Spirits, Begone! I’m Talking with the Ghost Lab Guys

This morning, I finally got my interview with the guys of Discovery Channel’s new paranormal series Ghost Lab and something very strange happened. I do all of my interviews through Skype with the Pamela add-on to record the call. I’ve been doing this for a couple of years now and have logged nearly 100 perfect recordings. Today, the software did what it was supposed to. The counter clicked off the time, the bars hopped up and down showing a voice signal but when I went to transcribe the interview I found only my voice and not theirs. A half hour of recorded time and nothing but long, silent pauses between my questions.

Are the spirits conspiring against me? Were they trying to prevent me from talking with the newest ghost hunters on the TV scene? If so, they should have broken my pencil, too because I took notes.

Brothers Barry (front) and Brad Klinge are good old Texas boys who use the “scientific method” approach to ghost hunting. They rely on “real-time” analysis, using equipment in their mobile lab to constantly monitor and evaluate data streams while they’re still on location and actively investigating a scene.

Says Brad, “Most groups don’t go over their data until days. . . sometimes months later. ‘Oh, I got an EVP but now we’re 500 miles away.’ Even if you can go back, hot spots change. You can’t recreate exactly what was happening then. So we work in real time. We have people in the Ghost Lab truck monitoring the video, audio, EMF and temperature for spikes so we can check them out right way.”

Real-time monitoring is important if you’re interested in determining the cause behind the effect. Be it a spike in the EMF readings, a drop in temperature or footsteps in the hall, having the data analyzed instantly gives the crew a chance to go back and see if they can recreate the event.

“We don’t just want to catch something, we want to know why we caught it,” says Brad. “That’s why we think of this as a “case study” not an investigation. It’s research and like any science experiment, you can’t do it once and say it’s true. You have to get the same result over and over again.”

Says brother Barry, “Our goal is not to disprove, but to prove the paranormal through science.” They do this by attempting to connect all of the corresponding data in order to get a bigger, clearer picture of what’s happening at a scene.

ALPHABET SOUP

Take the concept of EMF. Every ghost hunting reality show and even fictional shows such as Supernatural work on the premise that a spike on an EMF detector means paranormal activity (as long as the spike can’t be attributed to visible factors like power lines.) But who decided that this was the case? What does one thing have to do with the other?

“That’s a good question,” says Brad. “When we first got into this, we asked the same thing. All of our beliefs are that ghosts are natural energy and energy can’t be created or destroyed only transferred.” And that energy can be quantified and monitored with a meter.

The brothers go on to theorize that an area with a lot of electromagnetic energy from a natural source such as power lines or even camera batteries, is like a “ghost buffet.” Spirits need to energy to manifest so they are attracted to areas with high EMF readings. (I’m typing this from my notes, so if I’ve got this wrong, please do correct me.)

Next to EMF, EVP is probably the most known combination of letters in the ghost hunting vocabulary and the Klinge brothers have a doozy of an example coming up on tonight’s show.

While investigating the theater where John Wilkes Booth was supposed to have gone after assassinating Lincoln, the brothers picked up an EVP that left them literally dancing in the streets.

Says Brad, “We caught a voice saying, ‘yes, I’m John Wilkes Booth.’ What are the odds of getting something like that?”

What are the odds indeed? True to their scientific nature, the team sent the audio file to an audio forensics company with no indication of what they thought they had. The results? “Really good feedback,” says Brad but is that going to be good enough for the viewing audience?

I WANT TO BELIEVE

“You gather the evidence, then you present it to the public and say it’s for real,” says Barry. “People are going to doubt you but there’s nothing you can do about that. In the end, you only have your integrity.” And integrity is something that’s not taken lightly in the Lone Star state where the boys were raised.

If, as a viewer, you’re hoping for something a little more visceral, how about flying silverware? That’s what they say we’ll see next week when they visit the most haunted place in Texas

“It’s in Waxahachie, Texas near Dallas,” says Barry. “A café called the Catfish Plantation. We were there having a meeting and the silverware kept dancing on the table. You’ll see. It’s next week’s episode and it’s the most haunted place we’ve ever seen.”

Wrapping up the call, Barry and Brad Klinge spoke of the insane competition between ghost hunting groups and not just the ones vying for TV ratings. They say they’d rather work together so that their combined research can advance the study of the paranormal.

Says Barry, “To quote a phrase, we’re all in this together and if we can help bring ghost hunting into the mainstream than that’s good news for all of us.”

But I still have to ask the question: why another ghost hunting show?

The brothers’ answer? “Because they’re popular.”

You can’t get anymore honest than that.

So that’s it, SFUniverse readers. I know some of you had some passionate things to say about this latest foray into the world of TV ghost hunting but after talking with Klinge brothers, I’m ready to change my mind. The Ghost Lab series and the promo photos offered by the network make the brothers look like brutish biker dudes. But on the phone I found them both to be well-spoken, intelligent, and friendly people and never once did I feel like I was being given a song and dance. They seem to be genuinely interested in scientifically proving the existence of ghosts. And who knows, if they really did catch footage of flying silverware, then I’ll move them up to the top of my list of best ghost hunting shows on TV.

Ghost Lab airs Tuesdays at 10:00 on Discovery Channel.

Photographer: Jean-Marc Giboux
Credit: Discovery Channel