If you want to know how unpredictable the television pitching process can be, look no further than the origin story of Haunted Huronia.
Back in 2018, the crew and I shot a zero-budget parody of the famous “What’s in the box?” climax from David Fincher’s Se7en. We dragged a drone out to a field near Penetang and leaned heavily into creating a dark, cinematic, and oppressive atmosphere. We were so proud of the final cut that we used it to get our foot in the door at Bell Fibe. Our grand plan at the time was to pitch them a full-blown sketch comedy series.
That sketch show never actually got greenlit. However, that single gritty video built a relationship with the network that eventually led to a completely different opportunity—making a local documentary television series about ghost hunting.
Enter Haunted Huronia.
Starring James Dalzell and Deanna Palazzo, the series was a deep dive into the local urban legends, creepy history, and paranormal mysteries right in our own backyard. Going from absurdist sketch comedy to filming in terrifying, dark rooms in the middle of the night was a massive pivot. But honestly, it made perfect sense. We just took everything we had learned about building cinematic tension and emotive atmosphere from our Fincher spoof and applied it to real-life local ghost stories.
James and Deanna were fantastic at anchoring the series, bringing a genuine sense of curiosity (and the appropriate amount of dread) to every haunted location we explored. The show had a great run on Bell Fibe One, and it remains one of the most atmospheric, moody projects I’ve ever directed and edited.
