For many people this is the extent of their involvement in the paranormal—a scary movie or a haunted corn maze in October. It is a chance to relive primitive days through the reenactment of the old rites of Samhain. It calls forth childhood fears of the dark and allows us to experience a primitive type of fear with a fun payoff.
As we enter the Haunted Corn Maze, the air is filled with the sounds of otherworldly horror; smoke from the bonfire is wafting in the night breeze and screams from other patrons can be heard above the din of the chainsaw. But, as we enter the maze, the darkness surrounds us and there is nothing—no monsters, no ghosts, no actors. It is desolate and we are alone for a long time, merely winding our way through the annals of the corn stalks. We walk slowly, barely able to see the trail, waiting in anticipation for the coming scare. A group of kids, laughing loudly and walking quickly through the maze, catches up with us and we let them pass by so that we can enjoy the suspense uninterrupted.
There were no scares or actors for the first half of the maze. Rather, it was only darkness and the imagination of what lay behind the layered stalks of corn. That was the truest experience in the maze; the suspense and belief that behind the façade of stalks there was something alien, unknown, malevolent, and frightening waiting for us. All we had to do is walk further into the darkness, further into the unknown.
Those who pursue the paranormal are walking into the unknown. Whether “real” or not, the paranormal represents all that cannot be known about our existence. The same way that every town has a haunted house or graveyard upon which beliefs and fears of the unknown can be heaped, the paranormal, in general, is where we place our hopes, beliefs, and fears regarding the very nature of our existence. Those who use the paranormal for entertainment are subtly engaging in the fear of the existential unknown—letting their primitive selves awaken for a moment before repressing them again in their everyday normal lives.
The use of the paranormal for entertainment is nothing new. Since plays and stories first began there have been depictions of monsters, ghosts, and devils. The relevance between fiction and reality lends to an age-old question: which came first, the ghost in reality or the ghost in fiction? Could ancient man have simply imagined these beings and then cast them into the fictions that proved most entertaining and influential, like the ancient Greek and Roman gods?
The ancient gods were used to explain the unexplainable at a time when science was just on the verge of birth. The gods were a way by which the people understood their world when there was no modern science. If ghosts, monsters, and UFOs are merely creations of the public imagination, such as the ancient gods were, then what, if anything, are these creations seeking to explain? Are these merely symbols of things that the public does not understand—things such as space and time travel, life after death or the complexity of the biological world or the notion of evil? While the use of gods to explain natural occurrences such as lightning and disease were understandable for ancient man, it seems entirely backwards for modern man in this age of science and reason to focus on the paranormal to explain various experiences. It is the intermingling of the scientific world and the world of the unknown, or paranormal, that has been the cause of much of the interest generated in modern society. It is a clash between two belief systems, science and faith—faith not only in religious terms, but faith in the paranormal. The clash between science and faith has at its heart the American way of life and has found a public arena in which to wage its wars—literature, theater, and, of course, television. Similar to the “Scopes Monkey Trial” portrayed in Inherit the Wind, in which creationism and evolution were pitted against each other to determine whether or not evolution could be allowed in schools, a similar dynamic has been played out between science and the paranormal on television.
The conflict makes for good television as man seeks answers where there have only been questions. Questions such as, Are we alone in the universe? Is there life after death? Is there true good and evil? The conflict and the interest therein has been building for centuries, and in the 1950s it finally received the ultimate medium—the television. Though humble and black and white at the start, television has morphed into a medium almost bigger than the world it inhabits. From our living rooms we watch lions on the plains of Africa, see the intricacies of ultra-slow-motion movement, and visit outer space. Our understanding and connection to the world has grown immensely. It has served our purposes for education, entertainment, economy, and imagination, and more recently, it has become the one-stop shop for everything paranormal.
Paranormal programming has grown to include everything from kids’ shows in which tween contestants try to test their ghost-busting abilities in supposedly “haunted” areas, to reality shows featuring séances and demonic possession. They range from National Geographic’s scientifically critical Is It Real? to the ridiculous and mindless Ghost Adventures on Travel. Most fall somewhere in the middle, trying to use science to explain or prove their findings, though never proving the existence of the paranormal nor debunking it completely. The mystery and the conflict between the paranormal and science is what draws the audience. It appears that while the intention of these programs may be to find and “prove” the paranormal, they silently acknowledge that to do so would mean the end of their programming, their jobs, and their income. Hence, it is a balance between the paranormal and the scientific that drives paranormal programming. If a show were to conclude without a doubt that ghosts are not real, they would probably lose the average viewer. It is the quiet hope that perhaps science may not have all the answers, the idea that science can’t disprove everything fantastic that maintains viewer interest. Though nothing has ever been proven scientifically on any of the paranormal programs, the idea that the paranormal could be true keeps people watching.
A Brief History of Paranormal Television
Before television there was radio, which served as the foremost entertainment medium in households until the 1950s and ’60s. During this time of radio-dominated entertainment, there was a paranormal scare that swept across a portion of the United States, and suddenly normal, working-class citizens feared for their lives and prepared to defend against an attack from alien life forms. This was, of course, the radio broadcast of Orson Welles’s War of the Worlds, which aired on October 30, 1938.
All across the United States, listeners reacted. Thousands of people called the radio stations, the police and newspapers. Many in the New England area loaded up their cars and fled their homes. In other areas, people went to churches to pray. People improvised gas masks. Miscarriages and early births were reported. Deaths were also reported, though never confirmed. Many people were hysterical. They thought the end was near. Hours after the program had ended and listeners realized that the Martian invasion was not real, the public was outraged that Orson Welles had tried to fool them. Many people sued. Others wondered if Welles had caused the panic on purpose.3
Although the program had been buffered with warnings explaining that the program was fictional, many people missed the announcements, and the fact that Welles took over another radio program to expand the listening audience further contributed to the confusion and panic that spread across the Northeast. Following the radio broadcast, newspapers across the country gave numerous accounts of the panic, and the incident quickly became a part of the American paranormal landscape. However, this 1930s radio show was not the only instance of an entertainment medium reaching, influencing, and frightening its audience. Bill Ellis defines this as “ostension,” which is the “dramatic extension into real life” of story.4 War of the Worlds was certainly an instance of ostension, and it would not be the last. The history of the paranormal as entertainment is tainted with the belief that some of its stories are true (for instance, the Amityville Horror), and thus can lead to real-life action by some individuals.
With the advent of the television, a new medium was accepted into households around the world, and with it came a new blending of fiction, reality, and the
paranormal. The earliest paranormal-based nonfiction program was Arthur C. Clarke’s Mysterious World, which aired in 1980 and explored paranormal phenomena such as UFOs, sea creatures, ape-men, and mysterious rock formations. The 13-part series was introduced by Arthur C. Clarke, an author widely known for his science fiction, and narrated by Gordon Honeycombe. The series documented cases of paranormal phenomena, and then interviewed witnesses and used science and technology to try to determine whether or not the phenomena could be explained. The answer then, as it is now, was that while there were scientific theories concerning what the phenomena might be, there was never any proof one way or the other. All they had was witness testimony and scientific conjecture, and with only testimony and conjecture, the viewer was left with exactly what he wanted, a mystery. That was, after all, the title of the show: Arthur C. Clarke’s Mysterious World. It would not have been a good show unless it delivered on the promised mystery. And it is this idea of the mysterious that would find its way through the eighties, nineties, and into the information age. It is the doubt that’s left behind after everyone has told his or her story and modern science has offered its best explanation with no verifiable truth or law. It is exactly this rift between what has been witnessed and what can be explained by science that causes the continued viewer interest. It is the mysterious world that the viewer craves—a world without explanation. This documentary-style program set the format for such future programs as MonsterQuest and Is It Real?, in which scientists examine claims by witnesses in an effort to either prove or disprove the paranormal. Invariably nothing is either proven or discredited, at least to the viewer. The program, no matter how critical, leaves the viewer with a mystery and a dilemma—to believe the word of a seemingly reasonable, normal person or to believe science that has, thus far, been unable to prove the existence of said phenomena. The beauty of this style of paranormal programming is that science rarely stands a chance against the word of the witness or witnesses featured in the program.
The problem is a matter of timing, coincidence, and the burden of proof. Firstly, the scientists have a very limited window of time in which to try to prove or refute a paranormal claim; they must do so while the cameras are rolling. Witness testimony requires no cameras or timing. It is often a thing of coincidence; a couple is walking through the woods and spots a Sasquatch. This is a fantastic coincidence that could take decades for science to replicate, thus science is given a small window of time to explain the unexplainable. Scientific explanation is automatically given the lower hand by means of timing, and as a result, the viewer is left believing that maybe this is a phenomenon beyond the abilities of modern science. Another example would be the investigation of a haunted house. The residents of the home spend 24 hours a day, 7 days a week in the house. The probability of them witnessing a ghostly occurrence is much greater than that of a scientist or an investigator who comes to the home for a limited amount of time to gather evidence of the paranormal. It amounts to fishing in the Dead Sea.
Secondly, there is a very logical argument that is often overlooked in the world of the paranormal, and it explains why science is often so skeptical; namely, that extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof if they are to be accepted. Terence Hines does a wonderful job of illustrating this point in Pseudoscience and the Paranormal when he states, “The most common characteristic of a pseudoscience claim is the nonfalsifiable or irrefutable hypothesis. This is a hypothesis against which there can be no evidence—that is, no evidence can show the hypothesis to be wrong.”5 In terms of paranormal programs, this very basic logic is what imbues the documentary style program with the element of the mysterious. In the course of a typical program, seemingly normal, good people will claim to have seen something unexplainable; and science, within the time given, is unable to prove them wrong. However, Hines argues that the burden should not be on science to debunk the claim but on the witnesses and proponents to prove it. It is nearly impossible to disprove what an individual claims to have seen, or, in the case of video or photographic evidence, it is impossible to explain away every single photo or video clip. Something that cannot be explained does not qualify as proof of the existence of the paranormal. However, in the modern documentary-style paranormal program, science is left with the burden to disprove witness testimony and evidence, which is nearly impossible in most cases. Hence, the viewer is left with a mystery. It should be noted, however, that Mr. Hines does believe that science should investigate claims of the paranormal.
First, the claim may, in fact, be true. Failure to examine it would then delay the acquisition of new, perhaps important, knowledge. Second, if the claim is false, the scientific community, which is heavily supported by the public through taxes, has a responsibility to inform the public … Third, several important psychological issues relate to the study of pseudoscience and the paranormal … Fourth, and finally, the unthinking acceptance of pseudoscientific claims poses real dangers. Believers may act on their beliefs and cause physical harm, even death.6
World of Strange Powers in 1985 and Mysterious Universe in 1994 followed Arthur C. Clarke’s Mysterious World. However, it was in 1987 that one of the most well- known and popular programs involving the paranormal was released. Unsolved Mysteries takes a look at unsolved murder cases, missing persons, and unexplained paranormal phenomena, including alien abduction cases, ghostly occurrences, psychic predictions, and Bigfoot. Unsolved Mysteries set the standard for reenactment style programming that would ultimately influence Discovery’s A Haunting and Ghostly Encounters on Biography. Unsolved Mysteries was narrated by actor Robert Stack and the combination of his deep, resonating voice and the genuinely eerie Halloween-esque music made for creepy viewing. The series was run regularly on NBC from 1987 to 1997. It was then broadcast by CBS for several years and then on Lifetime. Stack eventually quit the show due to ailing health, but the program ran in syndication well into 2008 when Stack passed away. In 2008 Spike Television brought the series back in an effort to ride the paranormal tidal wave sweeping across cable television; the series is hosted by Dennis Farina.
While some claim that Unsolved Mysteries was a documentary-style program, it used paid actors, Hollywood sets, and special effects to reenact what the witnesses or victims claimed happened. One episode even featured a young Matthew McConaughey. Furthermore, especially in cases of the paranormal, there was little to no investigation done concerning the witnesses’ claims. The viewer was left with only the witness testimony acted out on the screen and perhaps a few cautionary words from Robert Stack stating that “no one knows what really happened and so it remains an Unsolved Mystery.” Each hour-long program would generally feature three to five reenactments based on witness testimony. Whether it was a murder, a missing person’s case, or the paranormal, the mysteries would be acted out for the camera and narrated by Stack, occasionally cutting to the actual witnesses themselves being interviewed and telling their story. This is the exact same format used by Discovery’s A Haunting, including creepy intro music and adding special effects that are much easier and cheaper to produce in the information/technology age. Discovery even goes so far as to make a disclosure at the beginning of each episode, which states, “The events depicted in this program are based on eyewitness accounts.” While this lack of critical inquiry could be seen as a drawback to the reenactment programs, they do make for entertaining and occasionally scary television viewing.
The third and final type of paranormal program is the reality-based program, which is the most widely used and most-watched program. This type of show rides the wave of the reality-television series by having camera crews follow paranormal investigators through their days as they hunt for ghosts, interview witnesses, and occasionally exorcise homes and people. The cost for producing a reality-based program is relatively low by comparison, and with some fancy editing work can be made to seem very realistic and action-packed as the ghost hunters poke and prod their way through various haunted houses with a variety of ghosts. Most
Haunted, a British television show that featured some paranormal investigators and mediums exploring some of Europe’s most famous haunted locations, inspired this style of paranormal programming. The show became a hit for the Travel Channel as viewers tuned in, not only to watch the exciting and creepy investigations, but also to watch the investigators as well. The team consisted of a psychic medium who could communicate with the dead, a historian, and several investigators, all led by the presenter and narrator, a pretty British blonde named Yvette Fielding. However, despite being quite popular with both British and American audiences, Most Haunted had some setbacks in the form of purported hoaxes that were aired on YouTube. The impact of Most Haunted’s style, though, was huge; it has become the most replicated form of paranormal programming to this day. Employing sweeping aerial shots of eerie locales and rehearsed stock footage of the crew gathering their equipment and preparing for an investigation, the actual investigation is filmed in the reality style of programming that has become so widespread and popular in modern television culture.
However, Most Haunted was not the first paranormal program to employ this style and stir up a bit of controversy. Probably even more influential was the 1992 faux-documentary entitled Ghostwatch.7 Presented as actual video footage of a real haunted house, Ghostwatch investigators filmed a small family being terrorized by the ghost of a former inhabitant. The video footage showed young girls running from their rooms as furniture was tossed about, and it even showed the possession of Michael Parkinson, a BBC presenter, by a spirit called “Pipes.” There were mediums channeling the voices of spirits and further possessions of the family living in the home. Interviews with neighbors revealed a terrifying history of the house. A former resident had claimed to be possessed by the spirit of a woman, and consequently, hung himself. His 12 cats were left hungry and, eventually, fed on the body before anyone discovered it.
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