Celebrity Paranormal Project

I've been addicted to Ghost Hunters for awhile now, and enjoy the show when it's on. So when I saw an ad for the Celebrity Paranormal Project on VH1 I couldn't resist checking it out. I finally watched the episode, and it was not what I was expecting.

The first episode featured Gary Busey, three young women, and a very subdued comedian. The location was the Waverly Sanitorium, which the Ghost Hunters visited as well. The format was set up to send the team in, first in pairs then as a group. With five people, this meant that one person only went into the place once as part of a pair. She was also the only one that didn't have an "experience".

I expected them to have camera crews, but they didn't. Each person carried a camera set in a backpack, and there were a number of stationary cameras set up around the areas they were investigating. As a result, there were never more than five people in the building at one time, and usually only two. The producers also split up the pairs frequently (a no-no in ghost hunting) which resulted in some interesting moments (including one that illustrated why you don't split up when ghost hunting, as a terrified person got lost).

The show uses the same annoying sound and video effects as Ghost Hunters in an attempt to make everything more dramatic. It works, true, but it also manages to hide any "real" evidence they might have collected. While Ghost Hunters is very careful to make sure any evidence is presented on its own apart from the effects, no effort was made in this show to distinguish what the team was hearing or seeing from what was added later.

And, by that standard, it was also difficult to tell if the team were really alone in the place or if the production crew were just off-camera pulling strings and scaring people. It was entertaining, sure, but it was impossible to tell if the team was set-up or if what they were seeing was real. The last mission, with all five team members going in to basically perform a seance, was ridiculous.

All told, an interesting format, but there are too many doubts about it to make it a real ghost hunting show. It's a psychological project, seeing how people react to scary situations (Gary Busey was a riot), but not much of a paranormal project. I may watch more episodes for the background on the haunted places they visit (since they did a very good job with that), but not for the actual ghost hunting.