Here is essay number four for my 31 Days of Halloween Vol. II project. Yesterday was all about Vincent Price. Today is about Ghost Adventures, at least, sort of. I am writing about Grave Encounters (2011), and you’ll see why I am sort of writing about Ghost Adventures at the same time.
I am a sucker for Zak Bagans’ Ghost Adventures. Is it a good show? Not really, in many ways. It is competently made and entertaining enough, but for a show about exploring the paranormal, it is often pretty laughable and better for memes than any serious investigation into the world of spirits and spooks.
Before Warner Bros. and Discovery rolled into a unified service, I delighted in Discovery+’s “Ghostober” for a couple of years. It was a 24-hour stream of Ghost Adventures and other paranormal shows, but mostly Ghost Adventures. I would have it on for background noise and would take breaks between tasks to watch Zak and his crew lose their minds over some coincidences, or to listen to Zak wax overly poetic about the cosmic consequences of a bunch of bro-dudes locked in a house with cameras. By Zak’s estimation, he and his crew are really piercing the veil between the living and the dead.
Are they? Not really. There is some evidence here and there, on an episode once in a while, that can be creepy and alarming. But rarely is there much. This is the same man who, being scalded by a potsticker, was jolted back to the task at hand, after all.
Zak’s propensity for exaggeration is a delight and part of why I think I enjoy the show so much. But what if Ghost Adventures actually managed to capture on film some real evidence? Also, I guess, what if they all died in the process?
Enter Grave Encounters, circa 2011.
Your Next Destination: Hell
The Vicious Brothers’ 2011 found-footage horror, Grave Encounters, has a simple enough premise: Get a Ghost Adventures-style documentary crew into a situation where the ghosts are very real and inject as much death and terror as possible. The cast of characters is certainly a lot more diverse than the Ghost Adventures team, but all retain the scrappy, bros in lock-down vibe of the show, down to the film’s lead, Lance (Sean Rogerson), who has a very Zak Baganesque look.
Anyone into this ghost show genre has heard stories and opinions on Bagans. There are those who suggest that the Ghost Adventures team often leaves locations worse than how they found them, intentionally antagonizing spirits. People who have hosted them have had negative experiences. As the years have gone on, I have found Zak’s demeanour problematic in how he treats his crew (on camera, no less!) and his propensity for evoking demons as much as he can. I think he is a believer, but I don’t think he is above tilting things in his favor as far as “evidence” goes in investigations. Former Ghost Adventures crew member Nick Groff, essentially the co-founder of Ghost Adventures along with Zak, has been accused of manipulating evidence before. The controversy of his own show, Ghosts of Shepherdstown, notwithstanding.
I am not necessarily accusing Zak Bagans of faking things on Ghost Adventures, but I wouldn’t necessarily be shocked if it happened. Ghost Hunters lost one of their hosts, Grant Wilson, possibly due to controversy surrounding evidence manipulation – his leaving the show due to burnout smells more like saving the brand than anything. There is a whole library of tricks that can be used for these shows.
I bring this all up because Grave Encounters, made in 2011, was released during some of the peak years of Ghost Adventures, and amid a boom of other paranormal investigation shows; the questioning of evidence and the oft-perceived scammy personalities behind media creation are firmly in mind in the film and inform the whole approach. The copious mid-2010s CGI and facial distortion evoke today’s YouTube shock video or analog horror scares – perhaps predicting the future in some ways, but definitely dragging down the effectiveness of the horror.
The film leans heavily on building up its crew of investigators as well-intentioned fakers, desperate for evidence and absolutely losing their shit and their lives when the dead actually communicate back. A scene that could be ripped from the B-roll of a Travel Channel show occurs when Lance, disappointed with the groundskeeper’s lack of experience with the location, hands the man a $20 bill to present a much more interesting story on camera. Later, the team’s “psychic,” Houston (Mackenzie Gray) is presented as a struggling actor who is filling time between other gigs on the show, putting in hammy psychic reactions to the locations. T.C. (Merwin Mondesir) isn’t really a believer but is apprehensive about tempting fate. Sasha (Ashleigh Gryzko) seems to be earnest enough and probably truly believes.
But Lance is the question mark here. A scene depicts him going over a production schedule, skeptical of capturing anything paranormal – yet as things happen, he is keen on documenting it all. His vibe in the film is like that of a lapsed adherent to a faith who has had a miraculous encounter and believes again, desperate to hold on to it, no matter how frightening it is. He’s the obsessive creator archetype here, but curiously practical and not to the overall detriment of the group. Lance is treated a bit too evenly to really work as a parody of Zak Bagans, but he is a pastiche.
I think it is the idea that Lance is a measured person in this situation, both intrigued and terrified, that allows him to “survive” in a relative sense. I won’t spoil the ending. I will say, in a more cynical film, the ending for him would be far more mean-spirited and a “take that” at Zak Bagans with a direct, embarrassing death. Here we get a grimly ironic fate, not the lesser punchline of hack work. I respect that.
Do I laugh frequently at Zak Bagans and his antics? How can I not? But I laugh at him because I like him; I respect that he seems to be a believer, and I respect that he is doing what he can to investigate the possibility of ghosts. Am I sure all of his tactics are above board? I don’t think so – I don’t think there is enough evidence in the world or the afterlife to help Ghost Adventures hit 20 seasons. Do I think he is our best advocate for contact with the spirit world? Absolutely not. But he’s made a career for himself doing it, and I can respect that.
But in Grave Encounters, in the film’s most chilling scene, when I see Lance puzzle and try to rationally explain the time anomaly they seem to have encountered in the location, I worry. He reveals he checked the time for sunrise for the lockdown’s production, and they’ve blown easily past that in the location, with windows showing it is still pitch black outside. I worry for him. Just as much as I occasionally worry for Zak Bagans in those rare episodes of Ghost Adventures that even make me question what I’ve seen.
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