According to The Hollywood Reporter, SyFy has picked up three new "reality tv" shows, of which two are squarely in the paranormal vein.
The first, Haunted Collector (that's the working title) features a "family of renowed paranormal investigators" (their phrase) that picks up items that are spooked, and keeps them in its museum. Apparently a lot of things fall into this category. Here's a list from Haunted America Tours. One item on it is the mirror at The Myrtles Plantation in St. Francisville, Louisiana. Now, I must say that I have looked into this very mirror a couple of times, and I have even photographed it, and I have seen nothing paranormal of any kind, nor have the people who have been with me. Maybe we were just giving off bad vibrations. Or ghosts don't like lawyers. Since we seem to travel in packs, there were more than a few lawyers hovering. According to the 'net, the noun of venery for lawyers is "huddle." I don't like that--we need something more poetic. Maybe a claim of lawyers. Or a brief. Yes, I like that one better. In any case, one can never prove a negative, so if I haven't seen the ghosts at The Myrtles, I cannot demonstrate that they aren't there. However...
With regard to the collection of haunted items, eBay, the auction site, only allows the sale of "spirits" or "ghosts" if they are attached to a tangible item. For example, the woman who sold her father's cane through the auction site for $65,000 because her son thought his grandfather was haunting it could do so because eBay considered that she was selling the cane, not a ghost. An online casino had the winning bid--Goldenpalace.com also purchased that Virgin Mary cheese sandwich (I hope no cats got to it).
The second is Paranormal Witness, which will present first hand accounts from people who believe they've experienced hauntings or encounters with spirits. But this show will combine "first-hand testimony and gritty drama." I'm not sure I follow the concept: is Paranormal Witness a "reality" show or isn't it? That is, is it "scripted" or not? (and I use the term "scripted" extremely loosely. But still). Is the drama supposed to be a re-enactment of the testimony, à la America's Most Wanted? (America's Most Wanted scary dead people?)
The third show doesn't seem to have that paranormal-ishness to it, but it still has links with the occult. It's Legend Quest, and features "follows real-life symbologist Ashley Cowie as he travels the world in search of hidden, mystical artifacts." I have no idea what symbology is. Does Mr. Cowie perhaps mean he is a "semiotician?" Semiotics is the study of symbols in various environments (including not incidentally law, magic, and many other disciplines).
Linguistic and Cultural Semiotics is a branch of communication theory that investigates sign systems and the modes of representation that humans use to convey feelings, thoughts, ideas, and ideologies. Semiotic analysis is rarely considered a field of study in its own right, but is used in a broad range of disciplines, including art, literature, anthropology, sociology, and the mass media. Semiotic analysis looks for the cultural and psychological patterns that underlie language, art and other cultural expressions. Umberto Eco jokingly suggests that semiotics is a discipline for studying everything which can be used in order to lie." (1976, p7). Whether used as a tool for representing phenomena or for interpreting it, the value of semiotic analysis becomes most pronounced in highly mediated, postmodern environments where encounters with manufactured reality shift our grounding senses of normalcy.
More about semiotics here from the website of Martin Ryder, University of Denver. And here's a video introducing the subject.
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