Las Vegan turns ghost hunting into competition

Las Vegas Review-Journal: Las Vegan turns ghost hunting into competition
Zak Bagans isn't overly protective. He's not whizzing all over the cable landscape to mark his territory. If he had his way, everybody would be doing his job.

Then again, you'd probably welcome others, too, if your chosen profession involved staring down more evil than Rush Limbaugh's proctologist.

"You've gotta understand, the paranormal is like the air we breathe," the longtime Las Vegan and star of Travel Channel's "Ghost Adventures" reasons. "It's the trees on this planet. It's a part of everybody's life. Nobody owns the paranormal."

It's that more-the-merrier attitude that led him to create "Paranormal Challenge" (9 p.m. Friday, Travel Channel), a competition for up-and-coming Scooby gangs.

"With the explosion of paranormal television, there's been an explosion of paranormal teams and organizations developing in every little town across the world. They're everywhere," Bagans says. "... They all have their own logos, their own T-shirts. And it's great. It's all these vigilante investigation teams. Some of them have been doing this for so long, and I just wanted to give the opportunity to give that spotlight to these teams. Let them go in front of the world and showcase their investigation skills. Show us what you can capture. That's what it's all about."

But while "Paranormal Challenge" is a competition, it's no "America's Next Top Ghostbuster." There are no fancy eliminations, no ruthless alliances. And the only reward is satisfaction.

"We didn't want to have a cash prize or anything like that. It's simply for bragging rights for the team," Bagans says. "And by doing so, I think it just goes to show everybody that we're just out there together trying to find answers together."

Each episode follows two three-person teams -- modeled after Bagans' Ghost Adventures Crew, there's a lead investigator, a secondary investigator and an equipment tech -- as they explore some of the paranormal world's favorite haunts.

And the histories of these places, presented like old Nine Inch Nails videos, are every bit as chilling as the evidence they uncover. Pennsylvania's Eastern State Penitentiary isn't just an abandoned prison, it's a "gothic temple dedicated to depravity, isolation and torture." And the nearby Pennhurst State School becomes "an unthinkable wasteland of suffering, abuse and neglect."

"Paranormal Challenge" outfits the teams with an array of equipment -- night vision cameras, thermal imaging cameras, full spectrum camcorders and still cameras, digital recorders, infrared camcorders and something called a Mel Meter, which measures electromagnetic energy and temperature -- and gives them two hours to investigate each of two ghostly hot spots.

Their every move is monitored from inside a nerve center and critiqued in real time by Bagans and a rotating panel of judges he calls "very, very respected and renowned in the paranormal industry." It's also the only three-judge TV panel you're likely to see without a cranky British guy.

The judges, made up of a mix of inventors, scientists, skeptics, psychics and parapsychologists, grade each crew on its teamwork, technological skills and use of the site's history, as well as the quality of their audio and visual evidence.

"It's a very informative show," Bagans says. "And it's going to let people know at home the basis of paranormal investigations and what you should and shouldn't do."

One of the most crucial things the judges point out is the care investigators must take in marking their recordings whenever they shuffle their feet or bang into something, so they don't mistake it for something ghostly later on. But to an untrained ear, the teams on the two episodes sent for review seem to be mishearing all sorts of things. Most of the audio evidence is so garbled that what's presented as disembodied voices saying things like "get out" or "just leave" could just as easily be saying "Jeremiah was a bullfrog." Or those sounds could just be a breeze.

But Bagans reports that one of the teams in Friday's premiere (which wasn't available in time for review) presents "an audio piece of evidence that even had the camera operators on set pretty much drop to the ground. I remember listening to it and looking back at some of the crew, and it sent shockwaves through all of us. It's one of the most chilling audio pieces of evidence that I've ever heard in my life."

And Bagans seems legitimately excited that viewers are getting to experience what he says is just more proof of the paranormal, whether that evidence comes from his Ghost Adventures Crew or some regular Joes off the street.

"I want them to see how easy it can be to communicate with a spirit. That's the point of this," he says. "And how we need to, together, start paying attention to these voices.

"This stuff is really happening. And I think by bringing in these different teams that aren't on television, they're just your next-door neighbors, by bringing these teams on and seeing the evidence that they're capturing, it's going to blow a lot of skeptics' minds away."