I’ve never been a big believer in the supernatural. Guess what? I’m still not. However, that doesn’t mean I can’t get creeped out from time to time. In fact, I do scare fairly easily. So why, if this is true, do I end up wanting to see things that scare the hell out of me? Ever since I was young, I’ve been drawn to ghost stories, the unexplained and the paranormal, despite a lack of any deep-seated belief. I started reading Stephen King novels when I was nine. Some of my favorite films as a pre-teen were The Exorcist, Psycho, and The Shining. (I want to clarify here, the difference between horror movies and gore films. I don’t usually watch films like Saw or Hostel.) I used to be terrified from listening to people’s personal ghost stories, stuff that they could not explain, stuff that they would swear they witnessed firsthand. There is something that we, as humans, love about the adrenalin rush of being scared.
One of the rites of passage of one’s freshman year of college is the ‘dorm urban legend.’ I don’t want to get too sidetracked here, but I remember vividly the stories of the student who came home to a darkened room, either leaving again or going to sleep, only to wake up to find her roommate mutilated, and the words, “Aren’t you glad you didn’t turn on the light?” in blood on the wall. There are many variations, and many other corresponding stories. My freshman year roommate, Rich, told me the story of La Llorona, the folktale of a woman who, in order to win the man she loves, drowns her own children, only to be rejected by the man anyway. She kills herself, and now roams the earth, crying, and looking for the children she murdered. Of course, he told this story during a holiday break when about 95% of the students had vacated the dorms. It made for the long walk down the desolate late night hallways to the bathroom that much more terrifying.
The bottom line is that I find these kinds of stories, though they can cause me some sleepless nights, highly entertaining. Somehow, I had missed the onset of the paranormal reality show boom. Programs from both sides of the Atlantic have been focused on trying to document evidence of the supernatural for the last few years. I’d caught a few bits and pieces of episodes here and there, but I never stayed tuned in for long (One, because I don’t like starting these kinds of shows from the middle. Two, because they would usually air late at night, and that would be a sure recipe for lying in bed wide-eyed for hours). But, now that I have streaming Netflix for the PS3, I decided to give one of these shows a try.
Ghost Adventures, which airs on the Travel Channel, is a program that spun off of a documentary film made in 2004. The film, which I have yet to see in its entirety (I’ve seen clips), had won some awards, gained some notoriety and supposedly captured some fairly compelling footage. It revolves around three men, Zak Bagans, Nick Groff and Aaron Goodwin. Bagans is the ‘leader’ of the crew, driven by his own experience with the paranormal (always alluded to in the show, but never explained in full,…maybe in the documentary?), while Nick, another paranormal investigator, is a kind of sober puppethead yin to Zak’s over-the-top douchebag yang. Aaron is the Shaggy of this particular Scooby gang, an equipment tech who scares fairly easily. You can probably tell by some of my comments above that I’m a little disparaging of the show. Well, yes and no.
Let’s face it, as with everything else on television, this show is mainly for entertainment purposes. To that end, the show succeeds, despite its buffoonery. I find the first half to be the most interesting part of the show. The background information, location history, and stories surrounding the individual investigations are riveting. I suspect the fact that the show airs on the Travel Channel might have something to do with the time spent on the front end. As an example, my favorite episodes have very little to do with the investigation itself. I was fascinated to learn more about Italy’s Poveglia Island, a remote spit of land used to isolate the bodies of plague victims. The resulting ‘investigation’ was a joke, one in which it would not be a far stretch to think there was a great deal of ‘acting’ going on.
On the other side of the cable spectrum is Ghost Hunters on the newly rechristened SyFy. It’s amazing how many differences there are between the two shows despite having the same basic concept. GH is ‘hosted’ by Jason Hawes and Grant Wilson, two plumbers who started investigating the paranormal in their spare time. Supposedly, they still work in plumbing, though the positions are honorary. (Yeah, like Roto-Rooter would want to dump a couple of guys pulling in nearly three million viewers.) Whereas the Adventures crew do everything with hand-held night vision cameras (which can be spun as either ‘more authentic and raw’ or alternately ‘a gimmick to create atmosphere’), the Hunters double up on the investigators (six as opposed to GA’s three) and have cameramen following each pair. The biggest difference is in reaction and results. To the GA trio, literally EVERYTHING is evidence of the paranormal. Breezes, goosebumps, dust particles, bugs and creaky floorboards are all ‘evidence’ of present spirits. On the other hand, the GHers almost never fully admit to these things being paranormal. In fact, they rarely find much of value in any of their investigations. So, either one group is really bad at this, or one is faking a ton of findings. Both have been accused of faking results. I couldn’t care less.
My point is, the most frightening part of the paranormal is where your imagination can take you, not what someone can ‘prove.’ I’m not here to act as some kind of authority on the paranormal. I’m not, by any means. What I do know, however, is that when these guys present devices as ‘scientific,’ it’s the biggest load of crap I’ve ever heard. When it comes to the unknown, or anything that requires a leap of faith, there is no such thing as ‘scientific.’ I mean, please, a visor that attaches to a box that houses a ‘word database’ that spirits find ‘easy’ to manipulate? An electronic ouija board? Really? Why not just throw a bunch of Scrabble tiles into the darkness and see how they end up? A staticky device that spirits can speak through? Seemed more like an out of tune radio that picked up a few stray signals here and there. What makes these situations frightening resides in the mind. Half of the battle toward making someone piss his pants is in the introduction. The location has a lot to do with it. Sanitariums, abandoned hospitals, prisons, missions, plantations and underground passages are all amazingly frightening enough on their own. Throw in the stories and it paints a fairly spine-chilling picture.
Still, you couldn’t get me to be in this places at three in the morning with the lights out. I have a hard enough time viewing them from a distance.
