As part of the continuing adventures of the Cast and Crew of The Skeptologists, I would like to share with you a bit of rough-edited never-before seen footage. This was shot during the Pilot of The Skeptologists and for reasons you will soon understand, it was never included in the final version of the pilot. I found the event interesting and it solidified my thoughts about how people interpret events based on their own predispositions.

Why, getting to experience it all for FREE, of course!

How can you win 2 free tickets? A winner will be drawn at random on March 25, 2009 from all who do the following:

1. Make a YouTube video, stating why you think critical thinking and skepticism are important.
2. Mention the Skeptoid podcast.

3. Once your video is live, email lisa[at]skeptoid.com and give her the URL along with your name.

Deadline for entries is March 24. The winner will be announced right here on March 26. Complete rules are here.

My shaky memory aside, Ryan will be back here next week in his regularly scheduled slot, keeping us updated on the machinations of getting critical thinking onto television. Some of us slack and do it from the comfort of our Aeron chairs with endless mochas at our elbow, but guys like Ryan actually have to get out into the real world and do the physical labor and artistic gymnastics that translate our musings into the media that the real world consumes.

So go get ‘em, Ryan, and we’ll see you back here next week.

Well, a lot.  As our production team quietly works towards doing just that, the rest of the world is unfortunately left in the dark, at least as it pertains to “The Skeptologists.” I, and  a handful of others are blessed (or cursed) with the knowledge of the what could be in store for our dutiful production.  That knowledge comes with a price. (And I’m not talking about exorbitant production costs)  We know because we are the ones that are actively doing the work to make this happen. We keep the details of the production quiet for many reasons, among those are the fact that the show is evolving, and we’ve got the right amount of cooks at this point.  The other biggie is that we want to protect the hard work that our entire cast and crew has given to this project by making sure that some other company doesn’t come along and grab our format. (Though even if they did, good luck! We’ve got the Skeptical Dream Team so neener neener neener!)

It’s a strange thing, TV.  First you have to come up with an idea that’s exciting fresh and different.  But, yet, not too out of the box, because on-one want’s to take a BIG risk on a show. It has to be like something that’s currently on the air and working …that’s code for getting good ratings and making the advertisers happy.  If you put together this “new fresh idea” The next thing you are going to hear is “Well how do you differentiate your show from XYZ show currently on the air?”  It’s seems you just can’t win.

We must tread a thin balancing rope between being different, but yet being bankable.

We know what sells, It’s what’s on TV now.  The themes and styles of the shows that you are currently watching however, are already old news to the TV production environment though.  Many of us are already onto the new things, they just haven’t aired yet.

As we move into the jingly cheery month of December, virtually all of Hollywood shuts down, save the small glowing screens of a handful of skeptics who are gearing up to write the first eight episodes of the TV series.  While everyone else is bringing on the holiday cheer and ringing in the New Year, Brian Dunning, David Vienna and myself have our work cut out for ourselves.  Powerful forces in the industry have asked us to prepare more detailed information about the show and it’s future.  This is great news folks! We’ve made it past the first several hurdles. And you know what? We’ve found a group of people who really see the merit of the show and are genuinely interested in taking this ball and running with it! Come January 3rd, when the big slick and over-styled wheels of the entertainment industry spin back up, we’ll be there, outlines in-hand ready to fight the battle of mediocracy with our show that aims to bring intellect, science and just plain old common sense to the common TV viewers. Do we have a snowball’s chance in he…  Ah, in er. Well.  Yeah, we do.

Many have asked where can I see this show? Well, at the moment, we don’t have the show in active production. We have finished a pilot episode and demo, and that is being used right now to pitch to agents and TV networks. We are working with some very esteemed individuals and companies that are representing the show for us. We are all making great progress.

As we begin to get solid deals put together, we’ll be sure to let you all know. Don’t worry, when the show is picked up, the entire Skeptical Community and hopefully many other people will know that it’s coming! For our international viewers, we’re not certain who will carry it, but rest assured, we’re working hard to give the show the largest audience possible. If we don’t air it outside of US, you can bet we’ll be working on online and home video options as well.

In the meantime, I’ll continue to share our exploits into producing the pilot with the Dream Team of skeptics: The Skeptologists!

The Queen Mary. Haunted ship?

We last talked about the two topics that we’d present on the show, Ghost Hunting Tools and Wheatgrass Juice. This week it’s all about those spooky little monsters and their propensity to violating all kinds of physical laws!

Ghost Hunting, Tools of the Trade! Ripped directly from Brian’s Skeptoid episode of the same name, this topic was a great subject for many reasons: It’s current, it should be interesting to de-mystify, and it would require a great, spooky location that’ll be great on TV.

We wanted to create a pilot that would show the true direction of this series, we needed locations and production quality that looked like the million dollar per-episode budget that we wanted to produce the rest of the show. We didn’t have a million bucks so it was going to take some hard work.

We set out scouring Southern California’s haunted hot spots. There were several that quickly floated to the top; The Coronado Hotel, A few different private homes and of course The RMS Queen Mary in Long Beach.

In our research, it quickly became apparent that if you owned a house, hotel or rusty old ship that was nearing 100 years old or more, well, it’s haunted by default. Just come up with some great ghost stories, or talk about the untimely death of someone that used to live or work there and you are set! Instant haunted place! Better yet, instant tourist trap! I figure in 30 more years my house will suddenly become haunted and I’ll be able to sell tickets to walk around my house with flashlights and stud sensors. I’m gonna be rich!

The one location that I really liked, and thought would be perfect is the Queen Mary. It’s history and it’s popularity for being haunted is very well documented and it has been a favorite for many, many ghost hunters. It’s a big location, and by that I don’t just mean it’s size, but it’s also very grand on screen and that’s the type of production quality we needed.

We needed to check it out, first hand. Shawna, our producer and I had stayed there a few years back when we were shooting a video on an unrelated project and we remembered how cool and spooky it was. The history of that ship, spooky or not is something you can truly feel as you walk through the maze of corridors, and levels.

Upon further investigation, we found that the Queen Mary has regular haunted ship tours, and once a month, has a special ghost hunt. This rather expensive tour started at midnight on a Friday night and would go till 2AM or later. We were to bring our cameras and flashlights and “be prepared” to see ghosts and evidence of the paranormal. I’m not sure exactly how one prepares to see a ghost, but I had a tall white chocolate mocha from Starbucks and some Smarties candy if you must know.

Brian Dunning, David Vienna and Ryan Johnson, preparing to hunt for ghosts aboard the Queen Mary

At 12 midnight on February the 15th, I was joined by Brian Dunning, Shawna Young and David Vienna to take part in our first official Ghost Hunt. We brought two video cameras, a couple of still cameras and our flashlights. We were ready.

We and about 20 others all met in the lobby, and laughed and joked about what was going to happen while we waited for our “Ghost Hunters” to arrive. These were not Queen Mary employes, rather they were a team of self described “Professional Paranormal Investigators.” They took this ghost hunting business very seriously.

They finally arrived and quickly led us to a room towards the lower section of the ship. It was a moderately sized room with many poorly taken still photos with light streaks, overexposed people and just plain old dust, that were all supposedly paranormal activity. If I had to guess I would say this was the room they used daily for their tourist “Ghost Show” which was, admittedly, a fun tour around the ship with special effects to simulate the paranormal activity supposedly witnessed there in the years past. We weren’t there for some special effects show, nope, we were there for the real deal, baby!

Now, at this point, we were all pretty excited to be there, I don’t know what I was hoping for but I really wanted to have something happen that I couldn’t explain. I wanted something to make me think that, at the very least, someone was screwing with me.

Our Ghost Hunter

But first, we had to endure an hour of the lead investigator essentially yelling at us for being there. Really. He did his best: “I’m a skeptic folks! And there’s a lot of bad people in my industry trying to fool you! We’re doing this for real!” It was hilarious, he was trying to be this tough, abrasive, been-there, done-that, seen-it-all type. I got the feeling that he was making it all up as he went along. When pressed by us and others for details of hauntings that he had supposedly witnessed in his “investigations” he suddenly stumbled and then gave a weak answer and then turned to his partner for some sort of assurance. His partner, by the way, took most of the first hour to get suited up into some sort of military black nylon accessory vest. He worked hard at becoming a one-man Radio Shack. He proceeded to stuff every little battery operated handheld device that you’d ever seen onto his person. “Boy we’re in for a real adventure if the ghost hunter needs all that!” I whispered under my breath.

So after being verbally abused by the lead ghost hunter, we were carefully informed, that we probably weren’t going to see anything. (Keep those expectations really low. Got it.) He went over the ghost tools, and I was impressed that he did hit some of the more obvious misuses of the common ghost tools that are seen on TV. The idea was to prove that he was a “real” ghost hunter and those screw-ups on TV were just out to make a buck. Did I mention that we paid $75 a head for this tour, and we counted 25 or so people on this one tour alone. Hmm.

Ghost Hunting Tools, ready to go

After talking about the fact that most these tools don’t work great for ghost hunting, and that there were not too many tools that did, he offered them all up to the participants in preparation to go hunt for the ghosts! Oh. OK.

Finally, 1:15 am we were headed down to the dark bowels of the rusty old ship. Now, understand this is an amazing ship and a fantastic place to see, the tour was worth the price strictly for the fact that we got to go where most other visitors would never be able to go. And since these guys were basically making this all up as they went along, we sort of meandered through the most dark and creepy places to look listen and scan for anything unusual. And I do mean anything. Heck a mouse crawling across the floor would have been something.

We toured the famous First Class Pool, a cavernous indoor pool covered with marble tiles and ornate architecture. This must have been a real sight back in the day, oh, and with some lights. It was pretty dark. We could see all the electronic special effects equipment that was used during the day for their haunted ship tour. We got to crawl around a while, and we noted several people noticing discrepancies in their compass readings. There were a few minor anomalies that were witnessed, but all could be explained away by nearby electronics or the steel of the ship. The ghost hunter tour guide basically just walked around pointing his flashlight. I dare say, it got boring pretty quick. Once we determined that haunting wasn’t happening there, we moved on.

Did you hear that? -- Producer Shawna in the Engine Room

One location that is tied to much of the Queen Mary folklore was the engine room’s aptly named, Door 13. There once was a steam activated door to the engine room that was kept closed at all times during the ship’s voyages. It was a safety door that would keep water out in the event of problems on either side. Many of these doors separated sections of the ship in these lower levels. The door itself was no longer there, but according to many different sources, there was a worker who got smashed in the doorway and was killed. In a followup visit to the ship, I verified this information by one of the staff members who says that he had personally seen the accident report and that indeed, this was one of the many fatalities that had occurred on the ship. Though he said himself, “I’m not sure that his ghost was hanging around.” He didn’t believe, but it was clear that Queen Mary policy was to keep this story alive to promote the ghost tours.

The engine room was great, but noisy spot and we noted that for a location to possibly shoot. We were joined for a while by the Queen Mary’s own paranormal researcher who gave the daily tours. She was really into this stuff and told many many stories about noises and sightings. We turned one of our cameras on her and did an impromptu interview, which was quite hilarious. When asked direct questions, in each case, she gave a very squirmy answer. She didn’t like that much.

The Queen Mary Boiler Room

We then moved on to the boiler room. And I have to say, it’s one of the coolest rooms I’ve ever been in. This was one of four giant rooms that originally had enormous boilers in them that created the steam to drive the ship’s massive engines. The boilers were removed, and all that was left was decaying scaffolding and pipe work from the old system. This site has been used in many old Disney films and also as a radical backdrop for some TV shows and live dance events. We quickly decided that this would be a great place to shoot, as it offered the right look, and plenty of clear open space to work, and of course, plenty of stories about the hauntings that happened in here.

After traipsing around the guts of this old ship, we took a bit of a rest in one of the conference rooms, (it too was originally a boiler room, but had since been converted.) We listened to the ghost hunter tell his varied stories about things that went bump in the night and how he was fighting the good fight to rid his clients of their demonic dwellings.

Ryan Johnson, Videotapes old ship parts, but sadly, no ghosts.

The more comfortable he got with us, the more elaborate all the stories got. About half of the group made it through the full ghost hunt. Not because of being scared, but I imagine, more because they were bored. There was a few individuals that were on the tour that were part of a self-envisioned paranormal group. They took themselves very serious and even starting calling out to the spirits. That kind of freaked out a group of young attractive girls that were with us, and so they were among the first to leave. Damn.

Suffice it to say, we didn’t see any paranormal activity, there wasn’t anything even remotely like it. I wasn’t scared, I got a creepy vibe walking through the place, but that was probably more about worrying whether I was going to fall through the rusted hull into the water underneath, than being possessed by the spirit of an ancient ship passenger, or one of the unfortunate souls of a soldier who were carried during World War II.

Shawna, Brian and Ryan after the tour.

All in all it was a really interesting experience. I learned a lot about the history of the grand old ship, and got to see a lot of fantastic things. It’s something that many just don’t get to see these days.

I didn’t realize how much more familiar I would become with this special ship in the months ahead. The Queen Mary was slated to become the primary location for the production of The Skeptologists pilot episode!

Stay Tuned!