When you’re a paranormal investigator, there isn’t much in the physical world that shocks you — unless you win a provincial media award.
The Beyond the Haunting team, comprised of Corine Carey, Kelly Ireland and Leanne Sallenback won Best Hosts in an Information, Lifestyle or Reality Series for their work on the “History’s Most Haunted” episode “Salem: Ghosts of the Witch Hunt”.
Carey shared her surprise at being nominated for the award with The Superstitious Times in a mid-July phone call, adding the team was up for four Leo Awards on July 6.
“We were quite shocked and humbled by even being nominated, and then to win it?” she said. “We were like, ‘Are you kidding me?’ it was wild. This is huge to be getting a mainstream award for a paranormal show as hosts.”
The award was all the more poetic as the team of three women shed light on what happened to women accused of witchcraft in 17th-century Massachusetts.
“It wasn’t lost on us that three females with abilities are going to Salem to investigate people who were accused of witchcraft and weren’t really even witches,” Carey said. “It was full circle for us, we were those kids that had abilities and we kept quiet and now we’re not keeping quiet and we’re telling people the truth. It was very significant for us.”
When Carey refers to abilities, each one of the team has some form of extrasensory perception that they kept hidden away for most of their lives. Ireland is an empath, Sallenback is a sensitive while Carey would consider herself a medium.
The Leo Awards were founded by the Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Foundation of British Columbia in 1999. They honour the province’s top shows, films, documentaries and shorts from across the province.
The production company behind “History’s Most Haunted”, Small Army Entertainment, was nominated for three Leo Awards. They earned nods in “Best Information, Lifestyle or Reality Series”, “Best Editing” (Rob Lawrenson and Sarah Cruise for “New Orleans: Ghosts of America’s Necropolis”) and “Best Director” (Stephen Sawchuk and Michael Bodnarchuk for “Montreal: Ghosts of the Prohibition”). Sawchuk also has a short film, Hell is a Teenage Girl, playing at the Fantasia Festival.
In an unplanned homage to their start in paranormal TV, both Ireland and Sallenback travelled to the awards ceremony in Vancouver along the Gold Rush Trail, which is where they started their TV journey with the series “Haunted Gold Rush”.
As for whether there will be a Season 2 of “History’s Most Haunted”, there is a hint of projects on the horizon in Carey’s voice.
“Things are moving forward,” she said. “We can’t say officially yet … but definitely, things are in the works and you’ll be seeing more of us soon, hopefully.”
“History’s Most Haunted” is currently airing Tuesdays at 5 p.m. ET and Thursdays at 11 a.m. ET on T+E in Canada. You can also catch the Beyond the Haunting team at the upcoming Lake Superior Paracon from Oct. 4-6 in Thunder Bay, Ont.
Photos courtesy Beyond the Haunting