Project 1
Ghosts & Spirits
(Video project)

 

Things happen, but we don’t attempt to explain how things happen.  Do you believe in ghosts?  Will we ever be able to prove that ghosts and spirits exist?  How will we know?  What will we find?

Ghosts…the spirit of a dead person, especially one believed to appear in bodily likeness to living persons or to haunt former habits.

Spirits…the principle of conscious life; the vital principle in humans, animating the body or mediating between body and soul.  The soul regarded as separating from the body at death.

Through my project I hope to open up the blackbox surrounding the idea of ghosts and spirits.  In my pursuit for answers I interviewed several people concerning their beliefs in ghosts.  I also conducted a séance with my friend on two different occasions to try to speak with different ghosts and spirits.  So, what is a séance?  A séance is a meeting in which a spiritualist attempts to communicate with the spirits of the dead.

In conducting the séance my friends and I tried to contact ghosts and spirits of Austin.  After doing the research it became evident that there were many supposedly haunted places in Austin.  Narrowing the results, I was able to focus on The Omni Hotel, The Tavern, Spaghetti Warehouse, The Driskill Hotel, and Logan’s.

The Omni Hotel haunting caught my attention the most, so in the séance my friends and I tried to make some sort of contact with Jack.  The story goes that a man committed suicide by jumping from a balcony at the Omni Hotel, falling to his death.  Since then, night maids have said to hear him in his room still moving around when the room is not occupied.  Guests also report hearing noises at night.

After hours pondering over a Quiji Board we felt this experiment was rather inconclusive.  However, we had all thoroughly freaked each other out and nobody wanted to walk back to their cars alone.  We definitely felt that there was some sort of presence in our séance even though we had no direct interaction with Jack.

As I pushed further to open this balckbox of ghosts and spirits I ventured out to one of my friends ranch’s to continue the Quiji Board session and even better, go to a small cemetery that was just down the road.  Some of the best footage that I got for my entire project was recorded in the cemetery.  So, be sure to note when watching my project the cemetery scenes.  None of the scenes shot in the cemetery were scripted.  If you listen closely you will hear several different conversations overlapping one another in pure chaos.

Though through my project I cannot say for sure that ghosts and spirits exist, I can say that I believe and so do they people that took part in the making of my project.  Do you believe?

 

 

Dictionary References
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/ghosts
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/spirits
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/seance

Video Clip Used In Video
http://www.archive.org/details/VJ_Mission_Tango_Ghosts

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