By JE Cothren
It was a dark and stormy night…Well, more wet then
stormy, sort of misty with high precipitation earlier in the
afternoon petering out towards the later evening. It was
definitely dark though because, as I mentioned before, it
was night… I’ll start again.
It was a dark and slightly drizzly night, the night before
Halloween, when I drove to Cleburne to meet Benjamin
Wilbanks of Night Crawlers fame. He was hosting a special
screening in his home of his latest project, Ghostbreakers, a
supernatural spoof that is the product of Wilbanks’s collaboration with another Cleburne native, Gabriel Horn.
The “screening” – Hollywood as that sounds – had the feel
of a family gathering or a church potluck. Kids in their
costumes and non-costumed adults gathered around a projector screen on the beautiful, Better Homes and Gardens
worthy patio to watch. Despite the domesticity of the scene,
however, what we watched was not some cheesy slideshow
or home movie. Instead we enjoyed the elegantly crafted
and wickedly funny labor of love that Wilbanks, Horn, and
their team brought to life in Ghostbreakers.
Ghostbreakers maybe a little difficult to appreciate before
60 | Acoustic Drive
watching, certainly at first glance. I assumed it was one of
those many sincere and uninteresting paranormal investigationshows. Initial misconceptions, however, can be attributed to the fact that Ghostbreakers is absolutely the best
kind of spoof and sincerity has a lot to do with it.
The reality TV package comes complete with set of easily
assembled and extremely familiar tropes which audiences
have learned to love (in a Stockholm Syndrome-y sort of
way.) There’s the tension-building previews that promise
that something definitely exciting will definitely happen
right after this short commercial break, the awkward cast
playing up their pigeon-holed identities for the camera, and
the general sense that without the emotion-driving music
and gracious editing you are essentially watching nothing
happen to a group of strangers.
Paranormal shows have all those reality TV basics, but add
into the mix some of the most especially earnest individuals ever to grace the small screen. Each episode follows the
investigators as they conducting unscientific yet highly selfserious “research” for the cameras. Research that typically
yields very few results, but is all the same championed as
hard evidence by the end of the twenty minute runtime.