Ghost Adventures: Season 1
Ghost Adventures is the paranormal reality show that people love to hate. Whether it’s the groups techniques, their attitude, or Zak’s larger than life persona, there are plenty of things to pick apart and be critical of after 19 seasons on the air. Let’s take a step back in time to October of 2008 and look at Ghost Adventures when they first started out.
Coming off of a feature-length film, also calledGhost Adventures, in 2006 (the film premiered on SciFi in 2007), the show premiered October 17, 2008 on the Travel Channel, just in time for the Halloween season. Featuring the same cast as the film, Zak Bagans, Nick Groff, and Aaron Goodwin explore reportedly haunted locations around the country in what becomes their trademark style of aggression and provocation.
In the first season, we meet the much younger investigators who are just figuring out how to host a television show. Zak reminds me of people I went to high school with, wearing all black with gelled hair and baggy jeans, as he introduces the very first episode at Bobby Macky’s Music World in Kentucky, supposedly one of the most haunted locations in the country. His style is reminiscent of later seasons, just more in line with the fashion of the early 2000s. Nick’s appearance somehow hasn’t changed much over the years. Aaron also looks very similar, however in recent years he’s lost a bit of weight.
While Ghost Adventures hasn’t changed a whole lot over the last 12 years, it did provide a different look at ghost hunting and paranormal investigation.
The Formula
Part of what makes Ghost Adventures different is that it doesn’t completely follow the standard formula for paranormal reality TV shows, with a research montage, the investigation, and the reveal. Instead we get an introduction to the location, some interviews with witnesses of paranormal activity, some general history of the location, and the investigation. No montage. No research. Any evidence caught by the team is generally bought to the audiences attention as it occurs with enhanced audio and anything captured visually being replayed for their benefit.
The Walkthrough
You can’t have a paranormal TV show without the initial walkthrough of the location to know what has happened and where.
Ghost Adventures handles this by combining the walkthrough with the interviews, and—in some cases—minor reenactments rather than going through each piece step-by-step. During this process the team goes through the location with a key person or employee of the location to find the hotspots of where paranormal activity has been witnessed. Throughout the walkthrough, they will occasionally cut away to specific witness re-tellings of those events, giving a face to the story being told. This is also where the history of the location is interjected, so that we as the audience are given some context to information about the location, events, and people who may be responsible for the paranormal activity. The walkthrough also provides the team an opportunity to mark locations to place static cameras—what they come to call their “X-Cameras” due to the duct tape X’s they put on the floor. The “X-Cameras” are located in areas with the most activity reported.
In the fourth episode, Moundsville State Penitentiary in West Virginia, there is an ever-so-slightly different format, which—I think—lends itself well to the the circumstances and location. During the walkthrough segment, the show also cuts away to some impromptu interviews that they conduct with people who live directly across the street from the prison. Now, in television there are releases that need to be signed and permission to film that needs to be granted before filming can happen so the interviews are probably not as impromptu as they make it seem, but I think it does play well. First and Foremost, you don’t often see a prison with residential homes just across the street, so this gives some interesting insight into the location and it’s place within a community. The interviews also range from people who have visited the prison in its current state as a museum, who worked there as prison guards, and, in one case, as an inmate at the prison.
All of the interviews give some unofficial history as well as some witnessed experiences that aren’t part of the standard walkthrough. While I don’t think that Zak has the best practices as an interviewer—the way that he asks some of his questions is a bit leading and at least once he doesn’t explicitly mention what they’re filming for—this “off script”-seeming detour does provide background in an effective way. Changing the formula a little bit makes for a nice change to a process that the viewer may have started getting used to, especially binge-watching the season 12 years after it originally aired.
The Investigation
One of the things that makes Ghost Adventures different from other paranormal reality TV shows is that they get “locked down” in the location they’re investigating. So, what does getting locked down in a location entail? Literally being locked into the location.
To illustrate this, during their investigation of the Houghton Mansion in Episode Three and the Riddle House in Episode Six, they install a latch and padlock on the outside of the property so that they are unable to leave until someone arrives the following morning to let them out again. In Episode Four, in the Moundsville State Penitentiary, they are locked in the building using an old prison door that had previously been used to ensure prisoners were kept inside the building.
It’s unclear just how “locked down” the Ghost Adventures crew are at any given time since we only see footage from the team’s cameras and their contact for the location is not seen between the time they lock the team in and when they let them out again the next day. For legal and insurance purposes they are probably only locked in for dramatic effect since no production company, network, or insurance policy is going to be OK with three people being locked into a building where they are keeping the lights off and have the potential to be injured—almost every location they visit is in some state of disrepair or at the very least is not up to modern building codes (exceptions to this include active locations like Bobby Macky’s as it’s currently in use as a bar and restaurant). That being said, the lockdown does provide the show with a touch of drama and intensity.
Once the team is locked in, the investigation starts.
Zak Bagans is not shy about how he conducts his investigations. Throughout the first season he mentions provocation at least once per episode as this is his preferred method of getting the spirits or entities at each location to make their presence known. Based on the way that other paranormal investigators and shows discuss the use of provocation it’s no surprise that Zak becomes the target of violent activity as a result of his antagonistic investigation style. In Bobby Macky’s Music World he ends up on the receiving end of scratches down his back. It’s worth noting that they come in the form of three parallel scratches, which many believe to be due to demonic or malevolent spirits due to the number supposedly being a mockery of the holy trinity in Catholicism—which happens to be a stereotype of supposed demonic encounters. Zak certainly believes this to be the case, and this also would coincide well with the story of a demon being present at the location.
Another standard part of the Ghost Adventures investigation process is to spend time alone in the most haunted parts of the location. During this portion of the investigation, Zak orders Aaron to spend time alone. Aaron, who is billed as their equipment technician, is always reluctant. During these solo investigations, the team member spends their time performing EVP sessions while recording what they’re seeing with their own camera while a static camera, usually an “X-Camera”, captures what’s happening in the room.
Throughout the investigation, Zak has voiceovers to explain something of interest as well as to point out when evidence has been captured. This is usually coupled with several replays with various treatments like enhancing the audio, zooming in or enhancing the video, and circling areas of the footage to pay attention to.
The investigation ends when the next morning hits and the Ghost Adventures crew are let out of the location. At this point, another voiceover takes place and Zak gives a conclusion to the episode. There is no reveal to the owner, just the occasional consultation with experts to analyze audio or video evidence captured.
The Evidence
The evidence caught by the Ghost Adventures crew is pretty standard fare for the paranormal TV show. The most often collected evidence is the EVP (electronic voice phenomenon). While most examples of EVPs are difficult to understand—and potentially just static—they are a highly sought after piece of evidence. Ghost Adventures is no exception to this trend. They are seemingly able to collect multiple EVPs during the course of every investigation, and while most paranormal TV shows collect EVPs of questionable clarity and quality, a not-insignificant number of the examples Ghost Adventures collects are clear enough to be interpretable as words.
The Ghost Adventures crew also collects a variety of video evidence. Where paranormal investigation and ghost hunting is concerned, video evidence encompasses a number of phenomena—orbs, shadows, apparitions, and even scratches or other injuries forming out of seemingly nowhere. Not nearly as common as EVPs, Ghost Adventures has examples of all of these throughout their first season, they managed to collect all of them in on episode, which just so happens to be their first episode—Bobby Macky’s Music World. Of the video evidence they’ve collected, though, there’s one phenomena that the Ghost Adventures crew has a less-that-consistent opinion on—orbs. Throughout the season Zak comments about what orbs are, or at least could be—spirits attempting to manifest and interact with the living. Later on in the season, though, we’re given some additional information: that orbs can easily be debunked as bugs or dust. I’m not 100% sure what the change of heart was throughout the season, but it was interesting.
The Verdict
In the first season Zak, Nick, and Aaron are relatively young and are new to the world of paranormal reality TV. They do, however, seem to have a good idea of what their show is and are able to stick to it.
It’s difficult to call the Ghost Adventures crew paranormal investigators, aside from the opening sequence of the show explaining that Zak is looking for evidence of the paranormal, we don’t see a lot evidence during the show of them collecting data, looking for alternate explanations, or trying to determine what the paranormal is. They fit more into the category of “ghost hunters”, just looking for paranormal activity and evidence of it.
A lot of the evidence they collect during their first season is on par with other shows like Ghost Hunters and Most Haunted—shadows, orbs, and EVPs that you can mostly make out with the help of some interpretation. The main difference they bring to the table is their attitude and style.
Ghost Adventures is entertainment through and through, from the presentation style of Zak Bagans to the showmanship displayed throughout the investigation. The first season of the show, however, has an earnestness that is lost as the seasons progress. In the beginning, the Ghost Adventures crew seems most interested in finding the evidence of the paranormal and their reactions to capturing evidence feel genuine. Starting only a handful of years after Ghost Hunters came on the air and pioneered paranormal reality TV, Ghost Adventures brought a different focus to the genre, focusing more on the paranormal activity and investigation and less on whether or not a location was haunted—giving us a show based strictly in ghost hunting.
Every episode of Ghost Adventures feels cohesive and keeps the same quality throughout. You know what to expect, but not it a bad way—you don’t have to worry about the content getting stale, given the changes in location and types of reported activity, mixed with never knowing what Zak might be doing makes for a unique but familiar experience when watching.
Ghost Adventures currently airs on Travel Channel. You can also watch Seasons 10-15 on Hulu and purchase episodes and seasons on Amazon Prime Video and YouTube, watch online at watch.travelchannel.com or on the Travel Channel Go app with your cable or satellite subscription, or with your Discovery+ subscription.