by Zak Bagans
LIFE IS ABOUT HELPING OTHERS
GET THROUGH THE GAME.
7
IT AIN’T CHEMO
Coming face-to-face with an uncaring killer.
There are many different kinds of death. I deal with the spirits of people who have long since departed this world, and I’m very comfortable in this field. But when you encounter people whose time to depart is near and there’s nothing anyone can do about it...that’s a whole different ballgame.
I have a friend named Kevin Hoyt who runs It Ain’t Chemo, a nonprofit organization that provides comfort to patients who are undergoing chemotherapy, radiation therapy, or other cancer treatment. It’s similar to the Make-A-Wish Foundation but has no paid employees—everything is done by volunteers. Kevin called me once to ask if I would visit a dying teen who was a fan of Ghost Adventures. Of course I agreed.
I met Kevin at the family’s home. The boy was in a hospital bed in the middle of the living room, and the cancer was so advanced that he couldn’t move or speak. It doesn’t take an expert to see when a person has very little time left on this Earth, and it startled me. I’d never been done anything like this before, so I’ll admit that I was uncomfortable and didn’t quite know what to do with myself. I wanted to be there to put some form of joy into this kid’s life, but deep down it was hard for me, because as an empath I could feel his pain. On the outside I was trying to smile and be positive, but it was tough to see a child who should have had his whole life ahead of him losing it.
I felt for the family, too. Every bit of their son’s life—every birthday, every school field trip, every bike ride, every friend who came over to play—all those moments they stood by their little boy were in the past, and now they had to watch him wither and die. It was gut-wrenching. I had to stay strong and be there to help make these last memories mean something to this family that had been through so much.
I brought a flashlight that I’d used on the show and autographed it for the boy. He couldn’t move, so I had to open his fingers and place it in his hand. It would be one of the last times he ever found the strength to smile. The family got emotional, and so did I, even though I didn’t know him. But that’s the thing: You don’t have to know someone for years to give a shit about him being in pain. That’s just part of being human, isn’t it?
I was sad to learn that the boy passed away a few days later. I’d never seen a vibrant young life dragged down by the dogs of disease up close like that. It really taught me to appreciate everything around me. The sun hitting your face, a lungful of fresh air, the ability to walk pain-free, sharing life with your family and friends…these are things most of us take for granted, but people like this boy yearn for. A life shouldn’t be spent lying in a hospital bed waiting for the icy fingers of death to drag you into the unknown. Kids are supposed to play and have fun. As I write this, I’m at a hotel, and outside my room I can hear kids playing in the pool. That’s how life should be for them.
The boy’s smile stays with me to this day, but it scarred me, too. So when Kevin asked me to visit another dying teen, I was apprehensive. Would I end up inviting another terminally ill kid into my life and make another meaningful connection only to have him taken away in an instant? Maybe, but what else was I going to do—pretend it doesn’t happen? Wish the cancer away?
Kevin asked me to meet the 15-year-old boy at Randy Couture’s gym in Las Vegas one afternoon. When I got there, a few mixed martial arts fighters were teaching the boy to grapple and do some MMA moves. Kevin introduced me to him, and once again it didn’t take an expert to see how sick he was. The cancer was doing its work, but the boy was lively and enjoying himself around all the fighters. I took off my socks and sat down on the mat next to him, and we talked about the spirit world and my life as a paranormal investigator. He asked a lot of questions, and I soon found myself in a real conversation about life and death with someone who would soon know much more about it than I do.
Suddenly he turned to me and said, “I’m learning how to fight so when I die I can beat the shit out of the demons that gave me this disease.” It was one of the most powerful moments of my life. I’ve stood toe-to-toe with demons, but seeing a sickly teenager look death in the eye like that sucked the wind right out of me. He went back to training with the fighters while I stood there watching in stunned silence. I couldn’t move, couldn’t talk, couldn’t do anything but admire his bravery. One of the reasons I’ve always loved MMA is the incredible courage it takes to get into a cage and fight. This boy’s body was his cage, and he was slugging it out with cancer. That takes guts, but unfortunately that wasn’t enough to beat the disease. A few weeks later he passed away, and again it hit me hard.
I believe everything happens for a reason, but I don’t know how to interpret moments like these. I fear death, I really do. Maybe it’s partly because of these encounters with people who are about to cross over at such a young age. We have so much to live for in this physical world that I want to stay here and enjoy it for as long as possible. And I don’t mean that in a materialistic way. It’s not the houses, cars, or belongings that make life wonderful; it’s the forests, the canyons, the oceans, and all the nooks and crannies and mysteries in between that make it so special. I fear the thought of no longer being able to feel. Maybe that’s the reason I was guided to help Kevin: to teach me how precious life is and to make me stronger.
IF THAT’S TRUE,
THEN MY ARMOR IS SOLID.
8
LOCKDOWN DAY
What do we do?
“What do you do on lockdown day?”
I get this question all the time, so here’s the deal.
Lockdown day is usually day three on location of a Ghost Adventures shoot. The first two days we knock out all the research, tech setup, background shots, B-roll footage, interviews, re-creations of events, and adventure sequences, where we do something risky to enhance the investigation. I like to find something that connects to the story of the location, like take a boat ride to the sites of shipwrecks off the coast of Point Sur, ride along with cops to see human trafficking prevention in action, or rappel into an abandoned mineshaft (I will never do that again). It’s one of the things we do to distinguish ourselves from everyone else.
The third day is lockdown day, and it’s always a special day for me. I usually contact Billy and Jay (who start their day at the ass-crack of dawn) to see what’s going on with the tech setup. They’re responsible for setting up the nerve center and wiring the four X-cameras, and being a hands-on guy, I like to know how that process is going. Early on, I go through with them where we want the cameras because camera placement is crucial to the success of the production. Like real estate, X-cameras are all about location, location, location, so I’m picky about where they are set up. I want them in reportedly haunted hotspots and at intersections where they can cover lots of ground, so we place them where they can see down long hallways, especially if the camera can shoot down another long hallway easily when turned remotely. Some of them have remote heads that can be controlled from the nerve center so that Billy and Jay can see more of the location and become a fourth and fifth set of eyes for us.
The X-cameras are awesome because they’re like robotic investigators. They watch our backs and help us capture evidence (both audio and visual) that we might have missed on our own. More important, they can clue Billy and Jay in if any of us are being affected by dark forces. Billy and Jay can contact us by walkie-talkie if they notice one of us behaving strangely so that we can close in on the person being affected and help him out. For example, when we were investigating the Overland Hotel, the X-cameras helped Billy and Jay see that Nick and I both needed help. Nick was definitely under the influence of a spirit downstairs, and I was on my back in the upstairs hallway after some invisible force had run through me. Billy and Jay saw it all happen on the X-cams and got us help.
These cameras also catch anomalies that manifest near us that we can later connect to a period of our bei
ng affected. I can’t tell you how many times we’ve caught balls of light disappearing into someone’s body at the same time that person became someone else.
So the positioning of the X-cams is very important, and on lockdown day I’m making sure that they’re good to go. After I get out of their hair, Billy and Jay finish setting up all the electronics, which takes about five hours. Aaron and I each spend time alone and go through our own individual routines to get ready for the investigation. As you’ll read about later, a lot of weird and hazardous things happen to us during these investigations, and they don’t just go away when the sun comes up. A lockdown is draining and frequently takes days to get over, so we don’t take this significant event lightly. I’m a big fan of mixed martial arts, so I compare my preparation on lockdown day to that of an MMA fighter on fight day. I imagine it’s like a pilot who has to land a jumbo jet on a tiny dirt strip at night. He knows how to do it, but it’s nerve-wracking, and throughout the flight it’s in the back of his mind that a lot of people are counting on him to put this beast safely on the ground.
Aaron has a ritual that involves shaving his head with a rusty old Ginsu knife. Okay, I made up the Ginsu part, but he does shave his head. That’s really all I know about what anyone does to prepare—and all I want to know. Lockdown day is a personal thing, and we respect one another’s space.
In the days leading up to an investigation, I like to put myself in the shoes of the people whose spirits I’m trying to contact. I walk where they walked, sit where they sat, and feel the objects that they held dear. I really enjoy re-creating past events, too. Reenactments enable us to tune into the energy of that era, which gives us a better connection to the spirits. People criticize us for not getting straight into the investigation and taking up part of each episode with reenacting an event from the past, but there’s more to paranormal investigation than putting on the equipment, going into a building, and walking around. You have to get into the right frame of mind and feel the location, and reenactments help us do that.
One of the most important things I do before an investigation is listen to the music of the time. For me, music is the key to lockdown prep. I like to listen to tunes that are relevant to the culture and the location: the blues in Mississippi, Creole in New Orleans, bluegrass in Kentucky, battle hymns in Gettysburg, and Native American music on reservations (I love the soundtrack from Apocalypto). Athletes often wear headphones on the day they have to perform because it gets them in the right frame of mind, and I’m no different. Anyone knowingly walking into an event where he has to be at peak performance wants to shut out the world and focus on the task at hand, and music really helps him do that. I take it one step further by using music to better understand the time, place, and people I’m trying to connect with, and maybe even bring us closer together before a lockdown, instead of just walking through the house and calling out their names. I believe that music is embedded with emotion, and if I can get myself on the same emotional level as the spirits, then we can make a deeper connection. I guess I use it both as entertainment and as part of the job, but I owe it to everyone to make every effort, no matter how small, to build that bridge between myself and the spirits.
I’ve always loved music because it’s so powerful. Whether it’s from the past or the present, music has the power to unify and comfort us. It can connect hundreds or thousands of people in an instant, whether they’re sad or swaying or dancing all at the same time. We can lose ourselves in it because it enables us to exhale all the stress from our lives. Like cleansing your palate after you eat something that tastes bad, listening to music on lockdown day helps me flush 2014. It helps me clear my head of all the texts, calls, and emails I have to return, all the bad news on TV, and all the social media mentions that flood my feed.
Besides listening to music, I take time to meditate and organize myself to baseline my blood pressure and my thought process. There’s a little more to it than that, but I can’t give away all my secrets.
What’s weird about lockdown day is the drive to the location. When it’s time to meet up—call time is usually 7pm—we ride together, but the atmosphere is different. The goofy times are over. The setup is complete. The interviews are done. It’s time to get dirty and do what we do best. We feel like a SWAT team in a van driving into a serious situation. It’s a little tense because we all know it could be a dangerous night, and our only protection is our spiritual armor. We aren’t really open with each other about how we protect ourselves individually. It’s interesting that we keep quiet about it, actually, but it’s a personal thing—prayers, cleansing, whatever processes we have we keep to ourselves.
After filming more than 150 shows and completing hundreds of investigations, I know how serious an investigation can be, what dangers we expose ourselves to, and what we can bring home to our families. We’ve dealt with possession, oppression, attacks, and all kinds of emotional swings, from extreme sadness to massive joy. We’ve all cried at one time or another, and we’ve even refused to continue an investigation because of how badly we were being affected. We never know what we’re in for, but one thing’s for sure: We can’t go into any location unprepared.
Depending on how far away the lockdown is, I also use the drive time to prepare technically. It’s probably a little bit of a defense mechanism to keep myself from thinking about the dark forces I might come in contact with, but it’s my nature to check and double-check everything. So many things can go wrong, and as the lead investigator, I have to guide the team and make sure we deliver a meaningful and complete investigation and a professional product. There’s a lot of pressure to deliver. It’s stressful, but I’m always up to the challenge. So the drive to the location is hectic in my mind as I go through all the things that need to happen. Nothing is going to fall apart on my watch.
If someone is having a bad day, it sometimes comes out on the way to the site. Just before the Houghton Mansion lockdown, Nick and I nearly got into a fistfight over something so insignificant I can’t even remember what it was now. When you’re around the same people for so long, these things happen, but like any group of people who are tested and come out on top, we’ve evolved into a brotherhood. In the end, I have their backs and they have mine, even if we have a few dust-ups from time to time.
When we get to the location, I usually make sure that the production staff has blacked out all the windows, shut off all the lights, and cleared the area. Then I check with security to make sure that there haven’t been any violations of the property. Some locations are still open to the public before we begin the lockdown, like the restaurant in the Lemp Mansion or the Queen Mary, so we have to take measures to make sure that people don’t taint our evidence. At Union Station in Kansas City, the crew was supposed to get everyone out before we started, but for some reason that didn’t happen, and our investigation of the main level was contaminated. We thought we had captured an apparition, but it turned out to be a real person who hadn’t left the building yet. I was pissed, but it happens, and there’s nothing you can do but move on…after uttering a few four-letter words.
Once in a while it all goes completely wrong, and we have to place the blame where it belongs: on the shoulders of the location managers. If they don’t clear the place out, then we have to come right out and say that a piece of evidence isn’t paranormal and the location isn’t haunted after all. A successful production almost always starts with a good contact person who’s willing to help. I love it when we have location managers who are grateful for us to be there; they always make the experience so much better. When they don’t give a damn, everything turns out bad. We try not to make it known on camera, but it’s not always Disneyland.
My last stop before a lockdown is usually the nerve center, where I make sure that the equipment checks have been done so that no technical problems arise. I hate to say it, but friendships get put aside at this point. It’s all business from here on out. When the investigation starts, I’ll be demanding and controlling
, and the guys know it. Being responsible for the show means that sometimes I have to be an asshole. This operation ultimately falls on my shoulders and no one else’s, so I can’t be weak or have low standards.
In the end, lockdown day is like a perfectly choreographed circus of logistics, technology, and people. The smallest mouse being out of sync will cause a chain reaction until the elephants bring down the big top. The credibility of the Travel Channel and the reputation of Ghost Adventures, which we take very seriously, are constantly at stake, so it takes a lot more work than you might think to bring you an entertaining episode and a meaningful investigation.
I SINCERELY HOPE WE HAVE DONE THAT
AND WILL CONTINUE TO DO SO
EACH AND EVERY TIME.
9
RENO CRACKHEADS
A walk in the park goes bad.
Lockdown day is supposed to be my day to get right with the world, but the world has no obligation to cooperate, and sometimes things go very wrong. Now that you know what we do on lockdown day, let me tell you a story of one that got a little out of control.
We were filming at the Mustang Ranch outside of Reno, Nevada. I had a few hours to kill before heading over to the site, so I took some time to get away from everyone and relax. We were staying at a hotel in downtown Reno—a casino, I think. I didn’t venture out much because I’m honestly not a big fan of Reno. I love Lake Tahoe and Virginia City, but Reno has really gone downhill. My experiences there have not been good, and this trip didn’t boost its standing on the best-places-to-visit list.
The hotel was close to the Truckee River, which runs through the center of town, so I finished a workout, strapped on my headphones, and went for a walk. Everything was peaceful, and I even posted on Vine how good I was feeling when fate slapped me in the face.