Though asking spirits to rap on walls has been mostly out of vogue since the decline of Spiritualism (that’s so 19th century), Syfy’s bringing it back with a bang in Ghost Hunters, Ghost Hunters International, and the most recent spin-off series, Ghost Hunters Academy.
Well, not exactly.
To a skeptic’s great delight, Steve Gonsalves and Dave Tango—paranormal investigators turned teachers in the newest series—spend more time debunking shoddy sightings than anything else, probably much to the chagrin of Syfy producers pushing haunting music tracks and sensational editing.
“We’re not big fans of mediums,” is one of the first comments of Tango in the pilot episode, and throughout the series that definitely comes through—Heathyr, a self-described “sensitive” with mediumship abilities, is the first of the class to flunk out.
The students, raised on ghost stories and quick to turn any shiver up the spine into the spectral communication of a residual spirit, make easy targets for the more critically-thinking Steve and Tango, whose (usually successful) attempts to fool the ghost cadets through the power of suggestion provide some amusing television. Edifying too—as counterintuitive as it might seem, Syfy’s new ghost hunter school might just provide lessons in skepticism for audiences expecting goosebumps.
Personally, I’m impressed. Steve and Tango make a point of emphasizing their focus on either verifying the personal experiences of “sensitives” and others or debunking them entirely:
“We’re looking for evidence, hard core evidence,” Steve drills into his students’ heads. “We go by the method that, if there’s any way that anybody else can doubt what we’re going to present, we don’t even use it.”
Maybe it’s not the scientific method, but there’s a definite priority on protocol and technology. (Do you know the difference between EVP and a disembodied voice?)
With cameras covering ever corner possible—at sites like a Civil War battleship, not getting every inch of the brig might be acceptable—and thermal imaging tracking unusually cold or hot spots, the aspiring Ghost Hunters attempt to capture as much verifiable evidence as possible. And though investigations can last from dusk to dawn—and Syfy fills an hour each week—that evidence is often shown to be disappointingly meager.
Steve and Tango are the first to admit it.
While it’s certainly entertaining to watch the personal reactions of sensitives, mediums, and empaths (apparently, there are betazoids among us) to potentially paranormal stimuli, accounts and personal experiences, however sincerely told, are ultimately just hearsay. Steve and Dave understand that, and I fully believe that they’re there to turn the content of a Syfy series into science fact: in one early episode, they go so far as to throw out the tapes from an entire night’s work after learning that their cadets weren’t “tagging” the recordings (narrating their progress to ensure, for example, that a student’s sneeze isn’t taken as some sort of spiritual emission).
Even with the central role critical analysis of evidence plays, Ghost Hunters Academy still reads at times like a reality show (and that’s a good thing)—after a weekend Syfy marathon, I felt as strongly attached to certain members of the “class” as I ever have for a tribe on Survivor. I even managed to put my own powers of suggestion into action by getting a friend I forced into joining my paranormal-TV spree to root for the cadet I personally wanted to “win” the opportunity to join an official TAPS (The Atlantic Paranormal Society) investigative team. For the record—I chose right (and celebrated with excited shrieks as shrill as any banshee’s).
Overall, I was pleasantly surprised—while still thoroughly entertaining (and kind of addictive), Ghost Hunters Academy, whose season one finale aired Wednesday December 16, proved much less sensationalistic than I’d expected from a show which takes place predominantly in dark abandoned asylums with bobbing flashlights making creepy shadows everywhere. In fact, with their focus on sifting the wheat from the chaff in terms of borderline “evidence,” I’d be just as comfortable calling Steve and Tang ghost busters as ghost hunters.
In this century, knocking on walls isn’t enough.
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Isabela Morales is a History and American Studies student who rabidly reviews indie science fiction at http://thescattering.wordpress.com/