It’s time to debunk the myth that shows like this are all a bunch of… hooey. Yes, you read the title of this post correctly; the show’s producer is an award-winning documentarian. If you think that Paranormal Witness is some schlocky pay-for-anyone’s-ghost-story kind of show, you’re mistaken. We have some clips at the end of this post so that you can see for yourself, but first check out our interview with Mark Lewis, the series producer. Here’s his bio:
Mark Lewis is the Series Producer of Paranormal Witness on Syfy. Lewis is a multi-award-winning writer, director and producer of factual dramas and documentaries. He has made films for BBC, ITV, Channel 4, Five, Discovery, the History Channel, National Geographic, PBS (WNET), Spike, and ABC Australia. His films have won an Emmy, the New York Television Festival, the American Film and TV Awards and he has been nominated for a BAFTA, a Royal Television Society Award, a Grierson Award and an Australian Logie.
Shot across the world, Mark’s often epic drama-documentaries have used full drama, supported by top-class CGI, to bring impeccably researched historical tales to the screen. The emphasis is always on stunning visuals and superlative story-telling. The results have been recently described in the press as “sumptuous”, “action-packed”, “luscious” and “spellbinding”.
Mark graduated from Oxford University in 1990 with a BA degree in Politics, Philosophy and Economics and a Masters in Political Science to pursue a career in journalism. He worked for six years making current affairs documentaries for the BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Network Nine Australia. It’s a journalistic training in the fast lane which has proved invaluable in his work making contemporary and historical drama-doc films.
Puts a different spin on things, doesn’t it? Mr. Lewis was kind enough to spare some time recently for the press, including SciFi Mafia. The first question, from Media Boulevard, was how exactly the stories are chosen:
Mark Lewis: I wish there was a database. Unfortunately there isn’t. These stories, we really have to search for. I mean, we’re on the hunt for very credible witnesses who tell extraordinary tales and extraordinary tales are proper stories — stories that develop.
So those kind of stories are very few and far between. So we really have to reach out to all sorts of groups- sometimes paranormal groups. We have to search — comb through newspapers and media reports — everything that we can to try and hunt down these stories.
It’s a real journalistic endeavor. Unfortunately they don’t come sort of running to you. You really have to hunt them out because those are the best stories; the stories where, many of these people aren’t sort of necessarily trying to sell their tales. You know, these are people that you have go and hunt out — the people who have been through some extraordinary situations and extraordinary circumstances. And actually, you know, are often shell shocked by their experiences. And they’re the ones that we have to convince to come on television to tell their remarkable tales. So it’s actually quite a hunt to try and find them.
They also asked him if any fact verification was attempted:
Mark Lewis: First of all we are really only looking for the most credible witnesses. And we do do background checks and we do do evaluations on all of the witnesses for the films. And that is quite an extensive process. Also we’re very keen within the stories, that the stories are corroborated. Now they can be corroborated by a newspaper report. They can be corroborated by real archives.
For example, one of our stories, Trumbull UFO Chase, tells the story of how a 911 dispatch office in Ohio was completely inundated with calls from the town of people seeing bright lights in the sky. And then up to something like 14 police officers ended up chasing this unidentified flying object around the country.
Now that entire incident was recorded over the Trumbull County police dispatch 911 records offices so all of those calls were recorded. And those features for that kind of archive, that kind of factual basis, features very heavily in our films.
Likewise, if photographs have been taken of poltergeist activity we make sure that those are cut into the films to give it that extra layer of credibility.
On top of that, the other thing that we’re very insistent upon is that the stories — we want them to be corroborated by multiple sources. And I think that when we find a contributor for the film, we’re very, very keen to speak to other people within that story, people they knew or their other relatives or people who come into the house that have experienced the same thing.
Many of those appear in the film, but some don’t. So we seek out paranormal witnesses. We talk to the friends and relatives of that person to kind of verify this or at least corroborate this. So many of those appear in the programs but some don’t.
But all of those are full of extra layers of journalistic corroboration for us, to try and put together the most credible stories that we possibly can. It’s as I said, it’s a great journalistic endeavor to try and do it so that we can hopefully get the most credible stories that we can possibly put on television.
He then spoke with SciFi Mafia about the wide variety of stories covered, whether the witness accounts are scripted (they aren’t), and the massive amount of research that goes into the production of each of the stories:
SciFi Mafia: Hi. Thanks so much for being on this call today.
Mark Lewis: Thank you very much. Hello Erin.
SciFi Mafia: Hi. I really enjoyed the first four stories and made the mistake of watching the first two alone in the house late at night. [laughing]
Mark Lewis: No, no. You should never do that. [laughing]
SciFi Mafia: I won’t do that again.
Mark Lewis: Well that’s good.
SciFi Mafia: But the second two had a really different feel. The first two were supremely scary. But the third one was almost kind of heartwarming, although obviously it was creepy too. And the fourth one, the UFO one, was just really interesting. Scary in a different way but kind of exciting. So with all of these things falling under “the paranormal,” what’s the breakdown of the rest of the episodes? Do you have a lot of “spooky,” or is it a big mix?
Mark Lewis: I think that as a series piece I’m really proud of the mix that we’ve got. But to be honest, the mix has been quite sort of fortuitous. We have a really broad range of stories that come in. Some are kind of real roller coasters, sort of shock-a-minute kind of films, like the Haunting of Mansfield Mansion, the one that I think is probably the most scary of all of the films. Some are like supernatural tear jerkers like Haunted Highway. Others are just really kind of overwhelmingly fascinating, like Trumbull County UFO Chase. So I think it’s impossible for me to sort of pigeonhole them and say we’re got more of this and more of that. And that’s what makes it so fascinating. They’re a really rich mixed bag of stories.
It certainly kept us who work on it riveted because even we’re surprised at how different the stories are. So I hope an audience will respond in the same way and to say, “My goodness, there’s such a kind of mixed bag under the same kind of paranormal umbrella.”
SciFi Mafia: And the mixes are really fun to watch. It’s great to see all the different ways stories can go.
Mark Lewis: I think what’s really interesting about these films is that they play out like proper stories. If you were to sit someone down and tell them a ghost story in the best way that you possibly could, many of these stories play out like that. They play out, sort of like pretty wonderful, sort of perfect ghost stories. You couldn’t engineer them better.
I mean “Emily, the Imaginary Friend” — the first story, the premiere. It’s a creepy story that develops, that has an extraordinary resolution. First of all you think it’s an imaginary friend, then it turns into a poltergeist, then uses a real sort of kick in the teeth when you discover that Emily isn’t Emily at all, but it’s the poltergeist male spirit masquerading as a little girl.
I mean, you couldn’t script something better than this. And I think that’s what we found each time as we researched these stories and people tell us these stories and we get them corroborated by other people.
You couldn’t write them better. So they play out like proper ghost stories, like proper pieces of storytelling. And I think that’s what’s been so rewarding for all of us who’ve been working on the series.
SciFi Mafia: And along those lines actually that’s a quick follow-up question I have for you. Are the narrations given — were they first given to you and then are they scripted or are they (the witnesses) actually truly just talking?
Mark Lewis: I’ll tell you the process. We reach out and we try and find these stories. We could find them from newspaper accounts, we could find them through paranormal groups. There’s an endless sort of variety of ways in which we could track these stories down.
But once we’ve tracked them down and spoken to the witnesses themselves and persuaded them to participate, we then have initially incredibly long conversations with these people over the phone. I mean, hours and hours and hours when we get to know them and we get to know absolutely every detail of the story.
Remember that these stories may last a good, at the most, 43 minutes if they’re to fill a whole TV hour. But many of these stories have taken place, in some cases, over several years. And there are an inordinate number of incidents that make up these stories.
So we have to talk and listen and sort of pull from our contributors absolutely every detail that we possibly can, so that we can then put together, in a kind of chronological form, the story so that we can help them tell it in the best way. Because imagine if your family or your house has been sort of possessed by a poltergeist, and all your family have been sort of torn apart by a poltergeist, as it is the case in a few of our stories. These become incredibly traumatic experiences for people. And, as I say, many of the events of these kind of hauntings or poltergeist experiences can take place over several years.
And so what we have to do with these people is sort of sort the wheat from the chaff and try and get the story written down on paper first of all, in a chronological form, so that we know that we are telling the very best moments of the stories; because there are several moments, believe me, that we leave out.
We just don’t have time to say all of the incidents that happened to these particular people because, obviously, these things happened over many years and there are as I said an inordinate number of events happened to these people.
Once we’ve got that down in paper form then we know we design a sort of list of interview questions for when we interview them on camera. And that [on camera interview] will help us draw up the script, which we then dramatize for the film. So really everything comes from the interview that we do with these people. As I say, they’re testimony driven films. So we have to make sure that we help the interviewees get that testimony down in a complete chronological form so that we get all of the very best details down there.
And then we can then help select which are the very best events, the most extraordinary events to tell for the film itself.
SciFi Mafia: Great. A really wonderful job at it too, I have to say. Really enjoy the show.
Mark Lewis: Thank you. Well please keep watching because I think they just get better and better, actually.
SciFi Mafia: Oh, I’ll be there.
Mark Lewis: Good. Thank you.
I was able to ask a few more questions a bit later, about use and verification of actual sites and props:
SciFi Mafia: Hi, great discussion. It’s just been so interesting listening to this today, so thank you again. Here’s a real quick question on the more technical side again. Do you ever use the actual site?
Mark Lewis: Just to film in?
SciFi Mafia: Right.
Mark Lewis: Now let me think before I answer that question. Well actually there’s one story that we’re making possibly for a second season, where we’ve filmed in the actual site. I think that’s something that we potentially investigate for future episodes. In answer to your question, no we haven’t. And it’s partly because a few of the people are no longer in those homes, you know?
SciFi Mafia: Right.
Mark Lewis: If your family’s been torn apart by a paranormal activity and a poltergeist or whatever – in many of our stories the people have moved out. They’ve just sort of said, “I’ve got to get out of here.” And have left those houses behind. So we haven’t filmed in those places so it’s difficult for us.
And of course technically speaking, when you’re filming a piece of drama and you’ve got all the crew members and all those kind of things, it’s very difficult. You can’t always time out with a crew of 40 or 50 people and just expect to film in a tiny house or whatever, it’s very, very difficult. When you’re dramatizing these things you have to find places where you are able to film and where you can get the camera crews. And so it’s often very difficult to film the drama in the real locations.
It would be a very interesting thing to do. The Haunting of Mansfield House, which is the fourth story in the run [it’s actually been moved to later in the season], that is a massive house that is in Mansfield, Connecticut. I think that would have been a fantastic location to film the real story. And I’m not sure I could have persuaded all the crew to go there, knowing the story and them all looking terrified, I think.
It’s actually something that we would consider doing for certain stories. But all of the drama film, we actually filmed in Toronto, in Canada. It’s a very good place. It’s a very good double for America within one city. You can actually find so many different locations that resemble so many different parts of the United States, strangely. And that’s why a lot of us come to film there. And I think that’s been another challenge of the series, we have stories from all across the United States — some in California, some in Kentucky, some in Connecticut. I mean obviously we have our crew all in one place just to film all of the dramatizations over a few months. And we have to center them all in one place. We can’t be traveling around with a crew of 40 all across the United States, unfortunately, much that we would love to, to film all of the dramatizations.
So we had to find one, sort of central harbor city where we could find good doubles for all of these different locations that take place in that kind of series.
SciFi Mafia: Yes, that makes total sense. Along those lines then, do you ever double check with the witnesses about aspects of the dramatization? Like a prop that you’re using, you know, “is this what the toy chest looked like?”
Mark Lewis: Yes, we do. We first of all, before we even interview these people on camera, we will interview all contributors over the phone for hours and hours and hours. That gets the whole story, but it also gets all the different details — what does the toy chest that flies across the room look like? All those kind of things. What does the house look like? We get into a very detailed plan of the houses so that when we seek their dramatic counterpart, the houses that we film these places in, we try and get as close a match as we possibly can to the real thing, often because we include real photographs of the house or the interiors of the houses in the case of the poltergeist story. We try to find houses that on the interior look pretty similar to the real things as well. So it’s very important that in these hours of phone conversations and then these hours of interview we get all the details that we can.
When we do go to interview these people on camera, what you see is a 20-minute story with the contributor. In fact, those interviews that we do with people will go on four, five, six, seven hours sometimes. So there are many more details where the interviewee doesn’t appear on screen telling you about that detail. But we use the details of the interiors, as it were, to inform how we dramatize things. So that, as you’re suggesting, several of the key props — for example, when the toy chest flies across the room, yes, absolutely that was very similar to the real toy chest that flew across the room in Emily and the Imaginary Friend.
Yes, so we do try and listen to our contributors and match as much as we possibly can the real pieces of furniture, the real people, the real things that appear in the stories. Good question.
SciFi Mafia: Great. You know, it’s terrific to hear the amount of care that you’re taking verifying everything.
Mark Lewis: Yes, inevitably, we’re dramatizing these things. And I think as much research information that we can do, using all of that research, using all of that testimony as wisely as we possibly can will only serve to make the stories more credible.
And that’s always been the sort of the mantra of this series is to make these stories as convincing as we possibly can.
SciFi Mafia: Great. Well thanks again for your time, and thanks again for the show.
Mark Lewis: Thank you.
It really is a cool show. Here are clips from tonight’s two stories:
Paranormal Witness airs Wednesdays at 10/9c on Syfy.
