Witnesses are actively seeking out New Dominion to give credence to their stories, to establish a shared reality through television for these experiences, which they cannot explain; but their story has to be one that is presentable in A Haunting’s format. New Dominion and its producers are not writing these stories but simply giving them an entertaining medium through which the world can hear the stories. With all the stories being presented through the wide variety of paranormal programs, or even just the stories on A Haunting, it would be foolish to assert that every witness is lying or that every witness is delusional. Perhaps there are those who are looking for their 15 minutes of fame, but what about the witnesses that do not reveal their identities? What are they to gain from sharing these strange, otherworldly experiences? Perhaps it is what Bill Ellis describes as an individual seeking a “belief language” for an experience they cannot explain. Programs such as A Haunting help individuals reconcile the real world with the supernatural. The particular format of A Haunting allows the witnesses to speak unchallenged by the slew of skeptics that would probably otherwise make them appear to be crazy or liars. It allows them to share more openly experiences that they cannot explain any other way than by assigning them a supernatural quality. The openness of A Haunting validates their feelings, their fears and experiences, and allows them to share with the world and be accepted by it through the medium of television.
A Haunting does not hide the fact that it dramatizes the stories for entertainment’s sake and does not challenge the witnesses’ testimony. However, there seems to be no end of witnesses coming forward to share their experiences. While the format does not seemingly fit with Discovery’s long-standing reputation for science-based, nonfiction programming, the fact that there is a segment of the population claiming to have these experiences should be enough to foster some inquiry from serious, scientific-minded people, as well as interest from people that just like a good, creepy story with the possibility that it may be real; that the world is actually full of doors, that when opened, make nightmares reality.
SYFY’S GHOST HUNTERS: “WAVERLY HILLS SANATORIUM”15
Ghost Hunters can be seen as a merging between the ancient and the new, the past and the present, the spiritual and the material—the ancient belief in ghosts and demons meets Keeping Up with the Kardashians. This reality-based program is the culmination of the paranormal in the twenty-first-century United States. The program follows The Atlantic Paranormal Society (TAPS), which is headed by Jason Hawes and Grant Wilson, as they investigate properties rumored to be haunted (when they’re not snaking sewer pipes for Roto-Rooter). The style of Ghost Hunters may have less to do with fascination with the paranormal than with the voyeuristic thrill of watching the team’s personal interactions with each other. Indeed, they have become stars. At a recent lecture given by Grant and Jason, a majority of the questions and comments revolved around the various TAPS members who have come and gone, and there was much fan adoration. A quick visit to their website reveals a slew of advertisements for TAPS clothing lines, TAPS bumper stickers and vanity plates, message boards, and TAPS magazine subscriptions. The places they investigate are largely commercial entities such as taverns, hotels, museums, and historical sites; these places are shown on their website as being haunted, and in this paranormally charged marketplace, “haunted” spells money for these businesses/places, an aspect of the paranormal that we will explore in later chapters. Though they do claim to investigate residential homes, they also claim that much of what they investigate is confidential. The two would not reveal the experiences that led them to believe in ghosts and to form a society that seeks them out.
They have guests that appear on their program to aid with the investigation ranging from fellow investigators that may be local to the area, to WWE professional wrestling stars that walk around the haunted area with EMF readers, searching for voices, sounds, and bumps in the night. Grant and Jason even own an inn located in New Hampshire, which is supposedly the site of paranormal activity. The program is aired on the Syfy channel, a channel that has “fiction” in its name, so how seriously are we supposed to take the Ghost Hunters? Alan Lowe of the Spirit Seekers even expressed some concern over programs such as Ghost Hunters: “People often seek out Spirit Seekers after seeing a paranormal investigation program, and are relieved to know that we can help them. However, I am suspicious of these programs and their dedication to truth. There are often scenes of ‘paranormal’ activity that could easily be staged. I think many in the audience may believe they are fakes and can become more suspicious of serious investigators.” This statement essentially gets to the heart of the interest and suspicion surrounding Ghost Hunters. It is filmed in a reality format, but since it’s on television, anything can be edited in or out and anything can be staged (audiences have been burned before by “reality” shows), so people who don’t truly want to believe in ghosts remain skeptical. Let us begin by analyzing the “Waverly Hills” episode.
After the usual opening and introduction of the investigators, including an ECW wrestler as a guest investigator, the team assembles outside the sanatorium to discuss the game plan for moving ahead with the investigation. The team has been here before and has had experiences. The sanatorium is located in Louisville, Kentucky, and the team immediately establishes a haunted history to the building. “Over 68,000 people died here” after it was built in 1910 to house tuberculosis victims. It is sacred ground. The narrator adds that the bodies were carted out of the building through the “body chute” to be disposed of. This is a fairly typical investigation site for Ghost Hunters and a traditional “haunted house.” A history of death under terrible circumstances and the desecration of dead bodies is a common theme in the notion of haunting. The most haunted places in the United States are traditionally places where people died under violent or otherwise horrible conditions such as Gettysburg, the bloodiest battle site of the Civil War, and the Lizzie Borden House, the site of the infamous axe murder of a family. Incidentally, both these places are now historical sites where people can pay an admission and tour the areas. So the Waverly Hills Sanatorium already meets the standard for a traditional haunted house: a history of death under terrible circumstances, and an old, abandoned place where Americans lost their lives, only to be sent down the body chute.
The investigation begins at night. The lights are turned off so that the haunted house notion is accentuated. Night is the traditional time for spirits and ghosts. Owen Davies discussed the influence of the darkness in the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century notion of ghosts. “The night was popularly thought to be the conducive time for devils, fairies and evil spirits to emerge from the depths of hell or the bowels of earth. From a religious perspective of inversion, if God, the angels and the saints were radiant, casting light wherever Christianity was practiced (as iconography depicted them), then it stood to reason that darkness, by contrast, was the natural home of the ungodly and the damned.”16
In the American tradition we can find similarities between the methods and practices of Ghost Hunters and a story from Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, a collection of folklore retold by Alvin Schwartz; a book commonly brought along for sleepovers and campouts. The story “The Haunted House” is about a preacher who spends the night (not the day) in a haunted house to try to end the haunting. While there, he encounters the ghost of a girl who was murdered. The girl leads the preacher to a treasure that he can donate to the church if the preacher can help her bring her killer to justice. She gives the preacher a bone from her finger to put in the collection plate. Whoever the bone sticks to is the killer. When the preacher passes around the plate at the next service, the finger sticks to a man who then confesses to the murder. The preacher is rewarded with a fortune for his church, justice is served, and the spirit of the girl can finally be at peace. Schwartz writes in the notes, “The tale of a person who is brave enough to spend a night in a haunted house, and who is often rewarded for his bravery, is told again and again around t
he world.”17 Coincidentally, the TAPS team is seeking out the ghost of a boy named Timmy who is said to roam the halls of Waverly Hills. They leave a ball for him to play with to see if the ball moves. TAPS takes the role of the preacher, bravely going into haunted houses to put tormented spirits to rest, tempting them into manifesting themselves so as to communicate with them and perhaps enact some kind of justice.
The ball does move, though very slightly; but it was left in the middle of a hallway that may have had an angled floor and possible airflows moving through the corridor. Still, they assign the movement of the red rubber ball to a ghostly presence. Speaking of red rubber balls and ghostly children, Stanley Kubrick’s film, The Shining, probably solidified the creepy notion of ghost children and bouncing red rubber balls. Thus, whether purposefully or inadvertently, Ghost Hunters touched upon one of the most well-known and influential horror movies in Hollywood history by incorporating a large mansion-like facility, a terrible history, ghosts of children, and bouncing red rubber balls; and the intertwining of fiction and reality create a general sense of history and horror for the viewer.
Meanwhile, down in the body chute, two investigators, a pretty young girl named Kris and her male counterpart, Dustin, make their way into the darkened tunnel. They see something, and both jump in fright. They quickly speculate that they may have seen something paranormal (this entity was not seen by the viewers), and they exit the tunnel with a bit of excitement. Once again, Ghost Hunters is tapping into the traditional American haunted house motif; two young people, a young couple, if you will, enter the haunted house as an adolescent rite of passage. Traditional ghost stories and legends often center on youth challenging themselves to face the fear of the unknown, either staying in a haunted house, or walking through a graveyard at night or into a haunted wood. These traditional legends and stories, often passed down through storytelling, have inspired what are now known as legend trippers, people who actively seek out paranormal legends and haunted places in order to test their resolve against the unknown. Legend tripping has become a new rite of passage for some youth, and Kris and Dustin are completing their legend trip in exploring the body chute of Waverly Hills Sanatorium. There is also a sexualized aspect to the traditional adolescent rite of passage; a young couple, alone, in the dark, with the fear of the unknown stretched out before them. It is often places like this, places of dark history and death and rumor, where small-town youths will drink alcohol or experiment with drugs or explore their sexuality. “Witches, werewolves and the like at first seem incongruous with the desire to get high, but in fact, both are means of escaping from the symbolically sterile world governed by school, parents, and police … The illicit nature of the sexual adventure is the key: authority figures such as parents, teachers, and other chaperones are united in trying to keep the sexes apart, thus essentially castrating them until the age of socially recognized maturity.”18 The experience of the young “couple” is that of being alone, away from reality and in a threatening place. But it is their rite of passage to brave the unknown realm that is in opposition to what the conventional world has to offer, and their being together entices the audience into thinking that maybe they will break those old social mores of sexuality and experiment. Of course, Kris and Dustin are adults, not adolescents, and while they are not a couple, the program is tapping into our childlike wonder and that need for rebellion, escape, and the possibility of sexual exploration.
The rest of the investigation is studded with similar experiences, subjective jolts of fear, cold spots, feeling that someone or something has touched one of the investigators, highlighted with ECW star, Elijah Burke, shrieking, throwing his hands in the air, and running away. He claims that he felt something touch his face. The investigation is followed by an analysis of the recordings made during the investigation. We watch as the investigators pore over hours of digital recording, infrared recording, and night vision video, occasionally stopping to point out something in the background or a sound that was previously missed. Ghost Hunters also features an interactive website where viewers can join the ghost hunt online and hit the “Panic Button” if they spot something the team missed. According to the team, “millions of people” must have been watching and interacting with the show.
Finally there is “the reveal,” where Jason and Grant present their findings to the owner of the establishment and make a determination as to whether or not the facility or home is haunted. It is interesting that they chose “the reveal” to head this part of the program. The reveal is a term used in magic when a magician, in essence, tips his hand and shows the audience how the trick was accomplished. The incorporation of this term as a title heading for Ghost Hunters adds an element of trickery to a program whose actions and investigations are already suspicious.
The more interesting human story aspect of this program is at the end of the Waverly Hills investigation, when the audience finds out that many of the investigators were actually auditioning their ghost hunting skills in an effort to be a part of the TAPS team. This allows the drama of competition for inclusion on the team to play out over the next several investigations and also sets the stage for personal dramatic interactions between the TAPS members and the trainees. TAPS is a club, and the newbies are trying to earn their way into the club and onto the show, striving for that little bit of reality television fame.
During the second half of this episode, the team investigates a private home in Massachusetts. This is actually a bit unusual for the program. In the past eight seasons only a small percentage of investigations were performed on private residences. The vast majority of the investigations are done on either historical sites or commercial estates, which get free advertising as being haunted and will reap the benefits (to be discussed later), while the Ghost Hunters get a big, spooky haunted house to investigate.
The Massachusetts home was the site of a suicide, and the woman’s daughter is seeing a man with “a boo-boo on his head,” and she can “see his brain.” The child reports this even though she has never been told of the house’s history. Over the course of the investigation, they record electronic voice phenomena and an image on the thermal camera that appears to be the upper torso of a man. During the reveal they disclose to the homeowner that her home very well may be haunted and counsel her on how to handle her child’s reports. The homeowner seems genuinely pleased to be housing a ghost, even though it is the ghost of someone who died a violent death.
Once again, this is the typical haunted house scenario; the scene of a violent death, a tortured soul still roaming the bedrooms and hallways, and a mother who is gaining a certain level of excitement by staying at the house. Her bravery is being rewarded by both her opportunity to be on television and now her excitement; she will probably also claim some local fame as the owner of a haunted house. This is not to say that this woman is in any way lying or manipulating in an effort to achieve her 15 minutes of fame. Rather, the point is that both the Ghost Hunters and the people claiming these places to be haunted are playing roles set forth by archetypes in fiction and film. An archetype is a base story or character upon which many other stories or characters are modeled. Ghost Hunters and the people that contact them are, most likely, not doing this on purpose; it’s just that the archetypal story of the haunted house and the characters that explore it has ingrained itself into the American consciousness and is unknowingly being played out on television on a national scale. This is not to imply that hauntings are not “real” but instead to illustrate how much fiction has fed into reality and vice versa. The investigations play out like the preacher going into the haunted house in Scary Stories. He goes in to rid the house of a presence that is trapped there due to a violent and untimely death. His bravery is rewarded with a treasure he finds for his church. TAPS is being rewarded in a different way; they have achieved fame and money and have “millions of people watching.” They claim to receive over 1,500 requests for investigations a month.
Also being played out is the ado
lescent legend trip; an act of bravery that is rewarded through respect, admiration, acceptance by peers, and, last but not least, providing some excitement and mystery in a world that seems all too real and knowable.
Ghost Hunters is entertaining to watch, though it probably always comes with a bit of suspicion or disbelief as to what we, the audience, are actually witnessing. Are we being duped by a giant, innocent prank being played out on television? Are we merely witnessing full-grown adults scaring themselves in big, dark mansions, or are we actually seeing people experience something beyond their reasoning and knowledge? This quandary forms much of the appeal for Ghost Hunters and for all paranormal programming, no matter the format. There have been instances in paranormal programming where fraud was discovered and brought to the public’s attention; however, to assume that all the witnesses that come forward in programs such as MonsterQuest and A Haunting are all collectively lying or are delusional is foolish and reductive.
The archetypes of haunting stories and stories of mythical beasts are played out by the witnesses, the investigators, and the producers in these programs. These archetypes have been passed down from traditional oral stories, to the theater, to the written word, to radio, and then finally to television. The idea of the unknown and mysterious has ingrained itself into the mythos and folklore of the American landscape, and such haunted sites and forests have become proving grounds for both individuals and television networks. These shows are popular. They are designed with entertainment in mind but also, for the most part, to contain the element of truth. Without this element of truth, these stories would be mostly boring versions of Hollywood horror movies; but instead, the public finds them fascinating, waiting to see what science won’t be able to explain next.
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