Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: Norman: The Doll That Needed to Be Locked Away
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE: 9/8/1977
WEBSITE: http://www.monstervisiontv.net/
CITY:
STATE:
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY:
RESEARCHER NOTES:
LC control no.: n 2012027087
LCCN Permalink: https://lccn.loc.gov/n2012027087
HEADING: Lancaster, Stephen, 1977-
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100 1_ |a Lancaster, Stephen, |d 1977-
670 __ |a Lancaster, Stephen. True case files of a paranormal investigator, c2012: |b ECIP t.p. (Stephen Lancaster) data view (b. 1977)
953 __ |a rc13
PERSONAL
Born September 8, 1977.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer, investigator, broadcaster, documentary filmmaker, and paranormal researcher. MonsterVisionTV (a paranormal research and investigation program), cocreator; MonsterVisionTV Films (a documentary film production company), cocreator.
WRITINGS
SIDELIGHTS
Stephen Lancaster is a writer, paranormal researcher, documentary filmmaker, and cocreator of a paranormal investigative program, MonsterVisionTV. After MonsterVisionTV ceased production in 2012, it was on hiatus for four years before being resurrected as MonsterVisionTV Films, which made paranormal documentary films. Its first film, Fantome: The Haunting of Brentwood Wine Bistro, was released in 2017 and attracted many viewers. Lancaster has been a paranormal investigator since 1997, and has worked for museums, commercial facilities, businesses, politicians, military facilities, and governments, noted a writer on the MonsterVisionTV website.
Dark Spirits
In his book Dark Spirits: A Man Terrorized by the Supernatural, Lancaster recounts a number of the most memorable cases he’s been involved with throughout fifteen years of his career as a paranormal investigator. He also describes the effect that many of these cases have had on him and how some of them had a profound psychological effect on him. Along with detailed descriptions of the cases themselves, Lancaster “presents them with commentary of what he learned, felt, saw, and feels,” commented Robin Lynn, writing on the website Pop Culture Beast.
Dark Spirits contains eleven chapters. Many of them are related to a supernatural entity that Lancaster may have attached itself to him. The harrowing encounter with that entity occurred during an investigation that involved an invisible group of supernatural beings that could not be seen with normal vision, but that had eyes that showed up on infrared cameras. Lancaster doesn’t know what he encountered, but he relates how the investigation was the beginning of the fractioning of his investigative team.
Other cases described by Lancaster include one involving a hotel room that drives its occupants crazy, a case of an accurate prediction made by a woman just before her death, a terrifying encounter on an abandoned plantation, and many more occasions of interactions with the unknown. Lynn called Dark Spirits a “book to make you wonder just what those bumps in the night are from. Or, rather, who those bumps are from.”
Norman
Norman: The Doll That Needed to be Locked Away features Lancaster’s “chilling first-person account of a haunted doll he purchased at an antique shop,” noted Erin Downey Howerton in a Booklist review. Norman was a vintage Matty Mattel doll, a common toy that depicted an advertising icon that was part of the Mattel toy company’s television marketing from the middle 1950s to 1970.
After buying Norman, Lancaster’s family was terrorized by unexplainable events, such as ominous infestations of vermin, the death of a well-loved pet cat, and thoroughly frightened children. Lancaster includes screen captures from a surveillance system to document what he saw as Norman’s supernatural activities. Howerton recommended the book for fans of demon doll movies, such as those featuring the murderous Chucky and the haunted Annabelle.
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, April 1, 2018, Erin Downey Howerton, review of Norman: The Doll That Needed to Be Locked Away, p. 34.
ONLINE
Monster Vision TV website, http://www.monstervisiontv.net/ (October 24, 2018), biography of Stephen Lancaster.
Pop Culture Beast, http://www.popculturebeast.com/ (October 24, 2018), Robin Lynn, review of Dark Spirits.
MonsterVisionTV (MVTV) was created by world renowned paranormal researcher and author Stephen Lancaster alongside co-creator Ryan Lick in 2007. The episodic supernatural investigating show was the first of it's kind as it chronicled Lancaster's paranormal investigation team, the P.I.T. Crew. The show offered viewers a different and authentic perspective to the field of paranormal research.
MonsterVisionTV achieved a viewership of over two million. Fans and paranormal enthusiasts adored their format and authenticity. The show operated without a camera crew offering the audience paranormal investigating through the eyes of the investigators. Their tried and true formula hit mainstream network television when Ghost Adventurers aired in 2008 taking the original format and catering it to a more commercial audience.
Stephen Lancaster has been involved in the field of paranormal research since 1997 conducting investigative work for politicians, military facilities, the board of education, museums, commercial locations, businesses, television and civilian properties. His research is recognized by the U.S. Government.
In 2009, Lancaster released his first research novel entitled, Paranormal Investigator followed by the best selling True Casefiles of a Paranormal Investigator (2012).
MonsterVisionTV ended their episodic format following Season 6 in 2012 although a few episodes still linger online.
After a four year hiatus from the public eye, Lancaster returned to the books and released Dark Spirits in 2016. That same year he would re-brand and mold MVTV into MonsterVisionTV Films; a paranormal documentary division. In 2017, Lancaster produced and released the first in a series of documentaries under the MonsterVisionTV Films umbrella.
FANTÔME: The Haunting of Brentwood Wine Bistro was released on October 13, 2017 and the film shot to #1 in Documentaries on the world's largest movie website, IMDb. His original research company, the P.I.T. Crew was reinstated. Current active members include Kevin McCray, Christina Parker, Eddie Hughes and James Burris.
Stephen contributed the prologue to the 2017 novel, The Spirits of Christmas authored by Sylvia Shults. The novel also contains Lancaster's origin story.
Norman: The Doll that Needed to be Locked Away, Lancaster's fourth novel, is scheduled to be released in April of 2018. The book includes contributions from famed paranormal expert Rosemary Ellen Guiley and extreme paranormal researcher Darren Evans.
Presently, the P.I.T. Crew are researching and filming in North Carolina and West Virginia for two documentaries slated for a 2018 release.
9/29/2018 General OneFile - Saved Articles
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MARK_LIST&userGroupName=schlager&inPS=true&prodId=ITOF&ts=1538246008253 1/1
Print Marked Items
Norman: The Doll That Needed to Be
Locked Away
Erin Downey Howerton
Booklist.
114.15 (Apr. 1, 2018): p34.
COPYRIGHT 2018 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist/
Full Text:
Norman: The Doll That Needed to Be Locked Away. By Stephen Lancaster. Apr. 2018. 240p. Llewellyn,
paper, $16.99 (9780738755519). 133.
Paranormal investigator Lancaster (True Casefiles of a Paranormal Investigator, 2012) gives a chilling firstperson
account of a haunted doll he purchased at an antique shop. Like many other possessed items,
Norman is a fairly common child's toy: a mid-century Matty Mattel doll. That's where the similarities end,
though. Lancaster claims that the months following Norman's acquisition led to a smorgasbord of terror for
him and his family, including horrified children, vermin infestations, the death of his beloved pet cat, and
more. Despite a failed attempt to auction away the doll, Lancaster's story builds with horrible tension
towards an incoming hurricane and the potential of Norman to wreak further havoc on his life. The story is
told in a straightforward and linear fashion; the narrative is studded with very small screencaps of
Lancaster's home-surveillance system to provide proof of Norman's doings. Dedicated readers of horror and
internet creepypasta stories will thrill to the mounting evil and the ersatz solution Lancaster and his wife
devise to appease Norman. A must-read for fans of the Chucky and Annabelle movies.--Erin Downey
Howerton
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Howerton, Erin Downey. "Norman: The Doll That Needed to Be Locked Away." Booklist, 1 Apr. 2018, p.
34. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A534956786/ITOF?
u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=1e38a8e2. Accessed 29 Sept. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A534956786
Book Review: Dark Spirits by Stephen Lancaster
Robin Lynn08.2016Book Review, Books
darkspiritsDark Spirits is the latest book from paranormal researcher and investigator Stephen Lancaster. This is a collection of some of the stories/investigations that have stuck with Lancaster the most during his career as an investigator, and he presents them with commentary of what he learned, felt, saw, and feels.
There are eleven chapters in Dark Spirits, and most of them are intertwined with “something” that may well have attached itself to Lancaster. The first story, “The Fascinating Case of Mrs. Weller”, is the most hopeful of them. It concerns a prediction a woman made just before her death, the evidence of the predictions written in a letter to her son dated one week before her passing. There are corroborating accounts from multiple people confirming some of the details, including pictures with unexplained artifacts in them.
The second, third, and fourth are intertwined as they happened at the same location. A large estate with large fields that were worked by slaves, a strange wooded grove where the slave cabins were supposed to be located, and a house that some residents seem to have never left. These were the most striking stories in the book. The terror is palpable as the group tries to flee an unseen pack of…something…Something who has eyes visible in the IR camera, but not to the naked eye. This is the investigation that began to pull apart his team, and from which “something” attached itself to Lancaster
The rest of the chapters are from after the core investigation team fell apart, and some investigations have Lancaster accompanied by former members of his team. These aren’t incredibly remarkable, save that there are some lingering attachments from the horrors of the investigation detailed in chapters 2-4.
There is come compelling threads presented that point to the presence of something existing after death, but as it is a book, detailed photographs, video, and audio recordings aren’t available. Nevertheless, this is a book to make you wonder just what those bumps in the night are from. Or, rather, who those bumps are from.
Dark Spirits: A Man Terrorized by the Supernatural
Stephen Lancaster
Publisher: Llewellyn Publications (August 8, 2016)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0738738956
ISBN-13: 978-0738738956
Behave Andromeda Romano-Lax
Robin Lynn
Robin is a semi-coherent, almost sentient being. She has some strange ideas, and some even stranger friends. Disabled, queer, agnostic, accident-prone & other adjectives.
She loves music, and talks about new releases from bands frequently. She also enjoys going to shows to recap them, and listening to albums by bands that "mainstream" music isn't interested in, because they're often the best music out there.
Follow me on Twitter and Instagram as @wyrdrobin to see what other things I have to say!