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Real-Life 'Ghost Buster' Has a New Medium: TV
Mary Ann Winkowski's paranormal experiences as a ghost buster are the basis for "Ghost Whisperer," a fall series on CBS starring Jennifer Love Hewitt, below. Winkowski is a paid consultant to the series.
(By Tony Dejak -- Associated Press)
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"I said, 'Right here in Starbucks?' "
Gray worked the experience into the series's pilot episode. Later, he began hearing strange noises and doorbells ringing in the middle of the night at his New York home.
He summoned Winkowski and said she sent the ghosts away, but not before giving him a full description of the people in the house next door, where the ghosts were also hanging out.
He hasn't had any problems since.
"It was pretty impressive. No matter how cynical you are, you have to think, 'How does she know that?' " he said.
"Ghost Whisperer" is just the latest paranormal TV drama, following the success of NBC's midseason hit "Medium," which stars Patricia Arquette as psychic Allison DuBois (also a real person).
Gray thinks there's an audience for such shows right now.
"In this climate we're living in after 9/11, people want to feel there's some larger plan," he said.
Jim Longo, chairman of the Education Department at Washington & Jefferson College in Washington, Pa., doesn't take a position on whether ghosts exist, but he collects stories of people who believe they have experienced the paranormal.
"Some cultures really believe that a spirit lingers until the body is buried, and some cultures believe they linger up to a year," he said.
Winkowski recently spent a week in Los Angeles, demonstrating her craft for the show's writers and for Hewitt, who plays a newlywed trying to cope with her unusual talent.
Winkowski says it wasn't until age 7 that she realized no one else could see what she saw. A lot of people didn't believe her, but her grandmother did and took her to funerals to talk to the recently departed.
"Mom didn't have a clue," she said.
Neither did her husband, Ted.
She told him she was seeing "other" people only after they exchanged vows.
"At first, I thought she could wiggle her nose like Samantha on 'Bewitched,' " he said. "I wouldn't be selling cars if that were the case."
Thirty-seven years later, he takes her ghost busting for granted.
"I never had a reason to doubt her," he said.
