by Zak Bagans
A great documentary filmmaker has to put together a great crew and be a great leader for that crew. You have to know what you want from them, be strict and organized, and know how to bring out their best. And speaking of people, you can’t let anything or anyone affect your creativity or color your vision for the film. A strong filmmaker doesn’t compromise his standards or let other people run the show. A weak person may not be able to handle a certain shoot or a particular person, so he ends up being more lenient on the production itself. This is not and never will be me or the people I work with. I make sure to bring in only the most professional and dedicated people who understand my vision for a project, which has been a big part of my success.
You have to make sure that everything you shoot—every interview, every piece of B-roll footage—follows your direction and is in line with your creative vision. You can’t let anyone mess with that. A documentary is a hunt to find the end of your story. It’s a mission, and you can never let go of it or give up on it. If you do, you can give away your title as a documentary filmmaker. You’ve lost your dignity and let yourself down.
No matter what the circumstances, a great filmmaker finds a way to get it done. If you run into financial problems or some other major hurdle, you can’t give up. Ghost Adventures (the film) was shot on a shoestring budget, but I never let that interfere with the storytelling. You have to be Braveheart about it and fight for your freedom. Ironically, though, I don’t recommend documentary filmmaking as a career. It’s not easy, and in some cases you put your life on the line to carry out your vision.
IT’S A TOUGH BUSINESS THAT EATS ITS YOUNG.
31
EX-GIRLFRIENDS’ GHOSTS
Women are hard enough to handle without their ghosts, too.
Some guys say, “All my exes live in Texas.” For me, all my exes get haunted and freaked out by evil spirits. It’s the nature of dating me. Over a period of two years, every girl I dated was affected by the spirit attachments I had during that time. I couldn’t help it. Every time I came back from an investigation, I seemed to bring back baggage that would attack whoever I was dating. It was awful. Over those two years, I’d say twelve women were affected in some way, and half of them experienced severe attacks. Dealing with women is hard enough. Demons make it nearly impossible.
A spiritual healer from Hungary told me that I had a possessive female spirit following me around and a demonic attachment. I don’t doubt it. In fact, two separate healers came up with this same diagnosis, and neither one knew the other, so I believe it. It made sense to me, so for a while I had all the women I dated sign waivers so I wouldn’t be responsible for anything that happened to them.
I’m joking.
When the attacks died down, I thought it was over. In the past year I haven’t had any paranormal activity at my house, which is a big relief since before then, every woman was getting attacked in some way when she came over. But recently, an ex-girlfriend called me out of the blue to tell me that she was having severe experiences with a spirit at home. Two weeks later, another woman said the same thing. No, there’s no way they could have collaborated on this. They don’t know about each other, have never met, and live in different states.
Coincidence? C’mon. Look who we’re talking about here.
The first girlfriend (we’ll call her Ms. Blue) had a serious problem, and I had to go to her apartment because things were getting so bad. I hadn’t seen her in a long time, so yeah, it was awkward, but I wanted to help. So I went over one night to see what was going on. Apparently a spirit was attacking her and her roommate. It also damaged the apartment itself, tearing down the blinds, raising the washing machine lid, turning lights on and off, and opening and closing doors, and taunted Ms. Blue while she was sleeping. As soon as I walked into the apartment, I could feel that something wasn’t right. The air was heavy, and we definitely weren’t alone.
I’ve done this job for many years now, and I’ve conducted hundreds of interviews with people who have been traumatized by spirits. Ms. Blue and her roommate were legitimately freaked out and concerned for their well-being (it wasn’t a booty call, for those of you who may be wondering). So I walked in, sat down on the couch, started talking to them, and immediately felt uneasy.
It was worse upstairs in the bedrooms. I couldn’t even stay in Ms. Blue’s room because something unfriendly was there, pushing me out like it knew I could sense it and fight it. It wasn’t as strong in her roommate’s room, but it was still there, so we went downstairs to talk. That’s when things got worse.
I’m a sensitive and an empath and can channel the emotions of the spirits around me, and this one was angry. Really angry. Within seconds I was aggravated and wanted to do the women harm, and I knew that the negative energy wasn’t coming from me. Something was trying to make me feel its rage. Luckily I recognized what was going on and got out before I could cause any trouble. Outside the apartment, I told them that something was in there and it wasn’t good, and they needed to leave before it affected them permanently. I had gone over there just to reassure them that everything was okay, but I was unprepared for what I found.
The thing is, after I dated Ms. Blue, she had a bad relationship with a man who got her into trouble. He was a bad influence and almost destroyed her life—the kind of guy you wouldn’t want around your daughter, like Mark Wahlberg’s character in the movie Fear. About six months before the night I went to her apartment to see what was going on, he was shot and killed, so my first thought was that this spirit was him coming back to dominate her from the other side. He seemed like a usual suspect, and that’s who you always start with.
But then two weeks later, another ex-girlfriend (we’ll call her Ms. Green) texted me with almost the exact same story. It matched Ms. Blue’s nearly word for word—damaged blinds, doors opening and closing, lights turning on and off, the works. Did I think it was a conspiracy? Sure. But trust me, there’s no way these women could have cooked up this story between them, especially since I felt the spirit at Ms. Blue’s apartment and knew she wasn’t faking it. They don’t even know each other. So how was it that they were having the same issues?
And then it hit me. Could the same spirit have moved from Ms. Blue’s apartment to Ms. Green’s? Did the attachment travel from one place to the other? Remember what I said about the possessive female spirit that attacked women in my house? Hell hath no fury like a jealous woman, right? Could it be that this malevolent spirit remembered them from when they would come to my house and was trying to terrorize them both? Could it be that it was trying to feed off their fear and knew that it could manipulate me by getting me involved? It’s like a funky triangle of jealousy. It’s the worst kind of love triangle you can imagine—one with a demon chick involved…literally. She’s baaaaaaaaaack.
Fortunately, the attacks have subsided (at the time this book is being published, at least). Sometimes hauntings last a long time, and sometimes they last only a short while and then go away: The entity gets what it wants and then leaves the victim(s) alone. I didn’t really do anything to stop them, but the attacks ended, which is fine by me. But let this be a warning to any woman who wants to date me. I’m not a stalker, but some sort of bitchy spirit watching over me is.
GEORGE STRAIT’S EXES MAY LIVE IN TEXAS,
BUT MINE GET POSSESSED.
32
CRAZY FANS
Some of you scare me.
I have a dungeon that has become my refuge, and many days I just want to stay there. We all need a safe harbor where we can get away from everything and feel secure. Since I am a fan of Dracula and the dark bits of life, it was only fitting for me to remodel my basement into a dungeon when I had some extra money. It’s me, and it’s the one place I can retreat to when I’ve had enough of everything—especially people who have no boundaries.
I was filming an episode of Paranormal Challenge at the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum in West Virginia when Dave Schrader, Chris Fleming, and I decided to get something t
o eat at McDonald’s. (Don’t judge me.) It was evening, and we were done filming for the day. Since Weston, West Virginia, is a small town, we figured we would sit inside and eat. What could happen, right?
As we strode across the parking lot, I noticed one of those old child molester vans in the back of the lot. It looked like the A-Team van from the early 1980s, except this one had no windows, so I was a little on edge with each step—and with good reason, it turned out. When we were about halfway to the door of the McDonald’s, the sliding door of the van opened, and two women came running toward us.
“Zak, you need to say hello to my daughter,” the older woman said.
“Hello,” I said.
“Do you not recognize her?”
I was starting to feel uneasy. Seeing the way they carried themselves, I could tell that something about them was off, and not in a good way. “No, I don’t recognize her,” I replied. The girl, who was probably fifteen or sixteen, suddenly covered her face with her hands and burst into tears.
Oh boy. Here we go.
“Well, Zak, you’ve been having sex with my daughter through astral projection, and now she’s pregnant!”
And there it was.
Dave Schrader has been around a lot of strange people and could see right away that this wasn’t a good situation. He took charge and told the woman to leave or we would call the police, then ushered Chris and me inside. A few moments and a couple of comments later, they complied and went back to their van, while we went into Mickey D’s to laugh it off over some Big Mac goodness. All good, right?
Nope.
Twenty minutes later, the van returned, and I envisioned the sliding door opening and a machine gun opening fire on us. Seriously, the mother was clearly ten cents short of a two-dollar bill, and she didn’t seem to care how far the situation might escalate. As she marched toward the door of the McDonald’s, I got angrier with every step she took. I don’t want to be harassed while I’m trying to enjoy a meal with my friends, and I won’t shy away from a confrontation to stand up for my privacy. We met her in the entryway, and this woman proceeded to repeat that her daughter was crying because she’d been astral projecting herself and having a sexual relationship with me in the astral plane for a long time, and now she was expecting our love child. Someone was cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs.
FUN FACT:
THE ASTRAL PLANE IS A THEORETICAL PLANE OF EXISTENCE THAT MANY RELI GIONS BELI EVE SOULS CROSS OVER BEFORE BEING BORN AND AFTER DEATH. SOME BELI EVE THAT THE ASTRAL PLANE CAN BE VI SITED CONSCIOUSLY THROUGH ASTRAL PROJECTION, MEDITATION AND MANTRA, NEAR-DEATH EXPERIENCE, LUCID DREAMING, OR OTHER MEANS. SOME CLAIM THAT THEY CAN USE THE “ASTRAL VEHICLE” TO SEPARATE THEIR CONSCIOUSNESS FROM THE PHYSICAL BODY AND TRAVEL THROUGH THE ASTRAL PLANE, BUT HAVI NG SEX ACROSS IT? THAT WOULD BE AN INCREDIBLE FEAT OF METAPHYSICS.
Dave and I calmly pointed out how crazy this story sounded and how she should listen to what she was implying. Only the Holy Spirit can impregnate women without physical contact. I am not the Holy Spirit, and I was pretty sure that neither was her daughter. We again implored her to leave before the police came, and thankfully she did without resorting to violence, but I was on edge the whole time. Some people are good at hiding their intentions and will swing into unpredictability at a moment’s notice. I kept expecting her to do something rash, but thankfully she never did. I never saw those two again, but I’ll never look at a Big Mac the same way.
Unfortunately, the paranormal world attracts a lot of people like this. Though I suspect that every field of entertainment has its fair share of eccentrics, there seems to be a large concentration of bizzaro characters in the paranormal world. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. I don’t know if it’s the subject of death or the spiritual side of life that attracts oddballs, but we seem to flock to it…myself included. I’m not normal and I never have been, but that doesn’t mean it’s okay to get obsessed with me, like this next person did.
Dave Schrader used to host events through his Darkness Radio platform where he would invite 300 to 500 fans to spend three days at a haunted location with us and some of our friends in the paranormal profession, like Jeff Belanger and Mark and Debby Constantino. Anyone could come and greet us at a social get-together, listen to lectures on the paranormal, participate in a ghost hunt, and help raise money for charity. While it was a great time for everyone and 99 percent of the fans were great, there was always that 1 percent who were better suited to America’s Most Wanted than Ghost Adventures.
A couple years ago we were doing one of these events at the Stanley Hotel in Colorado. The Stanley is a beautiful estate nestled in the mountains about two hours outside of Denver. It’s famous for being the hotel where Stephen King had a paranormal experience that inspired him to write The Shining. Though it’s definitely haunted, it’s not a very violent place, so it’s a perfect environment for bringing in fans with little or no paranormal experience. On the first night we did an auction to raise money for local charities. (That part isn’t relevant to the story. I’m just proud to say it.) I was passing through the hotel lobby after the auction when a woman stopped me and asked if she could show me a picture she had painted of me. I said sure, and I thought it was a really cool gesture—until she pulled out a painting of an empty room.
“Is this someplace I’ve investigated?” I asked.
“No. This is the room you’re going to die in,” she answered.
“Excuse me?”
“Yeah. This is the room you’re going to die in, of respiratory failure.”
It’s amazing how fast the human mind can switch from happiness to hellfire rage. I went off. I couldn’t help it. Something about this incident really incensed me, and I lost my mind. I yelled at her to get out of the building before Chris Fleming, who has a knack for getting between me and crazy fans, stepped in to calm me down. Some people think that I won’t stand up for myself—that because I’m a public figure, they can say what they want and I’ll just laugh it off because I don’t want to be seen losing my cool on TMZ, but they’re wrong. I’ll defend myself if I feel threatened, and I won’t care about the damage it causes until later. Part of me regrets blowing up at her, but another part of me doesn’t.
When this happened, I honestly wasn’t sure whether this woman was possessed by a demon that was trying to torture me. Chris got the same feeling, and I’ve learned to trust his instincts. It may explain why I got so mad so fast. I don’t know what Chris did to get rid of the woman, but I saw him a little while later, and he just said that he had resolved the situation, like some bad-ass sniper.
Okay, one more crazy fan story. I have a hundred of them. I’m not trying to ridicule anyone, but you just can’t make this stuff up, and there’s a point to it all eventually.
The scene was Scarefest 2013 in St. Louis. Scarefest draws a lot of people and is a great time, but because I’m an empath and a sensitive, it can also be a daunting adventure in sensory overload for me. When hundreds of people are standing in line to meet me, I can feel their emotions and energy, and it’s overwhelming. It’s like being in the middle of a loud, crowded rave with lights flashing and bass thumping. Your senses are assaulted from all sides, and there’s no way out. Just like a paranormal investigation, an event like Scarefest where I interact with hundreds of people is totally draining, and when it’s over I want to crawl into bed for a week or get lost in Red Rock Canyon.
I’ve always enjoyed Scarefest, though. It’s run well, and they go out of their way to make me feel comfortable and secure. In 2009 I had just filed a restraining order against the craziest fan of all time, who had threatened to show up at Scarefest and kill me. So the organizers made sure that I had two jolly green giants escorting me everywhere I went. It was overkill, but you never know when someone is going to follow through on a threat, and then everyone is left to say, “We should have seen it coming.” So I appreciate what they did for me.
At the 2013 show, I arrived early and went to check out my booth. I noticed that t
here was no security, and the VIP ticket holders were allowed to walk freely around the main floor before the show started. I was cool with that. But while I was setting up the booth, a strange woman approached and showed me a collection of photos of me in various places—photos I’d never seen before. She had pictures of me doing everyday things like getting juice at a health food store and hanging out with a friend. It was like a private investigator’s file or something.
“You better watch yourself,” she said.
“Excuse me?”
“I know someone who’s photographing your house in Vegas and your cars when the garage is open and every facet of your life.”
Like I was during the encounter with the woman who said that I was going to die of respiratory failure in the room she’d painted, I was instantly angry. This woman may have been mentally off, but I don’t tolerate this sort of stuff. I genuinely like to meet fans and hang out with the people who have made myself and the show popular, but not if it means putting up with threats or being bullied. I’m not taking time out of my life to interact with people who just want to harass me.
As you may have noticed, I have a short fuse. I don’t ever want to blow up and do something stupid that’s going to get me in trouble. I know this about myself, so I brought a friend with me to Scarefest who’s about 6'8" and 280 pounds. He told the woman to leave, and she did, but she continued to cause problems throughout the event. All weekend she spread rumors that people were watching me and I was doomed. It was disturbing, and I wasn’t happy about her having unrestricted access to me, so that was the last time I attended Scarefest. It’s unfortunate that one fan can ruin it for everyone else, but that’s the way it goes sometimes.
Some people just don’t have any boundaries or filters and go out of their way to try to hurt you for whatever sick reason they’re harboring. I don’t want to get shot by a disgruntled stalker or, even worse, see a fan get caught in the crossfire when a stalker comes after me, so I stay in my house 90 percent more than I used to. But you know what? I asked for this life, so I have to deal with all the trappings that come with it.
