10 Reality TV Shows That Question Your Supernatural Beliefs

According to a survey by the PEW Research Center in 2009, 65% of Americans believe in the supernatural. Ghosts. Aliens. The Loch Ness Monster. Aberrations like these fascinate us due to the fact they can’t be explained, or in some cases, proven to exist in the first place.

However, many don’t do a good job of it, confusing faith with fact and exploiting the viewer with camera trickery or just flat out lies. Nobody wants their time wasted, so evidence must be collected, no matter how sketchy. Some hide this better than others, though if you open your eyes just a tiny bit, cracks in the facades of many of these shows begin to appear, making you question why you even believe in such things in the first place.

And television has no problem taking advantage of those beliefs. Seeing a way to earn quick cash on a small budget, stations around the world have been saturated with programs featuring people hunting the paranormal in an attempt to prove, or in some cases, disprove, the existence of the things that should not be.

To paraphrase “The X-Files”... we want to believe. And while many of these shows can be entertaining under the right circumstances, to find actual proof of the paranormal? Your best bet is to look elsewhere.

Running on The SyFy Channel from 2004 to 2016, “Ghost Hunters” followed “The Atlantic Paranormal Society” (or TAPS), a group which consisted of a pair of plumbers and an ever rotating group of young investigators. What set this show apart from the scores of others that were soon to appear, was that these sleuths of the supernatural went into supposed afflicted locales in order to debunk claims of hauntings, not prove them.

Though as the show continued, that goal seemed to be pushed toward the wayside, with more and more “evidence” being collected each episode, probably due to the fear of viewers becoming bored watching a bunch of grown men fumble through the darkness talking to themselves, with no results.

While "Ghost Hunters" had many followers, it also had a lot of skeptics, several of whom even going so far as to establish “The Skeptical Analysis Of The Paranormal Society”, or SAPS (Ha!). And like with any reality show, as time went on, those who once considered themselves fans began to doubt the show, claiming not only was evidence staged, but that the editing of the program was played fast and loose. These accusations weren’t helped as several one time members of TAPS began coming out, spilling the beans about what went on behind the scenes. A quick Google search will turn up results on the matter, which are too numerous to go into here.

While not the first show about hunting spirits, “Ghost Hunters” is arguably the program that popularized the idea. And wether any of the evidence presented during its twelve season run was true or not, there’s no denying that without this show, the reality TV landscape would be much different today.