Ghost Hunters: Like Ghostbusters Without the Marshmellow Guy

You know what would make the viewing public collectively poop their pants? If producers of Ghost Hunters kill the music and sound effects while the team from TAPS do their investigations. Silence, pure ear sucking silence, is more chilling than the "ker-chung" sound drops and weird musical ambient flow you hear while ghost detectives Jason Hawkes, Grant Wilson and their crack team of investigators tip toe their way through creepy light houses, abandoned hospitals and closed down prisons. Walking through darkness, as their faces glow under the night camera lenses, suddenly one will ask "Did you hear that?" "Yeah! I did!" Umm, well I didn't. I heard a musical sting, then you guys, then a sound that resembled the opening one second theme from Law and Order, not a ghost looking for the light.

I love this show nonetheless. Both Jason and Grant are extremely likable every day guys from Rhode Island who work for Roter-Rooters by day, and kick ghost butt by night. Taken by their own life changing experiences with ghosts, and so fascinated by the paranormal, they established The Atlantic Paranormal Society (TAPS) as a hobby, and set out to not only find ghostly beings, but to debunk any false rumors about haunted locations. Whether TAPS is actually truthful in their findings is anyone's guess. The ghost lovers on the web have debated their veracity, and sometimes I wonder what the team is truly seeing since the TLC cameras never happen to capture what the ghost hunters are reacting to, and the aforementioned M&E track drowns out the noises they hear. Yet, the last several minutes of audio and visual findings turn up interesting images and floating voices proving a haunt, or nothing at all.

My favorite moments are when the TAPS crew get the crap scared out of them. Watching these these guys get mowed down by a heat sinking orb, or freaked by a cob web touching their neck, causing them to flee, screaming like girls running from a co-ed pantie raid - well, it's pretty priceless. On the sister show Ghost Hunters International, a TAPS affiliated team from Florida went to the Philippines to investigate an old air base hospital that had some ghostly activity, and discovered the voices and movements people reported was just a homeless guy living in the basement. This turn up is sublime in its debunkery. Hope the creepy music didn't wake him up.

Ghost Hunters and Ghost Hunters International air on the SciFi Channel (Soon to be known as SyFy).