Dark World: Into the Shadows with the Lead Investigator of the Ghost Adventures Crew (4 page)

We complied.

I still wonder what would have happened if we had stayed. That event is one of the reasons I wanted to do this full-time and return to get answers someday (we would have two more incidents with this hotel in the following years—more on that later).

We captured voices on our digital recorders that we didn’t hear until long after we returned to Las Vegas. That was one of our first lessons of paranormal investigation: disembodied voices usually occur at a frequency lower than normal human ears can detect, so you don’t even know that you’ve captured a spirit voice until you rewind the recorder and listen (recorders can pick up sounds above and below normal hearing range).

After a year of putting the material together, we submitted the finished product, titled
Ghost Adventures
, to the New York International Film and Video Festival and won their prize for best documentary film. It was also nominated for best feature film at the Eerie Horror Film Festival in 2006. Finally, NBC Universal picked it up to air seven times in a year on the Syfy Channel where it made their top ten list. The snowball started rolling.

We formed the Ghost Adventures Crew network, a group of like-minded paranormal investigators across the country. Suddenly I was being recognized in public and found myself talking to fans for hours. Usually I’m the one wanting to talk to people about my experiences, but after the film aired people approached me about the film and their experiences. It was a weird role reversal that took a lot of getting used to and I’m still not completely at ease with it. I always considered myself an average guy who experienced something extraordinary and wanted to share it with the world, not a celebrity.

I met a man named Wayne Allen Root who was experienced in television, and I asked him if he would help me turn the documentary into a television show. He pointed me in the right direction and introduced me to the right people. During those pitch meetings I would get emotional and physically shake at the opportunity to bring the paranormal to the world, but to be honest, I was shaking for another reason. I still suffered from social anxiety disorder and had a hard time speaking in front of a group of people. Before my paranormal experience, I would stutter, stammer, sweat, and become generally scared at the thought of being the center of attention. After coming face to face with a ghost, those feelings slowly subsided. During the making of the documentary I discovered that what most people call creepy, scary, and spooky, I call comfy, cozy, and home.

Two weeks after pitching the idea to the Travel Channel they offered us a full season of
Ghost Adventures
. Our charisma and chemistry made us likable enough and our investigation style gave us credibility. It was gratifying because it verified that we did the documentary right, despite having no experience in the field. We showed that we could advance the paranormal science and that a lot of people believed in us.

I’ve been criticized over the years for sensationalizing our investigations and overreacting to the evidence we collect. I don’t deny that I get excited, but that’s what happens when you’re passionate about what you do. I am a paranormal investigator to the core. Every part of me is invested in this life and is completely committed to finding paranormal entities and bringing them to light. Would you want it any other way?

Fast Facts about Zak

I get some of the weirdest questions, so I’d like to dispel a few myths and throw out some fast facts about me:

• I’ve never worshipped the devil, studied the secrets of voodoo, or drunk blood for protection from evil spirits.
  
• I’ve never been called a savior or a patron saint.
  
• I’ve never battled a zombie, Ninja’d a ghoul, or rode a bull.
  
• I’ve never been referred to as “The Zak.”
  
• I like science fiction, think baseball is boring, and believe artificial sweetener is worth the extra calories.
  
• I’m a great wingman.
  
• I think Star Wars is better than Star Trek.
  
• I fantasize about having a beer with Chevy Chase.
  
• I have one scar underneath each eyebrow from falling into a glass table as a kid and from a particularly nasty hammock incident.
  
• I have five tattoos.
  
• I’ve had a stalker and had to issue a restraining order against him.
  
• I now have a concealed weapons permit.
  
• I’m addicted to history because today’s fast-paced, technological society wears me down and the rugged, simpler life of years gone by is enticing.
  
• I’m very much a believer in Karma and what goes around comes around.
  
• My biggest influences are the deceased people I meet. Growing up it was Ralph Waldo Emerson.
  
• Wounded veterans choke me up.
  
• Animal cruelty is the shame of mankind.
  

Back tattoo—

Symbolizes my experience in Poveglia, Italy.

Fight between good and evil.

hosts get a bad rap. If we believed everything
that came out of Hollywood, then ghosts would throw hatchets, push people over cliffs, and possess entire kitchens that just happen to be full of sharp knives. After several years of doing this job, I can verify the exact opposite is true. Sure there are demons and wraiths who seek to harm the living, but there are just as many virtuous, misunderstood spirits with good intentions as there are mischievous and evil ones. Crossing over from the physical realm to the spiritual side does not instantly make someone a bad person (and let’s remember these are still people in a nonphysical form). There are spirits whose desire to help people carries over with them. There are confused spirits who just want answers, and there are child spirits who just want to play.

Energy

Before we set a single foot in the afterlife, it’s critical to understand the one core assumption that just about every paranormal theory hinges on:
spirits are composed of weak energy and are not capable of manifesting themselves into sound or sight until they come in contact with a greater amount of energy that they can borrow or take altogether
. The presence of an energy source gives them the ability to manifest as sight or sound. This is key to understanding the paranormal. I believe in this theory and in fact it’s probably the one constant I’ve found throughout my travels and observations with the paranormal. Spirits can gather energy from just about anything: electronic equipment, lights, cameras, batteries, cars, EMF pumps, water, and even human beings. One of the reasons I believe the Rolling Hills Asylum is such a hotbed of paranormal activity is because it sits directly across the street from a power generation plant, giving the spirits inside something to feed off of. It’s the one core theory that has pervaded this field and proven to be true over the decades of recorded paranormal science.

Supporting this theory is the Law of Energy Conservation, which states that energy can neither be created nor destroyed in a closed system. According to this law, all energy in the universe has already been made and our physical bodies are merely containers for our own personal energy. If the body is a container of energy, then when it dies its energy is released back into the universe the same way air is released back into the atmosphere when a balloon pops.

But does it remain intact with all of its knowledge, experiences, emotions, and identity or does it simply dissipate back into the environment and lose everything that it was? This is a critical question for our field and one of the keys we all seek to unlock. The prevailing theory in the paranormal community is that a person’s energy remains intact and either moves to a new plane (heaven or hell) or resides in the physical plane with us, which causes what we call a haunting. It is this wandering energy that still knows who it is with which we try to make contact.

When spirits manifest there is almost always a physical change in the world around me. It could be as simple as a flickering light or as severe as a complete drain on my equipment, but in almost every piece of evidence I’ve ever captured, it’s there: an unmistakable transfer of energy from a known source to an unknown receiver.

The source can even be us. Humans store energy. It’s a fact. And because no sighting of a spirit can happen without a human observer present, it’s assumed that ghosts borrow the energy of the living to build strength and make their presence known through sight or sound. It’s why people sometimes feel suddenly lethargic or the hairs on their arms and neck stand up. It’s a physical response to their personal energy being gathered by ghosts and almost always precedes a paranormal encounter.

I have felt spirits use my own life energy many times. At first it was scary (naturally), but now I love it because I know I’m making a connection. I can feel the shockwaves of them using me and I become a part of the experience. I become the battery that helps them connect to the physical world. The paranormal experience goes up a level from two-dimensional to three, which makes it that much more real and intense.