'Ghost Hunting' Shows Are Getting So Bad That It's Beyond Amusing

I filmed at a private home with our crew a few years back that was supposed to be haunted. The woman who lived/lives there had a dialysis machine in her bedroom with the cables for it running across the floor. She also got through two bottles of red wine that night so I'll assume she didn't take her health that seriously or she was on government PIP payments. After laying a rug over the cables so we couldn't kick them loose (my idea), I met her three medium friends of varying approachability.

The first medium shot me an angry scowl because I'd smiled and said hello (I avoided her for the rest of the evening, I didn't want to ruin 'her show'.), the second lady was a bit more friendly, the third lady was great and even showed me an anomaly of some sort happening live on her phone's camera. The first two wove a story that didn't check out when I looked into the history of the house later. For some reason I'll never understand, the owner of the house was recruited to join our team.

She caused as much trouble as she could including trying to get me out of the team which was bizarre because I'd barely even talked to her at this stage, before, during or after filming in her house other then pleasantries like "Hello" and "Thank you for having us.". I think I talked to Escargot about it at the time. She even went as far as saying "You abused me!." at the last team meeting I attended. This woman was warped but she's said it underneath a sound recording CCTV. I told our team leader who immediately asked the woman what she meant but the woman refused to explain further.

I wasn't barred from the group but neither was that woman so I decided to leave. There was no way in hell I was going to visit locations with the lights switched off and be in a room anywhere near that twisted fantasist. I even had her 16 year old daughter, bless her, phone me online to tell me to leave her Mum alone!? .. I'd made no effort to contact the nutter (her Mum or the household) so I had to be diplomatic (because I was talking to a kid) and explain she and her Mum had nothing to worry about, I hadn't and wouldn't be trying to contact them in any way and I wished them well.

I've 'worked' with a lot more mentally stable/well balanced people on ghost investigations but the above experiences seriously put me off.

A mate's just started a new team. I'd join him but I can't take seriously phone apps that occasionally spit out words like DEATH or UPSTAIRS or AM I DEAD etc .. he's into that stuff, I've got no time for supposed supernatural contact phone apps. Or mad women.
 
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Swifty said:
I filmed at a private home with our crew a few years back that was supposed to be haunted. The woman who lived/lives there had a dialysis machine in her bedroom with the cables for it running across the floor. She also got through two bottles of red wine that night so I'll assume she didn't take her health that seriously or she was on government PIP payments. After laying a rug over the cables so we couldn't kick them loose (my idea), I met her three medium friends of varying approachability.

The first medium shot me an angry scowl because I'd smiled and said hello (I avoided her for the rest of the evening, I didn't want to ruin 'her show'.), the second lady was a bit more friendly, the third lady was great and even showed me an anomaly of some sort happening live on her phone's camera. The first two wove a story that didn't check out when I looked into the history of the house later. For some reason I'll never understand, the owner of the house was recruited to join our team.

She caused as much trouble as she could including trying to get me out of the team which was bizarre because I'd barely even talked to her at this stage, before, during or after filming in her house other then pleasantries like "Hello" and "Thank you for having us.". I think I talked to Escargot about it at the time. She even went as far as saying "You abused me!." at the last team meeting I attended. This woman was warped but she's said it underneath a sound recording CCTV. I told our team leader who immediately asked the woman what she meant but the woman refused to explain further.

I wasn't barred from the group but neither was that woman so I decided to leave. There was no way in hell I was going to visit locations with the lights switched off and be in a room anywhere near that twisted fantasist. I even had her 16 year old daughter, bless her, phone me online to tell me to leave her Mum alone!? .. I'd made no effort to contact the nutter (her Mum or the household) so I had to be diplomatic (because I was talking to a kid) and explain she and her Mum had nothing to worry about, I hadn't and wouldn't be trying to contact them in any way and I wished them well.

I've 'worked' with a lot more mentally stable/well balanced people on ghost investigations but the above experiences seriously put me off.

A mate's just started a new team. I'd join him but I can't take seriously phone apps that occasionally spit out words like DEATH or UPSTAIRS or AM I DEAD etc .. he's into that stuff, I've got no time for supposed supernatural contact phone apps. Or mad women.
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Never be alone with nutters. Sounds like you've met a few.
 
DrPaulLee said:
I really must get involved with your groups Swifty. There are two round here, the first is a bunch of most haunted wannabes who hike access prices, and the other are just apathetic when it comes to cases.
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Shadow Paranormal, Eddie Mallet and Chris Halton are the only ones I take seriously because they keep records.
 
Hmm mebbe they knew you wouldn’t put up with any nonsense or bulls**t swifty and would tell them straight out that they were wrong/making it up
 
Who me said:
Hmm mebbe they knew you wouldn’t put up with any nonsense or bulls**t swifty and would tell them straight out that they were wrong/making it up
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It's a long story including a trouble causer, someone's unexpected pregnancy, someone getting paranoid, someone else's night vision camera stopping functioning permanently, someone splitting up with their husband, covid restrictions. The plus side is I'm now the Godfather of the little kid who lives with his Mum up the street from me :). That was a bit intense. I had to renounce all evil at a Catholic ceremony, promise to steer him towards God and do a bit of a speech in church. I managed to score a bottle of the blessed water he was christened in though. As you do.

A wasp landed next to him as he was about to get dunked so I flicked the little f****r away from him. That's probably not going to be the only time I'm going to have to protect him. The ironic thing is we'd all just had to sing 'All things bright and beautiful'. Except wasps when I'm standing next to a baby.
 
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Analogue Boy said:
Maybe it was a Holy Wasp and he was destined to be stung and gain superpowers and one day use them to save us all from an alien threat.
Although, I’ll admit that’s a bit of a long shot.
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I didn't think of that. You could be right. I might have messed up his destiny of testing double glazing by bouncing off it a lot and leaving little yellow turds.
 
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Swifty said:
I filmed at a private home with our crew a few years back that was supposed to be haunted. The woman who lived/lives there had a dialysis machine in her bedroom with the cables for it running across the floor. She also got through two bottles of red wine that night so I'll assume she didn't take her health that seriously or she was on government PIP payments. After laying a rug over the cables so we couldn't kick them loose (my idea), I met her three medium friends of varying approachability.

The first medium shot me an angry scowl because I'd smiled and said hello (I avoided her for the rest of the evening, I didn't want to ruin 'her show'.), the second lady was a bit more friendly, the third lady was great and even showed me an anomaly of some sort happening live on her phone's camera. The first two wove a story that didn't check out when I looked into the history of the house later. For some reason I'll never understand, the owner of the house was recruited to join our team.

She caused as much trouble as she could including trying to get me out of the team which was bizarre because I'd barely even talked to her at this stage, before, during or after filming in her house other then pleasantries like "Hello" and "Thank you for having us.". I think I talked to Escargot about it at the time. She even went as far as saying "You abused me!." at the last team meeting I attended. This woman was warped but she's said it underneath a sound recording CCTV. I told our team leader who immediately asked the woman what she meant but the woman refused to explain further.

I wasn't barred from the group but neither was that woman so I decided to leave. There was no way in hell I was going to visit locations with the lights switched off and be in a room anywhere near that twisted fantasist. I even had her 16 year old daughter, bless her, phone me online to tell me to leave her Mum alone!? .. I'd made no effort to contact the nutter (her Mum or the household) so I had to be diplomatic (because I was talking to a kid) and explain she and her Mum had nothing to worry about, I hadn't and wouldn't be trying to contact them in any way and I wished them well.

I've 'worked' with a lot more mentally stable/well balanced people on ghost investigations but the above experiences seriously put me off.

A mate's just started a new team. I'd join him but I can't take seriously phone apps that occasionally spit out words like DEATH or UPSTAIRS or AM I DEAD etc .. he's into that stuff, I've got no time for supposed supernatural contact phone apps. Or mad women.
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Sounds actually like a potentially dangerous nutter both to herself and people she associates with. On dialysis and drinks 2 bottles of wine in one evening? Not going to live long, but no doubt she'll be complaining why she's at the bottom of the list for a kidney transplant.
Sadly there are no groups in the north west to join.
 
Stormkhan said:
Follow the Frog Brothers!
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"Death by stereo!" :smoke:

Lost Boys jokes aside, we did once consider diluting some vodka in a plant sprayer bottle once but we didn't go that far. The theory on trying that was that one location was purported to be haunted by an ex reverend with a recorded drink problem. Amongst other strange things, we'd sometime catch a strong smell of alcohol (like when you might smell it on someone's breath who's hiding a drink problem).

At first, we'd all empty our bags and pockets to prove none of had brought alcohol with us, you could even be standing on your own in an area and get a sudden whiff of it so we ruled out an investigator drinking alcohol. We compromised, I bought one of these red wine miniatures bottles, we left it in the middle of the place with the lid removed, locked off a camera directly pointed at the wine then all went outside at the same time so it couldn't be tampered with. We didn't capture anything weird, I wasn't expecting it to be lifted from the ground with someone invisible drinking from it ... we were just hoping the smell would either excite, annoy or trigger object some kind of recorded phenomena. It was worth a go.
 
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Normally they review bad movies, but today Red Letter Media are on a ghost hunt, promising no fakery (it's a one-off show, so no need to hook viewers). They even try to get the ghost to repeat the slamming door from a Ghost Adventures episode in the Villisca Ax Murder house...

 
sherbetbizarre said:
Normally they review bad movies, but today Red Letter Media are on a ghost hunt, promising no fakery (it's a one-off show, so no need to hook viewers). They even try to get the ghost to repeat the slamming door from a Ghost Adventures episode in the Villisca Ax Murder house...

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I watched this today, to be fair the RLM guys did a pretty standup investigation, enjoyed it and had a few giggles throughout as well.
 
Skip to 22:05 to catch Carol, the key keeper and business partner of 30 East Drive in Pontefract caught on camera flicking a coin down the stairs and trying to pass it off as paranormal. Carol's video's been taken down now but not before it was sent to Youtube's Life Of Michael for a closer look. Doors opening and closing 'by themselves' without her going into the rooms to see if anyone's in there faking it etc ..

 
Yithian said:
There's an interesting little essay here about the 'spookification' of asylums and the cynical/ignorant conflation of the mentally ill with the possessed. In a sense, we never really got away from this, but I--not one for hand-wringing social angst--agree that there's something unsavoury about the re-emergence of the trend.

Ghosts are Scary, Disabled People are Not: The Troubling Rise of the Haunted Asylum
By SARAH HANDLEY-COUSINS • October 29, 2015

This past spring, the defunct Willard Psychiatric Center (previously known as the Willard Asylum for the Chronic Insane) in Ovid, New York, opened its doors for tours — one day only, with no advance sale tickets. I immediately made plans to make the two-hour drive — after all, for the past few years, I’ve been working on a project that touches on institutionalized Union veterans, and many of my subjects lived, and died, at Willard. The opportunity to see the asylum was rare: the grounds still house a correctional facility, so security on the campus is tight, and most of the buildings sit locked and empty. I was eager for the opportunity see where so many of my old soldiers lived out their lives, and to visit their graves.

I left bright and early from Buffalo and arrived in Ovid with plenty of time before the tour. But instead of getting my ticket, I found myself at a dead stop, just before the asylum grounds, in a line of hundreds of cars. There is nothing else in Ovid (no offense, Ovidians), so it was pretty clear that the traffic was for the tour. Within a few minutes, state troopers arrived to direct traffic, and it became clear that no one was getting in to see the asylum — there were just too many people. I waited in line for half an hour before a trooper turned me around and sent me, grumpy and disappointed, back to Buffalo.

I spent the rest of my drive pondering what on earth had caused hundreds and hundreds of people to show up on a Saturday morning to go on a tour of an old mental institution. I discovered later that nearly 4000 people tried to get tours, up from less than 500 the year before. Visitors had swarmed the grounds, causing property damage and sneaking into areas of the campus that were closed to tours. Were there really thousands of folks so excited about New York State history or local landmarks that they would flood a tiny village to take a building tour?

When I got home, some research revealed what attracted so many to the tour: the paranormal. The Travel Channel’s Destination Fear had run a short segment on the asylum, featuring two employees of the correctional facility campus describing vaguely creepy events, such as the suspicion that the ghost of a red-haired nurse-turned-patient wandered the halls. When the tour of the asylum was announced, news had apparently traveled through local ghost-hunting circles. Most of the folks who had lined up by the thousands to tour the old asylum weren’t interested at all in the history of asylums — they were hoping to see a ghost.

Essay Continues:
https://nursingclio.org/2015/10/29/...not-the-troubling-rise-of-the-haunted-asylum/
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Sorry for the late response to this. With us (my current group), it's not sensationalising mental health problems but recognising that strong emotions experienced by these now dead people may have become something tangible ala stone tape theory and so recordable.

There's a lot of now abandoned and what used to be officialy called lunatic asylums in my county of Norfolk, usually operational in the Victorian era. We've also visited places that only closed as recently in the 90's that were thankfully called, well, nothing labelling what they did which was to care for people with mental health problems so they have more upbeat names like 'The Meadows' or similar reflecting society's compassion and respect for the privacy of their once inhabitants.

The pattern for closures of these types of facilities/institutions seems to be put down to the older Victorian era type places being reported as closed down because of architectural reasons: physical erosion of these buildings and their equipment. More modern era facilities/institutions such as The Meadows (one we visited) can be looked up online as failing instead quality inspections such as faeces found on bed sheets, under staffing, inadequate staff training and/or failure of duty of care.

Both era's accounting of closures could explain why these places are more often reporting hauntings by ghosts of medical staff than of patients.

I'd be interested to hear Dr Paul Lee's thoughts on these observations.
 
I'll forgive this bloke if he's never been on a ghost invest himself because I can't deny he talks a lot of sense when it come to 'click and subscribe' attitudes by presenters getting in the way of objective reporting:

 
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