Glamorous Ghost Hunting

It’s a Wednesday night and you’ve tuned into the Sci-Fi channel for a Ghost Hunters fix. Jason, Grant, Steve, and the rest of the team show up at an old, historical building somewhere in New England, set up their cameras, and begin their investigation. You see 20 minutes of the six investigators walking through the property, EMF detectors, digital audio recorders, and temperature probes in hand. Every now and then, Jason and Grant head through the various rooms with a Flir thermal camera (worth about $12,000). After 20 minutes of highlights, of Grant hearing a knocking from a far corner, Jason seeing a shadow, and Steve pestering Tango, they break down their equipment and head off into the sunrise. After the commercial break, we see Steve and Tango happily going over evidence. They’re watching the infra-red camera recordings and listening to audio. For five minutes, you see them catch a sound or two or shadows on the screen. The final five minutes are taken up with Jason and Grant revealing the evidence, or lack thereof, to the client.

What you don’t see is me, Heather, novice ghost hunter, watching six. mind. numbing. hours. of video for our Georgia group. Video of a bonus room. With a futon in the middle of the room.

Six hours.

Mind-numbing.

The futon never moved, dammit.

No ghosts dancing across the screen for my entertainment. No investigators performing mime. No family dog sauntering across the screen to lick itself. Just a futon and a bookshelf and the intermittent investigator walking in and walking out.

You also don’t see novice Heather nodding off and pausing the recording for 15 minutes to wash dishes. Then going back for more until the numb sets back in and a 15-minute break is needed for some Hairspray action. More futon excitement for an hour until I nod off and decide I need to read some blogs for a few minutes. I’m pretty sure Steve and Tango take frequent breaks to watch Die Hard or back episodes of Sesame Street. Maybe they even do interpretive dance. Or, maybe not. Maybe they watch all six hours straight with no breaks. Maybe I’m just a loser.

Crap.