Ghost Hunters/Headscratchers

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • The major premise of this show is locating and observing paranormal activity,in particular,ghosts. 100+ shows...not a single ghost has been located. WTH???
    • Ghosts aren't real, yo.
    • They used to have the show's premise be debunking ghostly reports.
    • You seem to think it's possible to "locate" something that technically doesn't exist physically. Unless it wants to.
    • For the residual cases this makes sense if you think about it: They can't locate it because there's nothing actually there to locate. There's just a memory of something that used to be there.
  • This is mainly a gripe with International, but I think it's popped up on the original series as well, and it always bugs me on Destination Truth, too. When they travel overseas to find ghosts, why do they speak English during EVP sessions? The guys on Ghost Adventures are a team of total bros who are downright embarrassing to watch as they jump at shadows, but at least they have the decency to ask Italian ghosts questions in Italian, for chrissakes.
    • All ghosts speak English Don't you know anything about science?
      • If you had decades to centuries doing nothing, maybe you'd pick up a couple extra languages?
      • Shows like this usually say that any EVP speaking a language the people that should have died in that area shouldn't know is a demon. It does sort of make sense, since these shows usually investigate international places of particular notability, like medieval castles, or ancient buildings, or places specifically supposed to house demons. How could anyone know what a demon is capable of? How farfetched is it to say they can read your mind and copy your language?
        • Yeah, but that also assumes I'm ready to believe in demons. Ghosts are at least plausible. Demons? Not so much. Too much moral weight, too much reliance on specific Western religious dogma I don't subscribe to.
        • It doesn't have to be dogmatic, many different cultures have a similar concept, and most of them involve it being related to negative emotions and involve harming nearby people.
  • Admittedly, I haven't seen a large number of episodes, but it seems that every time I do catch one, all the investigators speak in a semi-robotic monotone and barely react to anything they hear. The guys on Ghost Adventures may jump at everything, but at least they speak and act like people (and, being the wuss that I am, I'd probably act the same way they do). Whatever way you choose to watch Ghost Hunters - either as real investigations with real evidence or as an act merely for the audience's enjoyment - more human reactions would help to make the show more enjoyable. As it is, it feels like everyone's just reading lines.
    • Or it could be that they deliberately keep their voices down so as not to interfere with the evidence being recorded. There was a bit during the Academy training where they chewed out a couple guys for spooking and running away screaming since it wasn't professional.
      • A few ghost hunters I've talked to went into extended rants about this behavior: keeping your voices down interferes with the recording more, since it's hard to tell what soft noises are ghosts and what soft noises are the investigators whispering. Supposedly the proper procedure is to speak at normal volume and identify yourself first so the noise is clear on the recording.
  • So I've been looking around the net and trying to find out how much of this show, if any, is actually staged. i mean, the whole "i'm very uncomfortable" or "i'm feeling cold" or something of that nature, where one of the investigators just says they feel something might be a real sensation and an investigative tool (after all, nobody even knows if "ghosts" exist, or anything much about the phenomena around them, like EVP and whatnot) but for a viewer it can easily be inferred that they're simply faking it for the audience reaction. i'm more curious about the videos of weird shit moving or the EVP recordings where a voice is clearly heard. it would be similarly easy to fake, but at the same time, it would be very low to fake it. what i'm asking is, is it completely staged, right down to the evidence, or do they really investigate and turn up stuff. if that question can't be answered, can someone answer if they're allowed to do that (that is, fake it all entirely and tell the viewers its real; that has to be false advertising.)
    • for Example, i notice that on the Paranormal Investigation page, when the phrase Non-Fiction is used, its used in quotation marks, which honestly, is kind of an asshole move unless people can say for sure whether its staged or not. the best i can find is people simply claiming its staged and then deriding people who claim it isn't, usually providing less evidence than the show itself. Wiki does have a small section on Ghost Hunters Wiki page about "staged Scenes" but its little more than "allegations". if anybody can provide anything definitive, that'd be nice.