VH1 makes summer appearance in Orono for reality show filming

So, apparently I’m one of the few people who didn’t know that VH1 was in our backyard this summer shooting not one, but two, episodes of “Celebrity Paranormal Project,” even though some locals were called to work on the show.

“They did a pretty good job of keeping things low profile,” said Tyler McPhee, 23, an art graduate student at the University of Maine. McPhee worked on the show as a production assistant.

“I had an art background and fell in with the art department, which meant a lot of building small props and making things look old,” McPhee said. “Anything that they needed for the set, we constructed.”

The cast, crew and the whole shebang were at Ayers Island in Orono – which VH1 dubbed “a remote island off the New England coast.”

Clearly they’ve never seen the Maine coast and couldn’t tell the difference between our lovely East Coast seaside and the Penobscot River.

“They changed it so it would be pretty ambiguous,” McPhee said.

The crew was in Maine for about two weeks in June working on episodes five and six, respectively titled “Tanner’s Ghost” and “Wooden Lucy.”

The goal for episode five was to investigate the abandoned mill on the 62-acre island and find the ghost of a foreman killed in a mysterious accident who is said to haunt the mill seeking revenge.

The cast for this one included actor David Carradine, rapper-turned-actor Coolio, “Bachelor” Andrew Firestone, pro boxer Mia St. John and Playboy model Bridget Marquardt.

Even Coolio wimps out when the team supposedly makes contact with the spirit, and Marquardt is the only one who stays behind to complete the mission.

Maybe that’s when Coolio took time to make his reported appearance at Bangor nightclub Barnaby’s.

The next episode featured original “Ghostbuster” Ernie Hudson, Willie Garson (“Sex and the City”), Nicole Eggert (“Baywatch”), Eric Nies (“The Real World”) and Courtney Friel (“The World Poker Tour”).

Back at the mill, the team searches for the ghost of a young girl whose father accidentally killed her after being tricked by a 300-year-old American Indian curse.

Even though I think the show’s pretty much a joke, it’s exciting that VH1 visited a Maine town at all.