Jason Hawes And Grant Wilson Of “Ghost Hunters”

Jason (left) and Grant on a Season 4 investigation

By Jeff Pfeiffer

At a press conference call last week, Jason Hawes and Grant Wilson, leaders of TAPS — The Atlantic Paranormal Society — discussed various topics relating to the upcoming Season 5 of Ghost Hunters, which premieres this Wednesday, March 11, on SCI FI Channel (see our preview). Here’s some of what they had to say.

Your show is popular with a large audience, but has even more female viewers than men. Any theories on why that is?

Grant Wilson: Maybe it’s all for Steve (laughs).

Jason Hawes: I think it might be a combination of factors. I mean, most of the crew we deal with are guys, but it seems like in our travels in this field over the last 20 years, it seems like the women are a little bit more accepting of the field. … More of the times we get called in, we’re getting called in by the female owner of the location, or she’s the one having most of the experiences. The female audience definitely portrays what we’ve seen in the field.

Grant: From our standpoint, you know, we’re surprised anybody watches the show. Not saying we that we don’t like it, but just — it’s just all weird for us still even five years in. We still consider ourselves plumbers, you know.

The season premiere takes you to Hannum House and the Betsy Ross House in Philadelphia. Where else are you going this season?

Jason: We did Star Island, which is an island about 10 miles off the coast of New Hampshire, which was a religious community at one time. They’ve had a lot of claims of activity out there.

Grant: One of the coolest cases that we’re looking forward to showing is [our investigation] at the Georgia Aquarium, the largest aquarium in the world. They have a traveling Titanic exhibit with actual artifacts from the [ship]. Every museum that [it] goes to, supposedly activity follows. So we caught up with it in Georgia and I had just an interesting time there dealing with the Titanic artifacts. And we actually got to get in the tank, the six-million-gallon tank with some whale sharks, and swim with them.

Jason: We even kind of shake things up a little bit. Grant and I bought an inn [the Spalding Inn in New Hampshire] that was reported to have been haunted for the last 70, 80 years. We thought, “Hey, let’s get it on TV and let’s get it investigated.” But then we wanted to maintain an unbiased approach. So we were able to contact the Ghost Hunters International [from the spinoff series] and have them come in and investigate it for us while we snowmobiled for two days. … We caught some great evidence [this season] and great visuals and audio, some other neat little things. This has been the most enjoyable season I’ve ever done.

Grant: Yeah, it’s just been a blast. I mean, [we] caught everything. Obviously a lot of EVPs, but we’ve brought in new equipment that yields new types of evidence.

As pop-culture icons, are you embarking on more marketing opportunities?

Grant: We’ve looked into it. Honestly, we’ve just been so busy with everything else, we haven’t had time to focus on it. We’ve had offers [to do] video games and things of that nature and we just haven’t moved on it. … There’s a lot of demands for stuff. A lot of people say [we] should have action figures, or Halloween costumes, or, you know, “My First EMF Detector,” but I don’t know. Maybe we’ll get to it. Not too worried about it.

What sets your show apart from others in this genre?

Jason: I think the main thing is we were a group that worked together long before the show, so we’re not a group of people who were put together to make a show. That goes to show why we’re such a big family, and you have your drama and everything else within the group because we’ve known each other for 10 to 20 years prior to even being on TV. … And we approach it honestly. Whatever we find is what we find. We go in there unbiased. We don’t go in there expecting the place to be haunted or not. We just go in there and try to figure it out. I think a lot of shows go in there and they’re too quick to believe that everything’s paranormal. I haven’t seen too many of the other shows, but from what I hear from people, that’s probably the main difference there.

If you could have an encounter with someone who’s passed on, who would that be?

Grant: You know, there’s always the obvious. It’d be nice to sit down with Jesus and find out what really happened, you know. I’m sure he’d have a lot to talk about.

Jason: It’d be nice to sit down with Elvis — if he’s really dead. Kidding. Honestly, if I could sit down with anybody who really passed on, it would probably be Chris Angelo, who used to be a cast member, a very close friend of mine who was killed in a car accident one day while Grant and I were doing a lecture. Chris was supposed to be heading out with us two days later to go do an investigation. He told me a month or two prior to that, he said, “You know, if I ever pass on, I’ll make sure I come back and haunt you just to let you know that there is the other side.” So that would be the best person in the world I could sit down and talk to.

Any advice for aspiring ghost hunters?

Grant: Make sure that if you want to ghost hunt and stuff like that, it’s always best to find a friend or relative, [whose] house you think is haunted. Don’t go into cemeteries or breaking into abandoned houses. The cops won’t believe you when you say you’re just ghost hunting. Honestly, a video camera is all you really need, and you just do it in a safe way. Don’t go the route of the Ouija board and stuff. Just get a digital recorder and talk to what you think is there, and keep in mind that what you’re talking to is just a person. A person without a body, but a person who at one time had a family, and a career.

Jason: Also … don’t go into a place automatically assuming it’s haunted because that’s what people have told you. You want to go in and you want to look for the real explanation. My children do this right now. I’ve got five kids, and my kids will do a little mock investigation and everything else to figure out what’s truly going on. My 8-year-old daughter thought her room was haunted at one point and ended up finding out it was nothing but her Furby with a low battery making these weird noises. So how empowering was that for her? It goes to show her that most of the time that fear has nothing to do with a ghost.