Jay Anson, then promoting his notorious book The Amityville Horror (1977). Anson claimed that the house was infested with demons, but his chief proof amounted to nothing more than that the haunting had attracted a visit from the Psychical Research Foundation (PRF). Asked to address the staff of the PRF on the Campus of Duke University, I proposed that field researchers looking into cases of the unexplained should adopt the tenets of investigative journalism; to look at the human stories together with the unvarnished facts (insofar as they could be discovered).