Haunted by the Half Light
Late last week, I was invited by Universal Pictures to go along to an evening at a supposedly haunted prison museum near London Bridge as part of a promotion for the UK DVD release of Half Light [2006]. Sadly, I was unable to go along, but I've just received this report from the night from a "mystery contributor" which I thought you'd like to see.
On a cold, misty night, somewhere in the forgotten cobbled back streets of old London town, something was stirring restlessly in the black shadows beneath London Bridge...
... alright, I’m sorry - I just checked my watch and it’s actually 8.30pm on a bright Thursday evening in mid August. Our little party is assembled outside the deceptively small looking twelfth-century Clink Prison Museum that you might easily overlook if you didn’t know it was there. It is tucked away beneath the arches of London Bridge, a fairly innocuous looking place; then James, the museum director, opens the outer wooden doors revealing a cobwebbed skeleton in a cage hanging above the inner door and I realise that this trip is going to be a little more than I bargained for...
There is no going back - tonight we are to be escorted around the prison by the psychic medium, Ian John Shillito, of Living TV’s Most Haunted fame. He is eager to see if he can contact any spirits here. I am wondering what our psychic will look like. I keep thinking of the somewhat nervous character of ‘Morag’ (Therese Bradley), the village psychic from the film Half Light who is ostracised by the rest of the community for her strange ‘talent.’ In the film Morag delivers cryptic and chilling portents to our heroine Rachel Carson (Demi Moore), about her recently deceased young son Thomas (Beans Balawi).
When our own psychic Ian arrives, I am a little relieved. He is dressed in jeans and a black shirt and trainers and seems friendly and relaxed. We descend beneath the grinning gaze of the skeleton into the depths of the prison. I manage to see some exhibits lit up behind glass and a rack of evil looking axes – before they switch the lights off and we are plunged into the gloom. Ian’s calm, disembodied voice tells us to find a seat and I find a space on what feels like a sawdust floor. Ian asks us to imagine a ball of light descending from the ceiling and other symbolic images that will help us to feel protected. We are going to be attempting to make contact with the dead – Ian tells us to listen to the sounds of the room, to open ourselves up to any presences there might be. Already he is getting a strong impression of a young boy with a large head and small body but he is unable to tell us why he is receiving this. I feel a chill down my spine when I recall Rachel’s own dead son, Thomas, who begins appearing to her while she is staying in the isolated cottage on the Scottish coast in Half Light.
After this we get up and move along to another passageway that is lit with orange light where a waxwork priest kneels with a frozen look of supplication. I am feeling a little anxious. We sit down here and are quiet for a moment; then we hear a faint clicking sound from the room behind me. We wait and there it is again, faint but definitely a chink like pebble on pebble or…chains, Ian tells us. We get up a
nd move into the clicking room. Ian invites the spirit that is making the noise to tap again. Click. It’s definitely coming from inside the room. He is getting images of a woman in fourteenth century dress. Are you a woman? He asks. Click. Were you murdered? Click. Were you a…he’s reluctant to use the word ‘prostitute’ so asks James, the museum curator, for a more accurate name - Winchester Geese is what they were referred to). Click. She was. Ian calls out various questions to the spirit – he addresses her as ‘Marianne.’ Like Rachel Carson, we learn that Marianne has lost a young child. Marianne shows Ian a starry sky to ask if she child is in heaven - her own guilt keeps her from going and that’s why she lingers here still in the prison. In Half Light, Rachel goes to stay in Scotland in order to help her to come to terms with the death of her son and to cope with her writer’s block, being a successful crime novelist. A mother’s guilt is a powerful force; the film plays with idea that the visitations of Rachel’s dead son are a manifestation of her feeling of responsibility for leaving him alone to play by the canal, in which he tragically drowned. Back at the Clink, Ian asks Marianne if she will join us upstairs for the séance, where we could help her to move on? Silence.
Upstairs we sit in complete darkness around a table with little fingers touching and Ian calls out for any astrals who died in the prison to come forward and bang the table, rock the table or tip the table. I am hoping they don’t. Poltergeist activity has been reported before – James has heard footsteps on the fire escape and found sawdust on his chair every morning for a week. When confronted, his colleagues knew nothing about it. Poltergeists are known to move objects around, just as Thomas does in Half Light when he moves the magnetic lettering on the fridge to communicate with his mother...
Meanwhile someone sees a faint light mist in the corner. Suddenly there is a clatter behind the bar and we all jump. Ian feels a strong presence of someone wearing a leather jerkin; he calls this spirit Edmund. James is feeling cold and sick so he leaves the room for a minute. Someone else feels a slight scratching on the tablecloth and I think I do too. James returns. We wait a long time but there is nothing else.
When the lights come on, James tells us that a paramedic once saw the figure of a woman embedded in the floor in the corner; his conclusion is that she was standing on the old level of the prison’s first floor. I wonder if she was Marianne. He also tells us that in the past, the prison had actually been on the river, which has since receded. I think of the lonely coastal beauty of the scenery of Half Light that hides its deadly secret.
Ian told us that so many lay people he does séances with worry about something clinging to them, and following them home afterwards. Darkness has fallen as we step outside the Clink, and as I walk home I can’t help peering back over my shoulder into the half light.
Half Light is now available on Region 2 DVD from Universal Pictures Video.
Film © 2005 FILM & ENTERTAINMENT VIP MEDIENFONDS 3 GMBH & Co. KG AND HALF-LIGHT PRODUKTIONS GMBH. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.Packaging design © 2006 Universal Studios. All Rights Reserved
On a cold, misty night, somewhere in the forgotten cobbled back streets of old London town, something was stirring restlessly in the black shadows beneath London Bridge...
... alright, I’m sorry - I just checked my watch and it’s actually 8.30pm on a bright Thursday evening in mid August. Our little party is assembled outside the deceptively small looking twelfth-century Clink Prison Museum that you might easily overlook if you didn’t know it was there. It is tucked away beneath the arches of London Bridge, a fairly innocuous looking place; then James, the museum director, opens the outer wooden doors revealing a cobwebbed skeleton in a cage hanging above the inner door and I realise that this trip is going to be a little more than I bargained for...There is no going back - tonight we are to be escorted around the prison by the psychic medium, Ian John Shillito, of Living TV’s Most Haunted fame. He is eager to see if he can contact any spirits here. I am wondering what our psychic will look like. I keep thinking of the somewhat nervous character of ‘Morag’ (Therese Bradley), the village psychic from the film Half Light who is ostracised by the rest of the community for her strange ‘talent.’ In the film Morag delivers cryptic and chilling portents to our heroine Rachel Carson (Demi Moore), about her recently deceased young son Thomas (Beans Balawi).
When our own psychic Ian arrives, I am a little relieved. He is dressed in jeans and a black shirt and trainers and seems friendly and relaxed. We descend beneath the grinning gaze of the skeleton into the depths of the prison. I manage to see some exhibits lit up behind glass and a rack of evil looking axes – before they switch the lights off and we are plunged into the gloom. Ian’s calm, disembodied voice tells us to find a seat and I find a space on what feels like a sawdust floor. Ian asks us to imagine a ball of light descending from the ceiling and other symbolic images that will help us to feel protected. We are going to be attempting to make contact with the dead – Ian tells us to listen to the sounds of the room, to open ourselves up to any presences there might be. Already he is getting a strong impression of a young boy with a large head and small body but he is unable to tell us why he is receiving this. I feel a chill down my spine when I recall Rachel’s own dead son, Thomas, who begins appearing to her while she is staying in the isolated cottage on the Scottish coast in Half Light.After this we get up and move along to another passageway that is lit with orange light where a waxwork priest kneels with a frozen look of supplication. I am feeling a little anxious. We sit down here and are quiet for a moment; then we hear a faint clicking sound from the room behind me. We wait and there it is again, faint but definitely a chink like pebble on pebble or…chains, Ian tells us. We get up a
nd move into the clicking room. Ian invites the spirit that is making the noise to tap again. Click. It’s definitely coming from inside the room. He is getting images of a woman in fourteenth century dress. Are you a woman? He asks. Click. Were you murdered? Click. Were you a…he’s reluctant to use the word ‘prostitute’ so asks James, the museum curator, for a more accurate name - Winchester Geese is what they were referred to). Click. She was. Ian calls out various questions to the spirit – he addresses her as ‘Marianne.’ Like Rachel Carson, we learn that Marianne has lost a young child. Marianne shows Ian a starry sky to ask if she child is in heaven - her own guilt keeps her from going and that’s why she lingers here still in the prison. In Half Light, Rachel goes to stay in Scotland in order to help her to come to terms with the death of her son and to cope with her writer’s block, being a successful crime novelist. A mother’s guilt is a powerful force; the film plays with idea that the visitations of Rachel’s dead son are a manifestation of her feeling of responsibility for leaving him alone to play by the canal, in which he tragically drowned. Back at the Clink, Ian asks Marianne if she will join us upstairs for the séance, where we could help her to move on? Silence.Upstairs we sit in complete darkness around a table with little fingers touching and Ian calls out for any astrals who died in the prison to come forward and bang the table, rock the table or tip the table. I am hoping they don’t. Poltergeist activity has been reported before – James has heard footsteps on the fire escape and found sawdust on his chair every morning for a week. When confronted, his colleagues knew nothing about it. Poltergeists are known to move objects around, just as Thomas does in Half Light when he moves the magnetic lettering on the fridge to communicate with his mother...
Meanwhile someone sees a faint light mist in the corner. Suddenly there is a clatter behind the bar and we all jump. Ian feels a strong presence of someone wearing a leather jerkin; he calls this spirit Edmund. James is feeling cold and sick so he leaves the room for a minute. Someone else feels a slight scratching on the tablecloth and I think I do too. James returns. We wait a long time but there is nothing else.
When the lights come on, James tells us that a paramedic once saw the figure of a woman embedded in the floor in the corner; his conclusion is that she was standing on the old level of the prison’s first floor. I wonder if she was Marianne. He also tells us that in the past, the prison had actually been on the river, which has since receded. I think of the lonely coastal beauty of the scenery of Half Light that hides its deadly secret.
Ian told us that so many lay people he does séances with worry about something clinging to them, and following them home afterwards. Darkness has fallen as we step outside the Clink, and as I walk home I can’t help peering back over my shoulder into the half light.
Half Light is now available on Region 2 DVD from Universal Pictures Video.
Film © 2005 FILM & ENTERTAINMENT VIP MEDIENFONDS 3 GMBH & Co. KG AND HALF-LIGHT PRODUKTIONS GMBH. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.Packaging design © 2006 Universal Studios. All Rights Reserved
posted by Kevin at 2:20 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home