I gave the sort of blow by blow of how their investigations go in my post about them last week so I really don’t need to get into it again because this episode followed the same format as the last one.  Silly instigation of spirits, putting themselves in potentially dangerous situations (both physical and spiritual) for the purpose of gathering evidence or creating some shock factor footage and just in general showing no respect for the spirits and locations being investigated.  However it’s the first segment, the one that deals with a Voodoo curse in Louisiana from 1915 when a supposed Voodoo Priestess named Julia Brown places a curse on the whole town.  A hurricane came several days after her own death killing just about everyone in the town.  And in come “Ghostman” and “Demon Hunter” to check out the validity to the hauntings that have been reported in the area since.

They use a coffin as an altar, they invoke Papa Legba, Baron Samedi and Mama Brigitte (they invoke her with sparking water which I found interesting because I had always known that rum with hot pepper was appropriate to her).  There is suddenly a sound of drums from somewhere and two of the guys take off and start exploring the woods and leave the “Demon Hunter” behind to hang out at the coffin altar.  When they call to him to ask if he saw something that they saw and ran after they get no response so the come back and Nathan is laying on ground, mouth agape and eyes wide open looking paralyzed.  Wow…really?

Here is the first part and I’ll include the second part as well but if you watch the first part you’ve seen all you really need to see.  Although if you watch the second part you can get to see them mark the the whiney guy with chicken blood and put him inside the coffin altar, bury him alive and try and provoke spirits while the guy is in the coffin.

Honestly, I think that regardless of how ridiculous these guys are, this is just unbelievably disrespectful!  The whole episode pretty much opens up with Shaun saying “We’re gonna mess with Voodoo for the first time in 15 years of investigating.”  Keyword here being “mess”.  Maybe it’s just me but that’s where my shock and awe comes in, the disrespect.  It just doesn’t seem as though they’re working with the practices in the rituals  from a place of respect or anything of that nature but more from a place of shock value.  It’s like a 15 year old that dyes their hair green, gets a tattoo and starts doing things to freak out their parents; they don’t know what they’re doing, they aren’t doing it for any real reason, they’re just trying to get a reaction.

You know what the WORST part of all of this is?  I can’t tear myself away from watching this train wreck.  I’m sure if this does end up coming back on A&E as a regular show I wont watch more than an episode or two.  There are two things that would make me less annoyed with this show.  First, incorporating some ACTUAL experts in their investigations when they are going to do things like rituals.  So with this Voodoo ritual they should have brought a Voodoo Priestess with them rather than just going and talking to one.  Second, it would be great to see them do some research with their evidence after the investigations rather than just “hey we found some stuff let’s go home”.  Their “evidence” of EVPs and their heat sink evidence are pretty suspect without any sort of follow up.  When you see heat sink evidence of someone sitting somewhere when the three on camera personalities are in view of the shot that doesn’t automatically mean it’s a spirit, especially when you’re dealing with people that have a camera crew following them around.  So who’s to say who or what that is?

Yup, cheat thrills.  The real shock and awe for me is how many people seem to be loving this show based on the comments that A&E is getting on their Facebook and Twitter pages.  It’s also surprised me greatly that there are people saying that this is what they would rather see other than shows like “Ghost Hunters”.  It just makes me realize that we’re still not really in a place for television shows about true paranormal work and experiences.  I guess in the meantime you can always check out the awesome team of Beckah and Katie Boyd and visit their site Supernatural Hotspots and watch their investigation videos and check out their stories.  Until we start demanding better of the media and these “reality” paranormal shows we’re going to continue to be nothing more than a Halloween freakshow all year round.

“Extreme Paranormal” appears as though it will be the latest in the A&E psychic and paranormal shows, something that the channel is getting quite deeply involved in. The cable channel is airing the two part pilot on the two Mondays leading up to Halloween (naturally).  On October 19^th the first of the two shows aired and it was quite a scene.  This show is very similar in style to “Ghost Adventures” (which you can see how I feel about that here).  Basically three guys with equipment that go running around provoking spirits only to later run away.  And they seem to have no purpose for doing what they do other than to freak each other out and “catch evidence” of a spirit.

The best, or really worst, part of the show is the “occult expert” Nathan, AKA “The Demon Hunter”.  I can’t even being to tell you the number of eye roll/giggles that this guy gave me in the hour of this show.  In this episode Nathan, along with Shaun, AKA “Ghostman” and Jason, who has no cool “Top Gun” call sign, went to visit the New Mexico State Penitentiary which saw some of the most brutal inmate deaths during The New Mexico Penitentiary Riot during two days of February 1980.  One of the brilliant ideas that these guys come up with is to visit the cell of a victim that was pulled out and burned alive and use fire and blood to try and draw his spirit out to make an appearance for them.  They get one guy to lie on the floor in the exact spot where the inmate died (there are burn marks on the floor showing how he was positioned at the time of his death), they outline the body in chalk, use a flammable gel to outline that, Nathan cuts his hand and draws out blood to draw “The Tree of Death Rune” inside the outline and then lights it all on fire to get the inmates spirit riled up all while basically verbally taunting him as well.  Seriously!?!  As for “The Tree of Death Rune” I honestly don’t know what he was talking about.  The rune he drew looked somewhat like Algiz upside down which was interesting since that’s not so much a rune of death but protection.  If anyone could shed some light on this I would love to hear it because I’m seriously wondering if this guy maybe spends too much of his time playing World Of Warcraft when he’s not being “The Demon Hunter”.  Which, by the way, they have the nicknames because they have a site and podcast called “Ghostman and The Demon Hunter”.

But after going nuts cutting bars off cell doors, lighting fires, screaming like little girls and generally acting like idiots they just leave.  No discussion, no assessment of evidence, no real purpose to their visit.  “Hi, we just want to come in and light shit on fire and maybe use a power saw to bust up some cell doors.  Mind if we spend the night next week?”

And then they went to a lake to hunt down a serial killer which was even more ridiculous.  They constructed a large circle with pentacles and a triangle attached to it out of foam with bit clear plastic party cups glued to the top to act as makeshift candle holders for tea lights and then they send it off afloat into the lake where this spirit apparently resides.  Nathan tells Shaun to go in the water but to stay in the circle because he’ll be “protected by God” as long as he says in it…because meanwhile Nathan and Jason will be, you guessed it, lighting a circle on fire on the beach and summoning the spirit of the serial killer out of the water.  Yes, a fiery ring of invocation, complete with skulls and all, on a beach at a lake while some guy is floating around with a flashlight in the water inside some rejected NERO prop.  Really!?!  And naturally they piss off the ghost which comes up from the water and grabs Shaun by the back and tries to pull him under, however Nathan will be sure to point out to him that it happened because he left the circle!  OH NOS!!!

Honestly, this is just getting to be too much!  There are enough of these paranormal shows on and a few of them, mainly the “Ghost Hunters” shows, seem to serve a purpose in trying to help the living and the dead cope with and understand their unique situations.  Things like this and “Ghost Adventures” are just silly and pointless.  At the beginning of “Extreme Paranormal” there is a disclaimer stating that portions of the rituals have been cut and that you shouldn’t try this at home.  I can only assume that the reason for “cutting out parts of rituals” is so that they don’t encourage people to light their living room floors on fire or anything like that in order to call on spirits that might be in the house.

On a somewhat brighter note, after that monstrosity ended a show I hadn’t seen before came on called “Medium/P.I.” This show stars one of my favorite magickal people and psychics, Jackie Barrett as she works with her friend Sean Crowley who is the Captain of the cold case homicide division of the NYPD to try and solve cases.  This was an interesting show and I enjoyed it since it showed people with the gift of sight working to HELP people, not just piss off ghosts for the hell of it.  Besides, it was nice to see Jackie Barrett back on TV.  She was the runner up of Lifetime’s show “America’s Psychic Challenge” back in 2007.  Sadly this didn’t seem to list any upcoming episodes beyond the one that I saw.  However another episode of “Extreme Paranormal” will air next Monday what the paranormal triple threat visit an insane asylum and put Jason in a straight jacket in an effort to “draw out ghosts”!  Good times.