Page 21 - The Westerner Magazine Halloween 2018

agreed to the first season, thinking the show thirty similar shows. Other shows began

would never survive because we thought popping up imitating Dog the Bounty Hunter
who wants to watch a police officer and a couple and then you had the Ghost Hunters
of plumbers investigate the paranormal? We imitators.
had no idea it would become such an
Once Ghost Hunters proved it was going to
international hit.
be around for a while, these other networks

The show has aired in one hundred and created their own versions of it. Even Sci-Fi
forty countries. It’s been an amazing tried to copy the show numerous times. It
experience. was an incredible experience. I’m happy we
were able to have the experience and it was
Bruce: You were on the leading edge of
great to see Ghost Hunters help pioneer a
reality TV. Was that planned or did it
whole new genre of television.
develop organically?

There’s the positive aspect of that, but
there’s also a negative aspect. Paranormal
shows have come and gone. Some shows
are so over the top that the whole show is
based on trying to scare the viewers instead
of inform the viewers. People always told
us that Ghost Hunters was a family show.
Families could sit down and watch it
together.

Jason: It developed organically. The format
We were trying to take the fear out of the
of the show was our investigations. The
paranormal. Too many other shows were all
show made it look like we were on location
about the scare factor.
for one night. Really, we were on a location
for numerous days. So the format of the Bruce: Is your original group still together?
show just followed us as we did things,
which was great because we didn’t have to
change anything.

It was a different world back in 2004, when
the show started, because there weren’t
many reality shows. You had The Real World
and things of that nature, but when we
began it was us, Dog the Bounty Hunter,
American Chopper, all at the same time. It

just took off. American Chopper influenced