Posted: Mon Nov 17, 2008 10:28 pm Post subject: Ghost Stories from the Set of "CONJURER"
I am a filmmaker who shot a feature film last year in Whitesburg, Georgia. Several members of our crew experienced strange noises, and visual evidence that the late 1800s farmhouse we were filming in was haunted. I interviewed each of the crew members personally, and wrote the following summary of their accounts.
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Camera operator Todd Marshall heard a woman crying on the floor above him. It was an afternoon during the third week of filming the indie thriller CONJURER. “I could hear a woman sobbing upstairs,” says Marshall. “The sobbing had an echo quality to it.” Marshall climbed the narrow staircase of the antebellum farmhouse to investigate, but no one was there. When Marshall asked other crew members about the sounds, no one else had heard them.
CONJURER is a Southern gothic chiller about a grieving couple who relocates to a rural farm, and encounters disturbing occurrences surrounding an old cabin with a dark history.
The primary location of CONJURER was a vacant 350 acre farm in the small town of Whitesburg, Georgia. Whitesburg resident Patrice Jackson, an amateur ghost hunter, first showed director Clint Hutchison the farm when he was scouting locations in January of 2007.
“It was perfect for our story,” says Hutchison. “From the moment I saw it, I knew we had to have it.” A fan of films like Robert Wise’s THE HAUNTING, THE SIXTH SENSE and THE OTHERS, Hutchison never anticipated that he would be stumbling onto a real life ghost story.
Jackson told Hutchison about an eerie feeling she had when visiting the property alone, and shared her belief that the civil war era farmhouse was haunted. “It’s a feeling that is hard to describe,” says Jackson. “Even though you are supposed to be alone, you KNOW you are NOT.” Jackson reported seeing an unusual number of vultures circling the location on several occasions.
Hutchison didn’t think anything more about it until he took director of photography, Ken Blakey, out to the property on a tech scout in March of 2007.
“When I went in the place I immediately felt the presence of a melancholy woman,” states Blakey. “I felt her follow us all around our location scouting investigations with not a shred of malice, but a slightly anxious and wistful feeling.”
Hutchison and Blakey had been friends since working together in 1999. In all that time, Hutchison knew Blakey to be nothing less than level-headed and practical, with a sarcastic sense of humor. He had never mentioned a belief in ghosts or the supernatural.
Hutchison was surprised to have the seasoned cameraman make such a comment, unprovoked, with no prior knowledge of the house. “Ken said that he sensed a presence in two particular areas of the house,” says Hutchison. “When I raised an eyebrow, Ken told me, ’I ought to know… I grew up in a haunted house.’”
Blakey’s perception that there was something unusual about the property was not unique. Many other crew members reported strange occurrences on set. Early one morning before the rest of the crew arrived, set dresser Jon C. Kay and art department production assistant John Anderson were walking in the field behind the old farmhouse when they were startled by the sound of a horse whinnying directly behind them. They whirled around, and found nothing there.
One night, when production designer Roland Heart and art director Windi Robinson were working inside the house, they heard a strange, repetitive creaking sound inside the walls of the house and in the downstairs bathroom. “When we went into the bathroom, the sound was coming from the bathtub,” says Heart. “It sounded like it wasn’t underneath the tub, but inside it. Only the tub was empty, and there was nothing there.”
Eerie events were not limited to production personnel. Whitesburg Police Chief, Juanita Howell, visited the set and took photographs. She later noticed strange orbs in the images. Howell had also experienced uncanny occurrences on the property long before the CONJURER team arrived when using the empty farmhouse for police training exercises. “We heard noises upstairs,” says Howell. “When we went up, nothing was there. Then we heard noises downstairs. Again, when we went down, nothing was there.” Howell described the noises as sounding like a “box that hadn’t been opened in a long time” or “an old door being opened and shut” repeatedly.
On a night when the production was filming a gunshot scene in the house, key grip Christopher Birdsong reports an incident that “freaked [him] out”. “I was sitting next to the monitors in one of those set chairs, when I felt light headed. I felt like I was falling out of the chair. So much so, that I sat up and shook it off. I thought maybe I was just exhausted, but I felt wide awake. So I decided to stand up and walk around. On my way out the door, someone asked me if I was okay and I explained what happened. [Whitesburg Police Chief] Juanita Howell started asking me some questions about what I felt. When I asked her why, she said, ‘Because that is a sign of a presence in the room.’ She told me that many people feel a sense of vertigo when a spirit passes through them.” Birdsong emphasizes his own cynicism about the paranormal. “Now keep in mind I am super skeptical when it comes to stuff like that but I cannot deny what I felt nor can I explain it.” Like others on the crew, Birdsong also heard noises inside the walls.
In an even more striking incident, Marshall recounts that on one afternoon, he glimpsed strange figures in the house. “As I sat on the dolly I could feel the presence of three other people. Again I thought it was just set fatigue. For a brief moment my mind's eye could see three Confederate soldiers in their dress uniforms, kind of like a quick hologram or projection on smoke. The oldest was an officer, because I remember a gold sash around his waist, tall with kind eyes and two other soldiers in gray uniforms carrying something to him from behind. I blinked and they were gone.”
Realizing that skeptics might suspect these testimonies of being a marketing gimmick to promote the film, Hutchison emphasizes the sincerity of everyone involved. “I did not experience any uncanny events myself, but I know and trust all of the people who did,” says Hutchison. The director was so intrigued, that he asked his colleagues to write down their experiences, and he has begun to research the history of the farm. The production plans to do video interviews with those who had the uncanny experiences.
Production designer Roland Heart relays one last incident that occurred when he was working on an old cabin set that the production built as the titular conjurer’s abode. In the film, the cabin is an ominous presence situated a couple of hundred yards behind the farmhouse, on the edge of deep woods.
“I turned around, and an older gentleman was standing there, staring at the cabin,” says Heart. To this day, Heart does not know the identity of the man, or how he came to be on set. As the elderly man gazed at the cabin, he told Heart, “It’s just the same… same as it always was.”
Heart politely informed the gentleman that, although built of antique lumber, the cabin had been newly constructed for the film.
The man seemed surprised by this. He told Heart, “It looks just like the one that used to be right there.”
ABOUT THE PRODUCTION
CONJURER will be released on DVD on November 25, 2008 and will air on Showtime in early 2009. CONJURER won Best Feature at the 2008 Dixie Film Festival, Best Horror Film at the Illinois International Film Festival, Best Horror Feature at the 2008 Action on Film International Film Festival, and the Directorial Discovery Award at the 2008 Rhode Island International Horror Film Festival.
Joined: Jul 11, 2006 Posts: 659 Location: Riverdale, Ga
Posted: Tue Nov 18, 2008 7:59 am Post subject:
Wow, I posted a long reply to this and right when I was getting ready to submit, I had a power surge and lost everything. So here is a shorter version of what I wrote before.. The last investigation I went on with Patrick (there were only 3 of us), I was about to take a picture of some dresses from the 1940's era and I got an EVP that was very loud and clear on the recorder around my neck and fainter on another investigators recorder saying in echo, "shall I gather, shall I gather?".. It is my belief that there is another diminsion or layer going on in unison with our own existance, hence the echo sound as the sound waves travel almost quantum like through these diminsions to reach us.. Secondly where the guy talks about a dizzy spell overcoming him.. I have had that happen many times and I believe that feeling happens to some people who are sensative to it when they are next to or walk through a portal; a doorway to the other side that spirits come and go from.. I will look for your film to come out. It seems you picked a great location that probably truely has a gateway to the other side...
Yes, it was uncanny how many different people sensed something unusual at the farm. The land has history going back to at least the Civil War, and some of our crew was convinced that the entities they encountered were from that era. I also was fascinated that the local police chief in Whitesburg investigates places with the reputation of being haunted. She told me some amazing stories, and being in Georgia, she has probably visited some of the same locations that you and Patrick have!
Joined: Jul 11, 2006 Posts: 659 Location: Riverdale, Ga
Posted: Tue Nov 18, 2008 9:00 pm Post subject:
OMG Intense!! I am going to have to see that film and thanks for sharing with the Hounds. We love that "stuff" lol... By the way, GA is one of the best places in the world for haunted locations..
Joined: Jul 11, 2006 Posts: 659 Location: Riverdale, Ga
Posted: Thu Nov 20, 2008 2:13 pm Post subject:
I lived in California for 20 years and did not experience much. You can go down to old town San Diego to the old Court House. They give tours and I hear it is very active.. Andersonville GA, where Union Soldiers were held prisoners is a great sight and Reese Christian, good friend and author of the book Ghosts of Atlanta is excellant and gives some good locations, one being Oakland Cemetery. Get in touch with me when you come back and I will see if I can round you something up.. Also another great couple to talk to in LA in Michael and Marty Parry; somemore good friends and you can go to thier website on myspace from my own myspace page.. They are psychic mediums and know some good locations there. Thaey are on my top friends list
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Intense!! I am going to have to see that film and thanks for sharing with the Hounds. We love that "stuff" lol... By the way, GA is one of the best places in the world for haunted locations..
