Chasing Spirits: The Building of the Ghost Adventures Crew

by Groff, Nick

  Though I’ve had the chance to be in hundreds of these situations now, I still learn something new about the paranormal and about myself while doing this work. Every investigation changes me in some way, but a few leave a lasting impression—almost like a scar to remind me of what might be lurking around the next corner.

  CHAPTER 12

  FAVORITE CASES

  Once we got past the first season of Ghost Adventures, investigating so many locations and living a life on the road was turning into something I loved. Getting off an airplane in a new place, seeing different landscapes, all of that is an adventure. Traveling allows you to connect with people because you voluntarily put yourself at their mercy. When you’re in a strange town, you sometimes have no choice but to trust a stranger on advice like where to eat, where to shop, what local haunts to check out, and directions to the coolest bar in town.

  Now that we all knew what we were doing, I could look forward to the locations and the lockdowns instead of worrying about every aspect of the production. The Travel Channel was pleased with the response from the first season, so this time they signed us up for seventeen episodes! That huge order was validation that this was way more than a good concept. That little idea Zak and I had kicked around was now beginning to look like a hit TV show.

  Every location means something to me. We look at dozens of potential sites before choosing one we feel is Ghost Adventures worthy. We look especially for places where dark, tragic events have taken place and where the spirit activity is malevolent. If people are being pushed, scratched, hit, or possessed by entities, we want to know about it.

  Once we decide on a location, we really dig into it. Our researcher, Jeff Belanger, provides us with notes on the history, on what eyewitnesses have experienced, and where the hot spots are located. These notes get us ready for when we hit the ground.

  Once you walk into a haunted location, you become part of that story forever. Given we’re going in there to not only investigate, but film a television show, I recognize that I’m becoming a big part of the story of a haunted place. I take that seriously.

  I know there are other ghost investigating shows out there—and I enjoy watching them! Really. Even though Ghost Adventures fans sometimes say, “Ooooooo,” at the mention of another show, I have no beef at all. They do things their way; we do things our way. Watch both if you want different perspectives. There are some locations the other shows investigated first, and there are plenty where we investigated first. Our aim is the same. I am especially curious to see what the other guys find when they go to a place we’ve already been.

  When you go looking for ghosts, sometimes you find something amazing and sometimes you get nothing. It’s not fair to claim a place is haunted or not haunted based on a single visit. Some locations could be quiet for weeks, then be active for days at a time. We just don’t know what’s going to happen and when.

  QUESTIONS FANS ASK

  When you’re in an old abandoned building, why do you think knocks and other strange sounds are ghosts and not rodents or birds?

  I do assume that most bangs and knocks in old buildings have a natural cause. What you don’t see on the show is how many times we debunk an odd noise. We’ll hear some scratching sound coming from the wall, for instance. We’re initially freaked out—it’s dark, we can hardly see a thing, it’s tense, and then there’s this sound behind you. We turn on the flashlights and then see some big ol’ raccoon in the next room scratching away. That stuff usually doesn’t make it to the screen. What you see are the sounds we couldn’t immediately find an explanation for. That doesn’t mean it’s paranormal; it just means we don’t have an explanation for it.

  Some of my favorite investigations involve locations that are big and decrepit. When I walk into these places, it’s like stepping into a horror movie. Those old buildings come alive when I’m inside walking around in the dark. I tune in to them, they tune in to me. Here are a few of the locations that have been most important to me.

  PENNHURST STATE SCHOOL

  During the second season we had the chance to investigate the former Pennhurst State School in Spring City, Pennsylvania, just outside of Philadelphia. Rather than an actual school, Pennhurst was an institution for the mentally and physically disabled. I had seen pictures of this place and had heard about how some of the patients were tortured inside. The institution was controversial. It’s been called “a monument to shame” because thousands of patients were abused over the almost eight decades the huge facility was in operation. At a quick glance, it almost looks like an old college campus. There are dozens of stately brick buildings, but today the trees and weeds are literally reaching up to engulf these structures as if nature were attempting to swallow this abomination.

  The Pennhurst State School episode is one I’m most proud of because we were able to not only capture amazing evidence, but remind viewers of what can happen to people who sometimes don’t have a voice. We even submitted this episode for an Emmy, but we didn’t get a nomination.

  ABOUT PENNHURST STATE SCHOOL

  Even when Pennhurst was in full operation, these walls held something sinister. Ten thousand patients came through these doors, but not everyone left. Some were unwanted, others were thought to be beyond help, many suffered in conditions that were inhuman.

  The horrid conditions the mentally and physically disabled patients were subjected to at Pennhurst pushed some of the staff and patients to the breaking point. Mistreatment, abuse, rape, and murder all took place in this vast network of buildings. There’s a scar that’s been left here, and by many accounts it will never go away. It still lurks in these buildings.

  In 1908, the state of Pennsylvania took a bold step in treating people with mental and physical disabilities by constructing a massive complex of buildings to house those with special needs. First called the Eastern Pennsylvania State Institution for the Feeble-Minded and Epileptic, the facility was quickly filled with adults and children of varying needs.

  The patients were separated into different buildings based on their level of intelligence. Some people could mostly take care of themselves, but others were so profoundly disabled that they spent their days and nights in metal cribs, unable to wash themselves, and some could hardly turn themselves over.

  Many heart-wrenching cases were brought to Pennhurst. Mentally retarded and autistic children were often dropped here at a young age because their families didn’t know how to care for them. In many cases, the children never saw their families again—they were abandoned to become wards of the state.

  Because of a lack of funding, the limited number of doctors, nurses, and orderlies could only do so much to help the suffering populace. Reportedly, some of the worst cases were starved so badly for any kind of human contact that they would smear themselves with their own feces so staff were forced to take care of them. The lack of staff also led to drastic measures in dealing with unruly patients. In some cases, people were drugged into submission or chained to their beds because the staff didn’t have the resources or time to offer proper care.

  Family members would visit their loved ones and find bruises, cuts, or much worse. Some patients were isolated for such long periods that they regressed; some even ceased talking. Some patients were killed by other patients—sometimes it was an accident; other times it was murder.

  There were rules at Pennhurst. If a patient bit someone, they were punished. If they bit again, they were sent directly to the dentist’s chair and had all of their teeth pulled. Scores of patients at Pennhurst had no teeth as a result of this extreme treatment. Thousands of teeth were pulled in a rusty dentist chair that still sits in the tunnels beneath the complex.

  Exposés on the poor quality of treatment were written as early as 1912—just four years after the complex opened. But the abuse would continue for decades. In 1968, Philadelphia television news reporter Bill Baldini produced a multisegment exposé on Pennhurst called “Suffer the Little Children.” The piece, with its powerfu
l imagery of the suffering inside, drew the public’s attention at last. Baldini did a real service with that piece, and I was proud to have him back for the episode of Ghost Adventures.

  A massive lawsuit followed, further exposing some of the atrocities that had taken place at Pennhurst. In 1977, U.S. District Judge Raymond J. Broderick found the Pennhurst State School guilty of violating patients’ constitutional rights.

  The facility closed for good in 1987 and was left to decay. Up until a few years ago, it was owned by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and mostly neglected… and left to the ghosts, the angry spirits, the tormented victims who continued to inhabit the buildings and the land.

  Once I knew about Pennhurst’s past, I felt a lump in my throat. When I stood where these awful things had taken place, I thought I would cry. That powerful emotion would only get stronger as we interviewed people who used to work there, folks who could describe what Pennhurst was like in its day. Imagine putting a hundred profoundly retarded people into a room and just leaving them all day? They had no one to care for them, no interaction, and almost no supervision. Some were naked, some were violent, and many shut down. They weren’t treated like humans, so they stopped acting like them.

  It’s easy to get angry at those who worked at Pennhurst, but that isn’t the answer. Many of those employees—like the ones you saw us interview in the episode—were really good people who tried their best to help others, even to the point of volunteering on their days off. But one person can only do so much.

  QUESTIONS FANS ASK

  What’s the most difficult part of paranormal investigations?

  Communication with the other side and not knowing who you are speaking with. To me that is scary, because there are evil beings out there that can harm the living world. You need to keep a clear head and stay focused and balanced when talking to the spirit world so you can tell what’s real from what may only be in your head.

  By the time we interviewed former patient Betty Potts, I thought I was going to seriously break down. She’s a wheelchair-bound woman who had been forced to come to Pennhurst when she was eight years old. When she described her life there, I felt tears welling up in my eyes as I tried to focus. She explained how they tied her down to her bed and placed her in seclusion. She would bang her head against the wall, she said, so she could get some attention from the staff. This poor woman—this human being like you and me—not only witnessed this, she lived through it.

  When we were done interviewing her, I went outside to catch my breath and have some time alone for a minute. I glanced around at the buildings. These structures had been designed to help people, but instead became houses of torture. When you walk into a prison, you know what to expect—those people are there to be punished. But people went to Pennhurst because they needed help, at a school and hospital, a place for kindness and assistance. Instead they got torture.

  Standing there at Pennhurst, glancing around, I realized that I—me, Nick Groff—am partially to blame for the type of abuse that went on there. And so are you. Because Pennhurst is an example of when society fails. When the institution was finally shut down, fingers were pointed in many directions, but the fault for the poor treatment lies squarely on the shoulders of society. Society didn’t understand these disabilities, society didn’t want to deal with these unfortunate people, and society didn’t demand that their government allocate more resources for facilities like Pennhurst to take proper care of the people who needed the most help.

  After those interviews and before the lockdown, Pennhurst became personal for me.

  My mission was to tell the story here—not just the ghost story, but the personal story that represents the reason behind the haunting. That had always been the idea with Ghost Adventures, but at Pennhurst this idea hit my heart. In that episode I felt I understood why this place was haunted. It should be haunted. Every soul who walks in there should be reminded of the screams from the past, and I wanted to remind our viewers of this too.

  The Pennhurst campus was so huge that we rented a helicopter so we could film the place from above. It was eerie how vacant and hollow the place looked from above. As the helicopter came in for a landing, I felt myself reconnecting, getting mentally ready for this lockdown.

  This location was a little different from the others. Because parts of the buildings are dangerous and falling apart, and because people are constantly trying to break into the buildings to thrill seek, vandalize, or steal scrap metal, we had security guards positioned outside for the entire night. In fact, the night before we arrived at Pennhurst, some kids had broken into one of the buildings and had to be chased out. And one time, one of those trespassers pointed a gun at the security guard. I swear, it’s always the living you need to fear more than the dead. So we had a radio in case we needed help. The security guards locked us into the building for the night, so the only way to get around was through the underground tunnels that connect many of the buildings.

  The tunnels beneath the buildings are so dark. Even if it’s noon and sunny outside, these tunnels are black. As we were making our way down the passageway to the first building, I moved along the wall with only my night vision camera to light the way. I completely missed a metal chair lying on its side in front of me and I went tumbling over. A searing pain shot through my hand.

  After Zak shined his flashlight on me, I saw that my hand had just gone into broken glass and shards of metal on the floor. I saw the blood dripping down my arm. It hurt, and the worst part was I couldn’t even remember the last tetanus shot I’d had. I made a mental note that I’d need to get one when I got back home. But I had to go on. We wouldn’t get another shot at investigating this place.

  The whole building had a feeling of sadness, but beyond the sadness, there was something else there. This sinister force. Something we didn’t show on the episode was what happened to us on the top floor of the Mayflower building.

  Questions Fans Ask

  What are your top three most frightening moments on Ghost Adventures?

  At the Washoe Club in Virginia City I heard my full name, “Nick Groff,” come out in an EVP. That really freaked me out because the voice was so clear. At Moon River Brewery I was scared because I had never experienced something taking over my body like that before—I will never forget that. But my most frightening experience happened at Linda Vista Hospital when I locked eyes with a spirit. She still haunts me.

  Some of the isolation rooms for the patients were on the top floor of the Mayflower. We were all hearing these voices. Now, part of the reason security was stationed outside all night was because they’d told us stories of finding trespassers in here before. So the only way in was through those tunnels—and right outside those locked tunnels were the security guards.

  We’d heard enough disembodied voices on our investigations to know what was paranormal and what was not. The sounds we heard up there didn’t seem paranormal at all. We heard voices, then the sounds of running feet. We were sure some kids were in there fucking with us. The more we listened, the more we were positive it was just some kids pulling a prank. Maybe they didn’t even know we were there. I was pissed, you know? We were trying to investigate and film a show here. I started yelling, “Hey—we’re calling security if you don’t get in here right now!”

  The voices and running continued, so we got on the walkie-talkie and asked security to come up and deal with this. On the episode you don’t get to see what happens next. Security unbolted the door and ran a pretty good distance to come find us.

  They did a sweep throughout the building and found nothing—not a trace of any break-in, not a soul. And there was no way out except through the tunnel we’d come in! Now we were a bit freaked out. These guys shrugged their shoulders and said, “It happens here.” Then they walked out and locked us inside again.

  We didn’t collect a ton of evidence at Pennhurst, but there was this overwhelming feeling of sadness all around. The most interesting paranormal occurrence was when a roc
k was thrown at us by an unseen force. We caught the small stone bouncing by on camera. Though the paranormal activity on the night of our lockdown wasn’t as intense as other locations, Pennhurst will haunt me forever. I’m fortunate to have had the chance to investigate there and proud of the story we could bring to light again. We can never have enough reminders that we must take care of our fellow human beings.

  GHOST HUNTING IN ITALY

  Poveglia Island was another location I had heard about years before. Located off the coast of Venice, this place seemed like it could be one of the creepiest locations on earth. We tried to go there during our first season, but foreign travel and filming can be very expensive, so our budget didn’t allow for it. During season two, Zak and I pushed to get there. I’m glad we did.

  ABOUT POVEGLIA ISLAND

  Off the coast of Venice, Italy, there is an island that legend says was formed from the ashes of all the dead who were buried there. Poveglia was once home to an insane asylum, but today the entire island is abandoned.

  Locals and tourists alike are forbidden from setting foot on the island. Fishermen avoid the area because they say it’s cursed. Poveglia Island is Italy’s darkest haunt.

  In the south lagoon between Venice and Lido sits this small island that has been a place of refuge, a stronghold, and a dumping ground for the sick, dying, and deceased for many centuries.

  In AD 421, Poveglia Island saw its first inhabitants arrive. Barbaric invaders had come to the mainland, so locals took their boats to the nearby island for protection. The island was highly defendable and, considering its relatively small size, not worth the trouble for invading armies.