The Untold Truth Of Ghost Adventures

Whether you're a believer or a skeptic, you have to admit that Ghost Adventures is pretty darn entertaining. There's a whole lot more to this series than just investigating creepy, abandoned areas with extensive paranormal histories. We ain't afraid of no ghost, so let's investigate the untold truths behind the bros and phantasms of Ghost Adventures.

The cast and crew of Ghost Adventures got quite a bit of flak following the October 30, 2009 episode of Ghost Adventures Live. Filmed at the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum, the special featured guest investigator Robert Bess, who claimed that a spirit violently knocked an electromagnetic field (EMF) meter out of his hand. Problem is, that's not what happened, and it was quickly debunked. Bess actually hurled the EMF meter himself. As a result of the online backlash, hosts Zak Bagans and Nick Groff said in the Nov. 6, 2009 episode of Ghost Adventures Live: Post-Mortem that there was, in fact, no "real" paranormal reason for the EMF to have been thrown. "After we've analyzed the video footage here at our office," host Zak Bagans said, "we've concluded in our professional opinion that...we do not believe at all that any paranormal activity had anything to do with this EMF detector leaving his hand."

Whether you love or hate Zak Bagans' "bro" style, he puts his money where his paranormal-loving mouth is, whether cameras are rolling or not. In August 2015, Bagans plunked down $32,000 for a van that belonged to Dr. Jack Kevorkian, who notoriously assisted with suicide of 130 confirmed patients. Bagans says that he doesn't plan on using the vehicle for Ghost Adventures, but does intend on investigating the van. "I want to have it to show recognition to these people and the energy they had at the time of their death," he told The New York Daily News. "I can't wait to get it and see what I feel off of it...It called out to me." That's one heck of a collectible, bro.

Aside from your run-of-the-mill skeptics, even some believers of the paranormal side-eye Ghost Adventures (granted some of these people are worthy of plenty of side-eye themselves). Take, for example, self-proclaimed "spirit advocate" Bonnie Vent, who claims to talk to dead celebrities like Michael Jackson and George Carlin (who's likely rolling over in his grave right now). Vent claims that when Bagans and his Ghost Adventures crew visited the Cosmopolitan Hotel in her hometown of San Diego, CA in 2011, her guest appearance was made to seem like more than it was.

Bagans and Groff's research into the Cosmopolitan led them to believe it was being haunted by Native American spirits, especially when they captured Vent on film dancing, where they explain she was possessed on film. Not so, insists Vent. "In no way was I possessed," she claimed on her website. "The dance was an old fashioned Mexican Tarantella, not an Indian ritual dance. I did get into the flow of the energy...and I did perform a dance that I had no knowledge of for several minutes." That doesn't sound any less crazy, but oh well.

Reality can be a lot scarier than any haunted/abandoned establishment. Paranormal investigators Mark and Debbie Constantino were featured on Ghost Adventures, and now may be featured posthumously on a true crime series. KRNV-TV reports that the couple had a long, dark history of domestic violence. That history came to a tragic head in September 2015 when Mark killed Debbie, as well as himself, after an extensive SWAT team lockdown. Another man connected to the Constantinos was killed prior to the couple's murder-suicide, but his name and relationship to the pair hasn't been released.

In yet another incident involving potential Native American spirits, Bagans and the team were determined to capitalize on a controversy surrounding a canonization. In July 2015, Pope Francis announced that he'd canonize Father Juna­pero Serra, a Catholic missionary whose achievements vary by who you ask (the Church says he brought Christianity to the western states, while many Native Americans claim he brought their genocide). Protesters soon swarmed churches in Carmel, California, and Bagans was quick to capitalize.

"I believe when you have that kind of controversy arise, and you have the energy from the protests where many of the ancestors are buried, it can throw a spark into the whole paranormal energy of the mission," Bagans told the Monterey Herald. "I think a lot of the Native Americans buried there didn't want to be buried there." Bagans claimed to have heard several stories of "aggressive hauntings" at the Carmel Mission Church that'd he love to explore.

Bagans purchased a Gary, Indiana home in 2014 after reports that the family living within it were terrorized by demons. These reports were backed up by claims from child protective services who also witnessed the creepy activity. Problem was, the house was actually too scary, even for Bagans. TMZ reports that while filming a documentary in the home, Bagans felt "dark energy" and claimed "the demons were the real deal." Bagans tried exorcising the house but said his attempts failed. Believing the house was actually a portal to Hell, Bagans paid to have the house demolished in 2016, and even had the rubble stored in a sealed facility so no paranormal energy could escape from it and affect anyone nearby.

Before Ghost Adventures was a TV show, it was a standalone 2005 documentary in which Bagans and his bros investigated the Goldfield Hotel in Virginia City, Nevada. The team catches on camera a brick being lifted by an invisible force and hurled across a room. A beam then falls where the brick came from, and a plank of wood is hurled away from the brick...all without human hands involved. (That we can see, anyway.)