November 15, 2007
22 Reasons Why The SciFi Channel’s Ghost Hunter Is More Believable Than Travel Channel’s Most Haunted
I seem to be very entertained by paranormal investigative shows like the SciFi channel’s Ghost Hunters and Travel Channel’s Most Haunted. I take a lot of heat around my house for even entertaining the notion that either of these shows aren’t completely fake.
I can understand that view of Travel Channel’s Most Haunted, I watch that show more for the entertainment value of seeing people getting scared in the dark. For some reason, that makes me chuckle. But I have a different view of the SciFi channel’s Ghost Hunter.
Although both of these shows are based around paranormal investigation, they take two very different approaches to it. I guess you could say that one takes a skeptical approach and they other, well the other takes an approach that is…fake.
Most Haunted a couple of years ago. I liked the idea of people videotaping themselves walking around creepy places at night and in the dark. Like I said there is something about seeing people get frightened out of their mind that makes me laugh. Hey, I’m not the only one. America’s Funniest Home Videos has tons of footage of people scaring other people and we all laugh at it.
It wasn’t until I started to watch Ghost Hunters that I realized just how ridiculously fake Most Haunted seems. If your not that familiar with Ghost Hunters, it is the taping of a company called T.A.P.S aka The Atlantic Paranormal Society as they research cases for client’s who feel that they have some sort of paranormal situation going on.
If you haven’t checked out either show, you should. Ghost Hunters is good for a few goosebumps and Most Haunted, well it’s good for a few laughs.
Ghost Hunters – The Complete First Season
I figured I would give some reasons as to why Ghost Hunters is a better and more believable show than Most Haunted.
The Approach To Paranormal Investigation
- Ghost Hunters – More than just a “reality” TV show, Ghost Hunters is chronicling T.A.P.S which is a real paranormal investigative company which is based out of Rhode Island. They were taking on cases long before they got their TV show.
- Most Haunted – lead by Yvette Fielding who is the wife of Karl Beattie (also on the show) who owns the production company Antix Productions that actually produces this show. Right there is reason enough for them to “make things happen” on the show.
- Ghost Hunters – TAPS claims that they enter each case with the sole purpose of finding a rational explanation for what their client’s are experiencing
- Most Haunted – seems to take on each case with complete certainty that the only explanation for what is going on is paranormal activity
- Ghost Hunters – Every member of the TAPS team is an investigator carrying the necessary equipment to show proof of temperature drops, changes in barometer and stuff like that
- Most Haunted – has one paranormal investigator, usually Dr. Ciaran O’Keeffe, and everyone else just says things like “I’m freezing”, “the air feels heavy”, “I feel sad”…real concrete stuff like that.
- Ghost Hunters – they record everything. They set up cameras that are left to record from all different angles. They also use hand held cameras which are used when they are walking around the area.
- Most Haunted – they utilize hand held cameras and also have a camera and sound crew following them everywhere. That many people is bound to cause disruptions that could be mistaken for “experiences”.
- Ghost Hunters – they listen to what client’s claim their experiences in the area have been and they try to find explanations for them. They check out ventilation, wiring…anything that could be causing side effects that are similar to a paranormal experience.
- Most Haunted – they in no way try to explain what people have experienced in the area as something other than paranormal. They go into an area with the intention of communicating with the paranormal or an “astral being” as they like to refer to them on the show.
- Ghost Hunters – uses investigative equipment which would produce proof
- Most Haunted – uses psychics and mediums as well as asking the spirit to communicate through seances and by asking them to make a series of taps on the wall or the floor
- Ghost Hunters – clearly states that in about 80% of their cases they find causes for the client’s experiences that have nothing to do with the paranormal
- Most Haunted – never really state that there can be other explanations as to what people are experiencing and seem to think that those who would try to explain away the paranormal phenomena do so because they are skeptics
- Ghost Hunters – examines all of the footage they have captured throughout the night’s investigation, weed out stuff that can be explained away and present the client with a true example of things that they cannot explain
- Most Haunted – there is no way of telling what they are including as phenomena, they never explain their techniques for proving or disproving sounds and feelings
- Ghost Hunters – on numerous occasions TAPS have captured actual movement of items in rooms, things beings seen through infrared cameras ,and EVP electronic voice phenomena that have been recorded. They actually produce proof.
- Most Haunted – their crew sometimes cries, falls down, is possessed, feels cold, hears taps on the wall, has things thrown at them (which is never visible on camera) and sometimes feels sick. So they usually produce no proof what so ever.
- Ghost Hunters – I have found no reported instances of any of the TAPS crew being discovered falsifying any of the phenomena that happens on the show.
- Most Haunted – the shows own parapsychologist Dr. Ciaran O’Keeffe spoke out in a British tabloid called The Mirror about what he called “showmanship and dramatics” being used to deceive viewers.
- Most Haunted – The Mirror also reported, in an article called Spooky Truth: TV’s Most Haunted Con Exposed, to have obtained unedited footage from Most Haunted which showed Yvette Fielding and her husband Karl Beattie faking paranormal occurrences such as ghostly bumps and knocks
- Most Haunted – one of the shows regular mediums, Derek Acorah (who’s official site I was unable to get up and running at the time of writing this article…hmmm) has been openly accused by cast members of the show of faking his possessions. Acorah has since been fired from Most Haunted because he was found to be a fake.
Paranormal Investigative Techniques
The Findings
The Scandals
I figured I would throw in the above clip of Derek Acorah being possessed by someone claiming that “Mary loves Dick”. Come on…seriously? Does she. Any way whether you buy into either of these shows being at all truthful you have to admit that they are kind of entertaining. At least I think so.
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freelulu
11/26/2007 at 1:52 pm
I couldn’t agree with you more. A couple of years ago I watched the live Most Haunted special… people were calling in like crazy – with “sightings”. Yeah right. That Derek guy and his “posessions” are also ridiculous. I find it impossible that EVERY time you walk into a dark and spooky place, you get posessed by some spirit. Ghost Hunters is much more realistic and I like the skeptical approach – I appreciate that they go in to debunk.. and occasionally find something – much more realistic! Great article…
Tyler
01/04/2008 at 1:00 am
Most Haunted sucks. We stopped watching it because It got stupider and stupider. Ghost hunters provides actual proof. Most Haunted is NOT a credit to the ghost hunting world. You pretty much hit the nail on the head with this article. Great Job!
Joe NYC
05/01/2008 at 1:46 am
Although Ghost Hunters may be entertaining sometimes, the methods that they use are NOT remotely scientific in nature and the “evidence” that they find (although the do take some time so scrutinize much of it) can still be explained by many other natural phenomena aside from ghosts.
#1: if there’s ghosts, why look for them in the dark and at night when humans’ natural instincts make our minds go on alert mode where we get easily startled and where our sight (our strongest sense) is greatly hindered?
#2: orbs?? Cameras can no resolute dust particles or insects, so instead we see a blur or point of light reflected back.
#3: ‘cold spots’, do they really look into all of the possibilities for the formation of a colder air mass than the rest of the room forming? I don’t think so.
#4: ‘EVP’- those are a trick of our mind’s craving to make sense and order from disorder. This online symbol
, is not a face, but we turn it into one by associating a human’s eyes nose and mouth with the dots we see. An EVP is just a bunch of static that can be created by many sources, but we can easily make ourselves hear discernable words or phrases when we say to ourselves “we were listening out for a ghost to say something”. So then, we hear the static and turn it into words ourselves.
Enough blabber from me, but I’m just saying, their methods are NOT scientific. This is what we call pseudo-science. Just because they come in with a bunch of electrical equipment and claim to be running tests does not make them legitimate.
-Joe NYC
tiger
06/01/2008 at 8:35 pm
I think you said it best when you made the claim that you were entertained! Are they faking it well one would have to say yes considering they have been caught at it a number of times. It’s like the medium that has to ask you a bunch of questions about your dead relative that they claim to be talking to so why don’t they get those answers from them. It’s funny that when most haunted gets caught at faking evidence they always fall back on for entertainment purposes only but then claim it’s all real.
Mike Mchenry, IL.
08/27/2008 at 9:13 pm
While Joe for NYC made some very good points I think the overall show has to be considered. True they are not necessarily using scientific evidence, but I feel they are puting in an honest effort to find possible explanations for things we don’t understand. Since there are no true ghost hunting equipment they are using what is available that can help them at all. They will not declare a place haunted because of cold spots or evps but use them collectively with personal experiences and say video and audio “evidence”. There was only one show the first season I believe where Jason, one of the founders declared a place haunted. They also themselves disregard orbs as light reflection. I have met them in person, talked briefly with them (jason and Grant) and found they seem to have a degree of integrity. I myself am primarily a skeptic but very open to possibilities. I have seen things for years that I can’t explain but most of the time disregard as “my eyes playing tricks on me always in the middle of the night by myself”. I did have one time where is was early say 9 or 10 at night where I did see something that another person next to me saw. Early for me because I usually go to sleep around 1 am. I saw, clearly a white face come through the wall and back as if someone was poking their head through a window to look at something. Initially I just kind of shook it off and didn’t say anything. Then the person sitting next to me, who previously had no interest in ghosts said did you see that. When I asked what they saw they said a face that appeared and disappeared. It made me much less of a skeptic.
samantha thomas
10/14/2008 at 11:10 am
i live a mile from llanchaiach fawr manor in South Wales UK which was shown on an episode of most haunted. series 2 i think. i recently did a ghost tour of the place and the people working there said derek is a fake because he was in the history information room for an hour before walking around the manor and he gave the exact information for each person that they had history about up on the walls there….. people like derek make me angry … FAKES!!! during our ghost tour we heard a child running in the room above us. there was one room which everytime i tried enter i would get terrible stomach cramp pains which stopped when i went back out but my tummy felt tender like i’d done 100 or so stomach crunches for days later. my camera refused to work an hour into tour even changing batteries 3 times it still wouldnt work… the last picture i took before my camera stopped working has loads of faces in.. very scary… check them out and please feel free to email with question..
http://www.flickr.com/photos/29656032@N08/
Pat
10/19/2008 at 3:57 am
I couldn’t agree more. Ghosthunters is based on the premise of debunking claims, Most Haunted, and most of the other clones are just looking to find ANYTHING.
Even if Most Haunted isn’t all fake, they are the worst investigators ever. I liken them to Scooby Doo. They go hunting for ghosts, and when anything at all happens, they run screaming from the area. Hilarious, but not serious.
Melody
10/23/2008 at 2:33 am
I agree with you completely. I can say one thing. If Ghosthunters is a fake then they do a better job of it than Most Haunted. I was very disappointed in the Most Haunted live investigation at Gettysburg this year. As a Civil War historian I don’t believe they respected the property very much and the bangs that you heard all through the night sounded suspiciously like a broom handle being pounded into a ceiling. Also, everytime Most Haunted has “evidence” like a voice, or something other than a bump, they talk over it, or their soundtrack music is conveniently louder at that point, so you never actually hear -anything-. Everytime they catch an “EVP” you can only hear dead air. I like the way that Ghosthunters is produced and I like the way they handle it. Very professional crew.
daphne
10/23/2008 at 6:57 am
I’ve believed in ghosts all my life but think that Ghosthunters is fake. I’ve always thought they were fake. From the way they treat people who join their online forums (arbitrarily banning people with alternative explanations) to the fact that they will never 1.) show anyone all their footage and 2.) get a third party reference, the show has no luster for me.
Here are two links to read. The second one shows step by step how someone could fake some of their “proof”.
http://www.skeptic.com/eskeptic/06-08-10.html
http://www.ultimatetechlinks.com/CrescentHotelAnalysis.html
I’ve seem some wonderful things on the internet over they years online, pictures, videos, evps, that have been truly awesome. Ghosthunters has never shown me anything that I found to be that interesting.
Parris Morgan
10/25/2008 at 2:52 pm
I have had two paranormal experiences, so I do believe there is some connection between our reality and some other. I watched Ghosthunters from day one and after two seasons I couldn’t watch it any more. There are two few “payoffs” and we hear too much, “something brushed by me, did you hear that or Oh My God” comments coming from the investigators. I don’t know these people, so why should I believe them. They want the show to be sucessful for obvious reasons. The main thing that has bothered me about all the “ghost finding” shows is the equipment they use. They all use digital audio and video setups. The general public hears “digital” and they think “perfect”. People see cool laptops and hear all this psuedo tech talk which has an impression of true scientific research. I’m a professional sound engineer who has workied in radio and tv for 30 years and I have found that digital is not perfect. One needs very sophisticated and expensive mics and recorders to capture whats truly in front of the mic or camera. The cheap stuff, like what Ghosthunters and the other shows use, can and will introduce “artifacts” that distort the final product; especially during the transfer and postproduction process. Analog audio tape would be a more reliable medium to use.
david cicle
12/12/2008 at 7:36 pm
Ok i know people out there believe the Ghost Hunters might be fake, like the person who has the links with the pics of the soldier looking thing on the door with the #2 on the arm, jason and Grant both said they cant explain it. They never said it was GHOST PERIOD!! They said it was unexplainable!
They are not Photograph experts or specialized technicians of any kind. They are Plumbers who happened to get a TV show after years of doing this. yes they Are executive directors of the show now, but the first few years they were not and they would say in public they were considering leaving the show because the crew kept screwing up evidence.
I am a fan of the show. I have met the guys as well. They are cool and will seriously answer any question you want on the subject of ghost hunting and their experiences. Go to one of the events and find out. They arent rock stars and they dont act like it either. Ok thats my 2 cents. And sorry for the bad grammer.
Matt Houston
01/30/2009 at 9:44 pm
Ya’ll are all crazy, and this Ghost Hunter show sucks!!!!!!! FAKE. You are all so gullible.
muchgooder
02/02/2009 at 2:52 pm
I do find it funny that the premise of this article is to compare Ghost Hunters with Most Haunted. That’s like comparing Hitler with Bush – just because one is really really bad it doesn’t make the other one good.
Do I think Ghost Hunters fakes stuff? No, I don’t. For them to fake something implies that I’ve seen anything on their show that was impressive in any way. What is the single most impressive thing you’ve seen? The skeptic sites have debunked this show over and over.
What I will accuse them of is not being completley honest about their show. Lets take their recent fascination with the K2 Meter. In several episodes they’ve been amazed at the responses that they’ve supposedly gotten. If they were in fact talking to ghosts, wouldn’t that be the greatest advance in science in the history of mankind? Of course it would be. But what do they do? Treat it as some kind of run-of-the-mill proof and move on. Huh?
So at the end of the day all they have are things that always seem to happen just off camera and completely inaudible noises on audio tapes. If you saw the Penn and Teller episode on ghost hunters you would know that world-class scientists said that EVP meters could not be more ridiculous and that all of the scientific methods they use could not be less scientific if they tried.
Think about it. At the end of the day nobody has ever proved that there is an afterlife. Nobody! This show lulls people into the belief that they’re skeptics because they disprove some of the obvious stuff while leaving other stuff wide open. That’s smart business but not real ghost hunting. If they wanted to be taken seriously they would bring along a skeptic and release their “evidence” to the public. After all, their goal is to find proof, isn’t it? And of course, they never will
Here is my own blog on this subject: http://www.muchgooder.com/home/adam.nsf/lookupcontentbykey/debunking_ghost_hunters
Harry
02/18/2009 at 7:48 pm
Yes it is. They have been debunked several times and their Halloween 2008 is so fake and pathetic it has ruined the show for me. Go to youtube and look at the videos debunking that show…it’s sad.
idunno
06/04/2009 at 5:00 am
I admit that I watch Ghost Hunters regularly, Most Haunted… well the second I see a “medium” getting “feelings” and being “possessed” … I turn the channel.
I do admit that Ghost Hunters seemed to have an honest approach and be semi-legit… however… They started loosing it on the last season that I watched. When you get to the point where you can communicate with “ghosts” via a “K2″ meter on a regular basis, that’s when I start to call Shenanigans. They now have full blown conversations with “ghosts” every episode and I really don’t think it works like that in the real world. Seriously, how hard would it be to have someone in the next room turn on a microwave… or whatever… and make that little meter light up like a Christmas tree. As for the EVPs… I would really like to know what frequency they record on because there are tons of radio signals bouncing around from cell phones, CB’s, cordless phones, wireless mics, radios, intercoms, walkie talkies, etc. all around us, all of the time.
I have also noticed that they used to do a lot of investigations in peoples homes and many times not find anything. Now I notice that nearly every investigation is conveniently located in a failing hotel, inn, bed & breakfast, battleship, lighthouse, museum bar or other service related, tourist attraction that would benefit greatly from being “haunted” and they almost always say that “We definitely think that there’s some kind of paranormal activity here…”
I am extremely skeptical about anything known as “reality TV”. Like it or not, you eventually have to come to the realization that they HAVE TO find “ghosts” sooner or later, otherwise, they wont have a TV show. When a person, or better yet film crew & entire production company start to tell “little white lies” it’s amazing how quickly they turn into great, big black ugly lies.