I am Haunted: Living Life Through the Dead

by Zak Bagans

  Is it necessary to participate in rituals to try to find the secrets of the spirit world? I think it is. If you’re not willing to face the danger to see what kind of responses you get, then you’re not as serious as we are. These rituals have made us different people, but that’s our choice. You have to have the passion to go further in this field. We’re willing to take the risk, and that’s what makes us different, but it has consequences.

  As I grow older, I pay more attention to the effects of exposing myself to demons, evil spirits, and the most haunted locations around the world. Overdosing on energy while opening myself up to it and calling upon it, I see myself changing. I mean, who in his right mind would buy a Demon House while trying to heal mentally, physically, and spiritually from all the rituals, possessions, encounters, lockdown hangovers, and all the other stuff I’ve been through? Why buy a house that’s said to be haunted by 200 demons that three different police officers and clergymen are scared of? Why not? It’s like I’m trying to overdose on ghosts. I’m an addict.

  Your average person won’t go into a place full of negative energy for fear of attacks, attachments, channeling, possessions, or whatever, but I can’t stop exploring them. I understand that my health is at risk. I understand that I’m being affected. I’m dealing with physical issues because of it. I’m dealing with mental issues because of it. I’m dealing with spiritual issues because of it. Yet I’m totally addicted to this field. I want that next big experience no matter what the cost.

  Maybe that’s why I’m bored with the material world. Everything is just stuff to me. Cars, houses, clubs, gambling…that’s all it is here in Vegas. To me, a lot of this stuff is cool, but it’s boring, too. I enjoy creating good memories with my family and friends. That’s the part of life I like the most.

  Most people have a preconceived notion of what life is and what is expected of them, but after seeing all the things I’ve seen and knowing what lies beyond this life, my attitude has changed. I’m not a slave to a schedule or to other people’s expectations. People are so programmed by society, the tabloids, the Internet, and the like that they take the wrong things as truth and let themselves be puppets. They let the media tell them who’s important until they find themselves worshipping the Kardashians and Bieber or whoever’s in the press this week. The Lords of Fame drive the herds of sheep. Every day you hear about their lives and who they’re marrying or what they’re drinking and…who the hell are they? What are they famous for? Paris Hilton, Kim Kardashian…what have they even done in life? Why are we supposed to obsess over these people? Why does the media force-feed us this bullshit instead of praising more worthy and talented people, like war heroes? Why do they treat untalented people like royalty? They have no backstory of overcoming adversity or accomplishing great things, yet they’re hounded by the paparazzi and thrown in our faces every day.

  I’m ranting, but I want to look beyond the greed, hate, and negativity. I want to believe that there’s a world without the deadly sins. Society is judgmental, and there are times when I don’t want to be a part of it. I feel like I’ve been thrown into a river, and I just want to swim to the shore and get out. I stare back at the water and watch everyone go by yelling, “Jump in,” but I don’t want to. I want to stay on the shore and figure out what’s hiding in the bushes. I’m not saying I want to die, but I do want to peer into the jungle and discover what’s out there while everyone else floats by on inner tubes, blissfully unaware that they too will end up on the shore someday. We all do. Some of us will be more prepared than the rest.

  When you venture off into uncharted areas, what will people do? They’ll tell you, “No. You have to join us. You have to be part of society.” Life moves fast, and I chose this field, so I can see what lies beyond it when it’s done with me. Overexposure to the spirit world has made my thoughts deeper and clearer and my emotions much greater than I ever expected them to be.

  TAKE MY HAND AND I’LL SHOW YOU.

  2

  MY CREW IS MY FAMILY

  Let me introduce you to the people closest to me.

  I’ve been on the road doing Ghost Adventures for seven years nonstop.

  Nonstop.

  It’s an exhausting life on all levels, but I wouldn’t trade it for anything. The show and the people who help me run it are a part of me. Humans are social creatures, so nearly everyone has a family, a club, a crew, a union, a gang, a platoon, a church, a pack, or some other sort of social entity to which they dedicate themselves. The Ghost Adventures Crew is mine. I trust each and every one of them completely, and when you give yourself to people on a daily basis like that, you become very tight. Some days I have to push myself that one extra yard just to make sure they’re not disappointed in me. That’s what being us is all about. If you want to know more about me, then you have to know the people who surround me.

  What a lot of people don’t know is that I don’t just host Ghost Adventures; I am also the executive producer of the show. I make the creative decisions and am in charge of all the other producers and editors when we’re not on set. At home, I work every single day on the rough edit until it’s perfect. It never ends. I can’t take any time off because we have deadlines for the network. So I’m either on the road or working all the time. This kind of pressure creates a special camaraderie between people—it’s where a lifelong brotherhood is forged. A big reason why I can get through this insane schedule and hellish amount of travel (especially when I hate flying) is that I have great friends and family whom I don’t just get along with, but truly enjoy being around.

  Aaron is one of the most interesting people I’ve ever known, and I know a lot about him. Maybe too much. So how much can I say about this guy without him getting mad at me? He’s a little more outrageous than me, so how about this analogy: If I’m an 8-year-old trapped in a 37-year-old body, then he’s a 6-year-old trapped in a 38-year-old body. At some point we started calling each other G and talking in a slur just because…well, no reason, really. It seemed funny at the time, and somehow it stuck.

  Aaron has ADD and can’t sit still, which can be a pain in the ass sometimes because his mind never stops thinking and his body never stops moving. The guy has a lot of energy, and when you factor in his massive daily caffeine intake, it seems like you could put him on a treadmill and power Las Vegas. But it’s a double-edged sword, because he can go from happy and laughing to Dark Aaron in a second. Dark Aaron can manifest like a demon with no warning. Dark Aaron is not a fun guy to be around, and when he comes out, I call him The Complainer. Dark Aaron complains about everything. None of us is perfect, but Dark Aaron could be in a hot tub with the Swedish bikini team and complain about the temperature. Dark Aaron can really drive me crazy when we’re on the road and I’ve got a million tasks to accomplish and a show to run and the complaints pile onto an already huge mountain of stress. I’ve snapped and gone off on him, and we both end up apologizing and forgetting about it. Aaron and I have been through some shit together. We’ve almost tried to knock each other out, and we’ve cried together. And that’s what makes us so close.

  I love you to death, Aaron. You’re my brother and one of my best friends, but I gotta let the fans know about that day in Denver. We’d just arrived, and Dark Aaron was in full force, for what reason I don’t know. We were at a grill, and Aaron was quiet. Dark Aaron is like a dog that has rabies: You know it’s happening and you keep your distance. As I was eating my dinner, my left elbow barely touched the bread on his plate. It was like an unintentional boob graze in a crowded bar that you immediately feel bad for. He responded with a nasty remark, and I wasn’t in the mood. I’ll just say that we had a moment when I recommended he change his attitude immediately. He ended up giving me the cold shoulder, and it made me want to beat up Dark Aaron to get Real Aaron back. Like I said, Real Aaron is a great person and my brother, and I’ve got his back no matter what, but Dark Aaron can dive back into the pit at Bobby Mackey’s where he came from and stay there.

  Aaron
is also the pickiest eater I’ve ever met, and his quirks about restaurants would boggle the mind of Sigmund Freud. He’s into examining food and every ingredient in it. He won’t eat frozen hamburger patties (only fresh ones), or at places that use frozen hamburger patties that come from Sysco, or anything that contains corn syrup. He won’t eat at Chipotle because they use corn oil. He won’t eat at Subway because there’s an ingredient in the bread that’s also used to make yoga mats. He won’t eat at McDonald’s because they slash and burn half the Amazon rainforest to make grazing land for their cows. He will eat at maybe 30 percent of the restaurant chains in the U.S. As you can imagine, this makes it difficult when we all want to go out to eat, especially if we’re in a backwoods location and the crew is starving. Aaron will skip out on us or hold out for as long as possible until something appealing comes along. You would think that we’d research our locations better so that Aaron could have pleasurable dining experiences, but that never happens. Someday I’ll surprise him with a catered lockdown on his birthday.

  When the crew comes together, we connect in a psychic triangle of energy that I truly believe opens up a portal for the spirits to communicate with us and through us. I think our meeting back in 2003 was more than a coincidence. I believe that everything happens for a reason, and us meeting to make a documentary film is only one part of the big picture. I believe that something more powerful than us wanted us to meet and bring the paranormal into everyone’s lives through the popular medium of TV.

  Billy Tolley is a good guy. I met him about five years ago when he reached out to me on MySpace. He had an OCD-like obsession with EVPs, and his passion for getting into the mechanics of how they work was inspiring. The more I got to know him, the more I liked him. At the time, Billy was a Las Vegas club DJ, but he also did brilliant work with audio and video, so I saw a way to bring him in and eventually invited him to be a part of the Ghost Adventures Crew as a reviewer of evidence when we got home from lockdowns. He didn’t travel with us at first, but he slowly became an integral part of the group and added a lot of value to what we did, so I eventually offered him a permanent spot on the show running the nerve center. That’s how I do things. If people do good work and have the right attitude, then I promote them. Billy has been a great addition to the GAC and has become one of my best friends, like Aaron. The three of us talk and hang out every day when the cameras are off and we’re at home in Vegas. Billy recently turned 41, so I give him a hard time for being old. It’s not like he’s 8 like me.

  Our audio tech, Jay Wasley, and his wife, Ashley, are a big part of the production and also good friends. Jay is one of those guys who’s always there when I’m having a health problem. If I’m not feeling well or something is freaking me out or making me feel depressed or like I’m going to die, Jay is there to help me through it. He’s the guy who will come to my room or meet me somewhere to talk. There’s not a bad bone in his body; he’s as genuine and compassionate as they come. So I do whatever I can for the guy, like promoting him from production audio to audiovisual tech on camera (yes, there’s a difference).

  Jay is a fascinating person. I give nicknames to everyone on the crew, and I call Jay The Theorist because whenever we’re having off-camera talks, he comes up with these crazy theories on things, like “coffee beans make the hair on your head crystallize into aromatherapy and get rid of migraine headaches.” Dude…what? He’s also very valuable while we’re filming because he reads a lot and is very intelligent. I can be talking, interviewing, or hosting the show, and Jay will pop up out of nowhere with an awesome piece of research that’s relevant to what I’m doing and really adds to the production. He’s like Alex Trebek on speed.

  Case in point: We were investigating the Pioneer Saloon in Goodsprings, Nevada. During lockdown, a woman’s voice came through the spirit box and gave us her unusual name. As soon as he heard it in the nerve center, Jay got on the phone, searched the census reports from the nineteenth century, and found this woman’s name, so we knew what spirit we were dealing with. That’s the kind of quick wit and dedication that makes the show better. Plus, he’s never in a bad mood, and you’ll never hear him argue with anyone, so he’s great to have around…except for his diet. He eats the weirdest vegetarian stuff that I can’t even identify.

  Jay’s wife, Ashley, is our still photographer, and she comes along on every shoot. During the first two days at any location, Ashley takes still photos of us while we’re doing interviews, researching the location, getting B-roll footage, setting up, or whatever. All her photos get uploaded to TravelChannel.com, and she’s definitely a part of the GAC inner circle. I’m weird about who I consider to be in the inner circle of the production crew, but the Wasleys, who are modern-day hippies in a way, are awesome. I could see them driving an old VW bus.

  Laughter is so important. I’m dedicated, driven, and passionate about what I do, and I control my world very tightly, but if you can’t give your friends a hard time and then laugh about it, then they’re not really your friends, or you’re in a bad situation that needs to change. We rag on each other all the time and just laugh it off. It alleviates the pressures and stresses of doing what we do. That’s the thing about us: When we’re not filming, or when I’m not under the intense pressure of doing an investigation and delivering a great TV show as the producer and/or director, we let loose. When I’m not that Zak, I’m the goofy Zak—the kid-trapped-in-an-adult’s-body Zak. Within our core family, we joke around a lot, make stupid Vine videos, tweet to each other, and talk in our own silly language on the set. The demands of our job and the constant travel are difficult, but having a family on the road that you can be yourself around is a huge benefit of being a part of the GAC, and a big relief. We can talk about anything around each other; that’s just how we are.

  When you live on the road as much as we do, with such a big group, you get to know them whether you want to or not. At times they drive you crazy, and at other times you can’t live without them. If one of us isn’t feeling well or is in a bad mood, the others pick up the slack. We’re a great big dysfunctional family that works well together whether we’re on set or off.

  I think the world would be a better place if everyone had this kind of tight-knit support system. For the most part, humans are not lone wolves, but pack animals. We congregate in groups, identify with those groups, and make sacrifices for those groups. Whether it’s a hockey team, a police squad, or a firefighting crew, the people you work hard with become your family, and that’s certainly true of the GAC.

  THAT’S WHAT MAKES IT SO REWARDING:

  THE PEOPLE.

  3

  THE DEMON HOUSE

  One kid walks backward up a wall and the world goes crazy.

  It was January 2014, and I was in San Pedro, California, when my cell phone blew up. Hundreds of emails, tweets, and text messages began pouring in about a family in Gary, Indiana, that was possessed by a demon. Their house was allegedly infested. The story had just broken in the Indianapolis Star, and a lot of people wanted to bring it to my attention. The sheer volume of people reaching out to me was the first red flag of many to come about this place, so I was immediately intrigued.

  I’ve read about and investigated many demonic possessions, but this one was different. A lot of people you wouldn’t expect to come forward—police officers, state officials, nurses, doctors, and psychologists—had witnessed supernatural phenomena with this possession and seemed to change from skeptics to believers overnight. People had experiences both inside and outside the house, the most profound of which was a boy walking backward up a wall in a nearby hospital emergency room.

  Something drew me to this story, and not just a little, but a lot. I was completely engrossed. As I was getting ready to hit my call time to film an episode of Ghost Adventures, I couldn’t get the story out of my mind. I wanted to investigate, but I knew right away that there would be a conflict. The story had already gone public, and being a TV show host, I knew that the entertainment ind
ustry would be all over it. Stories like this, especially when they’re true or backed by real events, are like crack cocaine for Hollywood. The story practically writes itself, and it has a built-in audience in the people who have been following along. The competition would be stiff.

  My first thought was to make a documentary film about what had happened in the house and to the family, because documentary filmmaking is my passion. (My 2006 documentary film Ghost Adventures is how I got into this business in the first place.) But there was something more here. This story is bigger than just me and a documentary film. It could help provide answers to some of the oldest mysteries of the paranormal world, so I wanted to be a part of it. It’s like an astrophysicist finding out that a huge meteor has just hit Indiana, and there are fragments of it all over the state. It’s what the astrophysicist has been looking for his whole life, and suddenly it’s in Indiana. So to me, getting involved was not a want, but a need. It was one of the most credible and witnessed demonic possessions I’ve ever heard about in the media, and I had to get involved.

  I hadn’t made a documentary film since 2006, and this project had a lot of great facets to it: a great story, public interest, and an unexplained paranormal phenomenon. It wasn’t about the money or about exploiting anyone. I wanted to be part of a historic paranormal event, and there was no way I was going to be stopped.

  The first thing I did was call my golden connection, Dave Schrader. Dave and I have worked together on many projects, including Paranormal Challenge, Darkness Radio, and Coast to Coast Radio. He’s a great person to network with, and he quickly got me in touch with the priest in this case, Father Michael Maginot. His name was in the headlines, so he’s the first guy I called. We talked for half an hour. I told him who I was and that I was interested in doing a film about the true events that had taken place there. He assured me that he was interested in doing a film with me, but nothing was in writing, which made me nervous because I knew that 500 people were going to be calling him. It was a headline on every major news outlet around the world, so I knew I was fighting everyone for the story: paranormal people, TV people, film producers, you name it. All the sharks would be circling. The family to whom all this had happened put up a big wall, too. After the story broke, they weren’t taking calls.