SCI FI Channel‘s Ghost Hunters series has taken us to plenty of creepy haunted places around the United States. But if we start getting all America-centric and thinking we have a monopoly on things that go bump in the night, Ghost Hunters International is here to show us otherwise with a collection of Continental specters to rival the best we have to offer.
The series, debuting Jan. 9 and airing Wednesdays, is a spinoff of the popular Ghost Hunters, with a few of the investigative team members coming from the American TAPS (The Atlantic Paranormal Society) team. As the show’s name implies, it goes overseas to do its ghost-hunting, starting in Europe, but with an eye on maybe traveling even farther.
“Hopefully, this show is going to be as international as it possibly can be,” says Robb Demarest, a lead investigator on the GHI team, and who had actually been checking into a Japanese haunting on the day we spoke. “We’d like to go anywhere and everywhere. If there’s paranormal activity, we’d like to chase it down.”
The pilot episode finds the six-member team — Robb, fellow lead investigator Andy Andrews, Brian Harnois, Donna La Croix, Barry Fitzgerald (whom you may recall from the Ghost Hunters’ frightening exploration of those creepy Irish ruins) and newcomer Shannon Sylvia — chasing down activity in England and Scotland: Chillingham Castle and Mary King’s Close. The Close investigation is especially eerie; a “close” is like an American alley, and this one leads to a buried underground city of old Scotland, where many victims of bubonic plague where left to die. One such victim was a little girl named Annie, and in her room visitors have left a pile of stuffed animals and dolls, all looking somewhat sinister under the green glow of the team’s night vision cameras. At one point, the team tries to goad Annie into an appearance by taking her toys away. Maybe not such a good idea.
As with the original TAPS members, this team comes into their investigations with healthy skepticism, with Andrews in particular always trying to find rational explanations for the stories they hear.
Future episodes will have the group traveling deeper into Europe, into France, Italy, Germany and Eastern Europe. When traveling abroad, though, language can often become a barrier just among the living. So how hard is it when communicating with the dead in another tongue?
Donna cites one example. “One of our locations that we investigated was in Italy, and one of the EVPs [Electronic Voice Phenomenon] that we captured … was in Italian.”
Robb adds, “In this case it was fascinating because we didn’t know the meaning of it before we approached the client with this phrase. And when we heard it, it brought the whole investigation together, and definitely was a moment that could send a chill up your spine.”
It seems as if Europe, being a far older society than America, would have many more such chilling moments than its New World counterpart. But Donna, whose role in the investigation is to find any historical substance the ghost stories they may encounter, doesn’t see much of a difference.
“I do find that the stories and fables associated with a certain location are a lot more embellished [in Europe],” she says, “but I do not find that [locations] are any more ‘charged up’ than what I have found in my investigations in the United States.”
Often, these locations are found by word of mouth, and are not necessarily the notably haunted places one may think of, like the Tower of London.
“We’ve been sitting in a pub and talking to the owner or the bartender, and they start telling us stories,” says Donna. “And it’s a little place off the beaten path, but it’s a place full of activity that we try to get into.”
“You’d be surprised,” laughs Robb, “how many times people come up with the opener, ‘Now, I don’t believe in ghosts, BUT …’ and then launch into this massive story about how they saw something that there was not other way to explain. But people feel safe once they’ve issued that kind of disclaimer for it.”
Even when they do find a place, though, they sometimes can’t get into it. Yes, government red tape can even put a kibosh on the paranormal.
“A lot of it has to do with government approval,” says Donna. “There’s a couple of places in Germany I guess we were supposed to be able to get into, but due to the government they just wouldn’t allow any investigators to come in.”
But once inside a location, scarier things than bureaucracy can arise, especially when the investigations take place mainly at night.
“On a personal level,” says Robb, “one of the reasons that I like investigating at night, is that you get this quiet. You don’t have necessarily the cars going by, the passersby, so that’s useful. I also find that investigating at night, you’re more aware of your surroundings. Even though you may be in pitch darkness, you can hear things, you can make out things in the darkness, that in the light your eye might be drawn to certain things. Whereas in the dark, you’re totally in the moment, and it makes it easier for you to get an idea of what’s going on in a location.”
And what does go on this season? The duo is quiet about any details, but Donna does mention, “the fans won’t be disappointed in regards to [visuals]. We do have some exciting evidence.”
