A pet cemetery in the bayou outside New Orleans, a woman found chained in the Mississippi River, and a witness who waited twenty-four years to talk because he says he saw her ghost. That is the case at the center of The Pet Cemetery Murders: A Ghost Story, a three-part documentary series premiering October 11 on HBO and HBO Max, and HBO is not burying the supernatural angle in the fine print. It is in the title.
Dorothy Lou Thompson owned the cemetery, which the series bills as built on cursed land, and she disappeared in 1985. Her body surfaced in the river, wrapped in chains. Then the case sat cold for more than two decades.
In 2009 the File Reopens, and Witnesses Talk
Detective John Doran reopened the file in 2009. Witnesses came forward after that with what they knew about the killing at the cemetery, and with their reason for finally saying it out loud: they say Dorothy came to them. From there the story widens into a trail of dead husbands, Dorothy’s mother Grace, who founded the cemetery while staying a step ahead of her own criminal past, and, per HBO’s description, a community history of massacres and mob ties.
Lightbox Is Not a Paranormal Shop
Philip Cairney directs. The producers are cousins Jonathan Chinn and Simon Chinn of Lightbox, and Simon Chinn has two Best Documentary Feature Oscars on the shelf, for Man on Wire in 2008 and Searching for Sugar Man in 2012. James Marsh, who directed Man on Wire, executive produces alongside Suzanne Lavery and Silvia Sacco, with Nancy Abraham, Lisa Heller and Tina Nguyen for HBO. That bench is the reason to give this one a look instead of filing it with the cable paranormal-investigation shows it resembles from a distance.
Streaming documentaries have worked this intersection before. Netflix built The Devil on Trial around a murder defense that blamed possession, but that case came with a court transcript to argue over. This one asks the audience to sit with a ghost sighting as the reason a file got reopened.
Three Sundays in October
The episodes land October 11, 18 and 25 at 9 p.m. ET/PT on HBO and HBO Max, running 46 minutes, then 43, then 53 for the finale. The last one arrives the Sunday before Halloween.
The open question is how the series handles its own hook. A ghost sighting that reopens a cold case is a great logline and also a real woman’s murder, and holding both of those at once is the entire job.
