Director Starts Viral Campaign for Film, “The Garlock Incident”

Evan J. Cholfin and his wife, Ariana Farina, have started a viral campaign for their film, The Garlock Incident. The film takes cues from The Blair Witch Project and Paranormal Activity, telling the story of a group of students who went out to make a film, but disappeared when they stopped in a ghost town in Garlock, CA. Using social media sites, the filmmakers are immersing their potential audience into this world, providing them with a prologue to the film.

The viral campaign is set up using the point of view of concerned family and friends of the missing students who left Los Angeles in December 2011 heading to Las Vegas. They have created a page on Facebook, as well as set up Tumblr, Twitter and YouTube pages. The Families in Search of Truth pages provide players with clues, such as a text conversation posted on the Facebook page between Morgan Marcos, a friend of Sean Muramatsu, one of the missing students.

Morgan had a text conversation with Sean the day he left. Two vital clues were found in the conversation he uploaded to the page. The students were “checking out this ghost town on the way [to Las Vegas]” and “El Burro lives”. Morgan had no idea what the last comment meant, but Evan quickly enlisted the help of the group by having them search ghost towns between LA and Vegas via a ghost town website using the clues provided. The group narrowed the search down to Garlock, CA, one-time home of “Burro” Schmidt, a miner who actually took dynamite and blasted a tunnel from one side of a mountain to the other to bring precious ore through. Legend said that his ghost still haunted the town.

Evan and Ariana then began posting updates to the YouTube page. Their first major breakthrough came on April 25th. Then on April 27th, some footage from December 16th through 18th was posted.

Many more videos have been posted since then, mostly just friends and family members posting videos asking for people to help in the search for the truth. If you’d like to help, just like the Facebook page. Thanks to MovieViral reader Chrissy Wilson for bringing this to us!