What happens when you take your hobby and turn it into a near obsession with seeking out the bizarre and unexplained?
Oh… I mean outside of Ghost Theory.
What you get is Greg Newkirk’s Who Forted
Yeah, we cover some of the same stuff, trade articles back and forth in the internet/couch potato version of industrial espionage and practice voodoo just after midnight sticking pins in printouts of each others logo. But Greg and his friends have taken the next step into the proverbial, and apparently literal cow fields of the unexplained and they actually seem to look forward to “stepping in it.”
Self professed amateur filmmakers, They have already produced a documentary film, “The Bigfoot Hunter: Still Searching” which will be released free this coming February.
Here is a clip:
On the heels of that project the Who Forted crew have started a web based show that delves into the unexplained, paranormal, and just plain weird in a fashion that has eluded other shows like Finding Bigfoot, Ghost Hunters, Ancient Aliens and their ilk. They jump from OuiJa boards to accompanying a gun toting red neck Bigfoot hunter to making their own UFO and seeing if anyone reports it.
Check out the introductory clip from Weird HQ
Seeing what looked like part debunking, part investigating, and part Three Stooges routine I was left scratching my head over a few aspects of this project, so I contacted Greg and asked what was up?
Our goal with Planet Weird is summed up as “engaging the strange”. We might play fast and loose with how we define engaging, but that doesn’t actually require scientific proof, evidence, or however you want to define it. Our reasoning is this: we’re trying, first and foremost, to make something that is going to be A) lighthearted, B) entertaining, and hopefully C) enlightening. There are waaaaaaay too many bad paranormal reality shows out there who take themselves seriously to point of telling people they are “scientists” and go about presenting every bump and creak as some kind of paranormal proof.
Clearly, we aren’t scientists, and we would never try and convince people of that. We’re four people who are just passionate about weird things, weird places, and weird people. We want these stories to continue being told, and for people to continue being curious about them. In my opinion, the biggest issue with paranormal television is that the burden of proof is placed on the “talent”. This forces them to either say that nothing is paranormal or that something is definitely paranormal. It’s also the reason that there’s so much fakery in paranormal television (RE: collargate).
We don’t feel like we NEED proof, because the only thing we’re doing is trying to share a story. If we capture something incredible while we do it, that’s merely a bonus.. but we’re not going to hang out in a place for two days and expect to find solid evidence. That’s not our job, we’ll leave that to the scientists.
By “engaging the strange”, we really just mean that we don’t want to hang out in the dark staring at old buildings in nightvision. We want to actually meet the people behind these legends. Instead of just looking for a ghost like everyone else, hey, why don’t we recreate the Toronto Ghost Society’s “Phillip Experiment” and see if we can’t create one? Instead of just looking for UFOs, let’s go out and literally attempt to get abducted. Rather than traipse around New Orleans talking about Voodoo.. let’s frigging JUMP IN AND TRY IT!
So to answer your question (finally), we aren’t driven by evidence so much as we’re driven by the legend itself. I might walk out of a shoot going “yeah, this is a load of crap”, but Dana might walk out feeling the opposite. That’s pretty much how it goes in the paranormal, and that’s how it will be presented. We’re middle of the road folks, so it’s only natural that we’d have a middle of the road project. Take the teaser clip.. if you were to see that on television, if would be post produced into oblivion.. there would be cheesy music playing and horror stings at every “scare”. I don’t think you need to do that to make something entertaining, and I think that portraying the subject honestly does far more for paranormal circles than the need to make everyone in front of the camera an “expert” and every sneeze “evidence”.
So I recommend you check out Planet Weird, I know I will be, and stealing bringing you stories they delve into from time to time. Also look in these pages for the release of “The Bigfoot Hunter: Still Searching.”
Cause just maybe the search for Bigfoot really can get weirder.
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