Two pals explore the world’s most haunted sites in unscripted paranormal comedy series Ghosting With Luke Hutchie and Matthew Finlan
Ghosting With Luke Hutchie and Matthew Finlan has the filterless vibe of a dating show, but the kind of ghosting these two are doing involves a different type of disappearing act. Friends Luke Hutchie and Matthew Finlan, best known for their work in the horror genre, are going ghost hunting across Canada with some of their famous pals, hoping to find out if some of the more haunted places have supernatural tenants or not. Appropriately, the show was conceived on the lengthy boat trip from San Francisco to Alcatraz. “Apparently it’s haunted,” says a surprised Hutchie. “We came up with the concept about us going ghost hunting in Alcatraz. We have no reason to be doing that.” A week later the guys had booked a haunted Airbnb. “We shot our proof of concept to see how we would actually ghost hunt,” says Finlan. “From there we realized our version of ghost hunting is different from every other version that has existed.” TV Week spoke to the co-creators about their new project and what makes it the most fabulous paranormal show out there.
This show feels like a reaction to paranormal shows in general. What is it about those shows that drive you crazy?
Matthew: Most paranormal shows take themselves very seriously. I don’t think we can really take anything seriously. Hence Ghosting, which is like The Simple Life meets Buzzfeed Unsolved in a beautiful hybrid mashup. That’s true to who we are.
Luke: If you were looking for a ghost hunting show to watch and you love the paranormal, this is not going to be the show that you’re going to want to see. We take the fun of being with your friends and slap it onto ghost hunting. We’re taking the people that you love from your favourite horror project, whether it’s Scream, Level 16, Yellowjackets or Orphan Black, and putting them at the epicentre of a terrifying situation, while you watch them squirm to reach a verdict of “haunted” or “not.”
What sets you apart from other ghost hunters?
Matthew: Well, I am a firm believer in the paranormal, and Luke comes from the angle of more being a skeptic.
Luke: I mean, seeing is believing. You know what I mean?
Matthew: The thing is, though, anyone who might know us previously knows us from a very scripted world of horror, so now we’re stepping off of the script and into an actual real-life haunted house to see if we’re as brave as we pretend to be. And there’s also the aspect that we have no idea what we’re doing,
Luke: Also, what makes it so exciting is that it’s just fun. It’s easy. You don’t need to know the 800-year-old history of this ghost. It’s like, no, this ghost just froze to death and now we’re going to try to dance with it.
How easy or hard is it to find paranormal activity?
Matthew: What’s hard is trying to find paranormal activity within one shoot day. I think if we were camping out at these locations, we would have a plethora of evidence and it would be hard to narrow down what we want to share, but it’s hard to put ghosts on a schedule. That’s what I learned. Otherwise, I think it’s pretty easy to evoke a spirit in a place.
Luke: Something happened every episode, so we definitely got them to show up. Or did they show up, I guess is my question? But it was a weird thing because the times you thought nothing was going to happen, something happened. We definitely did a great job within the time constraints. You can also just gaslight the ghost and that usually makes them show up too.
That sounds like a terrible idea.
Luke: I love doing that. That’s my favourite pastime.
Matthew: Yeah. Luke provokes the paranormal. No one else.
If you think about it, paranormal activity is visually very anticlimactic. At best, it’s a flashing light. How did you go about figuring out what that would look like on screen?
Luke: Matthew set up his little tool so that you would be able to at least have some sort of visual cue. I think again, things happen in the weird way that you didn’t think they would, but I definitely think you see the haunting in this show.
Matthew: I think we visually wanted this show to have two elements.
Luke: Being sexy and being hot.
Matthew: Exactly. Those are the only two requirements to catch a ghost. You must seduce them. We’ve got the HQ [camera], which is very slick, very polished. And then we’ve got the in-the-field part, with which we wanted to pay homage to The Blair Witch Project or Paranormal Activity, very run-and-gun style.
Luke: The fun thing about this show is that the celebrity guest never knew where they were going. They found out hours before we went to set. So when we did get there, even if nothing was happening, they were like, where the hell am I? What happened here? Why am I here? I don’t want to be here. Get me out. It was constant nonsense, start to finish.
Who are some of the guests?
Luke: We have Katie Douglas from Ginny & Georgia and Level 16, Frankie Grande, from Spree and a movie called Summoning Sylvia. Zoë De Grand Maison from Orphan Black. We have Bukola Ayoka, who’s in the new series Robyn Hood. Devyn Nekoda from Scream. Kevin Alves from Yellowjackets. Synthia Kiss from Canada’s Drag Race . . .
What makes a good guest?
Matthew: A good guest is someone who has a strong opinion either way, whether they believe or they don’t believe. If they start the investigation strong in their conviction, that’s awesome. All of our friends were awesome. But some guests that are like, “I don’t believe in ghosts. I don’t know what I’m doing here, but I’m not going to catch a ghost” — to try and convince them that there might be something there was a really fun challenge for me, in particular.
Luke: You have to be able to roll with the punches. You need to be able to get up and scream and cry and throw up and laugh and keep going. You’ve got to be able to go with the vibe. Otherwise this show is a nightmare for you. And it has to be someone you would want to be trapped in an elevator with. If you don’t want to be trapped in an elevator with them, you can’t do the show. You’re not going to survive.
Ghosting with Luke Hutchie and Matthew Finlan, streaming Friday, January 26 CBC Gem