The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
TV’s ‘Ghost Brothers’ have Atlanta roots
The three stars either live or went to school in city.
They’re not brothers. They’re not ghosts. But a trio of black buddies with an interest in the paranormal and Atlanta ties are now on Destination America’s new series titled “Ghost Brothers.” The first of six episodes will debut at 9 p.m. Friday.
The opening episode starts with an ultra-dramatic narrator intoning: “Here’s a new team of paranormal investigators here to answer two questions about ghost hunting: Are ghosts for real and ...” “Why is everybody white?” That last question was asked by the leader of the crew, Dalen Spratt, a Clark Atlanta University graduate. He came up with the idea of black ghost hunters because he didn’t know of any.
“I’ve always been a fan of the horror genre,” Spratt said in an interview during a recent screening at Graveyard Tavern in East Atlanta. “Always watching ghost hunting shows. It was always white dudes. I called up Juwan and said, ‘Let’s do this!’”
Juwan Mass, a frat brother at Clark Atlanta with Spratt a decade ago, was game. While Spratt moved to Hollywood, Mass remains in Atlanta. They run a clothing line.
They soon added a third person for their team: fellow Atlantan Marcus Harvey, who calls himself the “barber to the stars,” having cut the hair of the likes of Nas, Chris Webber, Shaq and LeBron James. He met Mass and Spratt a few years ago.
“We have our own style,” Harvey said. “We dress for the show. We’re adding a new section to our culture: hip-hop paranormal!”
Destination America — now focused almost exclusively on paranormal shows such as “Paranormal Survivor” and “Ghost Asylum” — loved them.
“They’re smart guys. They don’t automatically assume it’s a ghost. They try to explain that it might be a cow or an air conditioner,” said Marietta native and Lassiter High School graduate Jodi Tovay, senior manager of development and production of network television and documentary film for the network.
All three shared paranormal experiences as kids. “Now that we’re grown,” Spratt said in the opening minutes of the first episode, “we’re not afraid to look for answers.”
The first episode features the three dudes seeking ghostly connections at the Magnolia Plantation in Derry, La., which used to house 100 slaves, mostly for cotton picking in the early 1800s. Tovay said they purposely picked spots in the South, since that’s where the brothers are connected.
And blacks approach such a historically charged location differently than whites, she noted. It helps this place is where others have seen full-bodied apparitions, shadows and sounds.
Spratt placed himself in the home of a black woman who lived there in the late 1800s named Aunt Agnes, a former slave who was into voodoo until she died in the 1920s. At first, they don’t sense her at all and joke that maybe it was too late at night for her. “She might be in her muumuu with a cigarette,” cracked Harvey.
Mass said they picked up something interesting at every location they visited, but “I got scared at every occasion. I’m quick to run at the drop of a hat!”
Harvey said the freakiest moment for him was when he felt a ghost brush against him at a hotel in Washington, Ga.
“It was nonsexual,” Spratt assured.
“It was a slight caress on my leg,” Harvey said. “I’m sure it was female!”