Hellivision

When I started this dumb blog I figured there’d be tons of stuff to write about. So much of the programming on TV is horrible, you’d assume there’d be an endless supply of material, right? Oh not so, my bro… I’ve found that 90 percent of the stuff that sucks just plain sucks. There’s not much more you can say about it other than, “It sucks.” It’s rare that something on television achieves a level of suction that’s inspiring.

Ghost Adventures however, is one of those rare somethings. It’s so appallingly bad, I find it hard to believe it’s not satire. This documentary takes the premise of ghost hunting and pushes it to its extremes. Unlike the prissy Ghost Hunters who get bogged down in the stupid Scientific Method, Ghost Adventures gets down and dirty and actually shows you ghosts and hardcore paranormal action on film. If Ghost Hunters is Victoria’s Fantasies on Cinemax at 12PM Friday night, Ghost Adventures is that triple-X DVD you bought at Amazing.net with the words “Scat”, “Dwarves” and “Part 37″ in the title.

Their camera captures objects flying through the air, spectral figures passing through rooms, and the crew shrieking like little girls and fleeing for dear life. Completely impartial video authority Slim Whitman confirms that these clips are for real and not staged or digitally manufactured too.

Hopefully Ghost Adventures will become a full-fledged series and we’ll get to see possessions, succubi, and the Devil himself caught on film some day. These guys definitely one-upped the Ghost Hunters gang. I’m not sure what that means exactly, but I’ll be glued to the set for more if they get their own weekly program.

For some reason I ended up watching Ghost Hunters starring the guys from TAPS yesterday evening. I’m not a big fan of shows where they hunt ghosts, UFOs, or legendary monsters. Even if you commit yourself to watching the entire program, you’re never going to see anything more definitive than some yokel with a flashlight gasping, “What was that???” If anyone ever found real evidence of the afterlife, Bigfoot, or Bigfoot in the afterlife, you would hear about it on the news, not SciFi or the History Channel.

I let myself get sucked in anyway and watched the entire episode. It was good for a laugh or two and pretty much what I expected, but I nearly choked on my popcorn when they showed two TAPS investigators taunting a no-show spirit (a.k.a. an empty room). Here’s a transcript of the best part.

………..

[A male and female member of TAPS are sitting next to each other on the floor of a dark and supposedly haunted bedroom, addressing the room/ghost.]

TAPS Guy: Are you too much of a wimp to do anything with us here now?

Room/Ghost: …

TAPS Girl: You need to show us that you hear us right now.

Room/Ghost: …

TAPS Guy: Why don’t you get all rough and tough with us?

TAPS Girl: You do realize that after tonight you’re gettin’ cast out of here? So you might as well make your last grandstand right now.

Room/Ghost: …

TAPS Girl: I think whatever it is that’s in here is just scared and cowardly and doesn’t have the gonads to do anything else. You need to not be such a coward.

Room/Ghost: …

………..

I think that ghost handled himself pretty well. Most entities would probably get all riled up by those hurtful words and start turning the closet into a gateway to Hell or something. But he kept his cool and made the TAPS investigators look like a pair of chumps. Sweet.

Watch the first 30 seconds or so of this clip to witness the stupidy for yourself.