Syfy Documentary Claims Forrest J Ackerman Sent A Message From Beyond The Grave

By Nick Venable | Published

This article is more than 2 years old

I’d like to think if superfan Forrest J Ackerman was still around, he’d have championed our site for not trying to bullshit a bullshitter. Ackerman is the guy who coined the term “sci-fi” back in 1954, so he would know a thing or two. He also founded the magazine Famous Monsters of Filmland, and had one of the largest collections of horror and sci-fi memorabilia ever. He died on December 4, 2008, but some say he didn’t cease communications on that day.

“Some” turns out to be documentary filmmaker Paul Davids, who is bringing his Life After Death Project to Syfy. This documentary will take into consideration a strange inkblot that Davids is convinced was sent to him by Ackerman from beyond the grave. While it’s said there are other “messages,” none of them are shown, and it’s not clear just how exploitative this thing is going to get. I certainly believe that Davids believes it’s real.

But he’s not alone. The all-star on this doc is author Richard Matheson, author of I Am Legend, among others, and he’s joined by Saved by the Light author Dannion Brinkley and The Coming Global Superstorm author Whitley Strieber. Other believers are Dr. Gary Schwartz, Professor of Psychology and Medicine at the University of Arizona, and Mark Macy, a former skeptic whose investigation into a European group’s claims of After Death Communication convinced him to switch to the faithful side. Macy’s face is apparently distorted for sections of the video, which they call a product of the Instrumental Trans-Communication (ITC) that Macy studies. There are a handful of other people, chemists included, who also say ADC is totally real and all that.

Michael Shermer, Ph.D. and author of Why People Believe Weird Things and editor of Skeptic Magazine, is the only skeptic featured on the show. I’ll let that speak for itself.

We’ve talked about documentaries on this website that make sense, and we’ve talked about Syfy “reality” shows that make little to no sense, and this Syfy documentary straddles that line with bells on. Find out how good it is when it airs on May 15. On July 16, a two-disc Collector’s Edition DVD will be released, including a sequel that apparently has nothing to do with Ackerman.

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