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 Intel­li­gencer, Arti­cle ID# 1101233