For Ghost Hunters Who Also Like Adventure, there's 'Ghost Adventures'

[Mal12345]

"Ghost Adventures is an American television series about the paranormal that premiered on October 17, 2008, on the Travel Channel. Produced by MY-Tupelo Entertainment, (a merger of MY Entertainment and Tupelo-Honey Productions),[1] the program follows ghost hunters Zak Bagans, Nick Groff, and Aaron Goodwin as they investigate locations that are reported to be haunted. The show is introduced and narrated by Zak Bagans."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_Adventures

I watched a few episodes of Ghost Adventures back in the 2008-2009 era. The show almost failed because Zak Bagans wasn't finding enough ghosts. He would typically use science to disprove the existence of ghostly influences at particular locations. Because of this lack of ghost finding, Ghost Adventures almost failed as a series.

After that time, Bagans began to make a roaring comeback and seemed to be finding ghosts everywhere he went, even places which weren't commonly considered to be haunted. It was then that I considered the show to be fake, and the ghost evidence to be entirely faked. I was also disappointed in the way Bagans and his crew would run away in terror from ghosts. And it seemed like they were rigging objects found in old buildings to move on cue, such as doors and random 2x4s.

But this year I've decided to give Zak Bagans a second chance. Fortunately, the episodes just happen to come on around the same time as The Dead Files on the same cable channel. And I'm a big fan of The Dead Files.

Zak doesn't always find ghosts, and this is comforting to me from the perspective of reality and skepticism. But it is also maddening in that there are so many fake people out there who want 43 minutes of fame. For example, the married couple in this episode is a couple of hoaxers:

Zak and his crew stayed over night and detected nothing supernatural whatsoever. Two days after they left the scene, Zak received a photo of a pair of pants nailed to a wall above a closet door at the location they had just explored, with the claim that a ghost caused this:

For real, people? Do you really think Zak Bagans is going to u-turn his ghost hunter van around in the middle of the highway and hurry back to THAT house again, and over as stupid a picture as that? They least they could is photoshop a picture depicting the alleged "ghost" in the act. Losers.

But for the most part you will see amazing episodes chock full of ghostly eye-candy, such as this one:

Season 10, Episode 10 - Loftus Hall:

Around 38 minutes into this episode, Zak has brought out his biggest weapon: the structured light sensor camera with skeleton image tracking. This has the effect of producing a matrix of infrared laser dots of light in the room which operates along with a motion tracking system. For example:

The hunched over green and grey figures are two of Zak's men sitting at a table. They are taunting a spirit into playing a game of cards with them. Suddenly, a man-like stick figure appears in the grid of dots, above the green-colored guy (Aaron). As he sits there he becomes sicker and sicker until he is forced to go outside and vomit into the grass. He was sick for the next two weeks.

In comparison to The Dead Files, Amy Allen, the star of The Dead Files, would never taunt spirits as Bagans and his crew does. Ghost Adventures would anger her so much that she would probably try to tear Bagans' eyes out of his skull if they ever met. She has too much respect, and even a personal liking, for ghosts. She's a weirdo. But you know, if ghosts are real, and if they are existing in a state of constant torment, then why torture them even more as Bagans does for money and fame?

As for me, I don't care. It's just entertainment. And unlike The Dead Files, Ghost Adventures often brings a shiver down my spine. It really is that spooky.

 

[Mal12345]

'At the same time that the thud hit the wall, we also heard something very eerie. A song very similar to “Three Blind Mice” was being hummed by an unseen voice. We were so preoccupied with the thud and trying to control ourselves that we didn’t pay much attention to it at the time, but later we all recalled it and heard it when we played back our recorders. “Three Blind Mice.” How weird is that? Who or what would find it entertaining to hum “Three Blind Mice” when we were in a state of mild panic? Could it be that demons have a sense of humor?' -Zak Bagans, Dark World.

Yesterday I watched the Ghost Adventures episode in which this occurred. It was the "Bobby Mackey's World of Music" episode. The part that occurred with Aaron alone in the basement was the spookiest and gave me chills.

But back to the "thud" quote. In the episode, Nick had just whipped out his wiener to "take a piss" in the men's restroom of Bobby Mackey's when he heard two loud bangs on the restroom wall. It was so loud that the rest of the paranormal investigation crew also heard the bangs although they were not in the immediate vicinity of the restroom. Nick ran out of the restroom with a cry of terror (forgetting to zip up his fly) only to be confronted by Zak who yelled at him to "STOP RUNNING!" After all, they are supposed to be ghost hunters and not your average man-on-the-street.

At this same time, you can hear, even on camera, a barely-audible noise in the background. Later on, while going over the recordings, they were able to distinguish the noise as someone humming "Three blind mice, see how they run..." over and over again. (There are three investigators.)

Two weeks later, while investigating a haunted mansion in Las Vegas, they heard it again: "Three blind mice, see how they run..."

Bobby Mackey's World of Music is about 2,000 miles away from Las Vegas.

 

[Mal12345]

Zak explains this coincidence by speculating, "It’s as if a demon or network of them are toying with me at these locations, which would indicate that they either have the ability to transport themselves or communicate with each other. Either way, they know how to find me and know where I will be, which is disturbing."

If he's such a great investigator, wouldn't he know that demons use spirit portals to move between locations? And anyway, as physical medium Amy Allan [The Dead Files] explains, they are not moving between locations, they are "changing perspectives." Time and space are subjective human conventions. Demons don't need no stinking "time and space" to do their "traveling."

Bishop James Long (who performs demon exorcisms for the Catholic Church) chided Zak, telling him that he is thinking about this in physical terms when he should be thinking in spiritual terms. He's right. But as Zak says in his book Dark World, he is trying to gain the attention of the scientific community where of course everything is represented as spatial and temporal as a fundamental perception-based assumption. "Is paranormal investigation really a science? Yes. Yes it is. I don’t consider myself a scientist, but I would not be doing my job if I did not educate myself and stay on top of the latest theories surrounding our field of research. And what we do is just that—scientific research."

But scientific research will only get them so far. And all they have really accomplished is to correlate some physiological/psychological effects with scientifically measured effects. For example, when they feel a wave of cold air suddenly rush over them, their thermometer also detects a sudden objective lowering of temperature in the room. Or when their hairs stand up on end, their mel meter detects a spike in EMF. That's all good science, but hardly convincing to the skeptic even when Zak proves that there was no obvious source of EMF in the vicinity such as a circuit box. It is, at the most, only evidence of something "unexplained" which is subjectively considered to be supernatural because Zak wants to believe in it.

I have personally seen one unexplained event and felt others. When I was 29 years old (an age that represented a turning point for me in many ways), I was sitting in a chair in my dining room talking on the telephone when a shadow glided across the ceiling over my head and vanished. It came and went so fast that I barely had time to register this as a perception, but perception it was. All in all, the perception probably lasted for close to a second maybe. I tried to be an INTP investigator and explain it as a normal shadow cast by perhaps an insect or something, but I never did find the source.

Another time (this was not paranormal or ghostly) I felt a "warning alarm" shoot through me, a very instinctive feeling of "danger," although there was utterly no perceptible reason for the warning, not by sound or by sight. And it turned out to be accurate as I found out two seconds after the feeling happened.

Zak Bagans in Dark World has provided his reader for his own explanation for the paranormal, but I'm not buying it even given that the paranormal is real and not subjective. I believe he is in way over his head, that he doesn't have a clue what he is getting into; that he is damaging his life, his possible after-life, and those of his teammates.

Furthermore, Zak Bagans is only stirring the spirit world into more and more activity with his investigations. He seems to know this, but he only makes excuses for it. Ti-tertiary will enable him to rationalize any addiction or urgent need he feels in regard to the supernatural, as I have read in Dark World.

Case in point: the story of Virginia Ridgeway, the caretaker of the Goldfield Hotel in Goldfield, NV "had an experience that she would never forget and still blames me for. As I was asking the spirits to move something and my tone escalated, Virginia claims two dark shadow figures entered the room she was in and attacked her. She was (allegedly) lifted off the ground [by a supernatural force] and thrown against a wall. She shrieked, so we immediately rushed her out of the building to recover. I remember she was extremely shaken up as if something had really traumatized her."

Allegedly? So if it happens to someone else, it is only alleged?

But Zak states in Dark World, "I do not take responsibility for the encounter that happened during our event, since we all knew this building was occupied by some very dark entities and Virginia knew the risks of going into it better than anyway," having had a similar event occur to her sometime in the past.

Ti-tertiary flies into Zak's defense to explain that Virginia Ridgeway should have known in advance that something like this might happen to her as ("allegedly") it happened to her in the past. Even the fact that the paranormal activity at the hotel ("allegedly") increased dramatically after Zak's investigation doesn't phase him, as the hotel was already known to be haunted "anyway."

But it is well known in the paranormal community that messing with the paranormal does serve to increase such activity, turning it more violent and dangerous. Zak knows it too:

'Carl had heard all the tales. He knew the well had once been used for satanic rituals. Some of the local folks referred to it as “Hell’s Gate.” Although he wasn’t very religious, Carl decided to sprinkle some holy water on the old well one night, thinking that it might bring some relief from the spirits. Bad idea. Instead, it seemed to awaken them and the paranormal activity in the building suddenly went off the charts.' (Dark World)

While Zak Bagans has produced a very entertaining and often spooky reality series, he himself is rather - sociopathically inclined. He rationalizes his investigations, stating that he is only trying to help the spirits and those inflicted by them. On the other hand, he also states that he is driven by a passion to investigate these phenomena, and no arguments or ugly demonic possessions will dissuade him. The evidence as I read it points to the fact that Zak Bagans is only in it for himself.

I am reminded of an aftermath interview that Zak had filmed with himself and the occupant of a haunted residence, where the man's demon-worshipping daughter was subsequently imprisoned on charges of some kind of physical assault, and the family has been terribly assailed (apparently by the demon Zozo) ever since. Zak told the man that after the investigation he himself had to have a spiritual cleansing done, whereupon the man responded with "But what about me?!"

Yes Zak. What about him? And what about all the others? Why is it always just about you?

 

[Mal12345]

Weird Ghost Hand

I don't know if this video will show up when you click the link, but it's got to be the weirdest paranormal footage I have ever seen.

A viewer pointed out this tiny hand that... - Zak Bagans - Ghost Adventures Crew (GAC)