This page contains a Flash digital edition of a book.
Oliver Stone’s son plays himself in his ghostly debut feature From The Woman in Black to the Paranormal Ac-


tivity juggernaut, the ghost story is back with a vengeance. Yet Greystone Park, a new entry in the genre this fall, boasts neither a big star nor the muscle of a large studio behind it. What it does have is a re- enactment of a real-life haunting written by and star- ring those who actually experienced it, and directed by the son of one of America’s most controversial di- rectors. During the 2009 shoot for Wall Street: Money Never


Sleeps, Oliver Stone introduced his son, Sean, to actor Alexander Wraith – both of whom had parts in the film. Over dinner one night, Wraith, a long-time urban explorer, told father and son about a series of para- normal events he’d encountered while infiltrating Greystone Park Psychiatric Hospital in his native New Jersey. Long fascinated by the occult, the director’s son convinced Wraith to take him and a friend to the abandoned asylum one night shortly thereafter. What they experienced scared the hell out of all of them. “It’s like the memories are still there and you can


feel there’s a presence, there’s something around you, something alive,” Sean explains. “You can go mad if you don’t come to terms with the fact that there really is another reality out there.” For the then-24-year-old, who only had a couple of


documentary credits to his name, Greystone was the perfect subject for his first feature. Shot as a straight-up re-enactment of their October 13, 2009, experience, the $500,000 film finds Wraith and Stone playing themselves, with Sean portray- ing the more skeptical of the pair. Oliver Stone also appears, reprising the role he played in introducing the two. The film takes the unique approach of tying the bizarre occurrences in the hospital to


Greystone Park recreates the paranormal events its makers experienced at an abandoned hospital.


demons and spirits of the East, particularly the malev- olent Middle Eastern demons called djinn, or shadow creatures. Though the filmmakers started shooting a couple


of months after their real-world experience, the money fell through three or four days into principal photography. It took another six months to raise more funds and to scout various locations to stand in for the real Greystone, including the abandoned New York children’s men- tal hospital, Letchworth Village; Linda Vista Community Hospital in LA; and the still- working Creedmoor Psychiatric Center in Queens. The shoot was also plagued by strange


occurrences, claims Sean. “We had scenes written but we had half a dozen


incidents that would occur during the course of shoot- ing the scenes, from lights turning on [by themselves] to people getting possessed, and that ultimately comes through in the movie.” Even stranger is that, according to Sean, the film-


makers continue to experience supernatural phenom- ena, including the appearance of shadowy figures and strange phone calls. “The things that happened are very strange,” he


allows. “We had phone calls as recently as a week ago from 666 numbers. These guys were doing rituals – I think they were sorcerers – but they were doing some black magic ritual. And they are still around. That’s part of my life now; I’ve come to accept it.” Greystone Manor arrives on video-on-demand September 13 and on DVD October 16.


A.S. BERMAN


RM8 D R E A D L I N E S


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60  |  Page 61  |  Page 62  |  Page 63  |  Page 64  |  Page 65  |  Page 66  |  Page 67  |  Page 68  |  Page 69  |  Page 70  |  Page 71  |  Page 72