OK so one of my guilty pleasures is watching ghost-hunting shows & I have to admit "Ghost Adventures" is my favorite.
I don't believe in the supernatural for a cold minute, don't believe in ghosts, am ridiculously skeptical about the paranormal, & I know such shows are completely ridiculous & basic. & I don't care, I still watch 'em.
For the most part, ghost shows are accidental psychology shows: they're shows about belief, cognitive biases, & skepticism. They're not really about ghosts or the paranormal at all. & that's fascinating to me.
Thing is... the vast majority of shows don't ever really find anything weird or unusual or out of explainable human experience.
...until they do. Until you have *that one episode* where for a couple of minutes, somebody captured something that truly doesn't make sense & is spooky as FUCK.
I love 'em for that, too.
& maybe a weird thing is, even tho' I'm hella skeptical about the paranormal, I mostly think the methodology of studying it is what's so poor. People see & hear & experience weird-ass shit all the damn time, stuff we can't yet explain. Is it paranormal? Ehhh... maybe? Maybe not.
So I'm never going to tell someone who had a "paranormal" experience that they didn't experience something weird as shit. They probably did.
the sad part is. There are people who DO believe everything is real on those shows.
that is when i stopped finding them amusing
nothing wrong with watching it, to each their own
@Kinnison True that. Given humans' propensity for believing nonsensical stuff it's no surprise.
@Impious_Jade
@Impious_Jade Ghost shows are one of my plain old pleasures too, I love them. I also enjoy how they talk about history and historical events, and visit the places where these events happened. I've had a couple of personal experiences that make me perhaps a little less skeptical than I know I should be. But yeah, I love them too. Even the ones that are fictional -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghosts_(American_TV_series)
@Impious_Jade I almost never see anything on those shows that looks like my own weird experiences, but I enjoy watching anyway. It should be a guilty pleasure, but I don't feel guilty about it.
When a person claims to have a "supernatural" or "paranormal" experience, my default is that I presume nothing unnatural happened until proven otherwise, but I still treat the person with courtesy and respect, because whatever they perceived was still a lived experience for them.
@Impious_Jade after doing tours at my hotel for 3 years I was far more afraid of the live ones than the dead ones but GA did capture something in the morgue that freaked me out until I quit
@RobinBrayFineArt Whoa that'd be freaky. And yeah, you generally gotta fear the living more than the dead... people can be pretty awful.
Every Ghost show:
"We are not sure what is causing this, so it is definitely ghosts"
*Everyone high Fives (including the ghost which you cannot see)*
@Kinnison LOL yeah exactly. If I showed up on one of those shows, they'd HATE me: "Bro - why you using that EMF detector? What's it showing? Why do you say it's showing you a ghost? How do you know? Did you check sunspot activity this week? How about get a map of this location's electrical system? You sure you using that thing right?"
@Impious_Jade It's probably not nice of me to say, but if something actually did appear while they were goofing around, it would make the shows much more watchable.
@AskTheDevil Hah no I actually agree. That would turn it into a whoooole 'nuther ballgame.
I do ghost tours if that makes you feel better. There's nothing I love more than a late night in an abandoned asylum or walking through cemeteries. I've been on several where ghost hunters brought equipment with them.
It's fun and the stories are always good. 👻
@Cosmichomicide See & the thing is I *love* ghost tours. I don't think there are "ghosts" but y'know? It's hella fun going into a spooky place & getting scared. SO much fun.
Same - I see it as a historic walking tour with a different spin to it.
@Cosmichomicide I totally get that. That's one of my fave things about "Ghost Adventures" in particular: they go into the history of the location, especially in their earlier episodes.
@Cosmichomicide I totally get that. That's one of my fave things about "Ghost Adventures" in particular: they go into the history of the location, especially in their earlier episodes.
@Impious_Jade my dirty secret tv show is 90 day Fiancee (before the 90 days).
@Impious_Jade in an effort to make a living in a tourist town I did ghost tours at a “haunted hotel” for a few years, I was in an episode of “Ghost Adventures” before the pandemic
@RobinBrayFineArt No kidding! Are you OK saying which one?
@Impious_Jade the Crescent Hotel in Eureka Springs AR
@RobinBrayFineArt Oh right on, that one definitely had some eerie moments!
@Impious_Jade i watch dead files ☠️
@dratino Oh cool, going to have to add that to the list... :D
@Impious_Jade it helps me relax for a bit 😅
My DIL is addicted to ghost-hunting shows. I don’t get it.
@Impious_Jade
The equivalent of light fiction -- an enjoyable distraction.
@Impious_Jade the hospital I was born in was featured on that show and I had a blast watching it! also, I may be possessed… 😈
I call just about every one of such shows "Ghost Bros", because it's always a handful of white bros running around doing totally ridiculous bro shit & doing all this macho posturing & trying to take the piss out of the alleged "ghosts" they find... which they really don't ever find at all, they just use a bunch of equipment that doesn't really measure what they think they're measuring, & say it's a haunting.