Ghost Asylum

When I first saw the promos over the summer, I guess I held out hope that the show would be half history / half exploring or a narrative deftly weaving the two. Instead, we get a retread of all the other ghost/monster hunter shows, where the participants all act like they hear or see something- apparently ignorant that bad acting is not convincing.

dude, that door just closed by itself !

I love abandoned asylums, prisons and ghost stories (even though I don't believe in ghosts) Watch Session 9, do your own research on the web- and take your own tours if you are interested in this sort of thing.

The only saving grace about this show is the Tennessee accents of the Ghost Asylum team. But, you get over that and then try to get into the ghost hunting they do, but you come up short.

The ghost trap stuff they do is an adolescent fantasy. In fact, the whole show has an adolescent flavor to it. I've watched many episodes, well maybe five, and really tried to get excited about it. But, I couldn't. I found the team leader's showing off his buff physique to be offensive, pathetic. He can can hardly walk normally, he's so stiff. Sure, he's probably a super guy, but man, that bodybuilder stuff is ridiculous. Well, I guess better than being obese like the rest of the crew.

Each week, these backwoods bumblers build some wacky device designed to "capture" a ghost.

Their accents so thick it's almost impossible to understand them without subtitles, they exposit some ridiculous theory about how you can catch a ghost with bubble gum and paper clips (or some such) and proceed to mount an "investigation" at some purportedly haunted location (e.g., hospital / asylum).

Sometimes, they claim to have "caught something" and spend the last 15 minutes of the show trying to communicate with whatever it is they "caught" - in one recent episode, they thought the ghost might have been captured in a quartz stone and spent several minutes literally talking to a rock!

I would have given this one star, but the fact it's so ludicrous has a bit of entertainment value in and of itself - it's *almost* worth watching just for the eye-rolling exercise.

So I watched the first episode of "Ghost Asylum", which I'm calling Duck Dynasty meets Ghost Adventures = Ghost Busters?

You gotta be kidding me... I started out not very happy about this, but I gotta say I liked the solar panel ghost attractor idea... and gathering up old hospital trigger objects, that's called doing your due diligence... this might not be so bad after all...

We'll see, this is just the first episode, and if it does well it could get a higher budget and start to utilize more creativity they have up their sleeves.

Only time will tell. Being the show is on Destination America, a channel dedicated to the paranormal, my guess is they will be able to throw a budget at the show and see how far it can go, the way they do with many of their other shows.

Capturing ghosts, trapping them in a faraday cage, releasing the capacitors in a peaceful place so they can cross over? Intriguing... I don't think a paranormal investigation show has ever done that before...

There are some interesting things they find, but their efforts to communicate with the spirits they encounter are less than mediocre. I also find it incredibly sad and upsetting that they would go into a place, especially after praying to God, and then try to trap a spirit. I do not think it has ever been clearly stated what they intend to do with a spirit if they do capture one, but the thought of trying to force a spirit into an object or other such material prison seems, to be quite frank, cruel to the spirit! I know these boys probably come from a strong hunting culture, being from the South myself, but this is not a game. The dead shouldn't be trapped and drug back home for your amusement. That is not only asking for trouble but it is incredibly disrespectful to those who have probably not died decent deaths.