Ghost Brothers: Season 1
In 2016 a new ghost hunting show opened their first episode with two important questions: “Are ghosts for real? And why is everybody white?”
And with those questions we’re introduced to The Ghost Brothers, Dalen Spratt, Juwan Mass, and Marcus Harvey. The three are friends who had paranormal experiences when they were kids and are looking for answers as adults. This also helps to set up the tone of the show, paranormal investigation with a bit of lighthearted humor and jokes at one-another’s expense, the kind of rapport you would expect from a group of long-time friends.
Each episode begins with Dalen and Juwan arriving at Marcus’s barbershop to discuss their newest case, often while Marcus finishes a customer’s haircut. While Marcus cuts hair, Dalen presents the case and location to the rest of the team and will also contact the client to have them describe their experiences in more detail to the rest of the team. From there, the team heads to the location, discussing the details and their expectations for the investigation while they drive.
The Investigation
When the Ghost Brothers arrive at the location they meet with an owner or representative of the location who takes them on a tour of the hotspots while providing a history of the location including anecdotes that might explain the reasons for the haunting. Once they’ve toured the location and learned the background, they get on with the investigation. They skip the montages of library research and interviews that comprise the beginning of the investigation on other paranormal investigation shows. They do, on occasion, include some dramatic reenactment during their walkthrough of the location in order to bring those stories to life as they’re being told.
To get this started with the investgation, Marcus takes Juwan and Dalen out to their car to officially kick things off. At this point, he excitedly says that they’re going to “pop the trunk”, followed by clicking the key fob to open the tailgate on their truck and revealing their equipment case. This adds to the entertainment value of the show and continues the thread of the show’s more light-hearted tone.
As the Ghost Brothers begin investigating, in many—if not all—of the episodes they invite a local investigator who has some prior experience with the location. This is a detail that you don’t often see on ghost hunting shows and it adds an interesting element to beginning of the investigation. In addition to the owner or manager of the location describing events that have taken place, the local investigator provides an additional element to investigating these hot spots as they have experiences that they can compare and contrast in the moment, as well as bringing another point of view and set of investigation skills to the show they they wouldn’t otherwise have.
Throughout their investigation they have a relaxed, easy-going style. They don’t shout or yell or try to intimidate the spirits or entities they’re looking to make contact with, they just go in, ask questions, try to talk, and are generally calm throughout. While they’re not the only show or group to lean away from provocation, they seem to approach their investigations in the most respectful way that I’ve seen so far, especially where the goal is more ghost hunting than paranormal investigation. In Episode 2, this is probably the most apparent when they are in what appears to be a living room, but has a coffin in it. While in this room, they’re using a REM Pod to communicate. They take time to explain who they are and what they’re doing in the home, they then ask yes/no questions and the REM Pod signals a fair number of times, seemingly in response to their questions.
The Verdict
The Ghost Brothers is an entertaining ghost hunting show for people who just want to watch the investigation and enjoy when a show has a sense of humor. Throughout the first season, they keep their investigation techniques simple and accessible—using equipment like EMF detectors, audio recorders, video cameras, and REM pods while staying away from the more complicated devices that have come to dominate the investigations of the plethora of ghost hunting shows available. This is nice to see, as it provides the viewer with the sense that they could also perform an investigation of their own.
The show exists in the same space as Ghost Adventures where they’re at the location to collect evidence and experiences of the paranormal. They aren’t there to prove—or disprove—a haunting, they’re looking to prove ghosts exist. The main difference being that the Ghost Brothers steer clear of provocation, relying more on conversing with the entities.
Their ghost hunting takes place in a tongue-in-cheek way, contrasting themselves against the stereotype of ghost hunters all being white. The first episode’s opening question: “why is everybody white?” sets the humorous tone, while also pointing out that shows in this genre are pretty segregated, whether intentional or not. Most diversity that makes its way into a paranormal reality TV show can be boiled down to stereotypical depictions of Native Americans as Shamans or healers, and only when the investigators believe that Native spirits are the cause of the hauntings. While they do make occasional references to being Black, they show isn’t centered on this. There is no answer to the question, “why is everybody white?”, or at least not a satisfactory one. There’s no good reason since once the show gets beyond this opening question, you’re just watching a ghost hunting show. I’m left wondering to myself, “seriously, why IS everybody white on these shows?”.
Of note is the fact that the Ghost Brothers aren’t particularly skeptical of the activity described to them or that they experience, which is fairly standard given ghost hunting aspect of the show. While they make an effort to look for alternate explanations, this is done as a way to reinforce that their experience is paranormal, describing what the activity is not as opposed to what else it could be. This is aided by the selection of haunted locations, rather than locations where the property owner is looking for acknowledgement of their experience or an alternate explanation to put them at ease, like Ghost Hunters.
Even though they’re going into their investigations seeking evidence to support the idea that the location is haunted, they do capture a fair amount of evidence that doesn’t have an apparent cause—Episode 2, the Allen House, they get signals from their REM Pod when asking yes/no questions near a coffin and later, the door to a bathroom in the home swings closed on its own. In Episode 5, at the Magnolia Hotel, while approaching the location Marcus begins to have difficulty breathing to the point that they need to call an ambulance and he spends some time in the emergency room. Later in the evening, he arrives to participate in the investigation. Later in the season, on Episode 6 they use a flashlight to communicate, seemingly getting responses to yes/no questions again. They also have personal experiences while staying the night at the location—the Fitzpatrick Hotel—that they have a serious, albeit dramatic, discussion about whether or not to leave the hotel. Some of these experiences seem like they’re overly dramatic, but being that this is a reality TV show, it’s not surprising.
All in all Ghost Brothers is a well-produced and entertaining ghost hunting show. There is a lot to enjoy and with the variety of locations and experiences, keeping the show from being too formulaic or predictable.
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Season 1 of Ghost Brothers originally aired on Destination America and TLC from April 15 to May 20, 2016. There is also a second season of Ghost Brothers, as well as a spin-off series—Ghost Brothers: Haunted Houseguests—on TLC.
Ghost Brothers Season 1 is available on Amazon Prime with the Destination Unknown subscription and select episodes are available on Destination America’s YouTube channel. You can also watch online at watch.travelchannel.com or on the Travel Channel Go app and with your Discovery+ subscription.