Ask any of my friends and they will tell you how passionate I am about the paranormal. When asked why I am such a diehard believer in ghosts (and UFOs for that matter), I always reply with the following two pieces of logic: 1) what on earth are you losing by not believing? and 2) the second you choose to believe, life instantly becomes a hell of a lot more interesting. This past weekend I went home for my niece’s wedding and was talking to my sister who had an unnerving ghost story about her brother-in-law which made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. It was as disturbing as it was captivating, and it managed to get my entire family bouncing an amazing array of ghost stories around the kitchen table. This explosion of the paranormal in recent years has not gone unnoticed by the art world, including artist Meredith Danluck who chose to celebrate our popular culture’s obsession with one of the most traumatizing varieties of all hauntings: the extremely rare poltergeist.
Danluck is a prolific contemporary artist whose work addresses the American identity and the deeply-rooted and widely-accepted mythologies it is composed of. One of her best known subjects was the Marlboro Man as she played with the peripheral and shared mythologies that are associated with this western icon such as Hollywood, the Deep South, and more. Danluck was recently selected to create an installation for the creme-de-la-creme of all art exhibitions — the Venice Biennale. The starting point for her Venice installation was the seemingly infinite selection of bogus YouTube videos of poltergeists caught on tape. The matrix is always the same: a sliding chair, a few falling books, and flickering lights. She takes these predictable set-ups and sort of “reverse engineers” them towards a more Spielbergian production. TO WATCH THE VIDEO OF DANLUCK’S VENICE INSTALLATION CLICK HERE.
And no FEELguide mention of ghosts would be complete without a shout out to my favorite show on television. This coming Friday, September 23 marks the fifth season premiere of Ghost Adventures on the Travel Channel, where they investigate the Ashmore Estates, a former private psychiatric facility in Ashmore Illinois. And good news for all you fellow Ghost Adventures fans: on June 25 main host Zak Bagans announced via Twitter that a new contract was signed for 26 new episodes to be added to the remaining episodes left on the current contract, equalling a total of 34 episodes to be made for season 5. For more information be sure to visit the Ghost Adventures Website. You can watch the first teaser for the episode below.
SEE ALSO: HALLOWEENguide: The 1949 Case That Inspired “The Exorcist”
SEE ALSO: Watch The Terrifying Documentary Of The World Famous Enfield Poltergeist
SEE ALSO: The Worldwide Television Phenomenon Of “Ghost Adventures” And The Burgeoning Science Of The Paranormal
