Autopsy: Ghost Hunters Show

I get a huge number of people lamenting to me that they quit watching "Ghost Hunters" about season 3, 4, 5....

Let's dissect the carcass that "Ghost Hunters" has become and figure out the disease process.

The premise of the show went something like this, "a couple of average work-a-day plumbers have a secret life at night, chasing down paranormal phenomena in search of answers. They are so possessed by this mission that they've parked a trailer out front for their team to work in and pissed away the kids' college funds much to their wives' irritation."

Cause of death: Boredom, routine. The show likely would have survived had it changed and adapted, but instead they brought in celebrities for ghost hunts and shifted around their team way too many times. Ultimately, it was the repetition of their hunts that began to take on a very stale feel. We can all predict that any given season the will go to a theater and a museum, a house and an historic site. They will also pair up Jason and Grant, Steve and Tango and the two "newbies." They will try the flashlight test, they will talk to their KII meter, and they will wander around while Steve pontificates about the history of the site and Jason makes vague mentions of how the place feels. The most exciting new change is Maddie the dog, but she can't possibly make up for the total doldrums (even as cute as she is).

What happened to the body systems of this entity we call "Ghost Hunters" show?

Motivation: It's hard to have any show with characters whose motivation is unclear. Jason and Grant seemed possessed enough to do the unpopular thing and spend their free nights in search of answers about the paranormal and yet, by never letting us in on the reason behind the fire in their bellies, we were left with leaders who were weak and dispossessed. The first shows, I appreciated hearing Jason's wife rag on him for the expense and time away from the family. I would like to have had them just set Jason down to tell they story of what he is looking for and why, even if they had to take him back to the scene of the earlier crime that sparked it. Anyone in ghost hunting understands that those seeking answers had something extraordinary happen to them. In this case, you have two plumbers with a lot of kids between them spending their nights wandering dark places in search of ghosts and none of it adds up. They didn't engage us in their personal quest. Huge sin.

Cast: Brian was handled poorly and much to his embarrassment. I think they paraded that whole mess out for the public to real in viewers who want to see the drama more than the hunting. Donna was "let go" without any explanation, just a vague mention of her health issues and she evaporated like she never existed. When members got stale, they sent them off to Europe with GHI. For a team that could pick anyone in the nation to join them, they bring in Kris who seems to have neither experienced the paranormal or had a burning desire to chase it, but they had a pretty new member to make the team seem a bit less misogynist. She has zero personality and whines like a little girl with a flat affect. Steve is mechanical at best and Tango just keeps his trap shut. So, we have a cast that makes none of us connect with them or their desires and motivations whatsoever. It may be "reality" TV but the same principles apply--we must hate someone and we must love someone and then we are rooting for them, wanting to see what happens to them, sharing in their experience.

Too Big For Their Britches: It's a capitalistic society and when two plumbers with lots of kids between them get a TV show, they decide to parlay that to the max while the subject is still hot. Not a bad decision, but growing too big when you haven't any experience in that realm makes you real vulnerable to failure or overextending yourself. The guys got a new shop, new magazine, gave talks and hosted hunts around the US, went on TV interviews, radio interviews, bought an inn in New England. Remember Jon and Kate Plus 8? It started out with a couple of regular folks in the suburbs who were struggling with way too freaking many kids in a tract house. We could relate to their exhaustion and their schedules and space issues. Pretty soon, they were getting plastic surgery, moving to a large sprawling estate, being hosted at fancy vacations and they lost us completely. Jumped the shark. The episode where J&G bought and inn, had the GHI team come in to determine it's haunted (convenient for business when their show is finally canceled) and then sped off on a couple of snow mobiles was the moment I knew it was over and I quit watching. Suddenly all their motivations changed from researching ghost phenomena to turning a profit.

No doubt, Syfy has had no luck with a good paranormal shows lately, so GH might get more seasons yet, but I really don't know where their viewership is coming from because everyone I know quite watching some time ago. It's time for new blood. New approaches. The viewers are just too smart and adaptable to settle for the same old, "give us a sign of your presence" and "turn the light on, please."

And, if they plan to continue this show any longer, please get a woman on the show. No, not a girl-woman with a soft voice, passive manner and zero personality. Amy and Kris are two of the most watered down girl-women ever. Get a real woman who could go toe-to-toe with Jason and question their methods and stir things up! Even so, it'd still just be CPR because this patient doesn't have much of a life expectancy.

3 DAYS UNTIL THE BLOGGER VIRTUAL ZOMBIE WALK EVENT ONLINE!

Comments

Don Monroe Case Files: Unusual Carving Unearthed!

Life-long explorer, adventurer and researcher, Don Monroe, has a million stories to tell, only he's been on the road nonstop, busy hiking the back country in dozens of countries, climbing the highest peaks and crawling in the deepest caves to understand this natural world we live in. He has hunted, tracked, trapped, cast footprints, talked to Native people, continued several-decade long ongoing research projects, devoured tons of research books, and ultimately sought answers about every aspect of nature and all the mysteries within. During those travels, he came across many unusual things. What I am presenting now is one of them - Don Monroe and a researcher friend named Massey, were up at about 7000 feet on Anaconda Range in Montana. They were tracking a bear when Don noted something sticking out of the ground, just a bit of something, but didn't look like a regular rock. In this remote area at that elevation, the idea of running across something man-made was unlikely. He s...

Terror of Doll Island!

Photo source Isla de las Munecas or "Island of the Dolls" (popularly coined "Doll Island") is a thing of horror for many. Why would an island filled with dolls for decades, laid to waste by the elements and neglect, be terrifying? Well, let me introduce you to its most unsettling beginnings. Don Julian Santana was unhappy with city life and moved to an island on a canalway south of Mexico City for peace and quiet. It was there that the legend begins and takes on a life that is animated enough to bring the dead to life. Don reported that a little girl had drowned in the canal 50 years ago and he believed her spirit to be troubled and haunting his little island. He said that he was out one day when he saw a doll floating in the canal and scooped it out, hanging it up on a tree near the drowning spot to make the girl eternally happy so she would not haunt and scare him. He then became consumed with finding more and more dolls, fishing them out of the canal, sorting t...

Monsters in the Deepest Ocean!

The ocean takes up the majority of the surface on our world and yet so little of what is in it is known to us. Upon occasion, we come across some real mysteries, tantalizing glimpses that make us wonder. For a long time, the giant squid (above) was a legend until it was finally filmed underwater. What other legends might tell us what is in the sea? One creative thinker in 1570 drew up the sea monsters that lay in the waters outside of Iceland. Scientist and artist, Abraham Ortelius had some very fanciful ideas of what awaited the seafarer. He also pondered what might live in the Pacific Ocean. In 1644, another artist/scientist drew up what he thought might lurk in the waters off of Africa. Willem Blaeu had quite an interesting vision. In 1727, Peter Kolb envisioned a sea lion of interesting characteristics - In present day, we still run across things in the sea that puzzle us. Here is one such thing photographed at Hook Island. It was estimated to be 75-80 feet long and to this day the...

Scary and Precarious Roads!

Summer road trip time - why not consider scaring the crap out of your family? The road to Big Sur (above) is sure to separate boys from men. Highway 1 is an intense cliff hugging drive along the coast for 122 miles from Monterey to Morro Bay. Independence Pass from Aspen to Leadville in Colorado. Highway 82 is a 187-mile white knuckler. And if that's not enough, you take the over 1000-foot tall highest suspension bridge in the world! Great Smoky Mountains National Park "Tail of the Dragon" in North Carolina/Tennessee Highway 129 takes you on 11 miles of awesome views. Clinton Road , Passaic County, New Jersey. Seriously paranormal , " If you are visiting the road at midnight, stop by the bridge at Dead Man’s Curve for a game of catch. Toss pennies into the water, and the ghost of a young boy will toss them back. A gray wolf with red eyes will stalk you from the bushes. Satan worshippers will hang hang up their bloody clot...

Obscure Horror Movies of the 70s and 80s

The 1970s and 1980s were horror movie lovers' heaven! There were movies about nature turning on man because of pollution, witches, devil worshippers, killers, insanity, revenge, demons, families moving into haunted houses, beasts attacking, and teens being slashed. You might have missed some of the more obscure ones in the offering - *Descriptions thanks to my favorite movie site IMDB (The Food of the Gods - 1976) The Food of the Gods: A group of friends travel to a remote Canadian island to hunt, only to be attacked by giant killer animals which have populated the place. The People: Kim Darby and William Shatner star in this 1972 made-for-tv movie. A woman is sent to a secluded valley to teach school to the reclusive residents' children. The citizens start showing some odd skills and pretty soon the teacher begins to wonder if the residents are human. The Initiation: Daphne Zuniga stars in this 1984 slasher that takes place during an initiation sta...

Desert-Dwelling Bigfoot: Yucca Man

There are well known reports of Bigfoot wandering the American Northwest, the Sierras, the Rockies, the Mississippi River corridor and even Florida and the Northeast, but there are Bigfoot reported in deserts too. The assumptions that hair-covered humans would not live there is wrong. We know they are resistant to cold, why not heat? And, if Native Americans could live in such conditions, then surely these denizens of the wild could, too. The Joshua Tree Monument Park and Twenty-Nine Palms areas in the California desert has long had reports of people encountering a tall hairy man, described as a Bigfoot-type figure. In the early 70s, a man was supposedly being a guard officer at a facility in the Twenty-Nine Palms area. He saw something big emerge from the desert and poised his gun, warning it off. Instead of stopping, it stormed towards him and the man saw that it was a large hairy man. He was so shocked he didn't react and the hairy man knocked him unconscious. It was ...

The Most Bizarre Photographic Finds On Mars!

Mars explorers have sent back photos of some rather unusual, sometimes vague, and often times puzzling items on the surface of the "dead" planet. This has us wondering, if our own planet no longer supported life, would all the evidence of our having been here be covered up by a millennia of earth, leaving only the occasional hint someone might have been here? Here's a look at a large gallery of photos from the red planet. You come to your own conclusions.... Th e one above, I will chalk up to optical illusion. The stone is actually on the ground in the distance. In the foreground is a rock casting a shadow. Are we looking at a planet that seems to be dead and yet it has a history of life? What if a civilization that was quite advanced had the opportunity to leave a sick planet for a healthy one not so far away in terms of space travel? Is Mars a planet that never supported life or is it a planet that sustained life long enough to build an entire civilization now buried ...

Ghost Ships and Fata Morgana Mirages

Fata Morgana Fata Morgana is a complex superior mirage. In this instance, in the horizon a narrow band seen can separate an image, casting what looks like another image superior to the original object. In the image above it appears as if the ship is in the air. Below, the image shows a repeat of it up in the air. Sometimes, the image can be inverted. This occurs when rays of light are bent when they pass through layers that are different temperatures. Flying Dutchman This legend is talked about among sailors since the late 1700s. The tale says that there was a ship's captain sailing around the most dangerous ocean strait, the Cape of Good Hope. He cursed the elements and swore he would make it no matter what. The ship went down and all perished, but they are said to continue as a ghost ship for eternity in the region of the Southern tip of Africa because of the arrogance. In fact, the legend was picked up and modified for many countries and many sea locations. Perhaps it wa...

Monsters in the Sewers

There was a fantastic X-Files episode involving a sewer-dwelling monster. It was so creepy and distasteful that it almost fascinates the viewer to wonder, what the heck is down in our sewers? I grew up in the 70s when the talk of alligators in the sewers were rampant. The legend went, someone flushed a baby alligator down the toilet and it ended up occupying the sewers of New York City. There were a lot of variations of it, but one of those urban legends that leaves you checking out your toilet before you take a seat. In Florida, a man went out to get his male, heard something hissing at him, looked over at the sewer open and found an alligator sending him warning signals. This popular video below made the rounds on YouTube and other sites. It certainly gives one the chills to imagine that during a simple camera survey of an ancient sewer works they came across this - There are some explainable creatures that are still quite creepy that depend on the conditions found in sew...

The Urban Sasquatch Journal: Stick Glyphs

This is the reporting by a Bigfoot researcher of an ongoing study in the Southern part of the United States in a very large park area near homes and urban setting. LINK TO PRIOR INSTALLMENTS STARTING WITH #1 Journal Volume 3 Report #50 Saturday November 26, 2016 I arrived at the park approximately 9:52 AM. The temperature was 65 and cool. It was partly cloudy with high clouds. I had my bike with me and rode the trail first. This took 44 minutes. I was back to back to my car at 10:48 AM. I then got my pack then rode over to the site. The goal of the trail ride was to observe any new tree breaks, twists or limbs etc. broke over the trail. Also to see if any stick signs were along the trail in the grass. I did observe several interesting items on the east end. These I photographed. Trail ride observations with photos. These cover photos 1-8. #1. thru #3. Between mile markers 2.75 and 3.0 , on the north side of the trail, approximately 10' inside the treeline, these possible stick ...

GHOST HUNTERS

Search This Blog