By Kenn Gold
The stars of SCI FI Channel’s Ghost Hunters will be conducting a live, real-time investigation of Waverly Hills Sanatorium, in Louisville, Kentucky on Halloween night. The stars and lead investigators of the show, Jason Hawes and Grant Wilson, recently sat down with MediaBlvd Magazine and other press outlets to talk about their experiences, and their live Halloween show.
Question> Can you tell us what you have planned for this live event?
Grant Wilson> All right. Well we did a live - six hour live show last year at Stanley Hotel. We're excited to do it again this year in Kentucky. Jay, you want to tell them about this place?
Jason Hawes> Well Waverly Hills had 63 plus thousand deaths there due to tuberculosis; so many deaths that they created what they call the death tunnel which also had a conveyor belt system to move the bodies up and down; a really interesting place. Last year we were able to catch a bunch of stuff. One of the things Grant and I caught on the thermal imaging was what appeared to be a small child run across the hallway. You were able to make out the heat signatures on his legs. So you could see the upper torso but you could see through the upper torso. It’s a very interesting location.
Grant Wilson> Yeah, Jason and I also chased some black shadow down a hallway and into a room that only had one way in and one way out. And a few investigators had stuff randomly just be thrown at them; screws, pieces of plaster when there was no plaster in the area, things like that. But we're excited. It's going to be - it's going to be interesting. We’ve got Josh Gates from Destination Truth. He's going to be hosting the show. And we'll be able to break away from the investigation here and there and chat online with some of the folks and I guess we'll have earpieces in and he can ask us questions as we're investigating that the fans want to know. So it's going to be interesting.
Question> When you do a show like this, there's the ever-present danger of six hours of live television which absolutely nothing happens. Any concern there? What do you do? Do you tap dance?
Jason Hawes> It is what it is. If we catch something great; if not, hey, that's the way it goes. Ghosts don't work on cue. So you're always taking a shot in the dark. We'll have to see. Either they'll have six hours of interesting TV or they'll be a lot of bored viewers.
Grant Wilson> But we're very aware of that aspect and we're not about to do anything to make it interesting, as far as we're not going to make stuff up paranormal. The whole goal of the show is to try and figure out what's going on there; not to necessarily capture an entity. So while we're hoping we do that, we're also going to be trying to figure the place out. And you're going to see us - see our technique and how we try to get these things to come out. And we'll be able to interact with the fans online and we'll actually be revealing who wins a contest that night too. So we're just crazy enough that it might pass as interesting if we don't catch anything paranormal.
Question> How did you get into this line of work? What turns you on to ghost hunting?
Jason Hawes> Well we both had our own personal experiences that we've always kept private. But it just took two total non-believers and threw us into this field. From there we just - we saw so much garbage out there and, you know, everybody was pretty much following everybody else's lead. We just - we had totally different ideas on how to investigate the paranormal. So we just took it from there.
Question> Of all the places you've been, how does this one rate on your Ghost Hunters' meter?
Grant Wilson> That's a good question.
Jason Hawes> Waverly Hills is a great place. It's definitely up there and also the mere size of the location makes it a great place to be filming a show. You know, it definitely ranks up on one of the top places that I've investigated and I'm looking forward to getting there.
Question> Halloween night's supposed to bring out ghosts? Is there a connection? Would ghosts know it?
Jason Hawes> Well of course the old fables say that it's the night when the veil is the thinnest between our world and theirs, but I think it's more just it's the folklore of it all. The whole fact that all through September, October into November, that every channel you turn it to is playing horror films. Also the fact that most people claim more paranormal activity during these months. And you got to think because most people now instead of spending time at the beach are spending time in their home. It's getting colder. The heat system's kicking on. All these little things making the house pop and crack sometimes making wood floors sound like there's footsteps. So there are definitely a lot of things that fall into play with that.
Question> Does the 63,000 deaths play into it, because you had obviously a lot of bad experiences going on there in life?
Grant Wilson> Well you think about it. I mean out of 63,000 people, chances are the odds are in your favor rather than a place where maybe two people died. But that's not really the factor in there. It's just the claims year after year after year and we know the people who own the place and the stuff they tell us that they experience on a regular basis is stuff we experienced ourselves. that makes the stuff we haven't experienced that they told us, think that we could. Because, obviously if they say something happens and we experience it, then maybe some other things are true as well.
Question> Have you ever seen a real full-blow aberration?
Jason Hawes> Yeah. I've been lucky enough to actually see one standing right in front of us. Grant and I were on a case together not too long ago and there was one right there standing in a bedroom that we were able to walk in and put our arms through before it disappeared.
Question> Did it say anything?
Jason Hawes> No, this never said a word. It never even moved. It just looked like - it was a black shadowy mass and kind of like if you're looking at concrete where you're getting the ripple effect from the heat…
Grant Wilson> A heat wave, yeah.
Jason Hawes> Yeah, that's exactly what it looked like.
Question> Does that make you guys true believers?
Jason Hawes> I was a believer before that just due to my own experiences but I am a firm believer in the paranormal. I just believe that over 80% of all claims can be disproved.
Question> Do you guys do this all year now?
Grant Wilson> No. No. No. We're still plumbers for Roto-Rooter.
Question> Why are some people such true believers and others so skeptical of the kind of thing you do?
Jason Hawes> Well a skeptic is just somebody who hasn't had an experience yet. To be honest with you, I'm really not concerned about what the skeptics think. You know, some of their advice sometimes is great, but the thing is we're not there to appease the skeptics. We're there to help the people who called us into their home whether they have an issue or not. They called us in because they're worried; they're scared. So we're there to help them.
Grant Wilson> Yeah and you can never prove the paranormal exists to skeptics. They have to have an experience. That's how you prove it to them. So there's no point in trying to show them pictures and video as proof. It will never happen.
Question> Do you think that everybody who dies has a ghost or just people who are unhappy or troubled?
Jason Hawes> Oh it would appear that for whatever reason, certain people decide to hang around whether it's to keep an eye on a family member or they're attached to an object or it was just they don't even know that they have passed on.
Grant Wilson> Yeah, we're not really sure why they're around just because we can't interview them in a credible sense. I mean there are psychics that say they talk to them but, that doesn't really stand up on its own two feet. So I'm not sure why but there are some weird things that happen.
Question> Do you take steps to prevent hoaxing? And I'm just thinking of the live show with Waverly being such a large place. Do you walk through and clear people out?
Jason Hawes> Absolutely.
Grant Wilson> Yeah.
Jason Hawes> And there will also be security there making sure nobody can get in.
Grant Wilson> The last live show there were 200 people running security. And obviously working on the show too and we're going to have the same setup there, you know, be people patrolling the whole time to make sure no one sneaks in or does anything.
Question> How you decide what equipment to take out? It seems like a lot of the stuff is kind of based on thermal and thermal imaging. Have you thought about looking at the paranormal in other ways or other wavelengths?
Grant Wilson> We are constantly trying to find new equipment to make it easier to understand what's going on. They don't make this stuff Ghost Hunters R Us. You have to take stuff from all different fields. And we originally got the thermal imaging camera because we thought we were going to be able to catch cold spots and hot spots with it because that's what people complain about a lot. But we found out that it doesn't really do that well. It helps you find drafts from windows and things, but we're finding that we catch a whole bunch of stuff that our other cameras don't pick up. And so, thank goodness, because it was a lot of money. We're constantly looking for new technology and new ideas and we have a lot of stuff. We just had custom built Faraday cages that we can put around our microphones to cut out all wireless or signals from cell phones and walkie talkies and stuff like that. We're constantly trying to expand our arsenal.
Question> Do you have scientists that give advice or kind of advise you or do the new ideas come from just other people that have similar experiences?
Jason Hawes> Well there are a bunch of members on the team that nobody will ever see. Because of their jobs, they can't be on camera. But we do deal with forensic scientists, nuclear physicists, electrical engineers, you name it. These people definitely help us out with equipment. Some of them actually modify the equipment for us. And yeah, it's not like they make stuff that's designed for hunting ghosts
Grant Wilson> Yeah, and it's the more the show gets out there, the more you start to get accepted and people, you know, that have doctorates and that can make an influence and change start to contact you because they realize that, you know, you're not going to believe everything you see. And they want to help you. So it's good. It's building and growing.
Question> It seems like occasionally you come across a place that has a lot of hot spots or a lot of activity and there may only see that one incident or even no incidents. Just in your experience, do you have the feel for sort of what makes this happen or is it connected to a person usually?
Grant Wilson> Well you definitely get a sense of if a place is going to have something happen or not. And of course it doesn't happen on queue. And you can investigate for three weeks straight and have nothing happen and then come back next week and it goes crazy. We're fully aware of that. We don't have any kind of super powers or anything like that. But just doing something long enough, you kind of get a knack for it. And because the show is so popular, we get so many case requests; we're able to kind of raise to the cream of the crop of the cases. And so we get a little bit more success rate. But of course we filmed, like first season I think we filmed 30 cases and only about 13 or 14 of those actually made it to TV. So, if a case is just lame, we're not going to show it and put you guys to sleep of course.
Question> When you're doing the regular show on Sci Fi, how many hours of work and film and everything actually go into the hour of TV that we see?
Jason Hawes> Oh geez, well let's see. Sometimes 2-1/2 weeks. Yeah, we - a lot of these places it might like look like we're there four or five hours, but most of these places we're there four or five days. So but then they cut it all down to the 43 minutes of television that you're able to see.
Grant Wilson> Well you think, if you do 10 hours of investigation in just one night, right? And you have six cameras set up, well now there's 60 hours of footage you've got to watch and so that all adds up. Take a lot of time.
Question> What are you doing differently this year for the live show? What have you learned from last year's live show that you'll be incorporating into this year?
Jason Hawes> We're just going to do what we normally do. We're just going to go and we're going to investigate the way we've been doing it and hope that something shows up.
Grant Wilson> We honestly don't do anything different on a live show than we do normally. We may talk a little bit more because otherwise people would fall asleep. That's about it.
Jason Hawes> Yeah, we just go. We have fun. We enjoy what we're doing.
Question> And are there any places that you've wanted to go to that you haven't had the ability to yet?
Jason Hawes> I'd love to get to the Amityville and shoot that place down.
Grant Wilson> I always say I want to go investigate the haunted mansion down in Orlando. I think I can debunk that place. No, I'd like to get over to Japan because they have some interesting historical hauntings, but it quite the distance.
