NEWS
TOP DIRECTOR’S PARANORMAL FASCINATION Guillermo del Toro reveals two ghostly encounters HIS 2017 fantasy movie The Shape of Water has attracted numerous honours, including Best Picture at this year’s Academy Award. Like many of Mexican director Guillermo del Toro’s previous productions, it reflects a strong connection with fairy tales, fantasy and horror. This formula is attracting huge audiences keen to immerse themselves in the magic of his cinematic creations. But Del Toro, known as a master of the macabre, gets his thrills from checking into haunted hotels when he’s travelling, taking rooms with a reputation for paranormal activity, in the hope of having his own spooky encounters. He has also spoken of two personal experiences of ghosts. In both cases he heard them rather than saw them. The first happened in Mexico when he was just 11 years old. In an interview with Gizmodo.com’s IO9 in 2016, he explained that after his uncle had passed away he was given the room in which he had lived. “My uncle and I made a deal, because he was one of the earliest influences for me. We talked about the paranormal and the supernatural and all that. He said to me that if and when he died, he would
The Shape of Water (Photo: 20th Century Fox)
come back and let me know if there’s anything else. “So a couple of years after he had died, I was not thinking about it, I was doing my homework, the TV was on. And then I started hearing a voice, a human voice breathing and sighing really close to my ear. Really sad, long sighs filled with sorrow. “I didn’t panic. Strangely enough, I started trying to logically figure out where the sound was coming from, and what it was. As I moved around the room, I noticed that the voice basically walked next to me. This happened for about five minutes. The last few seconds I recognised the voice as my Uncle’s. And then I ran out of the room.” The second encounter happened while he was working on The Hobbit and staying in an old building with other crew members. “Around midnight, I started
hearing a woman screaming horribly, like she was being murdered. And once again I didn’t panic. I thought one of the guys or girls on the crew was pulling my leg. So I didn’t get scared and I started to track the voice. “It was coming from the ventilation chute that went directly to the basement... The voice eventually stopped but then five minutes later I started hearing the most heartbreaking, loud, loud bawling from a male voice. Full of regret and sorrow. It was coming from the same place. That was when I freaked out!” He admitted that he was unable to sleep for the rest of the night. In a recent newspaper interview Guillermo also revealed that he had witnessed a UFO when he was aged 16. “It was a flying saucer with lights, a circle. A friend and I were on a highway and we saw a light on the horizon moving super fast. The thing went from there to 1,000 yards away in less than a second.” Then, spoken like a true film director, he added: “It’s exactly as they do it in the movies.” n
Guillermo del Toro (Photo: Gage Skidmore)
PSYCHIC NEWS | APRIL 2018
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