JASON HAWES: At the start the team worked together and our families were very much involved. How did this impact on you and your team and how did you feel about the changes to the show format as the seasons progressed? The TV show took off and became a huge success both in global attention and ratings. It drew people in though and got them to watch – they then realised what we were about. We hated that name as it did not reflect what we did. The only thing out of our control was the name, Ghost Hunters. In our case we had never wanted to be on television and we had the production team working around us. The people in it were cast specifically for the shows in question and had no prior involvement in the paranormal. Tonnes of shows have come and gone and the reason is simple. Mainly we carried on as we always had, however there were a few people we brought in who began to behave differently when on camera and that was addressed. My crew is my crew and it was important the team ran as it always had. JASON HAWES: Well firstly we were never casted. So, you made the decision to go ahead with the show. I sat down with Grant (Wilson) and Steve (Gonsalves) and we decided to give it a go with serious reservations, particularly as we all had good day jobs and Steve had the added pressure of being a police officer at the time. They pointed out that if we didn’t do it someone else would because of the attention we had brought. The article took off as we were not afraid to debunk an alleged haunting and it showed that we were serious about our work.Ī small company called Pilgrim contacted us (now a major production company) and said they wanted us to be ourselves and they would just follow us with cameras. In this case it turned out to be a problem created by mixed prescriptions. We told him from the outset the odds were well against finding something supernatural. Things changed when a guy called John Leland wrote an article based on an investigation with us for the New York Times. I’m not scared of being judged, I don’t give a damn if people like me or not, I am who I am and I’ll always be that person. What if we ended up harming the field of the paranormal?

We did not want to become a mockery and not seem professional. It was a real fear of people not understanding what we were doing and trying to accomplish.

We were offered our own show numerous times and turned them down as we were hugely concerned with whether the viewers would really understand what we did and would our passion translate on camera. It was the unknown 20% ‘what if’ mentality that led to production companies asking us to work with them behind the scenes on such programmes as ‘Scariest Places on Earth.’

JASON HAWES: Well first I am a firm believer in the paranormal, although at least some 80% of claims can be disproved.

Ghost Hunting by Jason Hawes