Paranormal investigation shows

I almost had a date with the "Paranormal State" guy. We chatted online (I think it was gay.com, to date myself), he asked me out but backed out at the last minute and we never re-scheduled. Probably all for the best, I couldn't take anyone seriously in that kind of job. And so ended my brush with celebrity.

R1 you probably dodged a bullet. Some years back he was a hardcore meth addict and was pretending he had pancreatic cancer in order to get sympathy money from fans. IIRC, he was scheduling conventions and taking people's money, then cancelling the events and running with the cash. He seems to have cleaned up since then, though. He apparently considers himself bisexual. I think he and the whole cast of "Paranormal State" were all college friends who met at Penn State. It seems Katrina distanced herself from him after all the meth shit went down.

I’m a believer in ghosts but I feel like all the ghost hunter shows on now are fake and stupid. I miss serious paranormal shows like Beyond and In Search of (the Leonard Nimoy one) so far Helier is okay.

Nothing beats Most Haunted.

No. No, I don’t.

I do believe in paranormal, have had a couple of experiences myself. As for the shows, they’re my guilty pleasure, although I usually have them in the background while multitasking. My faves are Amy Allan’s show “Dead Files,” I think she’s legit & straight up. I love her facial expressions & her potty mouth especially, it’s like a bleepathon much of the time. My other favorite is Kim Russo, she’s very authentic & hits the nail on the head like 90% of the time, & is partially right the other 10%.

[quote]I think he and the whole cast of "Paranormal State" were all college friends who met at Penn State.

They were and the organization was legit before the show started.

It would be several years after they were pitched the idea of a TV series that they'd actually get one on the air. Many people from the original team had already graduated but he just happened to stay in the area.

Anyways, the only show I believe is "Ghost Hunters." You know why? Because 80% of the time nothing happens. Then occasionally something is questionable. They never automatically default to, "This is a haunting!"

(And yes, I'm using the slang, "Anyways" instead of "Anyway" to imply something shady.)

I find all these shows to be bullshit. Entertaining? Yes. Believable? No. Such a coincidence that paranormal contact is always made on every episode.

There was a really excellent Canadian paranormal show in the late 90s early 2000s called Beyond. It was really good even though Canadian TV usually sucks.

I was always fascinated by ghosts and haunting a bit really I did just grow out of it. I tried everything as a young guy, ouija boards, going to places that were said to be highly haunted... but never experienced anything. The most “unusual” things I experience are frequent deja vu and quite an proven strong intuition. I’m pretty much resigned to the fact that there’s no such things as ghosts after all they would outnumber the living there should be millions of ghosts per living person.

There was a show several years back with Chad Lindbergh, where he & a male cohost would take turns spending the night in a "haunted" location. The other host rarely had experiences, but poor Chad did, almost every time, shrieking & running out of there to beat the band. He'd had a near death experience as a child, which attuned his psychic senses; I'm amazed he didn't have a heart attack in any of his investigations, & I don't think he was acting. It was actually kinda painful to watch.

[quote]I’m pretty much resigned to the fact that there’s no such things as ghosts after all they would outnumber the living there should be millions of ghosts per living person.

It's possible that when you move on you don't necessarily become a ghost.

I really liked the reenactment shows like, "A Haunting" and then later, "The Haunting Of ...." I even liked "Celebrity Ghost Stories" because, Joan Rivers talking about a haunted apartment she once owned isn't something you can see just anywhere.

Rob, the cameraman on "Paranormal Lockdown," is cute as fuck. I'd bite him too if I was a ghost.

I love Kim Russo! She's very watchable. And she often tells the celebrities she's working with things that she never could've found out about them by Googling. She seems pretty authentic.

A lot of them are horseshit, R9, though I find Katrina Weidman to be one of the more practical people on these types of shows. She seems genuine and does try to rule out logical explanations for things. I think she is just truly fascinated by unexplained phenomena.

Katrina also doesn't play it up for the camera really, which I appreciate. The same can't be said for Nick Groff, her co-star on that show. He is a dramatic nelly and oftentimes comes off as utterly phony.

Back in the 00s my friends and I would get together and watch Most Haunted. We were pretty young then and I guess we were more inclined to believe ghosts were real and found the show kinda freaky, but I don't think we ever truly believed the show, if that makes sense. And after awhile of watching it, we started to view it more as something to make fun of than be scared of. Derek Acorah going into trances, where they would then make some poor woman on the team ask for the ghost to touch her, whereby Derek would launch himself at her tits, I mean, it is really very funny. And then Dawn and Jennifer did a spot on parody of it that ruined any possibility of finding the show at all legitimate haha. Plus the main cast were all whackjobs. I think that Karl guy was going around calling himself the last samurai or something at one point.

But having said all that, I do have lovely feelings of nostalgia for hanging out with my friends, watching the show and hoping that this time we might be scared.

I don't watch them because they're all fake as hell. They're entertainment fodder, not informational shows. They make up the majority of what they claim, and the rest is just a bunch of exaggerations.

They must be so frustrating to make if you go into them believing in ghosts and wanting to capture them on tape, only for night after night come away with nothing... so you have to stretch the truth a bit here, exaggerate a bit there, fake a little something here, until you just have this completely false product that MAYBE you went into in good faith.

Paranormal State was a hoot when that old Queen Chip Coffey was on: she would have me in stitches every time. That show was extremely gay with Serge and Ryan being a couple, Chip and the hot lesbian, Michelle Belanger. The producers hoped Ryan would hookup with Katrina, but he got with Sergey!!!

I like the “My Hauntings” although I prefer simple ghosts over demons. Dead Files is ok, but it’s so heavily edited and predictable. The one where that dude bro shouts at the ghosts is annoying. Ghost Brothers should be funnier than it is... the one I would like to see is the basement in York where Roman soldiers allegedly appear every once in awhile. The old dude who saw them in the 1950s was totally believable and he told details (shape of shields, color of tunics) that were only confirmed later after archealogists’ unrelated research.

Notice the words "possibly" and "could have been" are used a great deal in these types of shows, especially the ancient aliens franchise. You'll never hear "we have actual physical proof" at any time on those shows.+

I'll admit I've watched them since the early aughts, but it was primarily because of my interest in abandoned places or places with a notorious history.

These shows are phony as fuck beyond that. I don't believe in ghosts. Amy from The Dead Files is amongst the worst in terms of fake melodrama. Zak Bagans and the rest of the cast of Ghost Adventures are a total bro-fest.

Oh honey, she look like she’s twirling on meth in OP’s photo. That’s one sweaty Betty!

R23, I can identify with what you say too. A lot of what my friends and I enjoyed about these shows was the abandoned places aspect of it, and nighttime exploration. We grew up in a part of the world where there isn't as much for young people to do as in other places, and we also weren't huge clubbing people, so we spent a lot of our youth driving around at night and looking at abandoned buildings, and basically freaking ourselves out for fun.

Seriously, people? How fucking stupid do you have to be to believe this shit?

R26 the shows might be staged, but I don't know why pondering the paranormal makes one stupid. It's an interesting topic—the question of whether it's real or just psychological, and whether it is or isn't what people think it is at all. It could be a part of future science that we haven't figured out yet. It's frightening to people because it's not something that is understood.

It is all nonsense. "Oh, look, I have goosebumps, it means there is a ghost." Of course, that is a normal fear response. Paranormal caught on Camera faking it! One episode had a guy in an abandoned school, church or something. A chair moves by itself and a board behind it also moves. Sloppy editing clearly shows a monofilament line connected to the bottom of the board pulling it from the wall. I recording the moment and posted it on the associated website. They ignored it completely. Now I don't believe any of the videos on that show. Of course, I never did.

I love Kim Russo, she's so Lawn Guyland.

Funny how the more I watch these the less convinced I am of the paranormal. I am sure the intent is the opposite.

For good paranormal content podcasts are where it’s at.

Yes, on podcasts no one can see you trying to keep a straight face. Any attention-seeking tool can make up a spooky story.

Nothing ever happens. They start freaking out over stupid shit that the cameras never picks up.

I enjoyed the original Ghost Hunters. They were a team from Rhode Island that tried to debunk the haunted places. Grant Wilson was very sexy and sensitive. I also liked the spin off Ghost Hunters International, they investigated some great locations throughout Europe.

I loved a British show called Most Haunted, back in the day. Long over but I used to love getting home from work Friday nights and watching that in the dark before I went to bed.

I see spirits

Why is it always at night on these shows? Do ghosts only work the grave shift?

I spent some time working for a producer of shows like this. They are probably more staged and "produced" than The Bachelor. This is entertainment. There is no requirement they be honest, accurate, or even unstaged. If there was, they wouldn't be able to shoot so many episodes. It's all bullshit.

The success of these type of bullshit shows contribute to the public's mistrust of the vaccine because they're so ridiculously anti-science.

Zak has made millions from his "show yourself" crap. Too bad Ryan Buell didn't stay on the straight and narrow path because that could have been him.

There are certainly a lot of flamers in that profession like Chip Coffey, Chris Fleming, Barry Taft, etc.

[quote]Grant Wilson was very sexy and sensitive.

Grant Wilson has big-dick nose.

Amy allen is legit, the others NO