Ghost Hunters: Season 2, Part 2
by Jay Bluemke
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Actor: Brian Harnois, Grant Wilson, Jason Hawes, Lisa Dowaliby, Steve GonsalvesDirector: Jay Bluemke
Brand: Ghost
Producer: Jason Hawes
Producer: Grant Wilson
Producer: Alan David
Producer: Brett Boydstun
Producer: Crystal Foos
Producer: Eric Mazer
Producer: Jason Fay
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language)
Format: Box set, Collector's Edition, Color, DVD, NTSC
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 550 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2006-09-19
Audience Rating: Unrated
Studio: Big Vision
DVD Reviews of Ghost Hunters: Season 2, Part 2
DVD Review: If Ghost Hunters is real, then I'm the Easter Bunny
Summary: 2 Stars
I stumbled across the DVD set of the second season of this show while browsing the videos at my local library. I had never heard of Ghost Hunters before. From the box I thought it looked silly and I don't like "reality shows" in general, but I decided to borrow it when I saw the Winchester Mansion listed on the back as being one of the locations they visit. I've been fascinated with that house ever since I saw a segment about it on a TV show in the early 80s called That's Incredible.
At first I was skeptical of Ghost Hunters. Then after a few episodes I started to ask myself if, despite the obvious scripting of some of the scenes, the show wasn't basically honest as far as the paranormal stuff was concerned; after all, I reasoned, if the show is fake, why wouldn't they make it more exciting? If they were faking it, would half the shows be duds where nothing paranormal happens? Besides, I thought, none of these people seem like professional actors, so they must be legitimate investigators. Now, however, after having watched all the shows in the second season and done a few hours of research on the web, I've come full circle. There's not a doubt in my mind that the whole thing is BS.
Because the "evidence" that they show would be so easy to fake (either during taping or afterwards in post-production), whether or not you believe that the supposed paranormal activity shown is genuine depends entirely on how much you're willing to trust the personalities on the show, namely Jason, Grant, Steve, and the others who sometimes join them. But just how trustworthy are these people? Should we trust them more than we would anyone or anything else on TV?
The show puts a lot of effort into creating an image of Jason and Grant as humble, ordinary, down-to-earth blue collar workers and family men. You really want to buy into that image and believe that these seemingly likable guys wouldn't lie to their audience. But just how accurate is this image? Are we expected to believe that after creating a hit TV series, getting book and merchandising contracts, and charging fans tidy sums of money for lectures and workshops, which seem to take place often, these guys haven't quit their day jobs as plumbers? Are we supposed to believe that these guys don't receive any money from "Roto-Rooter" for plugging its services on every episode? TAPS certifies local ghost hunting groups as being a part of their "Family" -- do Jason and Grant make money from this, as with the franchises of a fast food chain, or a pyramid scheme?
Jason and Grant are portrayed on the show as being hard-headed but open-minded skeptics. According to their latest book, Seeking Spirits, of which I read an excerpt here on Amazon, Grant's first paranormal experience was when as a teenager, he and a friend spent two years (!) interacting on an almost daily basis with a ghostlike entity in the woods. So let me get this straight -- if Grant spent two years interacting with a ghost, which he could even, apparently, set up appointments with to meet it in town (!), why does he pretend to be a skeptic on the show? Why would he even bother with EMF meters and digital thermometers, which don't prove anything anyways, knowing not only that ghosts exist, but having had an extensive relationship with one? Does that make any sense? No, it doesn't. In the lingo of the television industry, that's what's called a continuity error, or an actor falling out of character.
In the book, Grant also tells us that Jason's first paranormal experience was when he started seeing ghosts everywhere about six months after he started receiving Reiki treatments (which seems to somewhat contradict Jason's earlier claim to a medium in episode 213 that his first ghostly encounters were with dead relatives coming to visit him). Reiki is "a system of hands-on touching based on the belief that such touching by an experienced practitioner produces beneficial effects by strengthening and normalizing certain vital energy fields held to exist within the body" -- hmm, was Jason some kind of a New Age flake? That hardly sounds like the skeptical, down-to-earth Jason we see on the show, now does it? Reading such passages in their books, I can't help but feel that they're urinating in their fans' faces and telling them that it's raining.
There are other things that don't add up, like the story of how Grant supposedly quit his job as a "systems administrator for a major manufacturing company" to work as a plumber with Jason, but because I'm not looking to break the record for "longest Amazon review ever," I'll leave it at that.
What about discrepancies in the show itself?
In episode 213 (Crescent Hotel), Grant and Jason claim to have a recorded a "full body apparition" with their thermal imaging camera. They say the apparition is that of a man in a soldier's uniform. While I can't explain what they captured, I'm not sure that what I saw was a man in uniform. It seems to me they're just seeing what they want to see (or want the viewer to see) in a process similar to how one can imagine seeing all kinds of things in an inkblot.
In episode 219 (St. Augustine Lighthouse), having coincidentally not brought any female TAPS members with them for the investigation, they record a supposed EVP (an audio recording of a ghost) of a woman saying "help me." Only, I do not hear the woman saying this. It's not even clear to me that the voice heard is a woman's, or that it's even a voice at all. During the "reveal," the representative of the lighthouse museum doesn't hear what they heard either. That is, until they suggest it. Then he hears it. Would the man have heard what they heard in the EVP if it hadn't been suggested to him?
In episode 220 (Domani's Restaurant), during the reveal we're told that one of four EVPs which consists of unintelligible speech is saying "What is this contraption?" The audio is so hard to make out that the show has to subtitle it for us, and even then it's hard to tell whether that's what the voice is actually saying. Subtitles are used again for the next EVP in which the voice is allegedly saying "I'm staying here." Notice a pattern? No one would be hearing these phrases if they weren't being suggested to them by Jason and Grant.
One of the EVPs, the "I'm staying here" one, sounds like it was a child's voice reversed in an audio editing program to play backwards. The other one, the "what is this contraption?" one, sounds like it was done using text-to-speech software (the same kind of mechanical voice you'd hear from the talking clock, a Speak & Spell, or something like that). I know TAPS sometimes like to "clean up" their EVPs in software before playing them for people, and that process can result in weird distortion being introduced that isn't present in the original, so I'll give the latter EVP the benefit of a doubt. But faking this kind of "evidence" in an audio editor (like the one they use, Cool Edit) would be child's play. A child's voice playing backwards? Sorry, that's a bit too Hollywood for me. Someone (maybe Jason?) was having some fun with an audio editor and a voice sample on that one.
In episode 217, Donna LaCroix and Mike Dion, while sitting in a darkened bedroom together, both claim to have heard a ghost exhaling about 3 feet away from them. The viewer actually hears the breathing sound while watching this scene. Problem is, it's obvious that the sound was added in afterwards in the editing studio, not only because it's much clearer than the rest of the audio in that scene, but also because Mike unequivocally states during the reveal that their audio recorder didn't capture the sound they claim to have heard (so why would the cameraman's gear have done any better?). That the producers think it's OK to dub in ghost sounds during post-production without informing the viewer ought to make a sensible person question everything he's shown on the show.
It's telling that the show doesn't have a notice at the beginning to the effect that "some of what you are about to see has been staged, scripted, and dramatized but the actual evidence gathered in the course of TAPS investigations is authentic and has not in any way been modified or tampered with." Not that that would prove anything, but the makers of the show aren't willing to go as far as to even commit to that. For all anyone knows, the show could be pure fiction. The producers don't claim otherwise.
Donna LaCroix, who is no longer a member of TAPS, was interviewed on the GhostDivas podcast of November 12, 2009. When asked if there was any trickery involved in the show, she refused to answer, stating, at 23:20, "There was a lot of editing involved... I wish I could say something, but legally, I don't know [if I can]..."
Was Donna trying to tell us in not so many words that Ghost Hunters is fake but that she's not allowed to talk about it for fear of legal reprisals? Or is it a case of sour grapes, of dropping spiteful innuendos about her former employers after a bitter parting of ways? Your answer will likely depend on how devoted you are to the show. Diehard fans are no more likely to accept that it's fake than supporters of TV evangelist Benny Hinn are to question the pastor's miraculous faith healings.
Some people say to just appreciate the show as entertainment and forget about whether or not it's real, but the problem with that is that the show ceases to be entertaining once you stop suspending your disbelief. Its pretense of being real is its only selling point; otherwise, in common with all "reality shows," it would be nothing but an amateurish, bottom-of-the-barrel soap opera. If I want to watch fictional ghost stories, I'll take something with Vincent Price, Boris Karloff, or Bela Lugosi in it and not this crap, thank you.
Quite apart from the issue of whether it's real or not, there were technical aspects of the show that bothered me, such as:
* The music over scenes that shouldn't have had any. Why would an editor put music over scenes in which the viewer is trying to hear the noises that the ghost hunters say they hear?
* Some of these second season episodes used so much audio compression (to make them as loud as possible) that they became abrasive and difficult to listen to.
* There's a lot of material in the extras that should have been in the shows. The producers chose to omit it in order to leave in a bunch of "reality show"-like interpersonal drama that has nothing to do with ghosts and that I could've cared less about.
With all the negative things I've said about the show, you might expect me to leave it only one star, but no, I'm giving it two, for no other reason than that they visit some impressive locations, for example, the St. Augustine Lighthouse in Florida.
Description of Ghost Hunters: Season 2, Part 2
Synopsis:Item Type: DVD Movie
Item Rating: NR
Street Date: 09/19/06
Wide Screen: no
Director Cut: no
Special Edition: no
LanguageENGLISH
Foreign Film: no
Subtitlesno
Dubbed: no
Full Frame: no
Re-Release: no
Packaging: Sleeve Please note: This supplier will be closed on 11/24, 11/25, 12/26, 1/2 for the holidays. The shipping cut off is 12/10 to try and have the products delivered by Christmas.
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