I am Haunted: Living Life Through the Dead

by Zak Bagans

  First Published in 2015 by Victory Belt Publishing.

  Copyright © Zak Bagans and Kelly Crigger

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without prior written permission from the publisher.

  ISBN-13: 978-1-628600-61-2

  This book is for entertainment purposes only. The publisher and authors of this book are not responsible in any manner whatsoever for any adverse effects arising directly or indirectly as a result of the information provided in this book. If not practiced safely and with caution, paranormal investigations can be hazardous to your health.

  Interior and cover design by Yordan Terziev and Boryana Yordanova

  Cover photo by Charles Henry

  RRD 0115

  I dedicate this book to all my amazing fans, my Ghost Adventures Crew (GAC) family, all my skeptics turned believers, and all the souls who have communicated with me and left a mark on my life forever.

  THANK YOU:

  My entire family for dealing with me and understanding the unique job and gift I have and that I’m not always myself when I return home from intense investigations

  My dog, Gracie, and the Nevada SPCA

  The spirits who have made contact with me and didn’t harm me

  My co-author, Kelly Crigger, for listening to my crazy stories and life every day

  My publisher, Erich Krauss, and editor, Pam Mourouzis

  My assistant, Cecilia Medina

  Aaron Goodwin, Billy Tolley, Jay and Ashley Wasley, Bill Chappell, Dave Schrader, Devin Lawrence, Matthew Mourgides, Father Sebastiaan, Mark and Debby Constantino, Chris Fleming, Mike Haberman, Tara Bohren, Scott “Doctor” Gruenwald, Steve Barton, and Zory

  And Harold the Haunted Doll for bruising my f-ing arm...I’ll never pick you up again.

  Contents

  INTRODUCTION

  1: A DIFFERENT STATE OF MIND

  2: MY CREW IS MY FAMILY

  3: THE DEMON HOUSE

  4: MY OASIS IN THE DESERT

  5: DEEPER CONNECTION

  6: HELPING PEOPLE

  7: IT AIN’T CHEMO

  8: LOCKDOWN DAY

  9: RENO CRACKHEADS

  10: HEALTH RISKS

  11: HEART ATTACKS

  12: ROMANIA

  13: NETHERWORLD

  14: CARRYING SPIRITS

  15: DOLLS

  16: WEATHER

  17: A SAVAGE ATTACK IN A PEACEFUL PLACE

  18: ST. JAMES HOTEL

  19: OVERLAND HOTEL

  20: DREAMS

  21: APRIL 5

  22: OUIJA BOARDS

  23: LOCKDOWN HANGOVER

  24: POST-POSSESSION BLUES

  25: TRANS-ALLEGHENY LUNATIC ASYLUM

  26: LOCATION DISAPPOINTMENTS

  27: DEBUNKING

  28: GUEST INVESTIGATORS

  29: SYMPATHY, SAID THE SHARK

  30: BEHIND THE CAMERA

  31: EX-GIRLFRIENDS’ GHOSTS

  32: CRAZY FANS

  33: SOUTHWEST HELL

  34: THE DEVIL

  35: NATIVE AMERICANS

  36: GO TO THE LIGHT

  37: HATERS

  38: WHEN I DIE

  INTRODUCTION

  They say that our life, our existence, contains more unknown than known. That must mean that in death we find out what the rest of the unknown is. I’ve traveled the world searching the darkest nooks and crannies of places only talked about in whispers—places most people fear to go. I’ve been through the ringer of emotions, from boundless joy to profound sorrow and paralyzing fear. I’ve stood on the edge of the abyss and faced death with an uncommon clarity. I’ve prodded and provoked things we don’t understand in an effort to learn their secrets, in some cases hoping deep down inside that I wouldn’t.

  I’ve called out axe murderers, crawled through catacombs, been attacked by demons, been possessed by evil, and embarked on a quest to find the real Dracula. My adventures are a constant struggle between fear and courage. My body and soul bear the scars, but I consider myself fortunate. I made a conscious decision to do these things, and since 2004 my life has been a tumultuous journey through the best of times and the worst of times that I wouldn’t trade for anything. People watch my TV shows and think they know me, but there are layers of my life that have never been made public.

  Until now.

  When you’re young, life is just fun, but as you mature you learn to appreciate all the amazing things life has to offer. After all these years on the road, my experiences with the living and the dead have deepened my thinking and my overall sense of life. Life is beautiful. Life is horrific. Everything has its balance in the universe, and as I grow older, this balance is becoming clearer. I want to share it with you.

  Some of the greatest books ever written are about the mysteries and discoveries of life on the road. Jack Kerouac, Paddy Fermor, and Hunter S. Thompson, to name a few, have given us the gift of venturing out into the world and looking at it in new and unexpected ways. The road is a lonely, exhausting, invigorating, and living thing, but the wonder of seeing things we never would have dreamed of makes it worth the price we pay to leave the safety of home.

  If there’s one thing I know, it’s that I don’t know enough. The question I most want to answer—what happens to us after death—is probably best left unanswered, when I think about it. It’s the one mystery the universe will hold onto until we’ve all moved through it, and rightly so. Who are we to cheat death? The best we can hope for is to understand and manage it, and even that is pushing the boundaries of playing God. That doesn’t mean I’ll stop asking the question or searching for answers. I won’t stop demanding to know more than we really should. I am human, after all. We humans are explorers and pioneers, and we find our inner strength when the end state is the absolute unknown.

  In early 2014, Kelly Crigger and I decided to write a new book. We set up a system where I talked into my phone and sent him the files for transcription, and before long I found myself talking and talking and talking. I had more stuff to get off my chest than I realized; once the dam broke, I flooded the pages with stories of my life and adventures. But this is more than just a one-way conversation. I also learned a few things about myself. I’ve always known that I am haunted by the dead, but I didn’t realize that I am also haunted by the living. As you’re about to read, I have a distaste for modern society that tugs at my soul just as much as the spirits tug on me. We all grow up eventually, but being thrust into a white-hot spotlight of popularity turbocharged my maturation process. I have seen the best and worst in people both living and dead, and I want to share some of those experiences with you.

  BUCKLE UP.

  1

  A DIFFERENT STATE OF MIND

  Spirits and rituals have changed me.

  Over the course of filming Ghost Adventures, I haven’t matured just as a paranormal investigator and a TV personality, but as a person as well. My experiences have made me see the world differently than I did before this whirlwind of attention started. Before GA, I was what I would consider a normal guy—normal in the respect that I thought only about this material world. When I go out in public now, it seems that all I see is Madonna song material—people living in a material world. They do what society tells them to do. They have regular jobs and party on the weekends. They go to the movies at night. They spend money to get good-looking. That’s the ebb and flow of present-day society. Those are the normal things people do. I’m not saying they’re bad things, but as you’ve probably realized by now (or you
will by the end of this book), I’m not normal.

  I feel like I’m detaching from the material world. I don’t know what’s going on with me some days, but ever since I started filming Ghost Adventures, participating in rituals, communicating with the dead, and getting more serious about my work, my experiences have been more life-altering. Your typical paranormal investigator will go out and capture EVPs (electronic voice phenomena), do audio recordings and EMF (electromagnetic frequency) readings, take a few pictures, have a couple of experiences, see some shadows, and then go home, and they’re back to their normal lives. That’s not who I am. That’s not what I’m all about. Every other week I’m at a new location getting deeper and deeper in touch with the spirit world.

  When I look back at Nick Groff, Aaron Goodwin, and myself in the early days of the show, I see three guys who would do a lockdown but didn’t have any idea what we were doing. We knew what we were supposed to do and what we felt we had to do in terms of our investigations, but we didn’t know that much. Now we’re in a deeper place, and at times I feel lost in the regular world, even though I have a lot of the things I always wanted, which I earned through hard work. I’ve been able to buy a nice house and cars and support myself without having to worry about paying bills. I earned that. For seven years I’ve delivered a number-one-rated TV show to a major network, along with many other successful projects. That’s the American dream we all strive for: success and security.

  So why do I still feel so lost?

  Maybe it’s because I’ve experienced things that I can’t find easy answers to, and that makes me distance myself more and more from normal people who haven’t seen the darkness. When I get home from an investigation or a lockdown, I don’t want to be around anybody—not even my own family. I’m thinking about life, God, death, and what lies beyond as much as a young boy thinks about girls. It’s on my mind 24/7, but it has consequences. I think about my interactions with spirits and the emotions I feel as a result, and at times I don’t know whether I’m living or dying.

  Don’t get me wrong; I’m not depressed. It’s more that being deeply in tune with a world that’s dead is causing a shift in my life. When you tap into a world that’s bizarre, things can happen that no one understands. And then you belong to the spirits, not to yourself.

  I see other paranormal investigators as people who are trying hard to figure out the basics of the spirit world, while I’m fully immersed in it. They’re snorkeling in ten feet of water to look at the reef, while I’m at the bottom of the Mariana Trench. I’m in a very deep part of this field, and I don’t mean in terms of evidence. That’s what too many people focus on—visual, audio, visual, audio, audiovisual, EMF, EVP, proof, proof, proof. It never ends. There is proof, but it’s more complicated than asking science to provide it. Science changes all the time, and what is accepted as true today can be disproved tomorrow.

  Let’s stop with the cliché that says, “There are no ghosts because science can’t prove it.” Those scientists will prove ghosts when they prove God. I’ve met dozens of skeptical scientists who don’t believe in spirits or ghosts, yet they go to church every Sunday. There are just some things that can’t be observed on cue and be put into a nice, neat box, so it’s time to move on and admit that there are forces and worlds that far exceed what our minds can fathom. We should be looking for the causes of paranormal activity, not the effects. It’s more advanced than any science experiment or what any human mind could possibly comprehend.

  If you want to figure out the spirit world while you’re alive, then beware—the deeper you get into it, the deeper they may want you, and the more powerful the pull is to find the answers. For some spirits and dark entities, it’s one or the other—you stay in the living world and try to figure them out, or you join them to get the answers you’re looking for. No living person has any solid answers about the spirit world. Everyone just has their own opinion. It’s like religion. It’s not proven; it’s a belief. I’ve spent a lifetime discovering what I believe, and all I’m really sure of is that it’s a dangerous place, especially when you take part in local rituals.

  I’ve done several pagan rituals that called upon the ancient goddess of death, as well as a witchcraft ritual with a warlock who put a spell on us that we didn’t even know about. Christian Day, a powerful warlock who legitimately knows rituals that awaken strange forces, told me to my face that he cursed me because he’s mischievous. Nick, Aaron, and I participated in two rituals with Bloody Mary the Voodoo Queen, and Aaron went through nine months of hell afterward, which he believes was because of her.

  These are powerful people who specialize in the summoning of spirits as part of their religion. And I don’t know them that well. We’re not friends, so I don’t know if they’re doing black magic on us to harm us or what. I don’t know if these rituals have truly lifted a veil to reveal something evil, or if these people are trying to protect us from them. These people don’t just go around doing rituals for entertainment, so when they do perform one, who’s to say that they’re not unleashing something even they can’t control?

  Paranormal investigators who don’t participate in rituals or rely heavily on equipment-based investigation aren’t doing all they can to find evidence, but that’s okay, because not everyone should. I think it takes certain people who are more deeply connected to the spiritual world to successfully experiment and use rituals in order to knock on unfamiliar doors and establish a direct connection to the spirit world. We are equipment-based, but we have a balance. We’re like the mixed martial arts fighters of PI. We’re trained in scientific techniques, emotional connections, and historical research. I feel that few other paranormal investigators and TV shows (and let’s be clear: I’m not talking down about anyone and respect other investigators and TV shows) go the extra mile to round out their skills. Conducting historical research and emotionally opening up to the energy of a location and the spirits found there are where we shine. To me, other investigators are relic hunters, like a guy on a beach with a metal detector. They know where they’re going to go hunting, and that’s one of the big differences right there: We don’t hunt ghosts.

  We don’t call it ghost hunting even in jest. Ghost hunting is looking for something and using equipment to find it, and that defines these types of investigators. They’re not using their own bodies and their own energy to their advantage. Although I disagree with them, I also understand why they decline to do it. They think the body is fallible and can give false responses, and therefore a disinterested, unemotional machine is a better tool to capture paranormal evidence. This is where our groups disagree. To me, the body is a perfectly reliable detector of paranormal energy if you know how to use it right to tune into the spiritual world. This is a defining difference between our group and others: our willingness to use our bodies as detectors and to try local spiritual and religious rituals. We harness the power of religious groups and practices and go beyond what cold science can prove or detect in terms of the existence of another dimension. We go as far as we can to lift the veil and open up a portal to make contact.

  Think about it: If the spirit world is so much more advanced than the material world, then how can science and equipment go beyond known levels to detect it? I believe that EMF detectors and multi-spectrum camera equipment can do only so much. They can scratch the surface of the spirit world and catch a glimpse, like a shooting star in the desert, but can all that equipment capture anything when it’s sitting still or turned off? No. It has to have a conduit to work. It has to be in the hands of a person asking questions of the ghosts. When you do that, you calibrate your energies and prepare the equipment for a peek through the Stargate and into the spirit world.

  Equipment is great, but the emotional connection is indescribable. Your body is like a key trying to unlock a spiritual door. We’re constantly opening ourselves up while we’re using the equipment. Our results with the SB7 spirit box and every other piece of equipment we use are different because we are dif
ferent from everybody else. When we go into a location together, Nick, Aaron, and I are like our own highly sophisticated piece of paranormal equipment.

  I think our bodies are completely different from other investigators’ bodies because we’ve spent years learning how to use them to detect spiritual energy and open doorways. We swim in the spiritual ocean while everyone else is snorkeling. I’ve never seen another paranormal show participate in a ritual. That’s okay. Again, I’m not trying to speak ill of any other crew, but I don’t think they’re using all the tools in the toolbox to achieve their goals. We want to open ourselves up and open up those portals to make contact. Witchcraft, voodoo, paganism, cults…it’s all good.

  Is it dangerous? Absolutely. It’s not an invitation to a birthday party; you never know what will come through once you open that door. We’ve had an evil creature growl at us from an altar in England after steam manifested from our mouths as a result of a 30-degree temperature drop, which made the witch conducting the ritual so afraid that she stopped the ceremony—something she’d never done in decades of conducting rituals. During a voodoo ritual, we captured a digital still photo of the most amazing phantom face in a trinity flame. “Bridget Bishop” (the first person executed for witchcraft during the Salem witch trials of 1692) gave us her first and last name during a ritual with a warlock and witch—eliciting one of the most priceless reactions by a third party in the history of our investigations.

  It’s risky, but if I feel that these spirits and rituals will do me harm, or if I have any indication that they’re going to permanently damage my body or soul, will I stop? Yes. I have things that I want to do in this life. I’ve been through hell, I truly have. At one point I had nothing. I was totally lost because I couldn’t do a 9-to-5 job. It was meaningless to me. I wasn’t contributing to a bigger part of life, and I knew that there was something more inside me. I love what I do now more than anything else I can imagine.