For my final task of university Bootcamp year 1, I was tasked with creating a short with the theme 'Teesside Stories'. So I decided to delve into the supernatural and explore Middlesbrough's ghosts.
I found this deeply fascinating, because although I've never witnessed a ghost encounter I know people who have, and it's an area that's always peeked my curiosity. I recalled reading about local ghosts in the books 'Haunted Middlesbrough' and 'Haunted Teesside', so I reached out to a couple of the establishments that claimed to have ghosts, according to these books. The Central Library weren't able to help, unfortunately, as the members of staff that had witnessed phenomena have since left, and the Ghost Room itself is now used for storage. But the Dorman Museum staff kindly allowed me to film around the building when it wasn't open to the public, and even answered my questions about their resident ghost; The Curator. Sadly, they didn't want to appear on screen but I was able to get a voice actor to read out their answers, so it was all good.
Furthermore, I reached out online for more local ghost encounters. I posted in the Facebook group 'Memories of Middlesbrough' and I received a massive outpouring. All the stories I received were intriguing, but due to my time limit, that I'd already gone over, I couldn't use them all in a manner that I would have liked to in order to explore them all. But I did choose one specific experience to get another voice actor to read, it was a poem written by Ian Hall-Dixon to make sense of his ghost encounter when he was a child.
Amongst the replies I received, I was contacted by a local ghost investigator (Kindred Spirit Investigations) who offered to answer my questions, but also sadly didn't want to appear on screen, so I got another voice actor to read out her answers for the film. Again, it was all good. The answers I got, like the Dorman Museum ones, are deeply insightful and fascinating to listen to.
The film had a working title of 'Ghosts of Boo-ro', but as much as I like playing with words this title seemed a bit daft. Then I came up with the title I used for the finished short; 'GhosTees'.
Below you can watch the finished short. Enjoy.
