Brothers investigate paranormal occurrences in documentaries

JULY 24, 2008

Coming Soon to a TV near You…

Brothers investigate paranormal occurrences in documentaries

BY LUKE HENDRY, THE INTELLIGENCER

If it’s spooky, psychic, or comes from another planet, Belleville’s Gray brothers are interested.

Adam and Andrew Gray run Graymatters Video Productions. They’ve just received the green light to create four documentaries for Vision TV.

All delve into the unexplained: psychic spying, a famous alien abduction and the legend surrounding Mayan crystal skulls.

“It’s pretty exciting,” said Adam Gray. “The coolest thing is making your living coming up with ideas to do weird things.”

“Plus we get to go to Vegas,” Drew added.

Last March, their first original broadcast program, a documentary called The Nightmare, aired on Vision TV. It’s to air again on Space: The Imagination Station, which also funded its production.

The one-hour program investigated a phenomenon called sleep paralysis, a controversial condition experienced by Adam and one which has many mythological and spiritual interpretations worldwide.

Joan Jenkinson, Vision TV’s director of independent production, soon expressed interest in a half-hour version of The Nightmare. It and the three new films must be completed by Dec. 1.

Jenkinson said the new pitches were a “perfect fit” for her 13- episode series, which has a working title of “Do You Believe?”

“It was a no-brainer,” said Jenkinson, praising the brothers’ approach.

“They’re a delight. They’re very professional in their attitude, but more than that, they have very creative minds,” she said. “They know how to tell a story. It’s a great relationship.”

The globe-trotting shows will have an element of adventure and, while it sounds like fun, the brothers are preparing for some very intense work.

“It’s incredibly stressful putting these pitches together,” said Drew, noting they’ll be interviewing at least 25 people in several countries in August and September. Most of the work will be done by the brothers alone.

“In order to make a go of it we pretty much have to do everything,” Drew said.

But they will have some help, all of it with a local connection.

Adam’s brother-in-law, Rob Spence of Belleville, created the film Let’s All Hate Toronto and worked on The Nightmare. He rejoins the brothers as director of photography. Cousin Sean Fritz produced The Nightmare’s sound-track and is also returning.

Film producer Paul Stephens is based in the Greater Toronto Area but owns property north of Belleville. Another Nightmare crew member, he said he’s glad to be involved in another Graymatters project.

“They remind me of myself when I was younger,” Stephens said with a chuckle. “They’ve got real talent.

“I do mostly feature films, so to do a documentary is really refreshing,” he said. “I’m hoping these new three will lead to new frontiers for us.”

Each of the programs deals with vastly different — and unusual — material.

Despite its timing, the Grays’ show 13 skulls wasn’t inspired by the current hit film Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

“We can’t get Harrison Ford. We’ll use the Gray brothers,” joked Jenkinson.

Adam said he’s long been interested in the story of the life-size quartz skulls which during the 19th Century were found in Central American ruins.

Legends say Mayan priests — who it’s believed did not even have the tools to craft such perfect objects — used the skulls to heal, talk to spirits and kill. At least one culture continues to worship them.

“It’s a crazy story, one that’s very hard to believe,” said Drew. “But it’s a mystery that can’t really be solved. There are other theories they were created by a higher intelligence.”

“And the most popular theory is that they’re all faked — which is still an interesting story,” added Adam.

The film will follow archaeologist Joel Palka as he treks to ruined Mayan cities, trying to uncover if the skulls are indeed Mayan or an elaborate hoax.

Psychic Spies, meanwhile, features science writer Jeff Warren and his exploration of clairvoyance, the ability to see things at a distance. Remote viewing was even studied by the United States government in a secret project known as Stargate, an attempt to match Cold War Soviet efforts to use psychics as spies.

Warren will watch psychics at work and try to learn the skill himself through a course in Las Vegas. Skeptic James “Amazing” Randi will try to debunk the practice by using trickery to duplicate remote viewing.

In Alien Memory Syndrome, the brothers take on the 1961 case of Betty and Barney Hill. Drew said it is has all the elements of a classic alien abduction.

“They’re in a car; a white light’s following them; it stops them on the road — all the imagery we’ve seen a thousand times.”

The Hills’ niece, Kathleen Marden, will serve as investigator. She’s spent 15 years researching it. Drew said it’s “one of the more authentic accounts” because there is physical evidence that something strange happened to the couple.

The series will air in January, though airdates for specific episodes are not yet known.

The Nightmare Trailer

Nightmare's Happy Ending by Luke Hendry

Here is nice article by Luke Hendry at The Intelligencer about or first Doc last year. What swell guy.

Intelligencer Article March 15 2008

For the Gray brothers, terror has turned out to be a good thing.

Two years ago in the middle of the night, Adam Gray saw a figure in a white shroud at the foot of his bed. "I was quite terrified and I was trying to scream or move," said the Belleville resident, now 35. "I was completely paralyzed, except for my eyes."

The figure raised a hand, and Gray said he felt as though his soul was being pulled out of his body. Gray's wife, Jacqui, was alerted by muffled noise coming from her husband. She saw nothing unusual in the room, and shook him.

"As she shook me, it vanished," said Gray, who added the experience was so frightening he could not believe it had been a nightmare, as Jacqui had suggested.

But it became a recurring scare, and Gray was so shaken that he began researching its symptoms. He learned about sleep paralysis, a condition experienced by an estimated 20 percent of the world's population. One scientific theory says the mind and eyes wake up before the sleeping body, leaving the limbs still immobilized from sleep. In some cases, scientists say, the victim's mind may produce some sort of ghost or creature as a way of explaining the paralysis. Some people feel as though they're being suffocated; others have many more symptoms. Gray wanted to learn more, and since he was already in partnership with his brother Andrew in Graymatters Video Productions, a documentary seemed the best route.

When Andrew Gray first heard his brother's story, he had a typical brotherly reaction: "that he was nuts. "It took some convincing," Andrew, 32, said this week.

But in time, the pair developed a solid proposal for The Nightmare, a film exploring the subject. They recruited Canadian producer Paul Stephens, whose work includes Beowulf & Grendel, Ordinary Magic, and TV's Torso: The Evelyn Dick Story. They'd met earlier when Stephens, a frequent visitor to the Quinte region, wandered into their former Pinnacle Street office out of curiosity.

The Grays made their pitch to VisionTV at Toronto's Hot Docs film festival. "From the first few words of their pitch, it was exactly what we were looking for," said Joan Jenkinson, VisionTV's director of independent productions and The Nightmare's executive producer. "It was a fresh perspective," she said. "Their vision was also big. "I took a chance with them because I didn't really know anything about them," she told The Intelligencer.

Jenkinson said once work was underway, however, "They blew me away." Together, VisionTV and Space: The

Imagination Station gave The Nightmare the green light.

"In order to pull off such an ambitious project on the budget we had, we really had to get our hands dirty," Adam said. For the next two years, the Grays travelled from Japan to the African island of Zanzibar, filming interviews with

people who'd had sleep paralysis and scientists who have studied it.

"I'd never left the continent before, so it was all new and strange," said Andrew. Every culture they visited had a different name for the nightmarish experience. But in each, a strange creature visited victims in the night, terrorizing the person and sometimes creating the sensations of being choked or, in Zanzibar, physical signs of rape.

Newfoundlanders spoke of "the hag," a witch who attacked sleepers. In Japan, one woman said the face of her father on the figure choking her. And in Zanzibar, a witch doctor told Gray he had been possessed by evil spirits, then performed an exorcism on him. In California, a Hmong shaman from southeast Asia performed another ceremony on him, ending his recurring experiences.

Scientists, meanwhile, offered theories on whether or not the experience was a hallucination or something else entirely. Some of the evidence seen in The Nightmare seems to indicate it may be much more than a bad dream, at least in some instances.

So far, Adam said, "They can't really explain something as bizarre as this."

The brothers' roughly 43-minute film aired on VisionTV's Enigma March 5. It's expected to repeat and air on Space as well, though no dates have been set. The brothers are hoping it could lead to much more, and that may be happening. The Nightmare was the first broadcast project written and directed by the Grays. VisionTV's Jenkinson liked what she saw.

"They are my best find of the year," Jenkinson said without hesitation. "Throughout the whole process they were very, very professional and very creative, and the product we got at the end was fantastic. The writing was also very dramatic; they told a very good story."

Jenkinson has already agreed to use a new half-hour cut of The Nightmare in her new series, "Supernatural Investigator" It's a rebranding of Enigma, and aims to explain paranormal and supernatural phenomena. The brothers from Belleville have a place in the new brand, she said.

"We have full intention on moving forward with them on at least a couple of projects."

The Grays have pitched her ideas for four new documentaries covering everything from clairvoyance to black magic. If they're accepted, Andrew said dryly, "We're going to be quite busy this year talking to a lot of strange people in foreign countries," Andrew said dryly.

"It feels great," he said of the prospect of more work. "It feels like everything I've been working for is starting to take off and I'll be able to explore the kinds of topics I want to in film."

They said they're mindful of the possibility of being labelled as makers of only spooky projects, but aren't yet

concerned by it. "I don't think that's our lifelong goal - to make supernatural films - but it's a fun place to start," Adam said.

He added regardless of whether the strange phenomena are real or imagined doesn't matter: people are

experiencing them, and whatever the cause, it's worth investigating.

"We'd like to make films that open people's minds to the possibility that it's a genuine experience - this is

something that's real and happening, and people should think about it."

lhendry@intelligencer.ca

Copyright © 2008 Belleville Intelligencer