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Dean Trumbly considers himself a skeptic. But when his company, True North Paranormal, was gathering material for a segment about ghost stories at a Vernon theatre, the hairs stood up on the back of his neck.
Trumbly, a skeptic about paranormal matters, was operating a camera and everyone was downstairs in the theatre when everyone heard them. Footsteps upstairs in a theatre that was empty and locked.
That moment is now part of of the film that made it's debut a week ago at the Vernon Towne Theatre. For the audience, it's a unique opportunity to see the production about paranormal activity in the very theatre in which they were seated.
"It had a lot of meaning to me," said Trumbly, who grew up in Vernon, while the movie theatre's reputation for ghost stories was building.
"It was almost a surreal event for sure."
The Vernon Film was the pilot for a series that Trumbly has produced with the help of a Kamloops based couple with special interest in Paranormal activity.
Jon and Karina Kozuska of Kamloops. The couple are lifetime paranormal investigators. Karina is an empath, which is a person with the paranormal ability to read the emotional state of other people. Jon is a paranormal investigator.
"They had a real passion for it," said Trumbly, "and that's what we wanted."
Before the crew goes to a site, Jon gathers all the available research. But Karina goes in cold.
"She's just thrown right in to get a good read on the building as to presence and feelings and things like that," explained Trumbly.
"She does what we call an empath walk-through. She goes through all the buildings and gives us a read. And the reason we do a cold read is we want to see if it collaborates with the history and the evidence that we already know about the building."
Trumbly then does the editing. The addition of music is all aimed at giving it a spooky feel. The result is entertaining, whether you are the kind of person who believes in ghost stories or not.
"We're not there to make the true believers even more true believes or make the skeptics more skeptics, he said. "We're there to film our experience. At the end of it, we want the viewer to go home and make their own decision."
The Vernon showing turned-out to be a big hit. The doors opened at 6 pm and it was sold out by 6:30.
"I felt bad," added Trumbly. "Because we had to turn a hundred or a hundred and fifty people away."
If you missed out on the debut, you're in luck. True North and the Vernon Towne Theatre are planning an encore presentation for some time in September.
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