January 30, 2004
Film crew searches for Sinatra ghost
By Merry Thomas, bonanza staff writer
The film crew had barely entered the attractive suite when the young actor sitting on the end of the bed began talking rapidly as he stared at the floor.
He was describing a woman who was feeling ill.
"Her hair was flowing in this direction, and this is exactly where she lay," he said.
He suddenly reeled and slumped onto the carpeted floor, face down. The young man claimed he was experiencing what happened to Marilyn Monroe as she overdosed from barbituates in 1961 during the filming of "The Misfits".
Chris Fleming, a paranormal sensitive from Chicago, was hired by the British film crew to contact the spirits of departed celebrities.
The British film crew was shooting at Crystal Bay's Cal-Neva Resort as part of a series called "Dead Famous" for The Living Channel.
"This is our last step to try to find the ghost of Frank Sinatra," producer Charlotte Wheeler said.
She described the program as an alternate way to present biographies.
"The paranormal is really popular in England now," she added.
The crew had been in Los Angeles in November where they had a seance for Marilyn Monroe. They also went to known James Dean haunts but nothing came through there, Wheeler said.
The crew consists of Wheeler, plus director Chris Williams, cameraman James Lloyd, and the actors. The female star is Gail Porter, well-known to British audiences for hosting "Top of the Pops," plus appearances in a variety of programs aired on the BBC, ITV and Channel 4.
"Gail is the skeptic," Wheeler explained. Her counterpart is Fleming, who published Unknown Magazine for five years, a publication that invited people to tell their stories about paranormal experiences. Fleming describes his childhood as being similar to that of the child in the movie "Sixth Sense."
The British television crew found Fleming via the Internet.
"He had the good looks plus the experience we were looking for," Wheeler said.
The "Dead Famous" crew went through the Thunderbird Lodge where Fleming said he felt a lot going on.
"If I don't feel anything, I can't just turn it on or off for the camera," he said.
Fleming said the reason why James Dean didn't show up when they expected he might was because his spirit came to him during the Marilyn Monroe seance.
Fleming, who is termed a "sensitive" because of his ability to sense people's emotions, histories and futures, learned not only of that term while acting in the series but also discovered he is an empathetic, or channeler.
"What both James Dean and Marilyn Monroe wanted to get across is that people let go of them, stop worshiping them and wanting to be like them," he said. "They can't really go on to the afterlife because of millions of peoples' thoughts."
Fleming called his ability to tune into spirits both a blessing and a curse. He described a homeless man in Las Vegas who asked Charlotte for a quarter only minutes after he had done so as a lark.
"Suddenly I felt all of his pain," he said. "If we could all feel that, we'd all want to do whatever we could to help those people."
Such emotions can be so intense that they overwhelm him.
He spoke of channeling James Dean during the seance for Marilyn Monroe.
"Dean said it was his time to go," he said.
He accepted death with a shrug. Marilyn Monroe, on the other hand, didn't want to die, he said.
"She was poisoned ... and that's all I'll say," Fleming said. "It was a sad death."
Fleming said the television series has meant his reopening himself, allowing himself to see spirits as vividly as when he was a child. As a new channeler, he said he was astonished when he experienced people's feel thoughts and emotions just before their deaths.
"Sal Mineo was stabbed in the chest ... it was traumatic for him. It was not expected, and he didn't die right away," Fleming said.
After the episode was filmed, he was shown drawings of footprints and a crime scene photo that showed a trail of blood. That's when he realized his seemingly conflicting sensations about Mineo's death were on target.
"He crawled from the place where he was stabbed," Fleming said.
The intent of the series is not to glamorize the deaths or diminish the memories of these celebrities but to discover what really happened and to show respect for who they were, he explained.
"Frank Sinatra, the Rat Pack, had class," he said. "People looked up to them."
Tuesday evening, the group planned to hold a seance at the resort in a last-ditch effort to contact the man.
The crew's next stop is Alcatraz to look for ghosts of mob figures.
Although Fleming's paranormal abilities have been a source of derision, he has learned to accept this side of him. The experiences have led him to his life's philosophy -- a way of thinking and believing that is evolving along with his reawakening.
"In other nations and for the American Indians, these experiences were expected, part of daily life," he said.
Fleming urges people to meditate and try to figure out their life's purpose rather than focusing on emulating a celebrity.
"The one thing we all have in common is, we're all dying," he said.
