LGBTQ voices have ?? ?? ???always struggled to be heard, and none more than the voices of the undead.
A new web series called Queer Ghost Huntershopes to bridge that gap. The show, produced by documentary filmmaker Stu Maddux, follows a group of LGBTQ ghost hunters, collectively known as the Stonewall Ghost Hunters, as they travel around the United States to different haunted houses, prisons and mental institutions, seeking to make contact with the queer dead.
SEE ALSO: Saying goodbye to AfterEllen, and a generation of queer women's mediaAs one of the hunters explains in the opening trailer, the filmmakers were tired of the presumption that all ghosts had to be heterosexual. LGBTQ ghosts, many of whom spent their lives in hiding, have stories that desperately need to be heard by the living.
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The show uses real ghost hunting techniques and humor (thankfully) to reach out to the dead. In the first episode, they travel to Toledo, Ohio, to speak with lesbian nuns.
Surprise! It appears out the ghost only wants to communicate with the lesbian on the team.
As Queer Ghost Hunters explains on their Facebook page:
"Sadly enough, throughout history our LGBTQ community members were disproportionately incarcerated in jails and prisons, committed to asylums and were overwhelmingly employed in theaters and opera houses. These are all places that ghosthunters love to investigate. So why don't ghosthunters ever seem to find any queer ghosts?!!"
It's a good question, one that the series hopes to investigate over the course of the season. So far, Stu Maddux, the show's prdocuer, has been sincerely impressed with the the group's results.
"That there are surprising number of queer ghosts! Who knew! At most investigations there is usually contact with at least one ghost who reveals over the course of a conversation that she was a woman who loved other women or something like that," Maddox told Mashablein an email.
"And I gotta hand it to the team, I think they have such great results because no one has ever asked ghosts this before."
Catch more from Queer Ghost Hunterson their YouTube page here.