Goldfield Hotel Redemption
Embodied Perception and Occularcentrism in Ghost Hunting Reality TV Shows
Eden Redmond
Science manipulates things and gives up dwelling in them…science confronts the actual world only from greater and greater distances. It is and always has been, that admirably active, ingenious, and bold way of thinking, that one-sided thought that treats every being as an “object in general,” that is, at once as if all being were nothing to us…
- Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Eye and Mind
“My name is Zak Bagans, I never believed in ghosts until I came face to face with one. So I set out on a quest to capture what I once saw, on video”. This is the first line introducing every episode of the Travel Channel HD hit show “Ghost Adventures”. It begins with a claim to an experience and a pursuit to prove that experience through visual documentation. In the United States now there are 39 paranormal reality television shows on major networks. Each show is driven by the scientific method; paranormal investigators try to make evidence reliable and repeatable as well as debunk evidence. The genre stakes its credibility in visual evidence that is harvested with the scientific method. But are visual representation and scientific method the most veritable way to engage with ghosts? This effort for empiricism is extreme and reactionary to the history of supernatural encounters, which is based in storytelling, myth, folklore and tall tales. Regardless of whether one believes in ghosts, when we consider American ghost hunting, there seems to be a cleft between what we want ghosts to be, and how we want to meet and record them.
I advocate for an embodied and ambiguous perception based in what Maurice Merleau-Ponty calls indeterminate perception, that is embracing the “not quite there”-ness of what is seen. I wish to extend this understanding of ambiguous perception into the world of American popular paranormal. Rather than validate an experience through empirical evidence, we can dwell in the embodied experience even if that experience cannot offer resolution or definition.
I came to ghost hunting shows one summer in high school. My younger sister and I would avidly record and watch “Ghost Hunters” one of the earliest ghost hunting reality television shows. I didn’t think much of it then, we would watch it in neither full belief nor disbelief. There was just something weird and fascinating about plumbers turned ghost hunters turned blue-collar celebrities in these gruff, muscley white men investigators. We did genuinely enjoy watching the evidence of the paranormal investigations; though the evidence was rarely believable, it would spark great conversations about what we thought about multiple dimensions, death, and goodness. It was a great entry point for a 16 and a 10 year old to talk about existing. We would take these conversations into our rectangular pool and try to mimic ghost like movements in the water. Eventually we grew out of “Ghost Hunters” but we never grew out of ghosts or those conversations.
I returned to ghost shows when I was in college and started dating my partner. He showed me the original “Ghost Adventures” documentary from 2004. We watched in the dark, and what was meant to be a corny excuse to sit close together actually served again as a great opening for conversation. We would watch “Ghost Adventures” with friends and be connected by personal ghost stories and individual beliefs. People mostly told their ghost stories with incredibly detailed accounts of physical and intuitive experiences. My partner has a popular story that is based primarily in sound, a story that still gives me goose bumps. I began to recognize without much significance that the majority of folks that I knew with a ghost story had an experience that activated other senses and not visuality. In fact when someone would share a story about visible experience there tended to be more skepticism from the group.
Although the team of “Ghost Adventures” has plenty of devices that record auditory evidence and physical imperceptible presence, visual evidence appears to be the ultimate goal. For this exploration I will focus in on two of the most compelling pieces of visual evidence in “Ghost Adventures” series. “Goldfield Hotel” is the sixteenth episode of the show’s seventh season. This episode includes some formative documentation for the series, including a predictable verbal and visual response as well as a rock being thrown at Zak Bagans.
The lead ghost adventurer Bagans is a 38-year-old, Ed Hardy clad paranormal investigator from Las Vegas. This first experience he mentions was in fact recorded on camera eleven years ago. In 2004 Bagans along with co-creators of “Ghost Adventures” Nick Groff and Aaron Goodwin visited a ghost town in Nevada, recognized by the believing community as a highly active site for the paranormal, and made a documentary. This documentary chronicled two over night investigations and the conversion of these skeptics into disciples. From non-believers, converted by a sighted experience, to missionaries for the cause in avid pursuit of documentation, this development became the template for many others to follow.
Each “Ghost Adventures” episode begins with a tour of a residence, place of business or historical site that offers substantial evidence of paranormal encounters. These teams have cameras and gizmos that make visible many types of presence such as thermal heat detection and infrared nighttime visibility. The team of “Ghost Adventures” has a signature teddy bear whose tummy lights up if a ghost disrupts the surrounding electromagnetic field. The most diverse and abundant technology in any of these shows revolves around audio recordings: recorders with heightened sensitivities, open radio waves and ghost friendly word banks that are delivered audibly as well as visually on a screen. Once the site is set up with devices the team spends an entire night locked down in the facility gathering evidence. This process consists of speaking directly to spirits of significant previous tenants, as well as asking general questions. The “Adventures” team is known for their controversial approach, provoking those spirits that are considered volatile. Each investigation is coupled with a thorough explanation of process.
In the Goldfield Hotel Redemption episode, Bagans, Goodwin and Groff visit room 109 where Elizabeth is believed to haunt Figure 1). Elizabeth was supposedly kept prisoner by the hotel owner in room 109, chained to a radiator where she and her unintended pregnancy were hidden until she and her unborn baby died. In recent years the property caretaker Virginia has begun bringing flowers to the radiator and spends time with Elizabeth. The “Ghost Adventures” investigators join Virginia and bring flowers and a tiny Christmas tree to room 109. Almost immediately the room activates and Elizabeth is speaking to them and choosing relevant words from a word bank maching Ovilus III such as “foliage”. At one point Bagans asks Elizabeth if she will move one of the plants if she understands them, and sure enough a slender limb wavers in response. Later Elizabeth even selects the word “foliage” from the data bank box and soon after moves a plant again. Elizabeth articulated the word foliage and moved a plant accordingly, making for some persuasive evidence for the “Ghost Adventures” team.
However, in all of the efforts to prompt Elizabeth to prove her sentience, a key exchange takes place that is quickly overlooked. Uncharacteristically, Bagans asks Elizabeth if she needs any help wherever she is, at which point Elizabeth choses two other words from the Ovilus: “enough” and “think”. She actually interrupted the method that Bagans was using and asked instead for them to think about the encounter. While the investigators were fixated on producing a repeatable, reliable, empirical response they missed the opportunity to shift the engagement into something potentially more fruitful. They neglect an encounter that could have proven further sentience beyond manipulating foliage. Merleau-Ponty points out that empirical method or pure consciousness alone are each unsatisfying ways of approach.
[…] consciousness is too poor,[or] too rich for any phenomenon to appeal compellingly to it. Empiricism cannot see that we need to know what we are looking for, otherwise we would not be looking for it, and intellectualism fails to see that we need to be ignorant of what we are looking for, or equally again we should not be searching. [1]
The investigations on “Ghost Adventures” maintain balance between the intuitive and the empirical, though I do not know how aware of it the investigators are. The validity of the investigation relies on mechanized, clear data although much of the process of investigating relies on intuitive and internal, inarticulate experience. The investigators bring attention to when they experience goose bumps, when they sense a presence, and general heebie-jeebies. The “Adventures” team interrupts each other commanding focus through some signature taglines including Bagans’ “Shh! Shh! Shh! Listen! Dude! Listen!” Perhaps it is that “dudes!” and “bros!” are an unsatisfying vocabulary to recognize these experiences, or perhaps its something greater. So much of the experience inside these haunted sites consists of the ghost hunters sharing physical sensations and intuitive ideas. In fact when there is an effort to assign a narrative or outline the image of a figure in an image is when the credibility seems to fall apart.
Four years after it was originally documented, this video is still considered groundbreaking for the show specifically and the supernatural community at large. The video is cast entirely in green night vision lighting, we see Bagans standing near the left wall of a long hallway lined with doorframes. While he is speaking to the tech control center through his walkie talkie, a stone is visibly levitated from the foreground and chucked at Bagan’s foot. The rock smacks Bagans’ shoe loudly, bouncing off of his right sneaker and ricocheting in a tall arc from camera left to right. The rock somersaults dramatically, catching light from both Bagan’s flashlight and the infrared light of the recording camera. The incident is concluded with shouts from Bagans.
But what is actually visible? I still have trouble reading the video. The audience views this footage through several screens at once, the footage is shown on a hotel television, recorded through a video camera, transmitted onto my viewing screen (Figure 2). Eventually we see the footage as direct digital feed, but even here little is legible. The green on green imagery is odd and the contrast is relatively low making details blurry. Also Bagans is standing about twenty-five feet away from the camera, we see his frame, head and flashlight source light most clearly. The beam of his flashlight occasionally illuminates his shoes. As for the rock we are supposed to see it is not visible on the ground, it is not visible moving toward Bagans’ shoe, it is only visible once in the air.
The video is actually very abstract. The two things that are discernable are one sound and one image: there is a thwack (of the stone hitting Bagans’ tennis shoe) and a flash (the stone catapulting in a neat, parabolic arc). But I have yet to be able to determine if that is at all what I’m watching. There are moves being made here, altering the visual experience. All investigations are filmed at night. It feels counterintuitive to seek visual clarity through first obscuring one’s vision. These shows are filmed in total darkness. The signature green hue of the recordings that is viewed by the audience is produced by infrared film technology; the investigators cannot see that light. They are seeing only what flashlights illuminate. We cannot deny that this is predicated partially on superstitious decorum. But there is also a dramatic move being made here for an experience to be better perceived by abstracting one’s surroundings and compromising one’s typical ocular field. We immerse ourselves in compromised visibility in order to make ghosts visible.
After showing the clip several times unaltered, the team then decides to add a red moving arrow so that the audience may better follow the trajectory of the rock. Additionally this footage is sent out to a special effects designer and a professor physicist who are features on the show, each deeming the video unexplainable. This is considered some of the clearest and purest evidence recovered by the “Adventures” crew to date. But how clear can it really be if in order to understand the video we need to be directed by a red cartoon arrow?
In her essay Satellite Witnessing, Lisa Parks describes that pictures delivered via satellite imagery rely on being grounded in televisual language.[2] Parks refers specifically to the type of directing given by weather casters adjacent weather charts. Here the bright red animated arrow traveling across shades of green may as well be a weather directory. The “Ghost Adventures” footage is far from resembling a newscast though the addition of a red mobile arrow tracing the rock trajectory does resemble descriptions of an incoming cold front.
The image does however rely on the legibility of the handheld unknowing amateur camera technique. In fact the crew prides themselves on their amateur status, claiming that they do not need fancy camera crews to accomplish what they can. But the nighttime visualization can be recognized in wartime mission documentation or security surveillance. Is Bagans treating ghosts like intruders to be tracked down? Overall there is something dubious about the ironclad explanation to such an ambiguous video. Merleau-Ponty turns to “We make perception out of things perceived. And since perceived things themselves are obviously accessible only through perception, we end by understanding neither.” [3]
But how much of this effort for a tidy narrative and explicit visual certification must be chalked up to the medium? Television is occularcentric; though television provides auditory activation it relies primarily on visual engagement. Is the problem then that these shows are expected to be visually spectacular because they are experienced on TV?
Other shows have taken approaches less dependent on visual confirmation but do not deviate from scientific method per se. “The Dead Files” is another Travel Channel HD show featuring a psychic medium, Amy Allan, and a retired NYPD homicide detective, Steve DiSchiavi. The success of this show relies on Allan’s spiritual conclusions aligning with DiSchiavi’s investigative findings. The two separately conduct investigations of a site and do not share their findings until the very end. The success of the show depends on how consistent DiSchiavi and Allan’s findings are. Though in this way it still operates as a double blind experiment. Neither Allan nor DiSchiavi know what they will find, what findings are more significant, or what the other is up to. It is their unknowing that produces confirmation of a site. This process is still empirical but relies on blindness over clarity. To illustrate this conversation I will focus on season three, episode eight “Deadly Gift- Wichita, KS”.
Every episode, Allan walks through the property with some videographers, opening herself to dialogue with the dead. She does not have any backstory as to why she has been invited to the space. She does not know who lives there. The design of the show goes so far as to remove all artwork, religious iconography and photographs from the estate so that Allan cannot be distracted by visual cues. She must rely solely on psychic experience. Considering this decision to remove visual cues in order to allow for better corporeal engagement, it makes sense for this show to take place at night. Sure enough, when Allan’s conducts her first sweep of a site, it is at night. While she walks Allan explains the encounters she is having, what she sees and senses.
At the end of the episode, she reports one of her visions to a sketch artist who then attempt to illustrate what Allan saw (Figure 3). This image is shown to the family and DiSchiavi at the end of the episode. One of the family members asks “Is that me?” referring to the woman in the sketch who is “a sensitive” (to the paranormal), allowing these figures into her home. Allan confirms that the woman in her vision, recorded in this illustration, is the same woman sitting in front of her. The woman then reveals that she has always known she was a sensitive; this is news to everyone at the table and the audience. Allan has confirmed something that she could not have otherwise known thus validating her psychic evaluation.
DiSchiavi’s role is to speak with the current residents/ owners of the property assessing how they experience the property, detailing what concerns they have for their wellbeing. Then DiSchiavi reaches out to local historians and previous owners to build a lineage of the estate. This effort to find historical precedence and explanation that may or may not be evident in Allan’s experience is what the show hinges on. While this show relies on this effort for unbiased, empirical logic, is logic and information shared by word of mouth and local history: local history that is undoubtedly shaped by word of mouth and vice versa. The factual context that should support “The Dead Files” investigation is one that is steeped in local singularity, not global authority like the scientific method exercised in “Ghost Adventures”
This moment is epitomized by a disclaimer that comes up after the first commercial break of the show (Figure 4): “The findings of this Dead Files investigation do not constitute evidence of a crime and would not be admissible in a court of law”. This qualifies the role of the show’s evidence to serve as enough reason to direct the investigation of the show but not enough to lead say a legal investigation. There is wiggle room allowed in the evidence, history and lore. In “Dead Files” there is empirical trust built in to not seeing. Allan and DiSchiavi operate separately, unaware of each other’s findings.
“The Dead Files” offers a conversation around ghosts that makes room for non-resolution, whereas “Ghost Adventures” relies on scientific method and explicit clarity that continuously falls short of a fulfilling exploration. Scientific method depends on something that is repeatable and reliable. Yet each of the moments of evidence gathered while ghost hunting are singular. This singularity is part of the reason ghost stories are so personal, slippery and appealing. Some efforts are made to see if evidence can be repeated or predicted, but this rarely pans out. This seems to be where empiricism and the nature of ghosts cannot work together. It is worthwhile to share and explore ghost stories generally and on television specifically. While scientific method provides us with a familiar framework and lens to declare information viable, it cannot allow for the inherently indefinite nature of paranormal encounters.
[1] Merleau-Ponty, M. (1962). The 'Sensation' as a Unit of Experience. In Phenomenology of Perception (p. 28). New Jersey: Routledge & Keegan Paul.
[2] Parks, L. (2005). Satellite Witnessing: Views and Coverage of the War in Bosnia. In Cultures In Orbit: Satellites and the Televisual. Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press.
[3] Merleau-Ponty, M. (1962). The 'Sensation' as a Unit of Experience. In Phenomenology of Perception (p. 5). New Jersey: Routledge & Keegan Paul.