We conference with Jason Hawes and Grant Wilson of "Ghost Hunters" for the "Ghost Hunters Live" event which will take place this year at the historic Fort Delaware in Delaware City, DE, live from 7 pm-2 am on October 31 on SCI FI.

In June 2008, the Ghost Hunters, led by Jason Hawes and Grant Wilson, paid their first visit to the notoriously haunted Fort Delaware.  Built in the mid-1800’s and primarily used as an artillery defense for the Union during the Civil War, it eventually became a Civil War POW camp, housing over 33,000 Confederate soldiers.  The conditions at Fort Delaware were grim, and over the years, it eventually became home to thousands of deaths. After capturing a variety of paranormal encounters during this first investigation, the team eagerly returns to Delaware this Halloween to explore this historic haunt!

Once again, SCIFI.COM will also serve as the online destination on Halloween night, offering a multilayered digital experience for fans including an exclusive, multi-camera online video feed and thermal imaging camera views, exclusive access to photos from the live event, live Q&A with the TAPS team members and the return of the “Panic Button” for web watchers to alert the team of something they are seeing live on TV.
Enjoying record-high ratings throughout its run,Ghost Hunters remains one of cable’s hottest shows! 

The series is currently celebrating its best season ever, delivering a 1.9 Household rating, 2.7 million total viewers, 1.7 million Adults 18-49 and 1.7 million Adults 25-54.  Its live Halloween event is a tremendous hit with viewers, with last year’s event scoring a 2.1 Household rating and making SCI FI the #1 cable entertainment channel for the night in the key demographics. Ghost Hunters is produced in association with Craig Piligian's Pilgrim Films and Television (American Chopper,Dirty Jobs,The Ultimate Fighter).  Piligian and Thomas Thayer, along with Rob Katz and Alan David, serve as executive producers. 

Question:

On the past of a location having a lot to do with what’s going on there in the present and how they approach that:

Grant Wilson:

We like to just kind of hear what the stories are of the people who were there and then research the history later. But we’ve found, interestingly enough that a newer building can be just as haunted as an old building with a checkered past.

So we kind of - you know, the places that have more tragedy to them, unfortunately, seem to have a little bit more activity. But you never know. So that’s why we always take places we’ve already investigated for the live show because we know there’s activity there.

We’ve already “built a rapport” with what may be there. But the Fort Delaware hasn’t really seen too much action as far as battles, though. It was mostly accidents - most of the deaths there were due to accidents.

But nonetheless, it was a prison camp at one point and that’s always miserable. So and all that just gets - eventually gets (unintelligible).

Question:

On having six hours to fill what we will see over the course of that time:

Jason Hawes:

You know what, we’re just going to - we’re going to head around. We’re - and we’ve got Amanda Tapping with us, you know, the rest of the TAPS guys, some of the - our close friends from GHI, Ghost Hunters International.

And I think it’s just a really interesting location so - and a lot of ground to cover. So I honestly, you know, I think it’s going to be a good night.

Whether we catch something or not, it’s just going to be a wild night. It really is. What do you think, Grant?

Grant Wilson:

Well yeah, this is Grant. I think it’s going to be an interesting location because it is on an island so we have to barge everything over there. So once we’re there we can be completely uninterrupted.

There’s no chance of any kind of contamination or anything like that. But as far as how we’re going to spend the time, I don’t know, maybe we’ll play some cards. I don’t know. We’ll see.

Jason Hawes:

Well Grant (unintelligible) but I believe a part of the episode the first hour -- because it’s a total of seven hours long -- I think they’re going to show what it took to make this happen, be able to get in there and do this live show.

You know, they’re going to show how much chaos, you know, trying to get the actual trailers over to the island and everything else. So that should be interesting.

Question:

What is the Holy Grail for you? In a perfect world, one day when you nailed it completely,
what’s going to be on film?

Jason Hawes:

Honestly -- again this is Jason -- I think we look at it really different. The holy grail for us is
being able to truly figure out what’s going on, whether it be paranormal or not.

So if you go to a little old lady’s house or a family’s house - terrified to be in their own home and you figure out it has nothing to do with ghosts or haunting, right there is a holy grail because we’ve allowed the family to be able to sleep in their home again and feel comfortable, empower themselves to take their home back.

But of course, when it comes down to the paranormal, sure we caught a full body apparition right
on camera, you know, on video or something I think that’s great.

But, you know, it’s just - yeah there’s different parts of - there’s aspects that fall under different parts for the Holy Grail if you think about it.

Question:

On the running time and breakdown of the show:

Grant Wilson:

All right no, here it is. This is the breakdown. This is Grant. Yeah, you’ve got what they call the pregame show for an hour of the show exactly, you know, us getting, you know, all the - them getting all the trailers over there and all the equipment setting up so that the audience really knows how much effort goes into it which we wanted to get across.

We wanted to make sure they understood that this is crazy for us as well. And then six hours of just live chaos. No it’s not only us - them just following us around.

                             
We actually pull the audience in as part of it where they can go online. They can watch special camera angles online. They can report activity.

Jason Hawes:

Panic button, yeah.

Grant Wilson:

Yeah, they have a panic button which was pressed I don’t know, tens of thousands of times last time when people think they see stuff. And then if it’s legitimate we’ll go investigate. And so it’s more than just watching it. You actually are interacting and somewhat investigating with us.

Question:

So I was wondering what kind of activity did you guys initially find at this location that
separated it from the other locations that you had been scouring throughout the season.

Jason Hawes:

This is Jason to start off just so you know. And, you know, one of the great things that we had happen was we set a camera up down a hallway and you were able to see something walk out about 100 feet down the hallway - walk out, turn around and walk back into what appeared to be a wall.

Jason Hawes:

And that’s while Grant and I were heading down there. So we decided we’d set the thermal up – thermal imaging camera up by itself and just let it roll for the night.

And again about an hour or two later we were able to see a head and shoulders (clean) out from behind the wall and pull itself back in. That’s one of a bunch of different things we had happen. At one point Grant and I are sitting at a table in the kitchen talking and all of a sudden it sounded like either an explosion or a loud bang happened right there, right next to us - scared the life out of both of us.

But - and couldn’t find any reason or anything that made that happen. So there are a bunch of great little things - EVPs, things of that nature that were caught that really led into just a wonderful (case).

Question:

Did you feel any differences in temperature or anything like that? What did you gauge on the tools that you guys had with you?

Jason Hawes:

Well it was - you know, I can’t really talk about gauge - you know, temperature fluctuations being we’re on an island and the temperature can change drastically at any given moment let alone it was stinking cold that night so if we could find a hot spot, that’s probably where we would’ve been hiding.

Grant Wilson:

Well this is Grant, too, but the reason it was chosen was not only was there great activity but because it’s (the right size), it’s got a good history, something that we won’t exhaust the building in the six hours on TV.

And it is completed isolated because it’s an island so we don’t have to worry about anybody sneaking up and trying to pull fast ones on us.

Question:

On the live event having an influence on whether the paranormals will come out as everyone’s
watching:

Jason Hawes:

Well, you know, see I can’t sit there and comment on if the spirit activity on the island knows that we’re filming a live show.  But, you know, I can say that we’ve been there in the past. It was a good place for us to investigate. Hopefully it’ll be the same, you know.

But when it comes to pressure, I’m not dealing with any pressure because here - the way I look at it is whether I catch something or not, it’s an investigation and, you know, the production crew has to worry about having the cameras rolling, you know, in the right spots on us.

And if something happens great. If nothing happens then it’s a typical investigation because 80% of all investigations turn out to be nothing.

Grant Wilson:

But as far as the entities going, you know what I mean, it’s - like we said, we’ve been there before. Hopefully we can drum some stuff up again but there’s no guarantees.

Question:

Iis there a particular ghost that you guys would like to hunt - like say Elvis or somebody like that?

Jason Hawes:

Yeah, a particular ghost? You know, of course - man well Elvis, I have no idea even how to comment on that one. But...

Grant Wilson:

I think he’s still alive, so I can’t...

Jason Hawes:

Yeah right. I (unintelligible). You know what? I think any type of spirit activity - of course, when you go places that people are claiming Al Capone’s spirited - things of that nature, that’s just incredible.

I would love to - we were actually talking about doing Graceland at one point.

Grant Wilson:

Yeah.

Jason Hawes:

So it’s funny that you brought up Elvis. You know what, any place that there’s possible paranormal activity is just wonderful for me.

I’m never going to, you know, look at a place and, you know, just to get in on investigating Graceland does not mean that the spirit of Elvis is at Graceland. You know, it could be anything. If anything is there, it could’ve just been something that was passing through at that time. (Unintelligible).

Grant Wilson:

I think it would be cool to get in touch with maybe like Houdini’s spirit or something like that because he was so - you know, he spent a lot of his life trying to debunk all these claims.

But honestly, it’s so hard to get any spirit to respond to you. Good luck finding a specific one. So yeah, it’s going to be rough.

Question:

Have you noticed if there’s more paranormal activity at this time of year or is it just the same as any other day?

Jason Hawes:

Yeah, this is Jason. It depends on what part of the country. Like right now, of course, you know, the northern states - northeastern states in the United States are - you get a lot more reports from.

And the reason behind that is it’s colder. People are in the house more often. A lot of that could be chalked up to everything from the heat turning on, the wood popping and cracking making the sound of footsteps.

You know, you’re also - you’re around Halloween so it’s all the scary movies, the ghost movies, everything of that nature.

So it’s not that real paranormal activity takes off. It’s just that people’s perception that there is more paranormal activity picks up because of that.

Question:

Overall would you say most of your encounters are with evil forces or is it just a mix of
everything?

Jason Hawes:

You know, Hollywood does a great job by really sparking up the demons and everything of that nature. But, you know, out of all the cases we’ve done I could say out of the last 15 to 18 years that we’ve actually been sent in by churches to do cases...we’ve probably - and that’s how we’ve been sent in to really 600 or 700 church cases - maybe two of them have turned out to negative type entities. So the rarity - it’s so rare to actually run into a negative type entity no matter who tells you what.

You know, it’s just some people think that that sells so that’s what they want to put out there. We want to put out the truth and that’s what matters to us.

Grant Wilson:

You got to say most of the people who we encounter or entities, or we seem to encounter are just people. I mean they had lives. They had families. They had jobs, careers, you know, ambitions and stuff like that.

And that doesn’t really change according to our research past the grave. So I mean more - you can pretty much walk down the streets of New York City and not get killed hopefully.

And that’s because people are generally good natured and that continues beyond the grave. So anything we encounter, usually it can be reasoned with or there’s no real threat.

Jason Hawes:

Well and just touching up on what Grant just said -- this is Jason again -- the other - the only time I really hear people say I’ve got a demon in my house is if they’re extremely religious people in the beginning anyways.

So, you know, most people just look at a ghost as a ghost so a lot of - you know, certain people – very religious people look at it, you know, and (unintelligible) something negative.

So, you know, a lot of times you find that highly religious household but you really find out most of the time that it’s nothing to do with a negative entity.

Question:

What was your favorite Halloween costume as a kid?

Grant Wilson:

I actually dressed up as a Ghostbuster once. That is embarrassing.

Jason Hawes:

Actually what is my favorite Halloween costume? Oh my gosh.

Grant Wilson:

Wasn’t it ballerina, Jay? Isn’t that what you dressed up as?

Jason Hawes:

No Grant, no. But I wanted to be a - the missing person’s face on a milk carton one time.

Question:

What their feelings are about the show inspiring small regional paranormal groups?

Jason Hawes:

Honestly I think it’s great that you’re just seeing all these new people come into the field.

I’ve seen everything from nuclear physicists, forensic scientists and everybody else get involved in the field since our show has been out there.

So there’s that huge upside to it. You know, it - which makes me happy. But in return, a lot of these groups that are popping up disappear at the wayside as fast they popped up because, you know, people see the show and wow look, TAPS caught something here, they caught something
there.

What they don’t understand is there might have been, you know, ten episodes that never aired because we never caught anything. So it’s a real waiting game. And I also worry a lot of times about certain groups getting in over their heads.

We’ve been doing this for 18 plus years. Fifteen years before the show even existed our
dedication level was there a long time prior. We went through sometimes a year, year and a half before we caught any evidence.

So, you know, and that’s one thing that these groups need to remember. But also, you know, getting in over your head is something we - Grant and I and cast have been called in on many cases of groups that just popped up who all of a sudden go to a house and with what they believe to be a negative type entity or too much activity.

And they’re frightened and in return frightening the homeowners even more. So there’s that big downside to it all, too. You know, it’s - yeah, I’d recommend people form a group and get out
there and investigate.

But I recommend that they, you know, they don’t expect anything to happen. That’s the biggest
thing right there and just be prepared for when something does happen, you know. You want –
you don’t want to go running out of a house when somebody is there requesting you to come in
and help them.

Grant Wilson:

Yeah I think it’s good. It’s very nice -- this is Grant -- that we’re getting - raising awareness. But with the raise of awareness, we hope the quality goes up as well.
                             
And, you know, we feel a certain responsibility to make sure these groups are getting off on the right foot and getting trained right. And, you know, we do lectures and things to help the groups start off on the right foot.
                             
We’re actually working with someone else to help him write a book about the real dangers of getting involved in it - not the psychological dangers but, you know, walking into someone’s house as they pull a gun on you and stuff like that.

Those are the things that...

Jason Hawes:      

We’ve seen that happen.

Grant Wilson:

Yeah it does happen. So, you know, we - it’s very important that these groups go - we teach these groups to look for the truth, not necessarily a thrilling paranormal adventure because that’s just not going to happen.

If you’re pursuing the truth, whether you debunk a claim or you catch actual evidence, you feel equal success and you can continue, and your group will last forever.

Question:

What is the special appeal of “Ghost Hunters” over some of the other more dramatic paranormal shows or the other shows out there?

Jason Hawes:

Well first of all, I think the main appeal about our show is we’re normal, down-to-earth guys. We’re not, you know, these scientists out there talking over everybody’s head.

And I think that that’s very important. I think one of the main things is we’re not a group that was put together to make a television show like most of the other shows out there.

We are a group that existed long before television - long before this television show and we’ll exist long after. And we’re a big family. We really are. We’ve been together long before this show.

And, you know, our families have grown up together. Grant’s wife and kids and my wife and kids - Steve, you know, has been over to my house for years before the show, you know, hanging out with the family and the kids.

And all the other cast members. So I think those three reasons are what sets us apart from any other show out there.

Grant Wilson:

You limit your audience by catering only to those who believe already, you know.

We go in - if you’re a believer, you watch the show and have experiences. If you’re not, you can watch our show and hopefully we’re doing exactly what you are thinking as far as saying oh maybe it’s a window that closes a door or anything like that, trying to debunk it.

And that gives you the window for the whole world to eventually appreciate your show rather than just believers like most of the other shows do.

Question:

What do you recommend for people that want to go out and start their own investigative group?
What are the basics that any new group should have?

Jason Hawes:

Honestly it - well when Grant and I started we were using an old camcorder which was huge. We were using old cassette recorders, things of that nature. You really - you work up to where we are, you know.

I recommend people just go grab, you know, some cheap camcorders, cheap digital recorders and start off that way, and build their equipment as they need to and financially they can.

Grant Wilson:

Yeah I mean you can go so far as just - you can use a compass instead of an EMF detector. It’s not going to be as accurate but at least, you know, you’ll get some response. You can use - some people have baby monitors.

They can use those as far as some of them with the cameras and things. There - if you research enough you can find a good amount of equipment for any budget.

But the most bang for your buck is a video camera and a digital recorder.

Conference Interview Attended By: Peter Dimako, Editor.

Wednesday, October 21st, 2008 1:00 PM ET.