HALLOWEEN and the Ghostly Tales of Paradise Heights

GHOSTS: Artwork by Joe O'Byrne

HAPPY HALLOWEEN (Blood Red Font for this update) to one and all.  A night for ghosts, goblins and trick or treat and of course a chance to see the Tales from Paradise Heights Halloween Short  - THE WATCHER.  Fans of the series of tales here will know that Paradise Heights is a haunted landscape, most of the tales have had at least a hint of the supernatural about them, in some cases more than a hint.  This theme will continue.  

THE WATCHER and the play RANK were both set on Halloween and indeed dovetail into each other, stories coming from the estates taxi rank, LUCKY CABS.  You can find out more about both of these tales at the links below: 

RANK: A Tale from Paradise Heights
http://www.talesfromparadiseheights.com/rank.html 

THE WATCHER: A Tale from Paradise Heights
http://www.talesfromparadiseheights.com/the-watcher.html

Of course, THE WATCHER is a ghost story.  The play DIANE'S DELI  http://www.talesfromparadiseheights.com/dianes-deli.html  is also in essence, a ghost story.  The theme song written especially for the play is also a ghost story of its own if you listen to the lyrics, the song is on the link to the video to the song below.  Think we're getting a theme here?

Continuing this ghostly theme, various radio clips were created for the play RANK, transmitting from Paradise Radio, the towns local radio station.  If you watch THE WATCHER you will see the station's billboard in the background of one of the shots in the film.   PHIL'S ALL NITE PHONE IN is a popular program on the estate.  These clips were revisited for THE WATCHER and snippets of them can be heard throughout the film.  One clip in particular was never quite heard in full, but it referred to SHIRLEY - the Angel seen in THE BENCH, a girl killed in a car crash in the sixties who returns to the estate of today as an Angel and drifts in and out of the continuing tales.  She is seen in RANK, STRAWBERRY JACK, THE BENCH and there are very strong hints of her in Gabrielle's paintings in DIANE'S DELI - the video above showing representations of her created by the fabulous digital artist DARREN McGINN (you'll see a lot of his work throughout the site in trailers and artwork) http://www.talesfromparadiseheights.com/the-art-of-darren-mcginn.html

There is also reference in this radio clip to Gabrielle (seen in THE BENCH, STRAWBERRY JACK and there's a hint of her presence in THE WATCHER at the end) the artist scarred horrifically as a child by FRANK MORGAN.  A chilling little reference on its own that will be explored further in a future tale.  But the clip itself has something a little strange going on with it.  Various clips are uploaded on SOUNDCLOUD, the most any have been heard is around 480 times, apart from this clip I'm writing about - it's been heard a staggering 17,080 times - examining the stats revealed most of these listens were from Romania...spooky.

Here's the clip, voices of JEN WILLIAMS, a Paradise Heights regular (LISA the taxi rank owner in RANK and THE WATCHER)  and myself as Phil.

https://soundcloud.com/paradise-joe/paradise-radio-phils-all-1

The next tale, THE LAST DROP, currently in preproduction is also a ghost story, again stemming from LUCKY CABS.   A separate tale of its own, I'm hoping to start shooting in December.  Both the images below (a poster and a piece of concept art) are by the brilliant DARREN McGINN.

I've always had a fascination with ghost tales, or hints of ghosts - I think it stems from my Irish heritage and the great tradition of ghost stories Ireland has.  So if you like your ghost stories keep an eye on Tales from Paradise Heights.  

Here's the latest youtube  link to the THE WATCHER, watch, share and comment. Feedback is the breakfast of champions...:)  Enjoy your Halloween and we hope you enjoy THE WATCHER, the film has had over 110,000 views on http://scaryhorrormovies.co.uk which is nice :)

Finishing on two nice things that have happened to me in the last 24 hours.  Yesterday's blog update on THE BABADOOK http://www.talesfromparadiseheights.com/blog/the-babadook-a-metaphor-for-something-far-more-terrifying was actually read by the makers of THE BABADOOK.  They loved it and shared it...that felt pretty cool!

My daughter, Rosa, returned from a holiday in America this week.  She picked up a poster for me from one of my favourite films, THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS - still on topic.  She picked it up in Orlando, Florida, then went on to a comic con a few days later in Atlanta, Georgia.  Here she met CHRIS SARANDON (the voice of JACK SKELLINGTON in the film) where she got him to sign it to me!  Coolest gift ever...HAPPY HALLOWEEN!  

Joe x