Is Zak Bagans Just a Big Ol’ Fraud?

Zak Bagans is one of the numerous paranormal investigators who can be found on the TV screen. His main TV show is something called Ghost Adventures, though like a lot of his counterparts, he has shown up in a number of TV shows based on the same theme. Primarily, Bagans stands out in that he adopts a more aggressive approach than most of his counterparts, which makes for a similar but not quite the same sort of viewing experience.

Is Zak Bagans a Fraud?

Unsurprisingly, Ghost Adventures is fake. We know this because one of the main contributors to the earliest seasons, Aaron Goodwin, stated as much. First, he said that the producers would manipulate their recordings from time to time, which is rather revealing for something that is supposed to be focused on finding the truth. Second, he said that the producers would coach the cast members on their reactions in the scenes shown on the TV show, which extended to the reshooting of entire scenes when the results were less than satisfactory. The showrunners’ response was to boot Goodwin from Ghost Adventures, which was understandable but nonetheless cause for skepticism.

Besides Goodwin’s claims, there are more reasons to suspect that Ghost Adventures is less than truthful. For example, there was the time when one person on the TV show claimed to have had an EMF meter knocked out of his hands when the truth was that he had thrown it. To the TV show’s credit, its cast members admitted that there was no supernatural explanation for what had been shown on the TV screen, but the fact that they let said individual on their TV show does not exactly inspire great confidence in their ability to distinguish fact from fiction. Furthermore, it is worth noting that Ghost Adventures can be much more dramatic with its claims than a lot of its counterparts, as shown by the time that Bagans claimed to have been possessed by an evil spirit on the screen. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, which makes it rather unfortunate that Ghost Adventurers has nothing to offer than what can be found on any TV show of its kind.

Speaking of which, dramatic claims are something of a specialty for Ghost Adventures. For example, the interviews with people on the sites are stuffed full of claims of spectral faces, spectral bodies, and other spectacular shows of the supernatural, but the footage produce nothing more special than the usual succession of EVPs, unclear images, and off-screen sounds. In other words, the sort of thing that tends to have mundane explanations, but can be exploited to convince people that there could be something of interest. The whole thing isn’t helped by Bagans’s rather dramatic behavior on the TV screen, though there are skeptics who just call it an excellent example of bad acting.

Summed up, while people should feel free to watch Ghost Adventures for the sake of entertainment, they should maintain a sense of skepticism when it comes to such things. The world is huge, meaning that there are still plenty of unknown things out there waiting to be found by those who are willing to put in the time and the effort. However, there comes a point when an open mind is just another example of gullibility.