Posted Oct 13, 08 04:42 PM
...Hope To See the Ghost Tonight!
On Sunday nights, growing up, parents and visiting relatives stationed themselves at the dinner table. The pinochle decks were cut, the Chex Mix filling Chinaware bowls. But with siblings and younger cousins, the closer the time got to going home, the more inhibitions – like board games – were left on shelves.
If it was still warm outside, the game choice was “Hope to See the Ghost Tonight.” The goal was for a group – always the shortest, youngest, and slowest kids – to safely make it around the house without being accosted by ghosts – always at least high school sophomores.
If it were winter, we’d stay in the basement for “Light as a Feather” -- that taboo of taboo games. (I can still hear cousin Mary Ann calling out to her son, “Joseph, what are you kids playing???”) LAAF had the feel of a séance and the tone of Ouija. One person – always, yes sir, the shortest and youngest – laid down, flanked on all sides. The narrator sat at the head, improvising a story surrounding a mortal accident that led to the victim’s death. (How old were we?!) But the story always ended with the words “and now he’s light as a feather and we’ll lift him up to heaven.” What was then supposed to happen was that everyone, only on their strength of their fingertips, could actually lift up the victim several feet into the air. Amazingly, it frequently DID work.
Somewhere in the spirit of things dark and unexplained comes the Chiller marathon of Ghost Hunters. I’ve officially added the Sci-Fi reality series (now into its fourth season) to the short list of reality series worth watching – a mantle pretty much owned by all things Mark Burnett.
The title’s self-explanatory. The Atlantic Paranormal Society (“TAPS”) is a team of investigators by night, plumbers/teachers/psychic hotline operators by day. Armed with Electromagnetic Field Detectors, thermal cameras, and high-tech audio whatzits, here’s a non-ingratiating, non-sensationalistic docu adventure sure to shut up the “I-don’t-believe-in-that-stuff” loudmouth in your group. With each segment, Ghost Hunters creates a sense of each place in question’s troubled history. Then they turn off the lights and let the cameras run. Sometimes, they run with the cameras.
What’s cool about all this is how relate-able the team is. Lead investigators Jason Hawes in his baseball cap and average joe Grant Wilson seem like guys you’d tailgate with. But here they diffuse skepticism with an offhanded sense of reassurance that builds credibility without theatrics. Sure, Dave Tango is a techy, but not in any distancing, nerdy sense. Steve Gonsalves shines his flashlights in places most of us would never dare – yet is afraid of spiders. They seem like the kind of friends “into this stuff” you wish you’d met back in high school, the ones who had the wherabouts, know-how and nerve.
And those troubled places amount to a horror checklist, a road atlas for the intrigued who do lack nerve. Plantations. Forts. Libraries, conservatories, and museums. Lighthouses and seaside resorts. Inns and lodgings where even Stephen King got spooked (really). Estates and modern day homes where families are freaked by less-than-benevolent presences. Theaters and old Art-Deco terminals. Air Force bases and even the U.S.S. Lexington. County jails and state penitentiaries. Brothels. Mills that exploited child labor. Old West hotels and the OK Corral. Irish castles. Asylums that held Charles Manson. San Francisco’s Presidio. Even the Lizzie Borden House.
Chiller’s broadcasting the crème of Ghost Hunters’ crème-de-la-crème episodes. Yup. Catch “The Fear Cage”, “Fort Delaware”, “Salem Witch” (oooooh!), “Spirits of the Old West” and “Spirits of San Francisco” (Spirit of St. Louis is a plane, you know).
With each go-round, Ghost Hunters trucks out the subtle mood music, the fish-eye lenses, the swish edits, the multi-cuts. Its cameras poke around, anticipating we viewers will listen intently – we do – while roving our eyes to all corners, windows, and crannies. It anticipates correctly. Owing to the night cam photography revolutionized by Neal Fredericks in The Blair Witch Project, Ghost Hunters fascinates as a come-along-with us documentary adventure while emulating the feel of a current horror movie.
And yeah, when you’re done playing with these guys, it does feel like it’s time to go home.
Got a super, natural supernatural story to share ‘round our blog campfire? Well, skewer your marshmallow and then let’s here from you! Didja beat the Ghost Hunters to it? Madame, monsieur… the evening firelight is yours to post below…
Posted by Mike Kalvoda at 04:42 PM