A Haunted Reel: From a 10-Year-Old’s Ghost Stories to Hollywood’s Dark Side

My father once told me that he and his brother, my Tío Oscar, were walking late one evening through the campos of Cuba when Oscar suddenly shouted, “Get down! Get down!” Horses were galloping straight toward them. The ground trembled; the air filled with sound — and then, nothing. No horses. No hoof beats. Just silence.


What my father had experienced, I later learned, was what some might call an energy loop — a moment replaying itself, caught between memory and emotion, suspended in time.


In some Afro-Cuban spiritual traditions, that glass of water is believed to help the spirits find their way, allowing for a clear and honest connection between worlds.

That’s where she was one afternoon — most likely waiting for her grandkids, me included, to come home from school for lunch — when she awoke to the voice of her friend calling her name, saying goodbye. Her friend was still in Cuba. Days later, a letter arrived. Her friend had passed.

Of late, the more I watch and listen, the more I notice the logic-minded folks quietly inching toward the very thing they used to roll their eyes at — materialists now admitting there’s got to be more than meets the eye.

I grew up reading all of Hans Holzer’s books — the original ghost hunter, the man who made the supernatural sound like both science and poetry. A handful of years before he passed, he was in New York. At that time, I was producing a public access show at Manhattan Neighborhood Network (MNN) called P.U.D. — Politically Upside Down. I grabbed my camera — no cell phones back then — and went to what I think was Convent Avenue. I’d never been there before. (And my car got towed.) The area looked majestic, fitting for someone who spent a lifetime exploring the other side.

That was 2004. While sorting through old archives, the host of P.U.D., DonClark Williams, gave me the DVDs of all the shows. (More will be revealed, as those programs — like Holzer — were prescient.) He had  transferred them years earlier from VHS to DVD. And last year the show made its last technical stop.The DVDs  were digitized. 

 
And if you don’t believe me that there is a shift — take a listen to The Telepathy Tapes. Season 2 just dropped. It’s a great 101 class for all the skeptics out there.

Maybe that’s why Halloween always felt familiar to me — not frightening, but familiar.

This very short reel is a collection of that same spirit: best scary movie --  from The Exorcist  to clips of my favs Stigmata and The Devil’s Advocate, and a tiny bit of my 2004 interview with Hans Holzer.

It’s not just a Halloween dump — it’s a cinematic séance.
A way to revisit the ghosts, stories, and films that remind us how the supernatural never really leaves; it just changes its form.

Annette