30 Best Ghost Adventures Episodes Ranked

Zak Bagans, host and lead investigator on Travel Channel's deathless series "Ghost Adventures," is a great big scaredy cat. Which isn't a knock on Bagans or a criticism of the show, but rather a cornerstone of its appeal. 

For nearly 14 years and 300 episodes, Bagans and his team of paranormal researchers (known simply enough as the Ghost Adventures Crew, or GAC) have traveled to remote, possibly haunted locations around the country, learned a little local history, then locked themselves in overnight to get scared silly by every cold spot and bump in the dark they encounter. It's a tried-and-true formula, as reliably entertaining as trying to conjure Bloody Mary at a sleepover; whether there is anything spooking them — other than their own imaginations — is beside the point.

But that's not to say that every episode can be so easily explained away; the series has had its share of genuinely eerie moments. Even when a spectral encounter is less than convincing, an episode can be buoyed by a compelling history, colorful locals, or the frat house camaraderie between Bagans and his bro-ish co-stars. Whether you're a longtime fan up for a debate or a newbie wondering where to jump in, here are the top 30 episodes of "Ghost Adventures," counted down.

When a New Mexico man purchases a former saloon and brothel to make into his new home, a former client makes his displeasure known.

Owner Jesse Herron feels a dark presence pressing down on him as he sleeps, and later his dog is left with a bloody wound on his neck. At first, he suspects it might be the ghostly remnants of a woman who was murdered within the brothel by a jealous husband, but a neighbor (who also claims to be a psychic medium) informs him that it is an angry, male energy that haunts the property. When the GAC gets pushed around by this angry frontier spirit (whom the episode would love us to believe is Billy the Kid), they enlist this psychic neighbor to enter the house and protect its owner from further harm.

This episode benefits from a genuinely upsetting location, an abandoned state-run children's home in Montana. 

Its crumbling walls and exposed hallways would be spooky enough, without knowing that the facility has a disturbing history of abuse. The GAC, along with psychic Deanna Jaxine Stinson, hole up on a particularly cold night, armed with motion detectors and a device called an Ovilus, which allows spirits to communicate via a word database (sort of like an electronic Ouija board). 

When Deanna's Ovilus spits out two women's names — Harriet and Ann — it begs the question whether these were workers at the orphanage, or students.

St. Ignatius Hospital in Washington state has been abandoned since the year 2000, and the local chamber of commerce hosted guided tours through its famously haunted walls until 2018, when they suddenly stopped. Was it because the hospital ghosts had become too aggressive? 

The GAC certainly thinks so, as they initially stick together while inside, rather than splitting up to explore, for safety reasons. After Bagans records an EVP seemingly calling him by name, the crew is beset upon by a "demonic" presence that wraps itself around Bagans and GAC member Billy Tolley with cold, ghostly tentacles.

A visit to a famous California ghost town gives Zak Bagans the opportunity to cowboy up in flannel and a wide-brimmed hat as he scours the ground with a metal detector looking for old weapons; he finds a nail. 

Many miners lost their lives down Cerro Gordo's nearly 1,200 foot-deep mine shaft; as the GAC lowers a camera and tape recorder down the shaft to try to coax any restless spirits into identifying themselves, an unseen force pulls at the camera, thoroughly freaking out Billy and the entire crew.

Los Angeles' famed comedy club The Comedy Store gets the GAC treatment, as rumors have persisted for years that the building hosted illegal abortions, torture, and murder before it hosted stand-up comics. 

A journey down to the basement, where the bodies of victims may have been once buried, uncovers voices speaking Zak's name, a mysterious white mist that appears in a picture but not on camera, and nothing less than a portal to the other side. The episode is most notable for capturing the series' first ever murder — as Zak is roasted alive by comedian Jeff Ross.

The Castaneda Hotel in Las Vegas was originally opened in the 1890s by southwestern hotel magnate Fred Harvey. In the decades since its closing in the 1940s, the building has fallen into disrepair, occupied only by the disenchanted spirits of its former residents and workers, the famous "Harvey Girls." 

Zak and the GAC lock themselves in to see if they can make contact with anyone still occupying the space. In the still-operating Plaza Hotel down the street, the GAC stops by to follow the trail of a spectral child looking for her grandmother; Zak attempts to bribe her with a teddy bear.

Zak Bagans returns to the Old Washoe Club in Virginia City, NV — the site of the 2004 "Ghost Adventures" documentary that inspired the series — for the third and final time. Bagans claims that he has not come back just for fun, but that he has been receiving visions and dreams compelling him to return for some unknown purpose. 

Along with the requisite strange bumps and voices, the episode serves as a fitting tribute to late paranormal investigators Debby and Mark Constantino, who appeared in those first two visits to the haunted hotel.

The waters of Eureka Springs, AR were rumored to have healing properties, and people flocked there throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries to be cured of their ailments. The Crescent Hotel is a monument to this era in Ozark history, and known as one of the most haunted hotels in America. 

There's an unexpected poignancy to the episode, courtesy of Zak Bagans, surprisingly, whose father died of cancer shortly before filming. In between staged moments like asking random passersby in the middle of town where the hotel is, and tracking down "Michael," the hotel's most famous haunting, he wonders aloud that his father wasn't so different from those people who came to Eureka Springs a century before, hoping for a miracle. The search for healing and the search for the dead, it seems, are in many ways the same impulse.

This two-hour Halloween special takes a look inside the farmhouse that inspired James Wan's "The Conjuring." 

The 300-year-old farmhouse has been the (alleged) site of murders and suicides, and many ghost hunters have investigated the house over the last 50 years, including the famous Ed and Lorraine Warren. As for the GAC, Zak Bagans hypes up the episode as containing the most compelling evidence of ghostly activity that they had ever found, and while that reveal is a perfectly predictable bust, the episode does score a coup by bringing in Keith and Karl Johnson, paranormal investigators who (while not as famous as the Warrens) were actually the first team to investigate the Harrisville Farmhouse.

This home in Utah once housed a polygamist sect, but now its tenants report ghostly activity centered around the basement. 

Notably, Zak elects not to go into the house with the rest of GAC, citing an upper respiratory infection. He stays behind in the production van, AKA the "nerve center," communicating via walkie-talkie and watching the action on monitors. But just because he is not in the house doesn't mean that he is free from demonic intimidation. As the GAC prepares to enter, Bagan's Ovilus spits out the words EVIL, CENT, and TABLE (just like the one Bagan is sitting on), and later on, the more alarming ABORT, UNHOLY, and CHILLS.

Yuma Territorial Prison in California earned the nickname "Hell Hole" due to its extreme temperatures and the even more extreme punishments visited upon its prisoners. Conditions are perfect for a run of the mill investigation for the GAC, and for most of the episode that's what it is, but toward the end of the episode Zak and crew become interested in the history of the Yuma prison band. 

The faint sound of music compels them towards a stage, where their heat sensitive equipment captures several prison band-shaped anomalies, seemingly performing for their guests. It's one of the show's most memorable moments, a perfect coming together of the show's one-ghost-fits-all methodology and a site's specific history.

This Halloween special rides the coattails of the 2020 Netflix hit documentary "Tiger King," following the GAC's investigation of the animal park formerly owned by incarcerated big game collector Joe Exotic. 

While they are nominally on hand to investigate a purported haunting by Travis Maldonado (whose off-screen death by accidental gunshot was a key sequence in "Tiger King"), the crew doesn't capture much more than the incredible bad vibes of the filthy, overrun compound. At a certain point Joe Exotic's former zookeeper Erik Cowie, who has been guiding Bagans and crew around the area, can't take it much more and excuses himself from the room; Cowie would be found dead less than a year after this special aired.

The GAC had previously visited Vulture City, Arizona for an episode in 2010. At the time, the town's mining operations had not been operational for years. But now it is 2021, things are back up and running, and the local spirits do not seem pleased. 

When the attendees of a local paranormal convention suffer from mysterious ailments, some requiring hospitalization, Zak Bagans investigates the cause. Dark energy is felt around a tree that had been used for lynchings at one point, and it is presumed that much of the ghostly activity has its roots in the frontier violence between white miners and Native American tribes. These conflicts are often the historical subtexts of "Ghost Adventures" episodes taking place out west, but rarely is it so explicit or central to the investigation as it is here.

Ranch Island is a commune outside of Las Vegas, where the spirit of a man who hanged himself may be trapped. As the GAC investigates, Zak is overcome with dark energy and believes himself to be in contact, if not outright possessed, by this shackled spirit. 

Jay Wasley rigs up an experimental energy circle with a Tesla coil, as the spirit presses down on his shoulders and envelops the crew in cold spots. "We're here to help you!" Aaron exclaims into the darkness. "We don't want anything else!" While that last part isn't necessarily true, the first part is surprisingly sincere. It's a rare thing when the GAC is here to help the living, more so than the dead.