|
Ghost Hunters Hope to See Dead People Live on Halloween
By Troy Rogers
After you get home
from your own version of trick 'r treating on
All Hallow's Eve (aka - Halloween), the spookfest
continues on SCI FI, as Ghost Hunters
Jason Hawes and Grant Wilson will be "live"
on the air for seven hours at the insanely creepy
Civil War P.O.W. camp Fort Delaware in Delaware
City, DE. Don't know about Fort Delaware? It's
one of the most haunted locations in all of
the United States where thousands of people
met their demise, which makes it the perfect
setting for Hawes and Grant to work their Ghost
Hunters spookery.
As SCI FI tells us, the official SCI FI website will serve as the online haunted headquarters for Ghost Hunters Live on Halloween, a seven hour interactive creepfest, offering a "multilayered digital experience for fans including an exclusive, multi-camera online video feed and thermal imaging camera views, exclusive access to photos from the live event, live Q&A with the TAPS team members and the return of the 'Panic Button' for web watchers to alert the team of something they are seeing live on TV."
With Halloween just around the corner, we grabbed our flashlight, strapped on our head-cam, and made our way through the dark phone lines to talk to Ghost Hunters Jason Hawes and Grant Wilson to find out if there's more paranormal activity going down this time of year, if all the supernatural spirits they encounter are evil, if their's a famous ghost they'd like to hunt, and what their favorite Halloween costumes were when they were kids.
THE DEADBOLT: Is there a particular ghost that you guys would like to hunt? Maybe Elvis for example?
JASON HAWES: Elvis, I have no idea even how to comment on that one.
GRANT WILSON: I think he’s still alive, so... [laughs]
JASON: You
know what? I think any type of spirit activity
- Of course when you go places that people are
claiming Al Capone’s spirit is, and things of
that nature, that’s just incredible. I would
love to - We were actually talking about doing
Graceland at one point, so it’s funny that you
brought Elvis up. You know, any place that there’s
possible paranormal activity is just wonderful
for me. I’m never going to look at a place and
just because I’m investigating Graceland does
not mean that the spirit of Elvis is at Graceland.
You know, it could be anything. If anything
is there it could just be something that was
passing through at that time.
GRANT: I think it would be cool to get in touch with Houdini’s spirit or something like that, because he was so - he spent a lot of his life trying to debunk all of these claims. But, honestly, it’s so hard to get any spirit to respond to you. Good luck trying to get a specific one. So...
JASON: Yeah, it could be rough.
THE DEADBOLT: Actually, Grant I think you’re right, because I read somewhere that Elvis is still alive and working at a Burger King in Kalamazoo, Michigan.
JASON: [laughs]
GRANT: [laughs] Sweet, we’re there.
THE DEADBOLT: Have you noticed if there’s more paranormal activity at this time of year, or is it just like every other day?
JASON: It
depends on what part of the country. Like right
now of course the Northern states, the North
Eastern states in the United States, you get
a lot more reports from. And the reason behind
that is, it’s colder. People [are] in the house
more often and a lot of that can be chalked
up to everything from the heat turning on, the
wood popping and cracking, making the sound
of footsteps. You know, also you’re around Halloween
so it’s all of the scary movies, the ghost movies,
everything of that nature. So it’s not [that]
real paranormal activity picks up, it’s just
that people’s perceptions that there is more
paranormal activity picks up because of that.
THE DEADBOLT: Are hoaxes more of a problem at this time of year as well?
JASON: Honestly, that’s something you need to keep your eyes open for year-round anyways. It’s a rarity that that happens, but it does happen. So you always need to be prepared for that.
GRANT: Yeah, it rarely happens and we don’t really come across it too much. But if you let it slip once, your reputation is shot.
THE DEADBOLT: Overall, would you say most of your encounters are with evil forces or is it just a mix of everything?
JASON: Hollywood does a great job by sparking up the demons and everything of that nature. But out of all of the cases we’ve done, I can say out of the last 15-18 years that we’ve actually been sent in by churches to do cases. And I’ve probably been sent into six or seven hundred church cases, maybe two of them have turned out to be negative sites. So it’s so rare to actually run into a negative type energy, no matter who tells you what. Some people think that’s what sells, so that’s what they want to put out there. We want to put out the truth and that’s what matters to us.
GRANT: You gotta think most of the people
who we encounter, or entities, or we seem to
encounter, are just people. I mean, they had
lives, they had families, they had jobs, careers,
you know, ambitions and stuff like that. And
that doesn’t really change, according to our
research, past the grave. So you can pretty
much walk down the streets of New York City
and not get killed, hopefully, and that’s because
people are generally good natured and that continues
beyond the grave. So anything we encounter usually
can be reasoned with or there’s no real threat.
JASON: Just
touching up on what Grant said, the only time
I really hear people say, ‘I got a demon at
my house,’ is they’re extremely religious people
in the beginning anyways. So most people just
look at it and go, ‘This is a ghost.’ But certain
people, very religious people, look at an entity
there as something negative. So oftentimes you
find that in highly religious households, but
you really find out most of the time that it’s
nothing to do with negative energy.
THE DEADBOLT: What was your favorite Halloween costume as a kid?
GRANT: I actually dressed up as a Ghostbuster once... Kind of embarrassing.
JASON: Halloween costume... Oh, my God.
GRANT: Wasn’t it a ballerina, Jay? Isn’t that what you dressed up as? [laughs]
JASON: No, Grant. No. But I went as the missing person face on a milk carton one time.
-- Troy Rogers
|