Ghost Adventures

Did You Know?

• Zak Bagans believes he was possessed at the Preston School of Industry and at Poveglia Island in Italy.
• The Halloween special Ghost Adventures Live was broadcast from the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum on October 30, 2009.
• Ghost Adventures: Quarantine was filmed inside Zak Bagans's Haunted Museum during the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, with filming starting on March 30, 2020.

Premise

The series "Ghost Adventures" began as a self-titled independent documentary-style film. This film was shot in 2004 and later produced by 4Reel Productions in 2006. It first aired on the SciFi Channel on July 25, 2007. The movie followed the same trio as they looked into reported paranormal activity in and around Virginia City, Nevada, with a focus on the Goldfield Hotel in Goldfield, Nevada. The crew later revisited this location during the show's fourth, fifth, and seventh seasons. The television series is produced by MY-Tupelo Entertainment, which came from a merger of MY Entertainment and Tupelo-Honey Productions.

The main investigators are Zak Bagans, Aaron Goodwin, Billy Tolley, and Jay Wasley, with Nick Groff appearing from the first through the tenth season. Their goal is to gather visual or audio proof of ghosts at sites said to be haunted. Each episode starts with the team touring the location with its owners or caretakers. During this walk-through, Bagans provides voice-over narration about the site's history and interviews people who say they have witnessed paranormal events there. Based on these interviews, the crew marks spots of notable alleged activity with X's made from black or gray tape. They later return to these marked areas to set up static night-vision cameras in hopes of capturing something.

After the walk-through, the team discusses their plan and then gets locked inside the location overnight. They believe this prevents outside noise and stray shadows from interfering. Their equipment includes digital thermometers, EMF meters, handheld video cameras, audio recorders, the Ovilus device, point-of-view cameras, and infrared night-vision cameras. The investigators sometimes place objects and shout taunts, thinking ghosts might move the items or respond to the provocations. All video and audio from the investigation is reviewed afterward, and the material is edited down to fit a one-hour episode. The most compelling evidence is shown at the moments it occurred, with explanations provided.

Throughout the series, the crew says they have recorded and experienced various unusual phenomena. These include simultaneous equipment problems like battery drain and voltage spikes, shifting electromagnetic fields, sudden temperature drops or cold spots, strange noises, electronic voice phenomena (EVP), and apparitions.

Reception

Ghost Adventures, alongside Ghost Hunters, played a key role in making paranormal TV and ghost hunting mainstream during its time on the Travel Channel. The series is now available on Discovery+ and Amazon Prime. Like many ghost hunting shows, it has faced accusations of staging events. A notable controversy came from the 2009 Halloween special Ghost Adventures Live, broadcast from the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum. During the show, Robert Bess, who created the Parabot Containment Chamber, said an EMF meter was violently knocked from his hands. A review of the footage later showed he had actually thrown it himself. In the follow-up program Ghost Adventures Live: Post Mortem, hosts Zak Bagans and Aaron Groff examined the video and stated they could not attribute the incident to paranormal causes.

Related productions

Ghost Adventures has spawned several spin-off series. The first, Ghost Adventures: Aftershocks, debuted on the Travel Channel on April 26, 2014, and ran for three seasons. In it, Zak Bagans checks back in with people who previously appeared on the show, learning how their lives shifted after the original lockdowns. The series also unveils audio and video evidence that was captured during those earlier investigations but never aired.

Next came Ghost Adventures: Where Are They Now?, which premiered on the Travel Channel on August 30, 2019. This five-episode miniseries, with each installment under ten minutes, has Zak returning to some of the most unsettling investigations from the main series. He catches up with the real individuals from fan-favorite episodes to see what happened once the crew departed.

On October 5, 2019, the Travel Channel aired Ghost Adventures: Serial Killer Spirits. This four-part miniseries follows Zak and his team to various U.S. locations that are steeped in the dark energy left behind by serial killers.

Ghost Adventures: Screaming Room! started on January 2, 2020, also on the Travel Channel. Thirteen episodes were announced for its first season, with a second season to follow. In this series, Zak, Aaron, Jay, and Billy invite viewers into their screening room, which they call the screaming room, to watch and comment on their favorite episodes.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Ghost Adventures: Quarantine premiered on the Travel Channel on June 11, 2020. This four-part miniseries shows Zak and the crew locked inside his Haunted Museum for ten days. Filming began on March 30, 2020, as Nevada entered its state lockdown. The first episode, titled Perimeter of Fear, has the team investigating the room containing Jack Kevorkian’s van, where women have reportedly fainted, as well as the Natalie Wood room and a collection of haunted dolls.

Ghost Adventures: Top 10 arrived on Discovery+ on January 2, 2021, as an eight-episode miniseries. Zak Bagans counts down the most popular moments chosen by fans, offering a mix of scary, funny, and outrageous clips from past episodes, along with some of the crew’s best paranormal evidence.