Dude! Bro! Man! These are some of the familiar exchanges you'll hear as the Ghost Adventures Crew
— Zak Bagans, Nick Groff, and Aaron Goodwin — investigate the world's
most haunted locales and scare the bejesus out of their rabid fans every
Saturday night. (Hopefully the bro talk offers viewers a bit of levity
to an already freaky situation.)
Whether you
believe in the supernatural or not, the G.A. Crew takes their job dead
seriously, as they come well equipped with green-tinted night vision
cameras, motion and electromagnetic field detectors, no-contact
thermometers and other ghostbusting gadgets that have captured some
hair-raising moments: body scratches, unattended doors slamming, breathy
whispers in audio recordings, and images of unexplained orbs in
photographs.
As the show ventures into its 10th
season, Zak Bagans took time out to answer our burning questions about
what this new set of ghostly experiences brings.
Out of all the places you've traveled this upcoming season, which place was the scariest for you and why?
I'd have to say the scariest place for me this season was Mexico to
investigate at the Island of the Dolls. This place wasn't about evil
spirits or demons, it was about a place full of possessed dolls that
just really got under my skin. The Aztec canals where the Island of
the Dolls is located have their own countless layers of other dark
history and ancient hauntings on top of the Island's possessed dolls —
the whole area is just a very scary place to be. It’s a haunted
Mexican waterworld where you don’t want to get lost. I don't think I've
really been more terrified than what happens on the island when one of
the dolls starts unexplainably laughing. That was it for me. Done.
Were
there any additional scenes this season that you wished viewers
would've been able to see but were chopped in the editing room?
Our audience needs to understand that myself and my crew have a very
serious job and put ourselves in dangerous situations to learn more
about the afterlife. On one particular moment during our Halloween
special investigation in Ireland, my investigator had a very emotional
and disturbing moment that we had to edit down. I feel there is a
comfortable and acceptable level of what we choose to show the audience
when things take a turn for the worse while we are trying to come into
contact with evil spirits and demons.
I
decided it was right to cut out a small portion of when Aaron claims
he was grabbed by a very dark force and had a breakdown after the event
occurred. Many people won’t ever understand that attacks are more than
physical grabs and pushes. These entities can inject pure fear into
your spine and let you feel this inside your bodies…something that you
can’t feel yourselves watching on television. I felt some of the
moments Aaron had after this attack were a bit too personal for the
audience to understand, but let enough of it air for them to see the
effects of what we deal with.
What are the best parts of your job? The worst?
The
best part of my job is being able to travel to places to investigate
powerful stories, many of which contains unsolved mysteries and deaths.
To me as a documentarian and paranormal investigator, this puts the
adventure in my life and meaning to my job. I absolutely love to
interview people and it is a craft. You really have to know how to be
engaging and connect with them, to reach their deepest emotional levels
and get the answers you’re looking for. My new series, Ghost Adventures: Aftershocks
is the ultimate platform for my interviewing skills, as I’m mostly
dealing with people who have had traumatic experiences and attacks from
negative spirits.
The worst parts of my job
are traveling on airplanes, the airborne contaminants we come into
contact with on many of the locations we investigate, and spirit
attachments that turn serious when I get home from locations that are
haunted by demons and evil spirits.
Considering
your show deals more with frightening entities, we're wondering if
you've experienced any ghosts that were non-scary, dare we say, even
pleasant?
Oh yes, I’ve
had many pleasant encounters with spirits. The ones I enjoy most are
ones who are willing to help me establish direct communication. I
believe they understand they are physically dead and eager to aid in
our research of our two worlds' existence to the other. Examples of
this would be when I had a spirit at the Black Moon Manor tell me what
color they were making my EMF detector illuminate ("green"), and when a
Civil War soldier at the Perryville Battlefield gave me his first/last
name with 15 people witnessing it. A historical researcher then
matched the name to a man who died right near where our communication
took place. These irrefutable moments are ones that help us understand
life after death.
Your
career has been built upon all things dark and scary. What are some
things you'd like your fans to know about you that have nothing to do
with the macabre?
After dealing with so
much dark energy and investigating violent people for my job, I value
creatures with pure souls – animals, especially dogs. I believe a
higher power/god created these creatures to give us balance from people
who can be truly evil. I am an active voice and supporter against
animal cruelty. I have realized that when you rescue your pet from a
shelter, it is the most amazing feeling in the world how this animal
changes your life by giving it a better one.
When
I come home from dark investigations and have come into contact with
negative spirits, it’s like my dog helps me purify any attachments I
may bring home with me. Please adopt and rescue your pets from local
shelters and report animal abuse. They are on this planet to love and
help us. Let’s do the same back.
From
all of your years of investigating, what is the biggest thing you've
learned so far about the supernatural that you never anticipated
knowing?
The biggest thing I’ve learned
is that seeing and hearing isn’t always believing. Everyone expects to
go out and see a ghost or hear it talk. After years of investigating I
have come to develop my sixth sense. This is the most important, but
also dangerous, sense to use. Once you develop this sense you will
begin to FEEL these spirits, their emotions, their power. It’s like in
"Avatar" when they connect their tails into the other creatures. You
open yourself up and let these spirits connect with you through
energy.
When I do this and there is a strong
spiritual connection, there is no knowing how long the spirit will stay
in contact with you or what type of spirit it is — and that’s the
dangerous part. I’ve been on investigations where a spirit is
channeling through me and I have extreme changes in my emotions. ANGER,
SADNESS, CONFUSION. Then I begin seeing visions that are not mine.
They are theirs. There is no trace of time. My body goes stiff, numb,
cold. Then when the spirit leaves I can barely stand and speak. This
is what I call a "lockdown hangover" and depending on the severity of
the interaction, I can be out of it for days after. I wonder what this
does to my body. I don’t think it is good for it.
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