According to longtime Ghost Hunters star Steve Gonsalves, paranormal activity isn’t frightening.
“The ghostly aspect is not scary at all,” he says. “It’s startling, but then it quickly turns into excitement.”
So what’s the creepiest thing about hanging out in supposedly haunted locations?
“Spiders,” Gonsalves laughs. “And we’ve run across a lot of squatters. One time I heard a sound, and I knew it wasn’t paranormal, but I still wanted to go to it and sort of figure it out. So I’m following it, and I ended up in this little alley and there’s a guy shooting up what I’m assuming was heroin or liquid crack in between his toes. He was all like, ‘What are you doing? Are you the cops?’ So it gets scary in that sense.”
In some ways, paranormal hit Ghost Hunters is a zombie show: It just won’t die. Now airing its tenth season on Syfy in the U.S. and OLN in Canada, the show has gone through several cast changes — including The Atlantic Paranormal Society (TAPS) co-founder Grant Wilson’s big departure two years ago and the somewhat cloudy exit of popular investigators Amy Bruni and Adam Berry last year — but the show keeps scaring up viewers.
“It’s a little bit different, but the vibe is awesome,” Gonsalves, 40, says of the current Ghost Hunters team. “When Grant left, it was a little tough. We were all really sad, but what made it tolerable was that he wanted to leave. He wanted it to be over, and he wanted to spend time with his family. But with Amy and Adam, it was a little different of a scenario, but we still miss them.”
Even after 10 seasons, working on the show is still fascinating to Gonsalves, a self-described history buff. “We did an armory in Rhode Island, and they have some amazing things there,” he says. “For me, history is really one of the best parts about this job, and this place had hand-written letters from George Washington and these blood-soaked gloves from the Revolutionary War and all these awesome things.”
Gonsalves’ interest in the paranormal began when he watched the 1982 film The Entity, which claimed to be based on a true story, as a little boy. “I was pretty hooked,” he says. “And by the time I was 11, 12 and 13, I was reading Loyd Auerbach books. All the sudden, you know, I’m 14-years-old and I’m reading books on quantum physics and crazy things just trying to understand how objects can move and, if ghosts and spirits are real, how are they doing these things? Why can’t we quantify them?”
Although he’s a believer, Gonsalves, a former cop, understands people who think the paranormal is nonsense. “I’ve never been of the mindset of trying to prove it because I still don’t believe in psychics or mediums,” he says. “I’ve been a skeptic, and I still am. I go in with the mindset of just trying to further the research and figure out if there is anything after death. You know, what we’re experiencing, does it have intelligence? Is it coming back? Has it always been there? Is there any conscious thought behind it, or is it just happening? I’m just looking for answers to further our research in the field.”
Gonsalves thinks that level-headed approach is the reason viewers gave Ghost Hunters a chance back in 2004 and continue to tune in now. “Before our show, there were things like Sightings or Encounters, and a paranormal team would be on it, but it would just be a five-minute segment, and then they’d move on to something about UFOs or whatever,” he explains. “And to be honest, those investigators were a little eccentric and — not that we’re very scientific — but they were very psychic, very spiritual, and that’s hard for a lot of people to grasp onto. So I think when they saw TAPS, and they saw that we were disproving it and didn’t believe everything was a ghost, I think that everybody that didn’t really buy into the field was like, ‘Wow, this is like how I would do it. This is actually pretty cool.'”
‘Ghost Hunters’ airs Wednesdays at 9 p.m. on Syfy in the U.S. and Fridays at 9 p.m. on OLN in Canada
