Popular ghost hunting shows come in a variety of flavors with a universal appeal to cheese and camp. There’s the wildly popular roto-rooting Ghost Hunters originally airing on Sci-Fi and the bro-fest that is Ghost Adventures usually repeating every tired episode on Discovery+’s pantheon of channels. Even Ozzy, Sharon, and Jack Osbourne have joined the pseudo-scientific quest to prove what usually happens just slightly off camera. Shows like these all follow a similar formula. They are contingent on the audience’s willingness to blend our disbelief with what is manufactured on screen. By the end of the show there is still no proof of the hereafter, of residual or intelligent hauntings, or of demons who have chosen to just loiter in abandoned buildings for kicks. Viewers return from the spectacle safe from their tentative exploration into the outer limits of their knowledge. If the ghosts are not real, then at least we know the rules of our universe still hold, right? Read more
Posted on November 8, 2021
