Haunted or Hoax

By: Kathryn Trammell

With the current deluge of fall TV premieres upon us, let me introduce those of you who don’t mind seeing stories that are little “too female” to an excellent web series that has flown under the radar since it premiered on YouTube three months ago. Amidst the overwhelming buzz from shows like Inhuman Condition and the imminent return of Carmilla, Haunted or Hoax is a dark horse. Its potential for popularity within the web series genre certain if only it could amass enough viewers to recognize its charming qualities. So, consider this your formal introduction to a web series you should be watching.

The plot of Haunted or Hoax begins simple enough: best friends Jac Murphy (Sydney Kondruss) and Casey Stratt (Isabel Kanaan) create a website called “Haunted or Hoax,” the premise of which involves them going from haunted house to haunted house in an attempt to investigate and document via vlogging if whether or not certain locations are truly haunted. Local ghost stories lead the two to their first location, Grantham House, which is an old “Victorian masterpiece” where an unusual number of deaths have occurred since its first owners, the Granthams, died 118 years ago. Over the years, the house has been passed down from relative to distant relative until at last it landed under the ownership of one Ellia Henderson (Natasha Negovanlis). It isn’t until Casey contacts Ellia to obtain permission to stay inside and investigate Grantham House that Ellia returns to the residence for the first time in years, her contract with Haunted or Hoax requiring her to stay in the house with Jac and Casey until its haunting is either proven or disproven.

At first it appears that the vehicle for telling Jac, Casey and Ellia’s story will be the website’s vlog and that these girls, like so many other characters in web series that use similar means of story narration, will be constantly aware of the camera they eventually set up in the house’s living room. But the story isn’t told this way. Although the camera they situate inside the living room is turned on at all times, the characters only acknowledge its presence during very specific situations. It has one purpose: to document the potential paranormal even when the girls aren’t in the room. Because the vlogging camera is mostly forgotten, it also allows for the story to be told through the lenses of third person cameras, which give the audience a close up perspective on the characters’ interactions as well as the chance to see each actress performing their characters’ real selves instead of, well, their performed selves.

This becomes especially clear when actress Isabel Kanaan switches between the performing version of Casey (which Jac likes to describe as having a “flair for the dramatic”) and the real Casey who is much subtler in her approach to emoting and communicating. When performing, Kanaan’s Casey is full of the same theatrical highs and lows that one might use to dictate a campfire ghost story if their intent was to never actually scare anyone who’s listening. When real, Kanaan’s Casey is reactionary with her natural highs and lows dictated by the dialogue in the script and the way her colleagues play the scene.

The latter is possible because of the immense amount of chemistry the three actresses have with each other. Because web series’ casts are usually small, much of the success of their story’s delivery is reliant on their actors’ ability to forge and foster the believable relationships that are central to the plot. If a web series succeeds in doing this correctly, it creates a product in which audiences are willing to become invested. Haunted or Hoax set themselves up for this kind of success when they cast Kanaan, Kondruss and Negovanlis, whose complementary performances bring dimension to each others characters.

Take for example any scene in which interactions exist predominantly between Jac and Casey. By herself, Jac’s nonexistent filter for personal opinions and judgments might read as tiringly antagonistic, but when paired with Casey’s sweet optimism she is able to soften her character into someone who’s motives (love and jealousy) are entirely relatable. When the interactions revolve around Ellia and Casey, it’s the chemistry between Kanaan and Negovanlis that temper their characters’ extremes. Ellia’s brooding self-deprecation can at times be annoying, but when given an appropriate target, the brooding then transforms into pure desire and dare I say seduction. It’s when Negovanlis sets her eyes on “stun” that Kanaan is finally able to hit the pause button on her character’s manic highs and lows giving Casey a middle ground that seems to feed off and play into Ellia’s attraction to her.

But the great thing about the romance in this story is that it does not overwhelm the plot. This web series is first and foremost about the mystery surrounding the Grantham House deaths and why so many people believe the house to be haunted. I would even predict that at some level the underlying relationships between the girls, which intensify from the moment they step into the house, are a mechanism used by the story’s creator to clue us in on one of the ways in which the house haunts and then dispatches its victims. If you’re familiar with “The X-Files” episode How the Ghosts Stole Christmas, you might know to what I’m alluding.

Other mechanisms used to enhance the plot of Haunted or Hoax are as Victorian as the Grantham House. Whether it was writer Natalie Forward’s intent or not, Haunted or Hoax seems to be infused with the same gothic storytelling elements that one might find when reading Henry James’ Turn of the Screw or even Jessica Waters’ Affinity, both of which rely on atmosphere and mood rather than overt action to create suspense and conflict. Like traditional gothic stories, Haunted or Hoax is filled with enough prophecy, atmospheric mystery, portents and metonymy to thrill any historical fiction nut. However, for those unfamiliar with the genre, Haunted or Hoax might at times seems a bit slow and its script a bit thick with emotion. I assure you, this is done on purpose because when the plot is allowed to slow to a crawl, both emotion and suspense can be heightened so that when the supernatural does occur, we invest more danger into each occurrence.

Slowness aside, Haunted or Hoax remains entertaining to watch given its ability to make the viewer invested in its story, the chemistry between its actresses and the cinematography that showcases this chemistry reason enough alone to watch the series. But Haunted or Hoax also has plot in spades, its primary purpose being the unfolding of a gothic mystery that eclipses any desire to saturate the script with romance. And that is positively refreshing.

Haunted or Hoax can currently be seen on YouTube with new episodes uploaded to its channel every Monday and Friday.