Paranormal Reality TV: We face the nightmare, we face the dread

Instead of having going to these séances, the mediums come to us though our TV screens. People still go to mediums; they always will. The difference is that now we can see them in the privacy of our own homes, call their shows guilty pleasures and maybe laugh at ourselves for giving into them without too much shame. We can follow ghost hunters around a supposedly haunted house and “look” spirits with them.

 

The Paranormal Genre

In the last several years a new genre of reality TV has emerged – the paranormal genre. Now, this genre isn’t exactly new. I remember watching Sightings on the then SciFi Channel late at night and being too scared to actually fall asleep afterwards. However, Sightings and the occasional documentary on the Discovery Channel were few and relatively far between. Now we have ghost hunting shows on almost every basic cable network; most of them, not surprisingly, on the SyFy Channel with the Biography Channel not far behind. 

It's History Repeating

The public’s interest in the paranormal is not an entirely new trend. People have always been interested in what happens in the after-life (if there is one at all) and everyone loves a good scare. Since the beginning of civilization people gathered around campfires and told each other scary stories and questioned what happened in the After so we know that our fascination with ghosts and ghost stories isn’t going anywhere.

The thing is, the public tends to gravitate towards the unexplained for explanations during times of trouble. I can tell you that my already superstitious mother has become extra-extra-superstitious since the economy went down the toilet. The paranormal subgenre of reality shows really kicked up in the early-mid 2000s, just after Sept. 11^th and the during the height of the Afghan-Iraq War, in a manner that echoed the séance hysteria that kick started during the American Civil War. Families were losing sons, being torn apart by war and politics, people turned to the supernatural for comfort. Grieving wives and parents turned to spiritualists and supposed mediums to hold séances in an attempt to contact deceased loved ones while others thought of it all as just a chance for a good scare. With the growing popularity of still photography séance attendees began to take pictures of mediums with ectoplasm supposedly spewing from their mouths. On top of this, there was also the popular of practice spirit photography - a person would sit down for a portrait and the image of a deceased person (usually a loved one) would appear in the finished photograph. One of the most famous of these images is that of Mary Todd Lincoln and her husband,the already late President Abraham Lincoln.

Now, instead of having going to these séances, the mediums come to us though our TV screens. People still go to mediums; they always will. The difference is that now we can see them in the privacy of our own homes, call their shows guilty pleasures and maybe laugh at ourselves for giving into them without too much shame. We can follow ghost hunters around a supposedly haunted house and “look” spirits with them.

There's An App For That

Watching ghost hunting shows the audience is included in what was once a closed community. They now know the vocabulary used by paranormal investigators and can throw out words and phrases like EVP and orbs and use them correctly. They know why one should use an EMF reader when going through a location and how to conduct an EVP session. The tools of the trade have now entered the mainstream with different ghost hunting apps appearing on the market.

Our TV sets and computer screens have taken the place of the campfire and Ouija boards. Not only that, but the “ability” to attempt to make contact with the Other Side is no longer limited to those with “psychic powers”.