You wouldn’t think there’d be room for more than two ghost hunting shows on TV, but there were actually more than a dozen on the air this past TV season. And despite the fact that not one of these shows has ever captured undeniable evidence of life after death, we still watch every week, thinking this time is going to be THE time.
Here are the Top 5 Ghost Hunting Shows currently airing on TV.
5. Ghost Lab: This new series airs on Discovery Channel and for that they get a lot of flack. The series revolves around Texas brothers Brad and Barry Klinge, founders of Everyday Paranormal. Their gimmick is the fact that they roll into town in a giant ghost hunting mobile lab that they use to monitor “scientific” evidence as it’s recorded. Their most startling revelation to date was a knife that jumped out of a vase on to a table in one episode. If you ask me, the bigger mystery is why the knife was in a vase in the first place.
4. Most Haunted:
This Travel Channel series is a British import and it stars Yvette Fielding and a revolving team of psychics and parapsychologists. This is one of the few shows to employ psychics and mediums in their investigations and that fact has come back to haunt them on several occasions. In 2005, The Daily Mirror exposed medium Derek Acorah as a fraud, citing a case where he was fed false information, which he then repeated on camera, while “possessed” by said made-up ghosts.
3. Ghost Adventures:
Known as the “angry” ghost hunting show, Ghost Adventures also airs on Travel Channel. Each week Zak Bagans and his two buddies get locked down inside a haunted location where they proceed to antagonize the ghosts with shouting, foul language and bad acting. On the upside, the show spends more time delving into the history of the locations and it is fun to watch these guys freak out every time they feel a cold draft on their necks.
2. Paranormal State
This half-hour series airs on A&E follows a group of college student ghost hunters who really take this personally. Ryan Buell is the founder of the Paranormal Research Society at Penn State University (aka Paranormal State). His early encounters with a dark force have led him to a life of ghost hunting and now he’s got a team and a TV series to help him search for answers. This show is unusual in that Ryan comes off as more psychologist than parapsychologist. There’s also a leaning toward the religious aspects of a haunting, along with talk of demonic possession.
1. Ghost Hunters: The granddaddy of them all is Ghost Hunters and they remain the champs. Jason Hawes and Grant Wilson started out as humble plumbers who hunted ghosts on the side, but they’ve become supernatural celebrities thanks to the success of their series on Syfy. The show is extremely predictable and perhaps that’s why it’s so popular. They go in, they get the history, they set up the equipment then it’s lights out. That’s the time for EVP work, thermal camera imagery and the good old five senses. They startle. We startle and then they convince us that the sound on the digital recorder is a ghost saying his own name even though it sounds like the rumble the furnace makes when it comes on at night.
But what really makes Ghost Hunters the most popular ghost hunting show is the down-to-earth feel of the production. Theatrics are kept to a minimum and Grant, Jason and the whole gang seem like the kind of folks you’d enjoy having at your next barbeque. That’s more than I can say for Zak Bagans who would probably spend the whole afternoon cursing over the grave of my poor departed Fluffy.
Photo: Ghost Hunters courtesy of Syfy
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you have not included supernatural (the cw channel).
Destination Truth. Fun show.
ghost hunter suck!! ghost adventure rule!!!
ghost lab are lazy. ghost hunter is the gayest show on the fucken world.[ you watch the episode about ghost hunter in south park ] ghost adventure is the number 1!!!
what a load of tosh! GA is the best
Extreme paranormal stopt after 2 shows… Anybody know why?
I LOVE all of these shows! Some of the things they mention, like a heavy feeling in the air before unusual activity and shadows moving that cannot be explained have even happened to me. I have always disregarded these feelings, but wonder deep down what is really going on. I will keep watching!
Dude your wrong. GA comes first. The others are boring.
Ghost Adventures is a LOT better than Ghost Hunters. On Ghost Hunters, their equipment is clearly a poor quality; the visuals are pixelated and their EVP recordings are muffled at best. The EVPs on Ghost Adventures are clear, although they still have some that sound a bit unclear. With theirs, you can still at least Hear the voice – even if you don’t always hear it the way they do. I’ve never heard an EVP on Ghost Hunters that I actually thought was even a voice or a noise, let alone what they think it says.
Also, when the crew of Ghost Adventures actually sees something, they generally also catch it on a camera. Ghost Hunters constantly go around “I just saw something over there!” but they never catch it on camera. The whole show becomes a lot of ‘he said’ ‘she said’, making it a lot less credible.
On the topic of shows that are better than Ghost Hunters – take a look at Destination Truth. It doesn’t quite fit in with the whole ‘ghost hunting’ genre, but it dances on that line sometimes. Destination Truth is more of a search for the unknown, and it is very well done with some Very credible results.
That being said, Ghost Adventures should have been first on the list, and Ghost Hunters third. The list should have ranked the shows by what they actually find, not how many people watch it. People watch Ghost Hunters a lot because it constantly says “there are no ghosts”, which makes a bunch of people who are terrified that ghosts might exist really happy.
PS: To the person that said Supernatural should have been on here, please go look up the difference between dramas and live-action. Supernatural is a scripted, rehearsed, filmed in a studio, Drama. The shows on this list are live-action of non-fiction people actually doing paranormal investigations. Also, Supernatural is a terribly acted show.
GHOST ADVENTURES ALL THE WAY !!! No one can compare to that show , legit . The only one that really could is haunted collector and thats not even on here . Can you say lammmmmeee ? And ghost adventures is still better thanks to Zak bagans being cute .
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Ghost Adventures without a doubt ! They have the best evidence out of all the shows ! Stranded could be Zak and company Rules Ghost hunting !