The Creepy Real-Life Experience That Inspired Truth Seekers

Amazon's upcoming supernatural comedy Truth Seekers offers viewers a lot to be excited about. Alongside James Serafinowicz and Nat Saunders, it was developed by England's preeminent bromantic couple, Simon Pegg and Nick Frost. Both stars of the Cornetto Trilogy appear in the show, alongside Wanderlust's Emma D'Arcy and Samson Kayo of Timewasters. Truth Seekers tells the story of a ragtag team of paranormal investigators, caught up in a conspiracy for which none of them are prepared. And, weirdly enough, it was partially inspired by a real event.

During a remote New York Comic Con panel promoting the series on October 8, 2020, co-creator and star Nick Frost steered his interview in a decidedly bizarre direction right out of the gate. Asked by IGN's Terri Schwartz what inspired him to pursue the project, Frost started out with pretty standard stories — his parents were out a lot when he was a kid, so he used to watch lots of horror movies, enjoying "the feeling it gave (him) in (his) tummy and willy." Things ramped up from there.

"As I got older, Simon Pegg and I would hang out, and we'd try and frighten each other," Frost continued, "and we had a female ghost living in the house that we lived in." He then nonchalantly discussed the pair's love of The X-Files universe before Schwartz, cool as a cucumber, backpedaled like a champ. "I want to take a couple steps back to something you casually dropped in at the beginning of that description – you and Simon had a female ghost living with you when you first started..." 

"Yeah," replied Frost.

Nick Frost happily elaborated. "There was this thing with this girl, I was like, a young writer. At one point we split up and I said to her 'Just take everything, take everything and leave.' [...] When I came back that night, she'd taken everything except a single mattress."

He continued, "me and Simon Pegg wound up sleeping on this single mattress and watching The X-Files on this weird TV/video player combo. But like, we'd hear the door banging all the time. This bell would ring, and then one day I was laying there, watching TV, and I felt a woman kiss my forehead. As I span 'round, thinking it was Simon mucking about, I was just there in the house on my own."

It seems worth mentioning that Pegg and Frost met while living in North London, which would put the pair several thousand miles from the nearest practicing Ghostbuster, severely limiting the options with regard to who they were gonna call. Admirably retaining the interview's proximity to the rails, Schwartz inquired as to whether any of the other cast members had experienced a supernatural phenomenon. Samson Kayo reported that his mother had seen a mermaid — "Mermaids count," Frost contributed — while series regular Malcolm McDowell sort of shrugged and said "Nah, no. Not one." Emma D'Arcy, meanwhile, relayed a story about how a few weeks ago, she "mistook a squirrel for the spirit of (her) grandma."

Truth Seekers is scheduled to start streaming on Amazon Prime beginning on October 30, 2020.