Ghosts Archives | Otaku No Culture

Examining I Want to Believe’s Investigator’s Archive

I Want to Believe, An Investigator’s Archive is a terrific read because it looks at the motivations and interests that led these people to become more than just weekend investigators.

Available to purchase on Amazon USA

I Want to Believe, An Investigator’s Archive delves into the backend that television shows rarely feature–getting to know the people. In this book by Jason Hewlett and Pete Renn, we get a down to earth interviews with various paranormal investigators from across the world (North America mostly) who are truly dedicated to this craft, and why they’ve made it their life’s passion.

To cap things off, we hear a story or two of their most memorable finds about the hereafter. They won’t send shivers down your spine, but here, you’ll get a better sense of what these people do than seeing a dramatized take on television. This book is a loose extension these author’s own YouTube series, We Want to Believe, where they investigate the occult.

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Vancouver’s Most Haunted in Review

In what Vancouver’s Most Haunted best offers are a few updated on some well known haunts.

Torchwood Editions
Available to order on Amazon USA

Although Ian Gibbs of Victoria’s Most Haunted (2017) didn’t take a road trip to explore the rest of Haunted Vancouver Island to put into a new book (it’s been tackled by Shannon Sinn), he is back examining the Lower Mainland instead! This time, he’s delving into the secrets Greater Vancouver has tucked away. Instead of always tackling the most well-known places, he went around to find other incidents in Vancouver’s Most Haunted: Supernatural Encounters in BC’s Terminal City.

I’ve looked at his first collection (review here) and it’s an enjoyable read. This latest shows how his narrative has developed over the years. When Gibbs is not telling tales of meeting the undead as one of the many guides in Victoria, BC’s Discover the Past’s Ghostly Walks, he’s working on his next Ghost n’ Bears podcast. What he enjoys the most is extoling the incident that helped shaped the transition of human to spirit. Sometimes, as with a certain “Private Home on Marine Drive,” it’s about testing the cultural mainstays of whether other ethnic cultures believe in this world or not. Kristy’s (not her real name) experience of staying at her grandparent’s luxury home is a standout. It is this chapter and another run-in at a private residence that I found the most engaging to read.

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When The Light The Peony Lantern is …

Victoria Fringe Festival

Showtimes:
Sept 10 to 16th

Streaming Online
Tickets can be bought online.

Botan Dōrō (牡丹燈籠, The Peony Lantern) is a classic Japanese ghost story that can easily deliver chills when adapted to the silver screen. It’s been made and remade since coming into publication circa 17th Century. One of its earliest incarnations was a 1910 silent film production from which I feel The Yokohama Theatre Group took inspiration from. There’s a German Expressionist design—intentional or not—which I recognize. The angles the two huge projection screens intersect are very reminiscent of how two walls in The Cabinet of Caligari bend towards Francis (with one foot bound to a chain) as though it’s laying pressure, holding him down.

The visual motifs are very clear in the theatrical adaptation. Here, the team creates a fantastic illusion of movement. One example is how the rickshaw seems to come alive when in front of a moving video. It carries a new arrival. A lone traveller, Islay Vogel (Nora Beryll), arrives by boat to Japan and he doesn’t have a place to stay until his cab gets lost, introduces a wandering spirit, and finally makes its way to a hostel. There, he encounters an attractive female, O-Tsuyu (May Sera), even though his landlady seems unaware of, and the young adults fall in love.

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Presenting The Haunted Village in Full & Ashcroft, BC’s Haunted History

We Want to Believe Car Title Card On the Paranormal Network on YouTube

The second episode of The Haunted Village is here and it fills in the details I’ve mentioned in my first article. Barbara Roden, Mayor of Ashcroft, British Columbia, sums it up with even more information and those reminders of old times are well represented in all the heritage buildings that still stand. One spirit who regularly manifests is dubbed ‘The Dark Haired Man.’ He alerts people to his presence by turning on the water taps, and it’s up to Peter Renn, Jason Hewlett and crew to try and find him.

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From Art to Music with Millennium Parade’s Debut Album!

This work draws from Japanese folklore, and this supernatural world has modern tonality embedded in the lyrics. The songs take ideas from Hyakki Yagyo – The Night of One Hundred Demons and transform the images, stories and lore from this Asiatic world into evocative melodies that’s both a meditative and a clubbing experience.

Image result for Millennium parade

By Ed Sum
(The Vintage Tempest)

Not everyone will know of Millennium Parade, an arts collective from Japan whose music can’t be easily pigeon-holed. They are led by Daiki Tsuneta, frontman of J-Pop band King Gnu, and can be categorized as New Wave or Trip Hop. The debut self-titled album is a fresh exhilarating experience for me, and their sound is similar to but not quite like the sound from the virtual band’s Gorillaz. But anime fans will know them because they’re the composers of the opening song, “Fly with Me” for Netflix’s Ghost in the Shell: SAC 2045.

This work draws from Japanese folklore, and this supernatural world has modern tonality embedded in the lyrics. The songs take ideas from Hyakki Yagyo – The Night of One Hundred Demons and transform the images, stories and lore from this Asiatic world into evocative melodies that’s both a meditative and a clubbing experience. On the cover, a “Tezutsu Hanabi” (the oldest form of Japanese fireworks, encased in bamboo and held by hand) which was traditionally used to protect from evil spirits, and was also used to pray for a good harvest, is held by Ebisu (one of the 7 Gods of Fortune).

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VFFOnline: Navigating Nobuhiko Ōbayashi’s Labyrinth of Cinema

Noriko and Shigeru’s relationship is cute, and they share some wonderful moments which recall those films of yore. Without it, the anti-war message that concludes each segment would have felt overdone.

By Ed Sum
(The Vintage Tempest)

Streaming Online
at the Victoria Film Festival
Get your pass here.
All films begin Feb 5th, 2021

Note: Geo-locked to residents in British Columbia

Spoiler Alert

Nobuhiko Ōbayashi‘s Labyrinth of Cinema is not only a tribute to the Golden Age of Hollywood but also an anti-war film. The many genres this era introduced helped define the shape of entertainment still to come, and its fondly honoured. We see a bit of everything in this film, from animation to comedy to sci-fi, and there’s even a splash of horror offered after a few musical moments. The best bits are with the romances, though.

The films of today are a lot more sophisticated in terms of realism. This filmmaker went old school to make this movie, and he wanted his performers to overact. They are in on the joke. He uses those techniques to emphasize why the modern (nuclear) age is terrible. The realism is just that, and the fiction is in technicolour. Unlike Ishirō Honda‘s intent in Gojira (1954), this work makes a different commentary about why going to war is bad (from the eyes of one side in the conflict). Also included is the fear of where humanity is headed–whether or not any future conflicts to come will destroy humanity. Ultimately, his goal is to show us why engaging in the art of war (and not in the Sun Tzu sense) is bad.

Ōbayashi makes use of humour to hammer in the point. He also broke a lot of rules from movie making 101 when he was in post-production, namely the editing of Labyrinth of Cinema. I was taught to avoid jump cuts in my newsroom videos, but he’s gratuitous in using this technique. The plot here is non-linear, and he purposely micro-budgeted the set design in some of this film’s best romantic moments to make it picturesque, like it’s from a painting. More green screen sets were used to distinguish the many realities explored. My guess is that the only proper place was a movie theatre and everything else was digitally created.

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