Trunk introduces ghost hunters to Sandalwood

One of the highlights of debutante director Rishika Sharma’s

horror

film

Trunk

is that it features real-life

ghost hunters

. The team from The Real Asian Paranormal Society (

TRAPS

) who have been into paranormal investigation for close to a decade will be seen in the film.
“In

Kannada cinema

, we have been introduced to exorcism methods based on religion. As a die-hard fan of the horror genre, I was intrigued by the concept of ghost hunters and wondered why not introduce it in Kannada films. In fact, there was a ghost hunter called Gaurav Tiwari, who allegedly committed suicide after he returned from a live investigation of a paranormal case in Rajasthan. This was big news in 2016, after which I began studying people like him. They have different teams across the country and I got to know that one is based in Bengaluru. I met them and when I proposed incorporating their profession into a film, they were reluctant, as it seemed like outright commercialisation to them. I did ask them for information, and eventually, since our film does not have ‘mass’ elements, we requested them to help us make paranormal investigations look realistic. They took a couple of months to revert, but I am glad they were OK,” explains Rishika.
By having real ghost hunters in the film, the director hopes to educate audiences about the presence of souls around us through scientific methods. “Since I was introducing this concept in Kannada films, I had to be sure that they were authentic. We went with them to 7-8 investigations in Bengaluru and that is where we got to know how their equipment works. A lot of it depends on elements like temperature, sound, etc., and they were actually communicating with the ‘souls’ in a friendly manner. Our objective is to show that it is time for science and not superstitious practices,” says Rishika.