Prater’s Mill in for a ‘Shock’

Published 10:54 pm Sunday, August 24, 2014

VARNELL — When looking for a location to shoot an October episode of “Shock Theatre” for the monthly television program on WDEF in Chattanooga, show creator Jack Gray wanted to film it in a location with “a presence.”

“We were looking for a haunted location for our October show, and the night we talked about it, I told the crew that I would start looking for a location,” Gray said.

When he got home that night, an email was waiting from Dewayne Patterson from Murray County Paranormal Investigations offering to help out with the show in any way possible.

But neither believes that strange forces were pushing them together.

When the two contacted each other, Gray asked for any potential locations and tales to tell for the October show. Patterson had the right place and the right tale.

Gray and his production crew were on location at Prater’s Mill on Sunday for the Oct. 4 episode of the show. The program usually airs monthly on Channel 12 in Chattanooga, but October will be a double-episode month as there will be episodes on both the 4th and 25th. The program airs on each Saturday night from midnight to 2 a.m. The program will air in the lead up to the 43rd annual Prater’s Mill Country Fair, which will be Oct. 11-12.

“Shock Theatre” is a revival of a program which originally ran on WTVC Channel 9 beginning in the late 1960s with a cast of characters introducing an old horror movie. Gray said he was a young adolescent when the shows originally began airing and has always been a fan of science fiction and horror. The combination of the world of horror movies with a real investigation that Patterson and his team at MCPI has undertaken in the past collides for the episode being taped.  

“This is one where we are going all out for,” Gray said Sunday afternoon as crew and actors arrived on the scene near Coahulla Creek High School. “When we find something that works, we hit quick. We are a little ragtag, but you would never know it by watching what we put out there.”

Patterson said the show will be loosely based on a phenomenon which his team has experienced while giving tours of the mill’s grounds in the past.  

“One of the things that has popped up consistently on our tours of Prater’s Mill — and we have had psychics and scientists look at it — is the story of a little boy,” Patterson said. “We can’t find any hard evidence of who the boy is, but a lot of different people have seen him, and he has interacted with at least three teenage girls on our tours — not in a bad way, but more like he overwhelms them. All three times this has happened, it has been girls between the ages of 14-17 sitting in the same rocking chair and they will look up the steps and see him standing there. One time, he actually came down and took the girl’s hand. It has happened three times, and we never tell the tours coming through about anything that has ever happened in the past.”

The MCPI has been active since August of 2012, and Patterson said the team does not charge for its analysis for private clients. Also, there is little in the way of “ghost hunting” in his business, relying more on science — electromagnetic pulses and high-magnification sounds.  

“You can watch the shows on television and pretend to be a ghost hunter, but you aren’t going to believe until something reaches out and touches you,” Patterson said. “You can say you believe, but until you actually experience something you do not really believe. I am living proof of that. I thought I believed until something actually got a hold of me, and then I REALLY believed.

“We actually kind of feel there is a tie between the spiritual and the science behind this and try to show people that the two can co-exist,” he said.

On the web: drshocktheatre.com; murraycountyparanormalinvestigationsmcpi.com; www.facebook.com/mcpi3; pratersmill.org.