By Carl Medland | Interview By: Daniel P’Lopez
Paranormal Hollywood Haunting is far more than a ghost story. It is a documentary rooted in real people, real places, and real experiences. Every location you see exists. Every conversation is grounded in truth. What fascinated me was how reality often feels stranger than fiction. Instead of creating fear through special effects, I wanted to create unease through authenticity. When the audience starts asking, “Did that really happen?” the film becomes far more unsettling.
At its heart, this is a film about identity. We often think of hauntings as spirits trapped in buildings, but I believe people are haunted by secrets, by prejudice, and by the lives they never felt free to live. Hollywood has always been built on reinvention, yet for many people, especially within the LGBTQ+ community, the pressure to hide who you are has been just as powerful as the pressure to succeed. This film explores what happens when identity refuses to stay hidden.
One of the most powerful parts of the story is the relationship between Daniel and Arthur. Their love story is real. It is unapologetic, deeply moving, and unlike the relationships we usually see on screen. There is a forty-two-year age gap between them, yet what connects them is far greater than age. Their story challenges assumptions and reminds us that love does not fit neatly into society’s expectations. I wanted audiences to meet them without judgment and see two people whose lives have been shaped by resilience, loyalty, and acceptance.
The film also reflects two versions of Hollywood. There is the glamour people dream about, and then there is the Hollywood built on forgotten stories, hidden lives, and painful histories. Old Hollywood often demanded silence from people who were different. New Hollywood speaks far more openly about identity and equality, but there are still voices waiting to be heard. This documentary holds up a mirror to both worlds and asks how far we have truly come.
Mental health is another important thread running through the film. We touch on experiences linked to paranoia, schizophrenia, trauma, and grief with empathy rather than sensationalism. The unexplained can sometimes blur with deeply personal experiences, and I wanted audiences to consider how fear, memory, and loss shape the way we understand reality. The film does not hand you easy answers. It invites you to ask difficult questions.
As a paranormal investigator, I have always believed the greatest mysteries are human ones. The supernatural becomes a doorway into something much deeper. This film is about the echoes people leave behind, the stories history forgets, and the voices that still deserve to be heard. Whether you believe in ghosts or not becomes almost secondary. The emotional truth is what stays with you.
I wanted to blur the line between documentary and cinema. The film unfolds with the honesty of a documentary while building the tension of a paranormal thriller. I wanted viewers to forget they were watching a film and feel as though they were standing beside us, experiencing every discovery in real time. That realism creates a different kind of fear because the audience never feels protected by fiction.
Ultimately, Paranormal Hollywood Haunting is about acceptance. It is about giving space to people whose stories have too often been overlooked. It asks who gets remembered, who gets erased, and who still deserves to have their truth heard. If audiences leave talking about identity, love, history, and the blurred line between reality and the unexplained, then I feel the film has achieved exactly what I hoped it would.
This is an eighty-five-minute documentary paranormal thriller, but beneath every unsettling moment lies a profoundly human story. I hope audiences arrive expecting ghosts and leave thinking about people.
Daniel: Why did you make Paranormal Hollywood Haunting?
I wanted to make a paranormal film that feels completely authentic. Rather than relying on fiction, I followed real people in real locations, telling their own stories. What interested me was how truth often feels more unsettling than anything you could invent. The film blurs the line between documentary and thriller, leaving the audience asking one simple question. Where does reality end and the unexplained begin?
Daniel: Why should audiences watch the film?
This is much more than a ghost story. It is an eighty-five-minute documentary paranormal thriller that explores love, loss, mental health, history, and the stories people tried to bury. Whether you believe in the paranormal or not, the emotional journey is real. I hope audiences leave entertained, moved, and questioning what they believe, because sometimes the most haunting stories are the true ones.
Daniel: What are the themes covered in this film?
At its heart, Paranormal Hollywood Haunting is about identity, acceptance, and love. Daniel and Arthur’s relationship is real, with a huge age difference, and their story challenges many assumptions about what love looks like. The film also explores how attitudes towards homosexuality have changed from Old Hollywood to today, while asking whether everyone has truly been given the freedom to live as their authentic self.
Daniel: What is the significance of filming at this Hollywood mansion next to the lake?
The location was never simply a backdrop. From the moment we arrived, it felt like another character in the story. The mansion sits overlooking the lake beneath the Hollywood Hills, surrounded by decades of history, mystery, and memory. Every room has a presence. Every corridor feels as though it has witnessed another chapter of someone’s life. As filmmakers, we wanted the audience to experience the house rather than simply look at it.
The lake became equally important because water has always been associated with reflection, memory, and unanswered questions. Throughout the film, the house watches over the lake almost like a silent witness to everything that has happened there. That relationship between the two creates an atmosphere you simply couldn’t build on a film set. It’s authentic, and audiences instinctively feel that authenticity.
What I love is how the mansion almost responds to the people inside it. As Daniel shares his story and as we investigate, the building begins to reveal itself piece by piece. It becomes a place where history, identity, grief, love, and the paranormal all seem to collide. By the end of the film, you no longer think of it as a location. You think of it as a living part of the story.
That’s why I believe the mansion becomes one of the film’s main characters. Like every great character, it has a past, it has secrets, it has moments of beauty and darkness, and it changes the people who enter it. It doesn’t simply contain the story. It helps tell it.
Paranormal Hollywood Haunting is available on Amazon Prime.