By Felix Vasquez Jr.

Why do I even like “Ghost Hunters”? Why do I watch it every single week and re-watch the marathons on the Sci-Fi channel?

What separates these schmucks from other ghost hunters on Discovery or History channel? That’s a good question, and honestly I can’t answer that in one sentence. What I know now is that the show I once proclaimed as pure swill has now become a general fascination and a definite slot on my weekly series check list and that’s because as a whole, it’s a lot of fun.

“Ghost Hunters” is a reality show, true, but it’s also an awfully fun and consistently spooky series about the New England TAPS team who travel around the country to different assignments to look for paranormal activity in anywhere from landmark abandoned prisons and penitentiaries, to small houses where children are being terrorized. And what separates them from other purported ghost chasers in the atrocious “Paranormal State,” and “Most Haunted” is 1) They always go into assignments trying to debunk and then when all options are gone, they proclaim paranormal activity, and 2) They rarely use the word haunt.

Fifty percent of the time they’ll go into a house to look for paranormal activity and then just willingly tell the owners “It’s not ghosts at all, just bad plumbing, a weak foundation and your imagination.” Sure, for the first few seasons, SCI-FI desperately reached for drama trying to create tension and storylines in the group, but once the series came into its own, it cut the crap and was all about ghost hunting.

And sometimes what they find can be curious enough to leave audiences talking among themselves whether it’s all a coincidence or an apparition and sometimes they’ll go into a lighthouse and discover that they’re literally chasings ghosts back and forth who are interacting with them. Who among us didn’t sit on nerve’s edge during their stay at the Stanley Hotel?

The series hasn’t always been a win with me, but what sold me on it after a few years of ignoring its presence is that there’s a genuine sense of excitement that the members instill into the series. And it’s all spear headed by the charismatic father figures of the group Jay and Grant who keep a definite character to the series often making us feel as if we’re watching an episode of “Kolchak.” They’re very unglamorous and down to Earth and that enables us to root for them. Episodes without them can frankly feel quite dull.

The best example of that opinion has to be “Ghost Hunters International” one of the most ill-conceived reality show spin offs I’ve ever seen. What Sci-Fi does here is take the most annoying members from the US TAPS team, pairs them international members of TAPS and sends them out to places like Ireland and London to examine old buildings and tourist traps. What is witnessed is a pure disaster of epic proportions centered on people who rely on their imagination to prove a haunting has occurred, while lacking any semblance of charisma or professionalism.

How else can you explain them questioning an Italian ghost in English? How else to explain the women of the group screeching and cowering at the faintest noise? How else can you explain their utter lack of evidence on almost every single episode? How else can you explain Donna La Croix’s sudden evolution into a psychic presuming every time she enters a haunted sight, the ghosts there suddenly want to connect with her and her alone? And you have to love moments when they ask a ghost to touch them and then marvel when they feel a tingle in their arm. The power of suggestion is a marvelous thing and they prove it.

I think thanks to the disaster of “International,” it’s only made me appreciate what a treat “Ghost Hunters” tends to be. It’s ridiculously low key for a show about ghosts and hunters, and it really has deviated from the sensationalism in the first two seasons. Jay and Grant are much more authoritative for this new season and they seem to just want to get down to business and not fuck around, and they’re in good company. Dave Tango is a great partner and constantly keeps the investigation moving along with his professionalism, Steve Gonsalves has been a favorite of mine since the series started as an instant second in command to Jay and Grant playing dad when the two are off on business and keeping the group tight and in motion; the new member Kris is a great replacement for Donna adding sex appeal and shocking humility to the group. She’s soft spoken and really attempts to contribute something to the big reveal in every episode.

All the while I think the show manages to connect to me not just because of its novelty, but also because they really do tap into that side of me that’s confronted the paranormal more than a few times in his life. Do I buy everything I see on the show? Absolutely not, but that doesn’t mean I’m quick to write off everything as simple happenstance. You have to approach the supernatural with an open mind but a healthy skepticism and TAPS has that covered in every episode.

So far, “Ghost Hunters” really has yet to fail in being entertaining even when they’re indulge a family looking for their fifteen minutes on television. When the lights go off we know it’s time for business, and Jay and Grant really do charge in ready to disprove everything. It’s that extra honesty in a fundamentally dishonest genre.

“Why do you watch “Ghost Hunters”?” I’m asked. Simple: It’s fun.