As I've mentioned before, I work on my computer, so I can't generally watch a lot of shows that require a whole lot of attention. Yet, I like to have something on while I am working. Sometimes, it's music or old sitcoms that I don't have to pay much attention to, or maybe old radio serials. At other times, I'll watch paranormal podcasts. In another thread, I posted my observations on the Bigfoot podcasts that I have seen, and I have to say that much the same is true of the ghost hunting podcasts, and that includes ghost hunting shows that have been on television for seventeen seasons or more. While I am not averse to believing that there are things that we don't understand, and I sort of root for some of this stuff to turn out to be true, overall, I have to say that it's a load of crap. I have heard EVPs that were really very spooky, and compelling, and I have seen some video that looks real too, but you have to believe in the honesty of these people in order to accept that the stuff that looks real isn't fake, and nothing about these people says "trust me." I'm watching some British ghost hunting series now that has a pretty blonde girl on it, whose main attributes are her looks and her skills as a drama queen. She will open a door, peer in, then scream and jump back, insisting that there was an apparition there. Although no apparition is on camera, they replay her screaming and jumping back four times for the effect. Then they move on to the next room, which doesn't make any sense either. If you're there looking for ghosts, and she actually saw an apparition in that room, then wouldn't it make sense to hang out in that room for a while? But they don't because they know darned well that there is nothing there, and the longer they keep their cameras on, the more likely we'll be to realize it too. If they can find a spider, the camera will focus on that. Surely there wouldn't be spiders unless the place was haunted, after all. Every floating piece of dust is an orb. What's with that, anyhow? How far down on the reincarnation scale do you have to be to come back as a piece of dust? Ninety percent of the time when they scream or point out something that they were supposed to have seen or heard, I didn't see or hear anything that would be out of the ordinary in an old house at night, and that's true no matter how many times they rerun the scene, and they are in control of the production. In order to build up the excitement and tension in their filming of an old house where pretty much nothing is happening, they feel that they have to act like they're afraid of their own shadows. Why would you go out ghost hunting at night if you're such a wuss, anyhow? Since pretty much everything else about their production is so obviously fake or pretended, I can't believe the few things that might actually look or sound like it could be something. My opinion: bunch of crap.
I totally agree that at least most of what they show is pure made-up garbage. My mom and dad had an old hotel in Idaho, where they lived and operated the hotel for many years. After they passed away, we ended up having to sell the hotel , and it has sat empty ever since. The people who bought it were going to restore it, but that never happened. Somewhere along the line, these “ghost-hunters” came along and wander through in the dark, talking about seeing ghosts and shadow people. They talk to my dad (which seriously upsets me !) and ask him if he wants to have a drink and tell him that there are pretty girls there, and stuff like that. My dad never drank, and they didn’t even have the bar/lounge open when they owned the hotel, and the things that they claim my dad is saying is nothing like what he would have said if his ghost WAS actually there. I am sure that haunting that hotel would have been the last thing that my mom and dad would have wanted to do, and after watching some of their program, I feel really sure that other ghost-hunters are probably no more real than these were.
Here is a picture of Mt. Saint Helens, circa 1925, complete with a flying saucer and even a couple of hazy ghosts.....
For the past couple of days, I have been watching the Haunting series of ghost hunters, and I'll reiterate what I said in the opening post. It's a lot of crap. I don't believe that all cases of ghost sightings or other paranormal activity identified with ghosts are fake, although I think most of it is and I don't necessarily believe that the rest of it is evidence of hauntings by dead people. These shows, and I have seen a bunch of them because I enjoy watching this stuff, are insulting to the intelligence of those who watch them. If they were to play their film and audio without all of the orchestrated drama, no one would notice anything untoward. At least 95% of the time, I don't interpret the things they see and hear as they do. The more photos or video you take, the more likely you are to come up with some glitches in the picture, and I am not buying that these are ghostly manifestations. Every piece of dust floating in an abandoned building is an orb. Electronic voice phenomenon, or EVPs, are interesting. Although I rarely hear what they interpret the EVP to say, and I think a lot of studies have shown that without the provided interpretation, almost no one hears the same thing. But there are some that are clearly words, and some of the words are easily discernable, and these can be creepy. What I don't know is how many of those are flat-out fakes, though, and we are expected to accept the assertions of the ghost hunters that these voices couldn't have had a more natural origin.
Even when they are in places with electricity, they turn the lights out. I guess ghosts are afraid of the light.
I especially like it when the ghost hunters try to get tough with the ghost, as they so often do. What are they going to do? Beat the crap out of the ghost? I also can't help but think that if, for whatever reason, I was left to hang around some abandoned building in the dark after I died, I still wouldn't want to talk to these clowns. The ghost hunters never shut up so it would be difficult for a ghost to get a word in, anyhow.