Review: Ghost Hunters International

A short while ago, I wrote a review of the show Ghost Hunters and why I was quickly becoming a die-hard fan of the series.

Yesterday, I happened to have the day off and saw the SyFy Channel (formally known as the Sci-Fi Channel) had a Ghost Hunters International marathon. And, since I’ve only seen a couple episodes of that series, I figured I would take the time to watch it more in-depth.

Even though that show, now entering its second season, is loosely based on the original Ghost Hunters series, there are definitely some noticeable differences that ended up turning me off a bit.

As I mentioned in my other review, I’m a skeptic who was converted a bit by the original Ghost Hunters. This is because that show does manage to come up with some compelling evidence of paranormal activity; including some that would be pretty hard to fake.

When you couple that with a cast of hunters with distinct personalities and even day jobs (the two founders of the paranormal group TAPS work as plumbers for Roto Rooter) you have a pretty decent reality-based show. And, this is coming from someone who hates reality TV normally.

Even though this series shares the same concept as the original (with the exception of visiting places around the world), Ghost Hunters International just doesn’t have the same magic the other show has.

For one, the investigators on this series just don’t seem to measure up to Jason, Grant and others on the original Ghost Hunters in terms of personality. The latter group will fight passionately to prove or debunk evidence and it’s easy to relate to them and see their points of view. I just have never seen that from the investigators on GHI. In fact, I’m not 100 percent convinced they even look at the evidence. Their review of it seems a bit too staged; almost as though some intern or producer when through the evidence and then pointed out the best stuff to them before they went on camera.

My bigger pet peeve though is, unlike their counterparts on Ghost Hunters, the GHI investigators seem a bit too anxious to declare places haunted. They don’t do this with every location (Dracula’s Castle got a clean bill of health) but, I watched one episode that had evidence consisting of a few strange noises (that could have been footsteps but also could have been old pipes) and a couple unexplained lights caught on tape that could have been everything from dust to a technical glitch. Even my wife, who is much more open minded than I am when it comes to these things, was wondering how they can consider that proof of a haunting.

It doesn’t help that any real evidence (an apparition or a strange voice out of nowhere) conveniently takes place off camera (why don’t they wear helmet cams or something so we can see what they are seeing when they see it) or out of range of the tape recorders.

That’s not to say the show doesn’t catch any evidence. That unexplained human-shaped mist on one of the episodes was definitely interesting. But, the fact they consider just about anything as evidence reduces the impact of the legitimate stuff they find.

I still think Ghost Hunters is a unique and fantastic show. But, Ghost Hunters International is definitely a series I don’t see myself bending over backwards to watch.