Zak Bagans

[Mal12345]

Zak Bagans

You Must Be Registered To Vote

INFJ - "Sitting on the beach was my release, my anchor that I could always turn to when things got bad. I loved the feel of the sand, the song of the waves, and the allure of the salt water. When thunderstorms rolled in, I would head out to Dunedin beach and watch the water go from light blue and recreational to a mean, dark, sinister attitude that reflected the weather. I don’t know what it was, but watching something turn from docile to dangerous, and watching people leave while I held my ground, made me feel strong. But in addition to my anchor, these moments were also something more to me. Seeing the surface turn gray and creepy made me want to go out into the water even more than when it was blue and calming. As I’d leave the beach behind and venture out into the open water, I’d experience a whole new bag of emotions. Every time my toes touched the water, my nirvana instantly turned into my nightmare. While sitting in the murky water while everyone else ran from the beach was an adrenaline high and my moment of Zen, it also opened darkness in my mind. So you could say I’ve had a lifelong love-hate relationship with the ocean. It’s been my anchor, but not always in a good way." Zak Bagans, Dark World

 

[Mal12345]

Dark World - "With the shackles of high school tossed aside, I was free to explore the world around me. So where did I go first? Detroit.

"It’s not exactly the windswept Sahara or the Amazonian Jungle, but it was the first step on the road to anything. My father had family in Grosse Ile, just outside the city. I wasn’t there long (about eight months) when I decided to attend college at Western Michigan University.

"Huge mistake.

"Two weeks was all it took to realize college wasn’t for me. It wasn’t the academic work that made me so uncomfortable, but rather the overwhelming feeling that I was losing my identity. All around me I saw people whose goal in life was to commute to work, say hi to Sally the secretary, sit in a cubicle, and pretend to be happy for eight to ten hours a day just for the security of a fixed income. I guess you could say my mentality was like Peter from Office Space (although I would’ve loved to work with Milton and steal his red stapler). There was no risk, no edge-of-your-seat leap of faith into the unknown, no joie de vivre. It just wasn’t me."

 

[Mal12345]

[MENTION=8936]highlander[/MENTION]
This same post got six replies within 15 minutes on a non-paranormal typology site. Here, it got zero.

 

[Mal12345]

"A big part of being a paranormal investigator is listening to these people and, many times, helping them cope with it."
Zak Bagans (INFJ, "The Counselor")

https://oceanmoonshine9.wordpress.com/four-stacks/
So/Sx

"This subtype is able to connect with others and with life itself, but always with an undertone of volatility and a tendency to dramatize. They are the most involved and connected of the subtypes of Four. They can go from relationship to relationship, seemingly tortured by each one. They are the most driven of the subtypes of Four to express themselves publicly and type Four celebrities are commonly found with this stacking. This subtype has a real difficulty remaining grounded, partly due to the undeveloped self-pres instinct. Although they can appear almost Eight-like at times with their lust for life and desire for passionate experience, they lack the focus of the Eight and the instinctual energy that would keep them grounded. Sometimes alcohol or substance abuse can be a problem. These Fours become more healthy when they learn to control their impulsiveness and focus their energies."

This precisely describes Zak's transition from life before Ghost Adventures to life as a paranormal investigator.

 

[Mal12345]

"I’m lucky that I can still seek the closure I need." - ZB

J types seek closure.

 

[Mal12345]

Here is a powerful passage from Zak Bagan's "Dark World" -

Poveglia. The name still haunts me. Looking at it from the nearby island of Venice, where millions of people lounge away their European vacations cruising a gondola through the Grand Canal, you would not think of it as being so hideous. But this quiet island in Northern Italy is as sinister a place as has ever existed on Earth and has seen hundreds of thousands of death in its long and tortured history. Naturally it’s considered one of the ultimate places of paranormal energy and calls out to investigators like me with an unavoidable power. But this black hole of evil, which could have been a pleasant little brother to the legendary Venice, is not for the weak or casual traveler. Here are the highlights of its dark history:

During the days of the Roman Empire it was allegedly used to isolate victims of the black plague. That set a bad precedent that would be repeated many times over. In 1379 Venice was one of the most powerful societies in the world. It was a light at the end of the tunnel known as the dark ages and had everything going for it. Suddenly it was under attack (again) from the neighboring city of Genoa and its powerful navy, so the people living on Poveglia (there were a lot by then) were moved to Giudecca to protect them. In their place the Venetian government built a permanent fortification called “the Octagon” on the island to help keep the Genoese navy away. The Octagon is still visible today.

The island was reportedly uninhabited during the fifteenth century, though I cannot find a reason why. In the sixteenth century, a plague outbreak ravaged Italy, and with an empty island sitting just a few miles away, it was an easy decision to transform Poveglia into a quarantine facility (also called a lazaretto). After all, no one wanted the place, so why not keep the unwanted there, especially since most of Venice’s economy depended on trade and people from all over the world traveled through it? This move probably helped save Venice from experiencing a lot of death, but it also made Poveglia an island of hell.

For a long time Poveglia was empty, so in 1527 the Venetians offered the island to a group of monks, who refused to take it. Bad omen. In 1661 the Venetians offered to reconstruct a village for the descendants of the original inhabitants of Poveglia, but they also refused the offer. You would think a free island with a rebuilt village is an offer you can’t refuse, but they did. Another good call. The Venetian government was getting the hint that no one wanted to live there.

By 1805 most of Italy was under the iron fist of Napoleon, and under his rule Poveglia (the island that no one wanted) became a lazaretto again during a new outbreak of plague. This lasted until 1814. During these Napoleonic wars, it is said that the English occupied the island, ambushed French ships, and burned the crews alive on Poveglia. The last time anyone made an attempt to use the island was in 1922. Its buildings were converted into a hospital that housed both the insane and the homeless, but by 1969 it was completely abandoned.

So Poveglia was a magnet for suffering and death. Hundreds of thousands of people (that’s right, hundreds of thousands) died on its soil from plague, war, tsunami, mental illness, suicides, and executions. It’s the perfect storm for darkness, death, dread, and murder. Locals say half the island is made from the ashes of the dead who were burned and buried there, which I can somewhat verify. As I stabbed my machete into the soil, it penetrated it like a hot knife in butter. It wasn’t sand. It wasn’t soil. And it wasn’t dirt. It was ash.

 

[Mal12345]

Zak's full enneagram type is 4w3>6w5(cp)>8w9 Sx/So. His desire for self-preservation is his weakest trait. His 6 counterphobia is obvious with his desire to always confront danger, that is, his fears. But he is also driven by the type 5's curiosity. He is the vociferous self-declared leader (8) of his group of paranormal investigators, and his ultimate desire is to bring peace to the dead (9) (also facilitated by his INFJ "counselor" traits).

Ultimately, Zak's main type is 4w3 because his original search (according to Dark World) was for identity. And 3 is the wing because he also desires popularity, is ambitious, and has the physical characteristics of the 4w3 type.

 

[Mal12345]

The thing that visited Zak as a child:

 

[Cellmold]

[MENTION=8936]highlander[/MENTION]
This same post got six replies within 15 minutes on a non-paranormal typology site. Here, it got zero.

Doesn't that depend on whether there is an interest in Zak Bagans and his work? It doesn't have to be a paranormal site for that.

It's possibly down to my enormous ignorance though (which is pretty extensive) but I'd never heard of him till you posted this thread.

 

[Mal12345]

Doesn't that depend on whether there is an interest in Zak Bagans and his work? It doesn't have to be a paranormal site for that.

It's possibly down to my enormous ignorance though (which is pretty extensive) but I'd never heard of him till you posted this thread.

It was an MBTI facebook forum. The main difference I can see is that people on facebook are notified of new threads while people here are not. The new thread notification gets their immediate attention.

 

[Mal12345]

Doesn't that depend on whether there is an interest in Zak Bagans and his work? It doesn't have to be a paranormal site for that.

It's possibly down to my enormous ignorance though (which is pretty extensive) but I'd never heard of him till you posted this thread.

The show Ghost Adventures doesn't appear in Europe because Europeans are so afraid of ghosts.

 

[Cellmold]

It was an MBTI facebook forum. The main difference I can see is that people on facebook are notified of new threads while people here are not. The new thread notification gets their immediate attention.

I suppose it's more tightly focussed on a facebook forum. Here if you were to be notified of every new thread, many of which might not be relevant to MBTI or typology in general, it might be a bit overwhelming and spammy...even at low activity periods in the forum's life.

I think there is a forum subscribe option on the forum tools for every section and sub-section on this website, which I think would function much the same way as facebook when it comes to notifications, so the option is there to generate interest. But it does rely upon people wanting to subscribe to a section and get those notifications in the first place. Facebook forums (and I might be misunderstanding this as I don't use facebook a lot so I am assuming you mean a facebook group?) tend to be tied to a specific subject of that group so by being part of it you are automatically being notified of it, essentially joining it is like a subscription in itself.

This being a more traditional forum of sections and a fairly wide variety of topics and areas, which tend to grow organically as more people join and remain...slowly looking for broader spectrums of interest, means that the intrusiveness of new thread notifications about subjects or areas you don't necessarily care for might put people off if it was forced upon them.

Hence the choice. Although maybe it could be made more obvious, so instead of a small 'forum tools' drop down menu it just says 'Subscribe to forum section'.

 

[Mal12345]

I suppose it's more tightly focussed on a facebook forum. Here if you were to be notified of every new thread, many of which might not be relevant to MBTI or typology in general, it might be a bit overwhelming and spammy...even at low activity periods in the forum's life.

I think there is a forum subscribe option on the forum tools for every section and sub-section on this website, which I think would function much the same way as facebook when it comes to notifications, so the option is there to generate interest. But it does rely upon people wanting to subscribe to a section and get those notifications in the first place. Facebook forums (and I might be misunderstanding this as I don't use facebook a lot so I am assuming you mean a facebook group?) tend to be tied to a specific subject of that group so by being part of it you are automatically being notified of it, essentially joining it is like a subscription in itself.

This being a more traditional forum of sections and a fairly wide variety of topics and areas, which tend to grow organically as more people join and remain...slowly looking for broader spectrums of interest, means that the intrusiveness of new thread notifications about subjects or areas you don't necessarily care for might put people off if it was forced upon them.

Hence the choice. Although maybe it could be made more obvious, so instead of a small 'forum tools' drop down menu it just says 'Subscribe to forum section'.

I don't get why you're focused on subscribing to a thread. On Facebook you can be informed of new threads on your newsfeed, but that can be manually limited to keep your wall from being flooded with notifications. It also self-limits the notifications; if you don't visit that Group then the notifications automatically stop coming, the notifications slow down and eventually stop posting to your newsfeed altogether.

Alternately, one can browse to the Group's wall and simply scroll down the list of threads. Subscribing to a thread is the same here as it is there. You can manually subscribe, or you can post something to the thread which automatically subscribes you to the thread notifications. If you want to stop the notifications then manually unsubscribe from the thread.

 

[Cellmold]

I don't get why you're focused on subscribing to a thread. On Facebook you can be informed of new threads on your newsfeed, but that can be manually limited to keep your wall from being flooded with notifications. It also self-limits the notifications; if you don't visit that Group then the notifications automatically stop coming, the notifications slow down and eventually stop posting to your newsfeed altogether.

Alternately, one can browse to the Group's wall and simply scroll down the list of threads. Subscribing to a thread is the same here as it is there. You can manually subscribe, or you can post something to the thread which automatically subscribes you to the thread notifications. If you want to stop the notifications then manually unsubscribe from the thread.

You brought up notifications as an important factor to facebook: you directly implied that you thought the notification system of facebook notifies people and therefore draws them in as opposed to here....where it..works almost the same? So the point is you want the notification symbol at the top for messages, quotes, likes etc to also include when someone posts in a subscribed thread?

I guess I can understand that. I was getting caught up in a semantic argument in my head about the word 'notification'. I misunderstood what you meant.

 

[Mal12345]

You brought up notifications as an important factor to facebook: you directly implied that you thought the notification system of facebook notifies people and therefore draws them in as opposed to here....where it..works almost the same? So the point is you want the notification symbol at the top for messages, quotes, likes etc to also include when someone posts in a subscribed thread?

I guess I can understand that. I was getting caught up in a semantic argument in my head about the word 'notification'. I misunderstood what you meant.

I'm trying to work out why the same OP attracted more responses on Facebook. I believe it's because the Group notifications feature on Facebook attracts more notice. On this forum I am only notified about subscribed threads. On Facebook I am (or can be) notified about all threads old and new.

The MBTI Facebook group I've been talking about is a free-for-all, excepting spammers. Anything and everything is posted there within Facebook rules. But that's not where I posted the OP.

 

[Cellmold]

I'm trying to work out why the same OP attracted more responses on Facebook. I believe it's because the Group notifications feature on Facebook attracts more notice. On this forum I am only notified about subscribed threads. On Facebook I am (or can be) notified about all threads old and new.

The MBTI Facebook group I've been talking about is a free-for-all, excepting spammers. Anything and everything is posted there within Facebook rules. But that's not where I posted the OP.

Do you have a link to the group? Or is that against a policy here? I'm not clued up on the rules.

 

[plastic ciel]

INFJ?

 

[Mal12345]

INFJ?

Yes. But are you asking if that's the right answer, or questioning the answer already given?

 

[plastic ciel]

Asking. I don't remember that much about him, but that's the impression I got.

 

[Mal12345]

Asking. I don't remember that much about him, but that's the impression I got.

You're good!