Adventures in Filmmaking: Halo The Great, The Coffin Preacher

This adventure began a few years before the documentary, "Halo The Great, The Coffin Preacher", would ever be filmed. One Sunday, the front page of the Lifestyle section of the Macon Telegraph had a photo of an old turban clad black man rising from a coffin under the headline "Introducing Halo The Great". The story was written by Ed Grisamore and told of an eccentric man who had legally renamed himself, Halo the Great. At one time a sideshow/freakshow attraction, the article told ofHalo's days as a celebrity and his spiral downward to a pauper's existence in Butler, GA. The story intrigued me on many levels and I knew I wanted to meet this man. The opportunity came one Thanksgiving weekend when friends and family visited and my late friend Tom and I were up for a road trip. We traveled to Butler, GA to find Halo The Great. We followed signs advertising "Prayer and Counseling, $10" that led to Halo's homestead. It was a poor little shack set among the pine barrens. Lining the driveway to the shack were countless tires half buried in the ground and painted different colors. Halo came out to greet us and spoke of his poverty and hard times. Tom immediately dismissed the man as a quack and our visit was short. I knew there was more to the man than Tom realized and I would return.



It was nearly two years later that I made a return trip to see Halo, this time to approach him about appearing in a Mammoth Films documentary. I had since moved from the area, but was down there doing some time with the Air National Guard. One evening, just as the workday ended, I set out for Butler, GA, about an hour away. The road had been rerouted so this trip took me a bit longer to find Halo's place. When I finally did, I was sad to notice that signs that led to his place were falling to decay and appeared to no longer be kept up. I rolled up the tire lined driveway and the place was dark. I still rapped on the door, but nobody answered. Halo was not at home. I waited around a few minutes hoping he might just be out on an errand, but as the sun went down, so did my hopes. I dug through my truck's toolbox and found a legal pad and pen and wrote a note to Halo telling him I would like to film a documentary about him and if he was interested to give me a call. I stuffed it in the crack of his door, as he had no mailbox, and left Butler, GA disappointed and without much hope.



It was several days later before I came back home to Chattanooga. I had been monitoring the messages and was disappointed that Halo never called. I even contacted Ed Grisamore to see if he knew of Halo's whereabouts. He did not and said it was typical that Halo would pick up and move without warning or reason every few years. I gave up hope. I did not make it home until after 10 pm that Sunday night and checked the messages and there was the voice of an old man saying "This is Halo, please have Michael call me, it is very important." I was thrilled! It was almost 11 when I got the message and I decided I would call him first thing in the morning. Well, at nearly midnight, the phone rang again and it was Halo. Apparently he was as anxious to get in touch with me as I was him.



The phone call was awkward as I had never approached somebody about being in a documentary, and this person was a complete stranger. Halo told me of how people didn't want to do him right and how he'd been cheated in the past. He didn't want to be ripped off again and I could tell he expected compensation, even if he never stated such. He agreed to be in the documentary and we set a date to film, but I could tell he was uneasy about being taken advantage of. I was happy he agreed to do it, but feared he could cause problems later if he felt I was making money off of him and not giving him a cut. I stood only to lose money on this project and certainly could not pay him anything. A few days later, I called to tell him we needed to cancel the filming as the documentary would not be making any money and I could not compensate him in any way. He quickly relented saying don't worry about that, come do the film.



It was a sunny fall Saturday a few weeks later that Josh O'dell and I made the trip south to film the documentary. Halo greeted us with a smile and was anxious to film. I had him sign a document allowing me to film that he signed without even reading. For somebody so cautious before, he exercised no caution here. There was another man there, a neighbor I suppose, who I suspect was there to make sure we were not there to do Halo any harm. Halo told us several stories of his past successes and failure, present woes and future plans. I really enjoyed meeting him that day and admired his eccentric ways. He billed himself "The Coffin Preacher" and showed us the coffin he had once preached out of. Among his present woes was a bug infestation that had ruined his coffin. To be such a showman of the past, he seemed nervous being on camera that day. But he did a fine job and I still consider "Halo The Great, The Coffin Preacher" my finest accomplishment on film. As we finished filming that day, I promised Halo a list of churches in Chattanooga that might be interested in his services and copies of the finished product.



As we left that day, Josh expressed his skepticism of Halo's call from God to preach from the coffin instead of the pulpit. I asked him, "If God can tell a man to build a huge boat on dry land, why can't he tell a man to preach from a coffin?" Josh was not won over by the comparison, but it made sense to me. True to my word, I mailed Halo a long list of Chattanooga churches and a box full of VHS tapes of the completed film. I would never hear from Halo again after we parted ways that day.



It wasn't long after that when a friend from Middle Georgia called to let me know that Halo had passed away. I was sad to learn of this. I had considered a follow up documentary that would show Halo living out some of those big plans he shared with me that day. I wanted to give him one more audience and one more sermon, but it wasn't meant to be. I looked up his obituary online and was sad to see that his family used Halo's "birth name" of Carl Hall instead of Halo The Great and made only a scant mention of his life's calling. The documentary is posted on youtube and I occasionally get an e-mail from somebody inquiring about the late coffin preacher or sharing a story about him. His and I's meeting was brief, but it won't ever be forgotten.


The documentary is below.