We’ve documented a fair share of hauntings over the years of this blog’s existence. Once the reality of the ghost phenomenon has been established, the question becomes, if a movie theater can be haunted, why not a movie?
Director Alex Monty Canawati may have answered that question with his 2013 retro romp Return to Babylon.
From Wikipedia:
Photographed with a hand-cranked camera and scored with music of the roaring twenties, this silent film strings together the lives of the most famous and infamous stars of the 1920s, including Rudolph Valentino, Gloria Swanson, Clara Bow, Lupe Vélez, Fatty Arbuckle, and William Desmond Taylor.
If you’re a paranormal or Hollywood lore aficionado, I don’t have to tell you about the longstanding reports of ghostly activity surrounding pretty much all of those golden age stars.
And shooting the film in their houses may have caused some of that activity to bleed over into the movie.
Nor did it probably help that Canawati shot the movie on 19 rolls of 16mm film he found lying abandoned on Hollywood Boulevard.
The director assembled a modern-day cast and filmed them on a hand-cranked camera loaded with the found film stock. While shooting on location at some of the haunted homes, certain cast members, most vocally Jennifer Tilly, reported a feeling of being watched – and even touched – by persons unseen.
Canawati laughed these complaints off as products of actors’ overactive imaginations.
Until he and his editor watched the movie frame-by-frame and found … irregularities.
Throughout the film the characters appear to briefly morph into ghost-like images and other unexplained, unnerving phenomena. Some are quite monstrous. Canawati said there are also Christ-like images. “I was really quite stunned … This sends shivers down the spines of all who watch it.”
“But surely,” you say, “those are just double exposures, warps in the film stock, or even special effects trickery.”
Not according to the director – and technicians who examined the film.
On seeing the ghostly imagery on his print, Canawati thought there may have been some technical problem/explanation. He said no special effects were present or introduced. The film was sent to the Brooks Institute in Santa Barbara, Calif., and examined by experts in the field. “There was no reasonable explanation.” The movie had been shot on new “factory sealed” black-and-white film, he said.
Asked if some skeptics might explain the matter by calling it all a hoax, Canawati replied, “I don’t know what to say. I can only explain the story the best way I can. I’m gonna stand my ground that it’s not a hoax. We had the film examined.”
Which is all the more disturbing when you consider that the anomalies weren’t limited to facial distortions.
In some scenes, characters seem to grow elongated, webbed hands.
Then there are the full-body apparitions not visible on set that turned up in the finished film.
Watch this quick video on the high strangeness in Return to Babylon:
We’re left to wonder … If movies can be haunted, why not books?
My acclaimed horror-adventure novel may not be haunted, but it will give you hours of thrills and chills.
This one by far gave me the heebie-jeebies. I think by far it’s the creepiest phenomenon on earth that film, of all things, can pick up the supernatural. It’s one thing to see it in real life, but capturing something like that through a medium is on a whole other level. It’s difficult to explain but it’s unnatural (using film opposed to the natural process of using your senses), therefore more terrifying.
It’s empirical evidence that ghost phenomena don’t just occur in the mind. Whatever is going on, it’s an objective occurrence that’s happening in the world at large.
These phenomena show up in every sort of recording, visual or audio. Technology really does seem to capture a bit more than our perceptions can conceive at times.
… more things in Heaven and Earth …
Technology is catching what lies beyond the veil.
What about digital recording? Is this something that only happens with film? Does it relate to why Hollywood switched to digital?
Phantom phone calls from deceased loved ones have been reported for years with a high degree of consistency – even after Ma Bell went digital. And paranormal investigators have hours of electronic voice phenomena on hard drives.
Tangentially related, but I would love to hear your opinion on the Tobe Hooper movie Poltergeist. We recently watched it for Cannon Cruisers and I was surprised at how much was there that I didn’t pick up the previous times I’ve seen it, including how New Age nonsense is so far over its head. I think it deserves a look over.
Not the sequels, though. Obvious anti-Christian nonsense that has nothing to do with the appeal of the original.
There has also been a concentrated effort in recent years to try to claim its actually a Spielberg movie (it’s very much not) which makes me wonder if they don’t like the movie being as successful as it was. The almost deliberate subversion of the sequels has to be intentional.
Been a while since I last saw Poltergeist. But I did look into the persistent rumors floating around since day one claiming that Spielberg really directed it.
Based on my research, I’d agree it’s not a pure Spielberg movie. Nor is it all Hooper’s. Instead, it’s a Hooper-Spielberg joint. And not just because the latter was a producer. One documented incident had an Entertainment Tonight crew showing up to find him shooting second unit footage in the backyard.
The “even if it’s against your beliefs as a Christian” line is also a Spielberg tell.
But yeah, other than the subversive secular humanist stuff, it’s a fun watch. And genuinely scary. You probably mentioned on the show that the skeletons in the pool were real.
Real skeletons? Yikes. Using people like that – even after they’re dead – seems like asking for trouble.