“Ghost Hunters” had its premiere in 2004. “People like to watch it with the lights off,” Mr. More plainly, the show delivers on a desire for safe frights. “They want to know that there’s something after this life.” “A lot of people don’t want to think that when they close their eyes, that’s it,” Mr. What could be so appealing about that? Perhaps the “did you see-that?” moments, like the one at Waverly Hills three years ago, that tap into an enduring interest in the afterlife. On each show viewers watch burly men tip-toe around supposedly haunted houses in the dark.

On Wednesday the channel will add another one, “Ghost Hunters Academy,” which will test potential new group members. The “Hunters” have already spawned an international spinoff. Howe now calls it the channel’s flagship reality show. And “Ghost Hunters” is helping to do just that. “One of our objectives of the relaunch was to move beyond the narrow perceptions of the sci-fi genre primarily space, aliens and the future,” said Dave Howe, the channel’s president. “Ghost Hunters” attracts more women than men an important attribute for something that called itself the Sci Fi Channel until July. Despite a legion of detractors, “Ghost Hunters” is Syfy’s most popular show many weeks, beating scripted series on the channel like “Eureka” and “Stargate Universe.” Now in its fifth season, it regularly draws almost three million viewers, more than half in the advertiser-friendly 18-to-49-year-old demographic, according to Nielsen. Wilson are the shadow-chasing sleuths on “Ghost Hunters,” the Syfy reality series that has made believers out of its producers believers in paranormal programming, if not in the spirits themselves. Or could it be a tormented spirit they are seeing? Wilson answers, before striding down the darkened hall. Hawes exclaims as he cradles the camera screen. Hawes says the owners of the decrepit building “constantly see shadows back and forth.” Then the hunters’ thermal-imaging camera picks up a silent apparition at the far end of the hall, about three feet tall, darting from one room to another. They walk toward a hallway inside Waverly Hills, a Kentucky sanatorium that attracts paranormal investigators like themselves.Ĭamera crew in tow, Mr.

Jason Hawes and Grant Wilson are searching for ghosts.

Seeking Spirits by Jason Hawes