Skepticblog

So it’s me, not Shawna as promised this week. Sorry.

Turns out, She’s got the Chicken Pox!  So I’m going to write a very brief entry in her place.  

We’ll call this Queen Mary Part One.

Friday, April 4th, 2008.  This was a very adventurous day.  The crew and cast of the Skeptologists were split into two.  Half of the team headed to a small health food store to shoot the wheatgrass segment under the direction of Shawna, and the rest accompanied me to the RMS Queen Mary Ship. I wrote about the ship in a past blog when we scouted locations. 

The Queen Mary Ship, Location for The Skeptologists

The Queen Mary, permanently berthed in Long Beach, CA was to serve as the location where our Skeptologists would meet with “Professional Paranormal Investigators” to review their techniques and equipment to determine if there really were scientific tools that could detect the presence of ghosts. 

The Queen Mary has a rich and colorful history with many popular claims of paranormal activity. It’s a grand old ship with plenty of wonderful and spooky places to investigate and set the stage for what we hoped would be a very eventful day.

Yours truly and my FJ full of gear. Ah -- the fun part.

First we’re going to talk a bit about our special guests.  We had quite a time finding a suitable paranormal researcher that would agree to be on the show.  Though we didn’t come right out and say,”This is a skeptical show.” We did say that we were interested in investigating the claims made by those using paranormal detecting equipment and we’d like to experience an investigation and have the opportunity to do some tests.   We had to seek out people that claimed to be experts in their field and have the true ability of giving us good, solid information. Most were great with the idea, and then suddenly a few weeks later, they’d call and opt-out with one lame excuse after the next.  One after another we’d get an investigator to agree to the shoot, then they would cancel.  Finally we found Dan and the team from the SOCALPRS: Southern California Paranormal Research Society. They were up to speed. They knew about the show, who was involved and had been thoroughly prepped.  Turns out the small community of paranormal investigators did some digging and put it all together and most elected to opt-out of our show. 

The night before the shoot, Shawna got a phone call from Dan.  Suddenly, he had to work and “couldn’t get out of it.” While we were all decompressing from a long day up at Mt. Wilson, suddenly we were faced with no main subject for the entire pilot!  Shawna called and we met in the hotel room to get the damage report.  Dan claimed that he had to work and that’s why he couldn’t do it. Apparently the weeks prior, he was OK with taking that Friday off. Suddenly 12 hours prior, he’s bailing. Hmmm.  Something was up.

After a discussion with Brian, we decided to offer him some money to “make it worth his while” We called and made him the offer, and then he said he call us back.  Eventually he did and he accepted the job, but now he had some questions, he asked a lot about the nature of the show, how they were going to be represented and other details. We were not out to trash anybody, and we just wanted his honest opinion about how these devices worked. He was so sure that these devices were working as claimed that he welcomed our scientific and skeptical angle… It presented a challenge that he was up for.  A challenge that none of his fellow researchers had the brass for apparently.

Arran Murphy our Sound Mixer and I talking about the setup.

We all breathed a sigh of relief and after working out some kinks, not the least of which, was the fact that Dan had very little of his own tools (say what?), we proceeded.

Back to Friday morning. It was a beautiful day, and a clear one for L.A. standards.  We started the shoot at the mooring line at the bow of the ship to set the scene and introduce our researchers.  Dan decided to bring two of his friends along to the shoot.  They all showed up on cue dressed from head to foot in black.  So cool.  They certainly fit the part.  They were ready to show our team the “real deal!”

At this point we also introduced Dr. Michelle Thaller an astronomer with NASA/JPL who brought with her a $50,000 thermal imaging camera to that we’d have a gun in our own arsenal. Dan and their crew were impressed, we came packing.

LtoR Jonathan (Camera Op) Me, (Director) Michelle (NASA Astrophysicist) Arran (Sound Mixer) Yau-Man, Phil Plait and Mark Edward

We set the stage by talking about the ships’ history, what the investigator’s background was and what we expected to encounter.  Dan, very seriously, wanted to prep the cast AND crew with a special warning prior to entering the ship, we listened, and even taped this bit prior to entering the ship.  He kept calling it a “boat” …and ship people don’t like that much, I’m told.  That drove me nuts. He was serious about us feeling uncomfortable, woozy or strange once inside, and that if anyone was feeling weird, they were to let him know immediately so that he could do something about it, (though I haven’t the foggiest idea what.) He talked about “spiritual hitchhikers that would try and leave the ship on your person.”  This pre-set was the classic prep to make people feel something. Dan really believed what he was saying and so did his two cohorts. We gathered our things and proceeded to the ship’s first class pool. We began our tour of the famous Haunted Queen Mary ship!

More to come very soon!

Milena (Producer) Candace, Kurt and Dan (PRI's) looking carefully over the production photo release before the shoot.