Sci Fi series, "Ghost Hunters" takes us along on adventures with a dedicated team of Rhode Island plumbers who moonlight as real paranormal investigators by night.
Ghost Hunters Jason and Grant, Photo from Sci Fi, 2008
The group of real-life researchers investigate haunted houses, churches, schools and hotels throughout the country, encountering every type of unexplained presence and haunting.
Jason Hawes and Grant Wilson are real plumbers by trade, and head up TAPS — The Atlantic Paranormal Society — a group of ordinary people who have dedicated themselves to validating or de-bunking what goes bump in the night in your home.
Now Grant and Jason return for their third annual Ghost Hunters live event this Halloween. It will begin at 7:00 pm et and go for seven hours live on Halloween night, October 31, this Friday evening.
The seven-hour event will be an interactive one for Sci Fi viewers. Not only can viewers tune into Sci Fi to see the events unfolding on-screen, they can also log into Sci Fi’s web site for thermal imaging camera footage, exclusive question and answer sessions and a chat room to alert the team if they spot any ghosts during the live event.
Jason (L) and Grant (R) at the Stanley Hotel, Photo by April MacIntyre ©M&C
In September, Monsters and Critics had a chance to catch up with Jason and Grant at the historic Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado for a three-day ghost hunt.
It was there that Sci Fi Channel hosted a weekend of news conferences for digital press to promote its slate of reality programming, including "CHA$E," "Estate of Panic," "Scare Tactics" and "Destination Truth," as well as "Sanctuary," starring Amanda Tapping, who joined us for the hunt.
The Stanley Hotel, photo from Sci FI
The Stanley is one of the Ghost Hunter’s favorite locations to explore, and is the literary muse of author Stephen King (The Shining) who based the Overlook on his stay at the Stanley. The 100 year old-hotel has been investigated by the team nine times now.
The real-life "Ghost Hunt" was conducted through the hotel's haunted halls, rooms and buildings. Also in on the event were Steve Gonsalves, Dave Tango and Kris Williams who guided our split up groups through darkened hallways where the Stanley's manager claims the most recorded "activity" exists: Unexplained red balls appearing, and mysterious ghost children running and laughing, strange figures and unseen entities moving glasses and furniture around.
For their live Halloween special, Jason and Grant talked about returning to another favorite haunt: The historic Fort Delaware in Delaware City, Delaware. Fort Delaware also goes by the nickname the "Black Hole," was used during the Civil War as a POW camp that housed over 33,000 Confederate soldiers. The compound was decimated by epidemics and condoned torture, as nearly 2,400 men reportedly died on the island. Allegedly, the unhappy restless spirits have never left.
What is expected at the event at Fort Delaware?
Jason Hawes: We hope that all the ghosts come out to play but we can’t guarantee that you know what I mean. These things don’t work on cue. We’re just going to pretty much investigate like we investigate and see what comes out of it.
Grant Wilson: All we can do is just investigate like we always do and pull out all our techniques. Our audience is kind of aware that it doesn’t happen all the time.
Talk about how the past affects the present in these locations.
Grant Wilson: We like to just kind of hear what the stories are of the people who were there and then research the history later.
But you never know. So that’s why we always take places we’ve already investigated for the live show because we know there’s activity there.
But the Fort Delaware hasn’t really seen too much action as far as battles, though. It was mostly accidents - most of the deaths there were due to accidents.
What will we see over the course of that long time on the air live?
Jason Hawes: We’re going to head around. We have ‘Sanctuary’ star Amanda Tapping with us, the rest of the TAPS guys, some of our close friends from GHI, Ghost Hunters International.
I think it’s just a really interesting location and a lot of ground to cover. So I think it’s going to be a good night.
Whether we catch something or not, it’s just going to be a wild night.
Grant Wilson: I think it’s going to be an interesting location because it is on an island so we have to barge everything over there. So once we’re there we can be completely uninterrupted.
There’s no chance of any kind of contamination or anything like that. But as far as how we’re going to spend the time, I don’t know, maybe we’ll play some cards. I don’t know. We’ll see.
Jason Hawes: I believe a part of the episode the first hour -- because it’s a total of seven hours long -- I think they’re going to show what it took to make this happen, be able to get in there and do this live show.
SCI FI is going to show how much chaos trying to get the actual trailers over to the island and everything else. So that should be interesting.
What is the best case scenario for you, production-wise on a show like this?
Jason Hawes: Honestly -- I think we look at it really different. The holy grail for us is being able to truly figure out what’s going on, whether it be paranormal or not.
So if you go to a little old lady’s house or a family’s house - terrified to be in their own home and you figure out it has nothing to do with ghosts or haunting, right there is a holy grail because we’ve allowed the family to be able to sleep in their home again and feel comfortable, empower themselves to take their home back.
But of course, when it comes down to the paranormal, sure we caught a full body apparition right on camera on video or something I think that’s great.
But, there are different parts, aspects that fall under different parts for the Holy Grail if you think about it.
Six hours of this is going to be live and one hour is pre-recorded?
Grant Wilson: You’ve got what they call the pregame show for an hour of the show exactly, us getting all the trailers over there and all the equipment setting up so that the audience really knows how much effort goes into it which we wanted to get across.
We actually pull the audience in as part of it where they can go online. They can watch special camera angles online. They can report activity.
Jason Hawes: The Panic button, yeah.
Grant Wilson: They have a panic button which was pressed I don’t know, tens of thousands of times last time when people think they see stuff. And then if it’s legitimate we’ll go investigate.
And so it’s more than just watching it. You actually are interacting and somewhat investigating with us.
Ghost Hunters, Photo from Sci Fi
Talk about some of the recorded activity you witnessed.
Jason Hawes: One of the great things that we had happen was we set a camera up down a hallway and you were able to see something walk out about 100 feet down the hallway - walk out, turn around and walk back into what appeared to be a wall.
And that’s while Grant and I were heading down there. So we decided we’d set the thermal up - thermal imaging camera up by itself and just let it roll for the night.
And again about an hour or two later we were able to see a head and shoulders (clean) out from behind the wall and pull itself back in. That was one...
Yeah, that’s one of a bunch of different things we had happen. At one point Grant and I are sitting at a table in the kitchen talking and all of a sudden it sounded like either an explosion or a loud bang happened right there, right next to us - scared the life out of both of us.
But - and couldn’t find any reason or anything that made that happen. So there are a bunch of great little things - EVPs, things of that nature that were caught that really led into just a wonderful (case).
What tools did you use, did you measure temperature?
Jason Hawes: Well it was - I can’t really talk about gauge - temperature fluctuations being we’re on an island and the temperature can change drastically...at any given moment let alone it was stinking cold that night so if we could find a hot spot, that’s probably where we would’ve been hiding.
And it is completed isolated because it’s an island so we don’t have to worry about anybody sneaking up and trying to pull fast ones on us.
Do the spirits know or sense you are running a live show with them?
Jason Hawes: Well, see I can’t sit there and comment on if the spirit activity on the island knows that we’re filming a live show.
But, I can say that we’ve been there in the past. It was a good place for us to investigate. Hopefully it’ll be the same, you know.
When it comes to pressure, I’m not dealing with any pressure because here - the way I look at it is whether I catch something or not, it’s an investigation and the production crew has to worry about having the cameras rolling, in the right spots on us.
And if something happens great. If nothing happens then it’s a typical investigation because 80% of all investigations turn out to be nothing.
Grant Wilson: But as far as the entities going, what I mean, like we said, we’ve been there before. Hopefully we can drum some stuff up again but there’s no guarantees.
Any celebrity ghosts you may be interested in, like Elvis?
Jason Hawes: Yeah, a particular ghost? man well Elvis, I have no idea even how to comment on that one. But...
Grant Wilson: I think he’s still alive, so I can’t...
Jason Hawes: Yeah right. You know what? I think any type of spirit activity - of course, when you go places that people are claiming Al Capone’s spirited - things of that nature, that’s just incredible.
I would love to - we were actually talking about doing Graceland at one point.
Grant Wilson: Yeah.
Jason Hawes: So it’s funny that you brought up Elvis. You know what, any place that there’s possible paranormal activity is just wonderful for me.
I’m never going to look at a place and just to get in on – and investigating Graceland does not mean that the spirit of Elvis is at Graceland.
Grant Wilson: I think it would be cool to get in touch with maybe like Houdini’s spirit or something like that because he spent a lot of his life trying to debunk all these claims.
But honestly, it’s so hard to get any spirit to respond to you. Good luck finding a specific one. So yeah, it’s going to be rough.
Is there more paranormal activity after the fall equinox?
Jason Hawes: It depends on what part of the country. Like right now, of course, the northern states - northeastern states in the United States get a lot more reports from.
And the reason behind that is it’s colder. People are in the house more often. A lot of that could be chalked up to everything from the heat turning on, the wood popping and cracking making the sound of footsteps.
So it’s not that real paranormal activity takes off. It’s just that people’s perception that there is more paranormal activity picks up because of that.
With regard to hoaxing, that’s something you need to keep your eyes open for year-round anyways. It’s a rarity that that happens but it does happen so you always need to be prepared for that. Go ahead, Grant.
Grant Wilson: I was just going say yeah it rarely happens. We don’t really come across it too much. But if you let it slip once your reputation is shot and so you got to careful.
Jason Hawes: Honestly Hollywood does a great job by really sparking up the demons and everything of that nature. But, out of all the cases we’ve done I could say out of the last 15 to 18 years that we’ve actually been sent in by churches to do cases...we’ve probably - and that’s how we’ve been sent in to really 600 or 700 church cases - maybe two of them have turned out to negative type entities. So the rarity - it’s so rare to actually run into a negative type entity no matter who tells you what.
It’s just some people think that that sells so that’s what they want to put out there. We want to put out the truth and that’s what matters to us.
Grant Wilson: You got to say most of the people who we encounter or entities, or we seem to encounter are just people. I mean they had lives. They had families. They had jobs, careers, you know, ambitions and stuff like that.
And that doesn’t really change according to our research past the grave. So I mean more - you can pretty much walk down the streets of New York City and not get killed hopefully.
That’s because people are generally good natured and that continues beyond the grave. So anything we encounter, usually it can be reasoned with or there’s no real threat.
Jason Hawes: Well and just touching up on what Grant just said -- the only time I really hear people say I’ve got a demon in my house is if they’re extremely religious people in the beginning anyways.
So, most people just look at a ghost as a ghost so a lot of - certain people - very religious people look at as something negative.
A lot of times you find that highly religious household but you really find out most of the time that it’s nothing to do with a negative entity.
What do you think are the upsides and downsides of people forming their own paranormal groups and going out there and investigating?
Jason Hawes: Well to start off with. Honestly I think it’s great that you’re just seeing all these new people come into the field.
I’ve seen everything from nuclear physicists, forensic scientists and everybody else get involved in the field since our show has been out there.
So there’s that huge upside to it which makes me happy. But in return, a lot of these groups that are popping up disappear at the wayside as fast they popped up because, people see the show and wow look, TAPS caught something here, they caught something there.
What they don’t understand is there might have been, ten episodes that never aired because we never caught anything. So it’s a real waiting game. And I also worry a lot of times about certain groups getting in over their heads.
That’s one thing that these groups need to remember. But also getting in over your head is something Grant and I and cast have been called in on many cases of groups that just popped up who all of a sudden go to a house and with what they believe to be a negative type entity or too much activity.
And they’re frightened and in return frightening the homeowners even more. So there’s that big downside to it all, too. I’d recommend people form a group and get out there and investigate.
But I recommend that they don’t expect anything to happen. That’s the biggest thing right there and just be prepared for when something does happen.
Grant Wilson: Yeah I’d say...
Jason Hawes: You don’t want to go running out of a house when somebody is there requesting you to come in and help them.
Grant Wilson: Yeah I think it’s good that we’re raising awareness. But with the raise of awareness, we hope the quality goes up as well.
We feel a certain responsibility to make sure these groups are getting off on the right foot and getting trained right. And, we do lectures and things to help the groups start off on the right foot.
We’re actually working with someone else to help him write a book about the real dangers of getting involved in it - not the psychological dangers but walking into someone’s house as they pull a gun on you and stuff like that.
Jason Hawes: We’ve seen that happen.
Grant Wilson: Yeah it does happen. So, it’s very important that these groups go - we teach these groups to look for the truth, not necessarily a thrilling paranormal adventure because that’s just not going to happen.
If you’re pursuing the truth, whether you debunk a claim or you catch actual evidence, you feel equal success and you can continue, and your group will last forever.
What separates Ghost Hunters from the pack?
Jason Hawes: I think the main appeal about our show is we’re normal, down-to-earth guys. We’re not these scientists out there talking over everybody’s head.
And I think that that’s very important. I think one of the main things is we’re not a group that was put together to make a television show like most of the other shows out there.
We are a group that existed long before television - long before this television show and we’ll exist long after. And we’re a big family. We really are. We’ve been together long before this show.
Our families have grown up together. Grant’s wife and kids and my wife and kids – Steve has been over to my house for years before the show, hanging out with the family and the kids.
Grant Wilson: You limit your audience by catering only to those who believe already.
And that gives you the window for the whole world to eventually appreciate your show rather than just believers like most of the other shows do.
What do you recommend for people that want to go out and start their own investigative group?
Jason Hawes: When Grant and I started we were using an old camcorder which was huge. We were using old cassette recorders, things of that nature. You really - you work up to where we are..
I recommend people just go grab some cheap camcorders, cheap digital recorders and start off that way, and build their equipment as they need to and financially they can.
Grant Wilson: Yeah I mean you can go so far as just - you can use a compass instead of an EMF detector. It’s not going to be as accurate but at least, you know, you’ll get some response. Some people have baby monitors.
They can use those as far as some of them with the cameras and things. There - if you research enough you can find a good amount of equipment for any budget.
But the most bang for your buck is a video camera and a digital recorder.
What causes a place to be haunted?
Jason Hawes: Well honestly -- it could be anything. We’ve dealt with cases at places that have been 300 years old, had a lot of activity and some 300 year old places that have none - that have had no activity.
And vice versa with brand new buildings. You find a lot of it has to do with what happened on the property prior to the building or while the building was there.
The people in the home, what are they doing? There’s all of these factors that come into play.
Santa comes down the chimney every Christmas. The Easter Bunny drops off a basket every Easter. So there’s nothing that’s impossible.
Grant Wilson: There are two main types of hauntings and I won’t go too deep into it. But one is just like a leftover memory in a place that pops up at certain times.
So it’s pretty broad and that’s why we call ourselves paranormal investigators because you really got to put clues together and figure out what would cause a person to stay in that location whether they be dead or alive.
Grant Wilson: I don’t think that you could ever ignore the science of hauntings. The only time we even entertain the idea that it’s paranormal is once we’ve exhausted all the science at our fingertips.
That doesn’t mean we have all the answers. But once we’ve exhausted all our expertise and our knowledge, then we don’t know what it is, we will put it out there for experts to find out.
And once they don’t know what it is, then it’s truly paranormal. It’s just something you don’t encounter everyday. But you never ever want to overlook anything be it one way or the other.
You don’t want to overlook paranormal and just brush it off as something - some excuse you’ve made up and you don’t want to brush off the science just because it’d be easier to believe that it’s an entity.
Jason Hawes: On that same note, I feel slightly different. Sometimes you do want to just overlook the science because science can only explain so much right now.
There are those times when you’re sitting there saying well, all this activity happened. There’s no scientific explanation for it. Maybe it does have to do with something paranormal.
So science and only explain so much and, I don’t think the paranormal field will ever be figured out in mine and Grant’s lifetime.
Maybe, a couple hundred years from now investigators will have all the answers out there. And if TAPS played some role in that, even helping build the foundation to do that, then what we did was worth every second of it.
Grant Wilson: Once you exhaust science then it’s all paranormal.
How often do clients have extreme reactions to your findings?
Jason Hawes: Oh well we’ve had clients argue with us when they believe the place is haunted and we found reasonable explanations that really say that it’s not because some people want the notoriety of having a haunted house.
It’s mainly when you’re shooting it down and somebody actually wants it to be haunted is when they’ll get argumentative.
But you know what? We need to be honest. We need to be true and that’s what matters.
Your Talkback on this Story