Frank Paul De Felitta (August 3, 1921 – March 29, 2016) was an author, producer, pilot and film director.
His first effort, for the weekly radio program The Whistler, a popular thriller series, earned him $350 and started him on his writing career.
This novel, a horror story involving reincarnation, was a smash bestseller, selling more than 2.5 million copies and spawning a successful 1977 film adaptation (scripted by De Felitta) and a sequel, For Love of Audrey Rose (1982).
His novel The Entity (1978), based on the real-life case of a woman named Doris Bither who claimed to have been haunted by a spectral rapist, was also a bestseller and was adapted by De Felitta for a 1982 film starring Barbara Hershey.
Other successes include Golgotha Falls (1984) and the horror film Dark Night of the Scarecrow (1981), directed by De Felitta.