![]() He’s in a job, has family around, is working through things with counselling, got married to girlfriend Julia last year in a “Halloween- themed Gothic wedding with zombies and ghouls and monsters – Jason arrived in a coffin on the side of a motorbike.” ”Īs for King? He’s doing well, Lawrence says. There’s a lot of enthusiasm for that because it’s a longitudinal study in terms of all of these things. “It’s being used as a training tool, and we’re trying to get it into universities. Since Ghosthunter’s debut last year, a wide-ranging associated impact campaign focused on helping those dealing with unresolved childhood trauma including mental health issues, homelessness, substance addiction and family violence has attracted support from professionals seeking to provide trauma-informed training and educate university students and the public. The two key things he’d like to see people walk away with after seeing Ghosthunter? Increased empathy, along with a deeper understanding of complex social issues so foreign to most of middle-class Australia. Whether it’s a homeless man on the street or a troubled co-worker. The sins of the father, male rage, poverty and deprivation, the cyclical pattern of domestic violence, generational family dysfunction: for Lawrence, King’s life tells a wider story not just about historic social deprivation and the traumas faced by adult survivors of child abuse, but how we treat fellow human beings who are struggling, In one harrowing scene, a worried Lawrence calls his producer Rebecca Bennett about Jason’s suicide attempts and depressive episodes: what if the pressure of filming pushes him over the edge? “I was certainly seeking advice on how to deal with the situation, and we had fantastic organisations like Blue Knot to advise us.” With demons - including explosions of violence that see several girlfriends take out AVOS against him. In unflinching detail, the camera captures King’s battle to come to terms with his father’s crimes, his own guilt and fear about coming from ‘bad’ seed, and his wrestle Like life itself, “it was incredibly messy,” Lawrence says. ![]() Jason’s absent father, it turned out, was not just a violent childbeater but a serial paedophile who would eventually be found and jailed during the course of filming for raping at least nine little girls, including some of Jason’s friends.įrom ghost hunting encounters to meetings with police and estranged family members to his father’s trial and conviction, there was nothing straightforward or morally unambiguous in King’s story. Little did either man realise how differently Ghosthunter would turn out – although Lawrence’s curiosity was piqued early on after King showed him his childhood hospital records, a brutal catalogue of broken teeth and fractured bones telling a story of unimaginable child abuse that, curiously, King had absolutely no recollection of.Ī kind of protective amnesia seemed to be at work, Lawrence says – perhaps as a result of trauma.īut as the two men built a bond over several years of weekend ghost hunting expeditions, driving the streets, simply hanging out and chatting, the past started seeping through the cracks – and it would prove shocking in the extreme. He made contact and King, friendly, chatty and charismatic, was keen on the idea of being the subject of a documentary. ![]() “But I thought, what an interesting way to get a deeper understanding of the paranormal through this idea of how the grief we feel makes us fascinated by the afterlife and the loss of loved ones.” “I don’t believe in ghosts myself,” Lawrence says. King, Lawrence learnt, had come to the paranormal in the strangest of ways: after being visited by his brother’s ghost shortly after the latter’s death in a car crash. Independent filmmaker Ben Lawrence was intrigued by the subject: a local Sydney man, Jason King – a burly, tattooed security guard with the battered face of a boxer and a side hustle moonlighting as a ghosthunter. ![]() It began with a small article in a local newspaper.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |