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I know that a lot of people think the ghost hunting/ghost stories shows that have become so popular on TV over the last few years are pretty hokey. And yeah, ok, most of them are. But I still watch them. Except that one with Zak WhatsHisName. He gets on my nerves.
But this week I got an announcement about what may well turn out to be my all-time favorite of the genre: Queer Ghost Hunters.
Queer Ghost Hunters is a new web series set to debut on YouTube in October. In addition to being the month of Halloween, October is also LGBT History Month, which fits right in with part of the theme of the show: “The docu-series follows real people discovering stories of the queer past in places as diverse as the Ohio State Reformatory, where the film Shawshank Redemption was just — just one of many reportedly haunted places where LGBTQ people were often imprisoned, lived or worked in greater numbers that the general population,” according to the QGH press release. Queer Ghost Hunters looks at very real history, no matter what you believe, while parodying other ‘ghost hunting’ shows.”
As ghost hunter Lori Gum says in the trailer for the series, “The places most ghosts are found, we [LGBT people] were the people in those places.”
The series focuses on the work of Stonewall Columbus Queer Ghosthunters, “the first known group of its kind,” who “investigate haunted sites, asking for the first time if there are queer ghosts that wish to come out to them,” and — so the press release says — actually documenting on film some of those contacts with queer ghosts.
The series is produced by the same folks who brought you Gen Silent and Reel in the ClosetStu Maddux Films. Maddux himself notes that while the SCQG members “really believe in what they are doing,” they are also well aware “how bizarre it all looks. So their ability to have fun at their own expense has been just as fun to document.”
Maddux’s husband and co-producer, Joe Applebaum, adds, “It is the perfect combination of real findings and funny moments wrapped into a campy version of ghost hunting shows.”
I have already subscribed to their YouTube channel and “liked” their Facebook page, and I will be watching when Season 1 debuts on Oct. 1. Take a look at the trailer, below, and see if you want to be watching then, too.