Ghost Lab

What do you get when you cross ghost hunters from Texas with a trailer full of technology? You get Ghost Lab.

Ghost Lab follows the Klinge brothers, Brad and Barry, and their ghost hunting team, Everyday Paranomal as they investigate “some of the most haunted places in America”. The Klinge’s created Everyday Paranromal after having their own paranormal experiences as children. Their stated goal is to “find proof of the paranormal”.

A little on the nose, the show’s title clues us into the main difference between this show and other ghost hunting shows that were on television at the time: the Klinge’s have a ghost lab—a lab for analyzing paranomal data—that accomanies them on every investigation. It serves as their base of operations as well as where the analyze the data they collect on their investigations. Every piece of audio or video, environmental data, and personal experience is logged and reviewed from the lab—throughout the investigations, team members are present in the lab and reviewing anything that seems out of the ordinary or that an investigator marks (by stating “Mark Time” when they experience something) for review. Some audio, and a lot of video, are seemingly being reviewed and analyzed in real-time, according to how the show presents their investigations.

Often, when an investigator believes they’ve caught something especially interesting, they’ll finish what they’re doing and head straight to the lab for analysis.

Investigation Style

Investigations on Ghost Lab follow a fairly standard outline for ghost hunting shows: Tour the location, investigate the location with audio recorders and video equipment, research historical contexts, analyze data, report on their findings. Where the show departs from most other ghost hunting shows is in the data analysis—using the “ghost lab” to analyze the data in nearly real-time throughout the investigation. Where they seem to stick very closely to other shows is in their investigation style.

The Klinge brothers have a fairly adversarial style, spending a not-insignificant amount of their investigation yelling or being antagonistic toward the spirits reportedly residing at the locations they’re visiting. They even, in one episode, go so far as to pretend to purchase a location and begin “demolition” in order to instigate activity.

This investigation method is similar to other shows, like Ghost Adventures, where shouting and otherwise violent behavior is used to elicit paranormal activity.

While the Klinge brothers aren’t quite as violent toward the spirits as other investigators (I’m looking at you Zak Bagans), they’re still adversarial to the point of trying to antagnoize and anger the spirits for their own means (collecting evidence).

The Historical Context

One of the ways that many ghost hunting shows look to legitimize their investigations is through historical context. Ghost Lab is no different. After their initial overnight investigation, Everyday Paranormal spends time researching the location and any events that took place which could give a reason for the paranormal activity reported there, some of which are described or revealed by the property owner during their introduction and tour.

With the historical context in hand, the team undertakes a second overnight investigation, where they use the information they’ve learned to try and communicate with potential spirits now that they have names to put with the reported activity. This method makes for great television since it allows the team to create a narrative to the haunting and gives them targets that they can aim their investigation tward.

Analysis

Ghost Lab fits more with a “ghost hunting” show rather than paranormal investigation or research.

One of the the ways that this comes through is in the way that the approach their investigations. Rather than looking at whether or not a location is haunted, they are arriving at the location under the impression that the location is, in fact, haunted. Their data collection throughout their investigation is then simply in support of this conclusion—they’re just looking to collect evidence of the haunting.

The next way that this is made clear is through the historical context that they uncover. They look for people and events that would explain why a location could be haunted and use this to confirm both that the haunting is taking place and that the people they’ve identified are the ones haunting it.

In Season 1, Episode 6, “John Wilkes Booth”, the Klinges and their team are exploring a hypothesis that the assassin who killed President Abraham Lincoln survived the manhunt, changed his identity, and ended up in Oklahoma. throughout the investigation, they’re following this alternate trail and in the final location they investigate apparently collect and EVP that states “I am John Wilkes Booth”.

It’s a bombshell to be sure.

But what is actually happening?

Looking at this further, if we take a step back and 1) agree that the location is haunted and 2) that a spirit is responding with the statement, “I’m John Wilkes Booth” what does that tells us? All we know is that a spirit has claimed to be John Wilkes Booth. No more, no less. We have no other confirmation that the spirit responding is Booth, though. What keeps any spirit from responding with what the investigator would like to hear? If we believe that there are intelligent hauntings the ghosts could be telling us anything, true or not.

First, the Ghost Lab team is specifically looking to corroborate this hypothesis by trying to communicate with the spirit of John Wilkes Booth at these locations. They’ve already concluded that his spirit must be present, and if they do find his spirit, they’ve corroborated the hypothesis and proved that Booth survived and lived out his life under an assumed name. They’ve already concluded that the locations are haunted and just trying to prove that Booth’s spirit is at least one of the spirits haunting the locations.

Second, they’re falling for a common problem in investigations like this called “confirmation bias”. What this means is that they’re collecting evidence to fit the hypothesis they’ve already concluded to be true: There is a haunting. Anything they collect just confirms this and there is no doubt in their mind that they are correct. Confirmation bias is a problem in any scientific endeavor since by concluding that their hypothesis is correct, they can discount any evidence to the contrary. This underminds any scientific value that their investigation could yield and is a main indicator of something falling into the realm of “pseudo science”. It also undermines those investigations that are working within the scientific method and are investigating paranormal phenomena in general.

Ghost lab is an entertaining, if mostly standard, ghost hunting show. If you’re looking for a group of people running around in the dark looking to capture evidence of the ghosts that haunt a location, you’re in luck. While they do incorporate more technology and data collection into their investigation methods, if you’re looking for a more scientific exploration into the paranormal, you’ll be left wanting more.

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Ghost Lab originally aired on The Discovery Channel from 2009 to 2011. You can watch it on Amazon Prime Video with the Destination Unknown subscription, or online with your Discovery+ subscription.