Chasing Spirits: The Building of the Ghost Adventures Crew

by Groff, Nick

  I wasn’t a network person; I wasn’t even all that familiar with the television industry. When Matt started asking questions about the Houghton Mansion, about its history and the reported paranormal experiences, I felt more like a kid facing a pop quiz. It turned out the guy was just interested in the place and what we were doing. I realize now that his questions were just the kinds of questions we needed to answer for our viewing audience through the course of the show. Working with the Travel Channel helped us evolve our project in a big way.

  I wanted to impress the network execs, but I also wanted to stay true to our original vision for the series. After signing on, we had meetings with the network about what we wanted the direction of the show to be. One of the biggest things I told everyone when we first started the series was that I never wanted our show to go “Hollywood,” to become some big production. It’s easy to get caught up with bigger budgets and want to do fancy effects, but I wanted it to stay raw, because that’s what made viewers connect with our documentary in the first place. I thought it made for more gripping storytelling from a filmmaker’s point of view, and it would be more true to an actual paranormal investigation.

  The paranormal research groups that go out and investigate film all that stuff on their own. There’s no big camera crew following them around, no audio technicians, and they don’t just hand off the tapes to some editor who compiles them into a television show. If we had a polished Hollywood-style show, it would take away from the true nature of paranormal investigation.

  We wanted to be in charge of 99.9 percent of our own stuff. We wanted to do our thing and keep it raw. How could we trust the editing hand of someone who wasn’t there? How could we trust them to know what is paranormal and what isn’t? Even for us, it took a long time to figure out what was truly paranormal evidence. It takes a lot of research; we had to develop the skills to discern what is anomalous. In season one, you probably saw a lot of orbs and stuff like that, which could have been spirit, but could just as likely have been dust, bugs, water vapor, or some other mundane crap. The reality is we’re always learning.

  Now I’ve definitely become better at figuring out true anomalies from natural phenomena. I do believe there are orbs that are indeed balls of energy or are indicative of spirits. I get thousands of people e-mailing me or sending me pictures on Facebook asking me, “Can you tell me if this is an orb or just dust?” Most of the time, I have to tell them it’s just dust.

  When checking out an anomalous photo, I can tell if it’s something incredible or not right away. I do have to admit, there are some that have made me sit up and take notice. With some of the more interesting images, I’ll get a little more in-depth with the person who sent it, asking what they think it is. A lot of people will say, “Well, my family member died there and I captured this. Could it be that family member?”

  In my experience, a genuine orb produces its own light. On video it might flutter or pulsate; on a still picture it would light up the area around it. These are rare, but do happen.

  My response when someone shows me an orb picture is always the same: I wasn’t there, I don’t know the conditions of how it was captured, so it’s hard to say. But if you think it is Aunt Sally, then maybe it is.

  That’s the problem: you don’t know who or what you’re dealing with. The person who took the picture could have emotional issues as a result of the death of a loved one. There are a lot of people who just need validation for what they think they’ve captured, and because I’m on television, they think my opinion matters more. I’m a stickler about it—I ask very blunt questions, like whether or not there was a flash, or a window that might cause reflection. I’m straight up with folks, which some people appreciate, but others don’t. But it’s just too hard to be sure something is paranormal, and I don’t want someone running around with a doctored photo claiming it got the “Nick Groff Stamp of Approval” (no such stamp exists anyway). I have to protect my name and my integrity as a paranormal investigator, something I learned early on in filming season one.

  I know how easy it is with today’s technology to digitally “add” ghosts into photos. You can do it pretty easily with Photoshop, and there are a number of smartphone apps that will automatically do it for you.

  To help us decipher truly unexplained audio, video, and photographic anomalies, we reached out to, and soon became friends with, several known experts in the paranormal community. Mark and Debby Constantino are two EVP specialists based out of Reno. They are a husband-and-wife team of paranormal investigators who get EVP almost everywhere they go. They’ve become a magnet for spirit activity. They have captured literally thousands of spirit voices and have helped us get better at recording our own EVP. Because we’ve also become friends, we also find ways to mess with those guys.

  On a flight one day, Billy Tolley, the Ghost Adventures evidence reviewer who comes with us on most of our investigations, took a photo of me sitting in my seat on the airplane. He used a ghost capture app for the iPhone to plant a semitransparent ghostly figure in the empty seat next to me. I sent it to Mark and Debby and told them our plane was haunted. It was hokey enough that they knew it was a fake, but we all had a good laugh.

  The fact that people were turning to me with their evidence meant we were making a connection with people. When we were out filming season one, we were traveling all over, just the three of us. We didn’t like being cooped up in motel rooms on the first two nights of filming, so we’d always go out, meet up with the locals, and see what’s up. I love socializing in new places, and we were starting to find that wherever we went, people were recognizing us from the documentary that was airing so often on SciFi. And every one of them had a story to tell. Everybody likes to make that connection with another person.

  I’ll always take the time to talk to fans when we’re traveling. Not only do I enjoy the exchange, I also get to hear firsthand what parts of the show resonate with them. Most often, it’s the lockdown. Viewers like to see the actual investigation and the evidence we turn up.

  QUESTIONS FANS ASK

  What is your favorite piece of ghost hunting equipment?

  I like my digital audio recorder. I feel like I have a connection to speak with spirits on the other side, and this is the easiest way for us to do that.

  Going out on the town on one of the nights was pretty much our only downtime on the shoots, though. On the third night, we’d go in for the lockdown, and then head home after that. Then it was right to analysis and editing, which would keep Zak and me holed up in one room together again until we were done.

  That process alone was nerve-racking. What if they lost the tapes? We’d be screwed! I had to mail them everything—the hard drives, the master tapes. I was still new to Final Cut, so it was taking longer than I would have liked. Plus, the rendering time to get the footage loaded onto the computer was killing me. Even when I’d finally got the hang of the new software and the editing process in general, I still couldn’t believe how much time was being wasted waiting for the tapes to render.

  We decided the simplest solution would be to compress the footage from high definition to standard definition for our edit, and then when we sent it to the production company in New York they could recapture it in HD. It was still time-consuming, but it was our best option, and also a learning experience. It was my first time working in real television, and I was figuring out how to make it all work. I was pretty damn proud of that.

  All the stress and long hours started to take a toll on our lives outside the show, and with our family and friends. I tried as hard as I could to keep some semblance of a normal relationship with Veronique, but it wasn’t easy. I give her a lot of props for all her patience. I’d be on the road, then get home, and still she wouldn’t see me all day and sometimes all night. My body paid a price for it too.

  In fact, I got so damn skinny filming season one that I had to do something about it. I was on the road, which is a strain in itself, but then I wasn’t working out or eat
ing properly. Even when I wasn’t traveling or spending all night investigating, I spent every other moment chained to an editing suite. It was hell on my body. One night I came home and Veronique just stared at me. “Wow—you’re so skinny,” she said. “You’re way too skinny.” I never would have thought filming a television show would be that tough on my health.

  When we wrapped up the first season, my cousin Justin came to live with me for a bit. He’s really smart about things like personal training—he’s been ripped since high school, back when he played football. He can lift twice his body weight. He’s one of those dudes that you just don’t want to fuck with. While he was staying with me, we were working on things like scripts and concepts for other TV shows, but we also worked out quite a bit. He got me ripped, and I went from being a scrawny 175 pounds to being 205 and all muscle. I started drinking protein shakes, and I was jacked. Justin had me kicking ass in the gym, which made me feel better about myself.

  QUESTIONS FANS ASK

  What does it feel like to be possessed? Do you still have some control over your thoughts and actions?

  I wouldn’t describe my experience as having been possessed. It’s more that a dark energy has taken over my own body and mind. I do have control, but that is the dangerous part of losing sight of your own energy.

  It was actually Aaron who noticed first. He started making some stupid comments to me, like, “I kind of liked skinny Nick a little bit better. Zak’s supposed to be the ripped one, I’m the overweight one, and you’re the skinny one!”

  Of course, it’s funny now, because Aaron started eating right and he lost a ton of weight himself. Now Zak, he took it a little differently. Zak’s a competitive guy, and he’s always making everything into a competition. I’m competitive too—it’s always been in my nature and I hate to lose. Whether it was swimming, or basketball, or whatever, I’ve always had to win. I wasn’t looking to compete with Zak when it came to our bodies, but he kind of took it that way.

  Zak and I were working out together one time at a shoot. We were in a hospital because it was the only place around that had a gym. I’d been keeping on top of my workout plan, eating right, keeping my weight up, all that stuff. And as we were working out, Zak looked at me and said, “Dude, how can you just go from 175 to 205? There’s no way you can do that.”

  I knew where he was going with it, and I didn’t like it. I asked him what he was getting at.

  He eventually laid off me, but he still tried to lift more than me that day.

  It happens all the time, though, these little competitions. Maybe it’s just part of the male bonding. You know that game in some bars where you put in a dollar and punch the machine as hard as you can to try to get the highest score? Yeah, we do that anytime we’re out together and find one of those machines—thank God there aren’t many of those around anymore.

  I took tae kwon do as a kid. My dad got me into it when I was five or six, and I followed it all the way through and earned my black belt. He got me into it because he knew it would help me stay in control of my emotions, but also if I got in a fight, at least I’d know how to defend myself. I continued it all the way through college at UNLV, even shooting some tae kwon do videos with one of my professors. It was a big part of my life growing up.

  So if there’s one thing I know, it’s how to throw a punch—and how to focus all my strength and power into my fist as I’m throwing it. I would punch the stupid machine as hard as I could, scoring 900 or something. When Zak took his turn, he didn’t score as high as me. He just kept feeding money into the machine until he beat my number. I ended up with bloody knuckles after missing and punching a hole in the wall on one of my turns. It’s funny how competitive we can get with each other.

  Punching a wall offers an ironic lesson: If you’re going to work in the television production business, you need to be able to tolerate some pain. Sometimes you have to punch; sometimes you have to negotiate. You have to remind yourself that no matter how many disagreements, at the end of the day we all want the same thing: a kick-ass show.

  Different locations and episodes have stuck with viewers for different reasons. One location that makes many fans’ top five lists is Bobby Mackey’s Music World in Wilder, Kentucky. I’d been dying to go to this place for years, and I’d mentioned it to Zak and Aaron as a possible future investigation just as we were finishing our documentary. As soon as we got the green light on the series, Bobby Mackey’s made our season one short list right away.

  Bobby Mackey’s is a former slaughterhouse with connections to cult activity, suicide, and heartbreak. When you put all that together in one place, it will draw in negative energy and spirits.

  ABOUT BOBBY MACKEY’S MUSIC WORLD

  Today, Bobby Mackey’s Music World is a popular nightclub full of song, dancing, and good times. The cheerful setting, however, also holds something more sinister. Some have claimed the building’s basement holds the gateway to hell itself—in an abandoned well discovered in the bowels of the building.

  Many cultures have long associated water with paranormal activity. Some believe that spirits can’t cross flowing waters. So perhaps it is the rare northern-running current of the Licking River that keeps the dark forces trapped inside the building.

  The roadhouse that sits at 44 Licking Pike has a bloody history and a shady past. On this site in 1850, a large slaughterhouse and meatpacking facility were constructed that would serve northwestern Kentucky and nearby Cincinnati, Ohio.

  In the lowest part of the building sat a well to hold the unused blood, guts, and waste from the slaughtered animals. This was long before the days of electricity and refrigeration. On warm days the area around the building would reek of death.

  The slaughterhouse closed in the 1890s and then sat empty, but not unused, according to many legends. Some researchers have speculated that satanic cult activity took place in the building around the well. Animals, and possibly humans, were slaughtered here for ritualistic purposes during secret meetings.

  In 1896, the murder of twenty-two-year-old Pearl Bryan, a small-town girl from Greencastle, Indiana, made all the headlines in the region. Pearl’s body was discovered in a field less than two miles from the slaughterhouse, but her corpse was discovered headless.

  Pearl was pregnant, so her boyfriend, Scott Jackson, a student at the Ohio College of Dental Surgery, urged her to come to Cincinnati, where he could arrange an abortion for her. Jackson and his roommate, Alonzo Walling, attempted the abortion themselves, but something went horribly wrong. To cover their tracks, they brought Pearl’s body out to an empty field and cut off her head so she couldn’t be identified. They might have gotten away with the cover-up, but they’d left Pearl’s shoes on her feet. Shoes made especially for her in her hometown of Greencastle.

  Pearl’s severed head was never discovered, though some have speculated that Jackson had ties to the satanic cult that held rituals in the old slaughterhouse. Some believe the head made its way to the basement of the building to be used for dark incantations.

  Scott Jackson and Alonzo Walling were both sentenced to the gallows. Police investigators pleaded with the men to disclose where they’d hidden the severed head, but the men maintained their innocence. They were executed on March 21, 1897.

  The slaughterhouse was razed in the early part of the twentieth century. The lot sat empty until the 1920s, when the property was born again with a new building that served as a casino, nightclub, and eventual speakeasy during Prohibition.

  When Prohibition ended in 1933, E.A. “Buck” Brady bought the building and called it the Primrose. After more than a decade of successful operations, his casino caught the attention of Cincinnati mobsters who tried to muscle their way into the operation. When Brady refused to sell, the violence escalated with fighting and threats to customers in the parking lot, until 1946, when Buck drew a gun on a local mobster named Albert “Red” Masterson. Soon after, Brady was charged with attempted murder and left the casino business.

&n
bsp; Then, in the 1950s, the building reopened as a nightclub called the Latin Quarter. It was during this time that the club’s most prominent ghostly figure traces its roots. It’s the classic story of forbidden love. Johanna, the daughter of the nightclub’s owner, fell in love with a singer who performed there. She got pregnant and intended to run off with the young singer. Her father forbade the romance, however, and used his criminal connections to have the singer killed. When Johanna discovered her lover had been murdered, she attempted to poison her father, then took her own life in the basement of the building.

  The dark past of 44 Licking Pike came to an abrupt end in 1978, when a series of fatal shootings at the rough-and-tumble nightclub forced local authorities to close the establishment.

  Later that same year, a young country singer named Bobby Mackey bought the building and turned it into the music hall and tavern that still stands today. Paranormal phenomena have been present since day one. Though Bobby himself is skeptical, he’ll admit that he doesn’t doubt the words of many eyewitnesses over the years who have experienced something powerful and unexplained in the building.

  Nightclub employees, local police officers, and even patrons all have accounts of being shoved by unseen forces, witnessing specters walking throughout the building, and even cases of demonic possession. Though clergy and psychics have tried to help, there’s a dark force that still lingers inside.

  Legends are curious things. They’re created by people, but there’s always some root to them based in fact. We don’t know for sure about the cult activity, we don’t know if there’s a connection between Pearl Bryan’s missing head and the building, but we do know the place is haunted. We spoke to the witnesses who had been pushed down the stairs. We saw the video footage of the exorcism attempt on Carl Lawson, a former employee and caretaker of the building who actually lived in an apartment upstairs from the bar for several years. The reasons for the haunting may be in dispute, but the fact that it’s an active dark place is not.