(OPINION) If you’ve never watched one of the 320,000 different ghost hunter-type shows on cable, I can save you the trouble by quickly describing every episode that’s ever been recorded.

First, they’re all shot in the dark, so you’re watching everything occur through green night vision. At some point during the show, the following conversation between the ghost hunters will take place: Bob the ghost hunter: “Zak, I just felt a cold spot!” Zak the other ghost hunter: “No way Bob…where?” Bob the ghost hunter: “Over here by the door.” A cold draft?

Over by a door? Hold the phone, that never happens so it must be supernatural. And wait, Bob, what’s that glow coming from your flashlight? These shows have the same thing in common with all the Bigfoot programs, which provide everything you want to see except one thing: an actual Bigfoot.


Advertisement


Even though today we have drones, motion-sensitive trail cameras, thermal imaging technology that can spot a caterpillar crawling on a mountainside, and countless hikers with cell phone cameras that capture images ½ mile away – Bigfoot, by all measures, remains the hide-and-seek world champion.

If you believe in ghosts, I hate to burst your bubble, but they don’t exist. And by ghost, I’m using the traditional definition of a person who has died and is manifesting themselves in some way to the living, their spirit being trapped between this life and the next. No, there are no such things as ghosts.

But there is something much worse that is real. In 2015, the cable channel Lifetime released a series, called I was Possessed, that chronicled cases of reported demonic possession. When I saw it, I assumed it was going to be along the same lines like all the other ghost hunter shows.

Turns out, it surprised me. I’m not going to tell you that I believe every case they documented was legitimate.[1] But what I can say is that, given the small amount of experience I’ve had in this area, a number of the cases followed the same pattern I’ve encountered.

A person with no history of mental instability moves into a residence where some form of occultic activity was habitually performed or they naively begin to dabble in the occult themselves through Ouija boards, seances, or similar activities. Most times, nothing immediately happens. READ MORE