I am Haunted: Living Life Through the Dead (8 page)

After people die and pass over, I don’t think it’s right to accuse them of horrific criminal behavior unless there’s evidence of guilt, as there was in Herb Baumeister’s case. Herb was never convicted, but it’s been proven that he was responsible for many of the deaths that occurred at Fox Hollow Farm. (Turn to chapter 14, “Carrying Spirits,” for more on that story.) To publicly state that Lizzie’s father raped his daughter without having some kind of proof just isn’t right, and I said so on
Aftershocks.
Liz stated that the spirit of Lizzie’s mother had given her this information. That may be true, but I don’t believe evidence from a spirit is strong enough to take public. I’m not saying it didn’t happen, but I think Liz should have kept that information to herself.

Aftershocks
is a great way to help people get over emotional trauma caused by paranormal events, but it’s not just the living who need help. The spirit of Andrew Borden can’t defend itself from the accusations of the living, so I chose to. I can’t defend every spirit, but I can speak out for one that I’ve had an encounter with. There’s no evidence to suggest that Andrew ever sexually assaulted Lizzie Borden.

I love doing these interviews, but what’s weird is that I’ve struggled with anxiety disorder my whole life and sometimes have trouble getting up in front of people or being around strangers. I never thought I’d feel so comfortable being in the middle of a slew of cameras listening to someone open up about themselves so honestly. Maybe listening to them helps me get closure as well, because I find a lot of meaning in talking to them. It’s addictive. It might even be therapeutic for me, when I think about it.

I can sit with a friend and talk about sports, but my mind won’t be into the conversation as much as if we were talking about the paranormal. Ghosts, spirits, demons...these are the things that get me charged up. I don’t just listen, I absorb. I’ve gained so much knowledge doing these interviews, especially about my own abilities as an empath. To hear people say that I’ve helped them win their battles to understand their experiences of being victimized by unseen forces is indescribable. Helping them has given my life more purpose. The darkest time of anyone’s life is knowing you have a purpose, but not knowing what that purpose is.
Ghost Adventures
brought purpose to my life, but
Aftershocks
has really enlightened me. It’s very rewarding.

We can’t choose our family, our era, our gender, etc. But we’re given this life, and in this life we learn to live no matter what fate or our environment deals us. I grew up with very little. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, I lived in a house with no furniture. My dad used to take me to the gas station and feed me bread and cheese with mustard. I struggled to find myself and my place in this world, but I always knew that I had more to offer than working in a cubicle for some company I didn’t care about. I wasn’t going to be anyone’s puppet or work for a pension and have some fat boss say at my funeral, “Zak worked a good 45 years for this corporation, and now Jim Bob has his job. Eat your cake.”

Money isn’t power; helping people is. If there really is a judgment at the end of life, I’m certain that God isn’t going to care about your bank account. He’s only going to care about how many of His creatures you helped. We live by money. It’s the blood of society. The greed of life. The root of all evil. It’s what makes the world go round today. Too many people believe that the more money you have, the more power and respect you have. Just watch the show
Shark Tank
to see how billionaires treat average people with contempt. I hate the message that show conveys: that power is what we should strive for, and that money is what defines us. We’re better than that. I really want to believe that we aren’t selfish, pretentious assholes. And I’ll admit that some wealthy people make the world better. Steve Jobs and Bill Gates have changed all of our lives. It’s undeniable. They’ve enabled us to do things we hadn’t dreamed of, like narrating this book into an iPhone.

Being told that my work helps people is the fuel that keeps me going in my career as a paranormal investigator. I don’t have to prove anything to anyone, and skeptics don’t call me out anymore. I think they gave up on me when they realized that I was actually doing some good. Life is not a video game where you aim for the highest score you can get before you die.

LIFE IS ABOUT HELPING OTHERS
GET THROUGH THE GAME.

Coming face-to-face with an uncaring killer.

There are many different kinds of death. I deal with the spirits of people who have long since departed this world, and I’m very comfortable in this field. But when you encounter people whose time to depart is near and there’s nothing anyone can do about it...that’s a whole different ballgame.

I have a friend named Kevin Hoyt who runs It Ain’t Chemo, a nonprofit organization that provides comfort to patients who are undergoing chemotherapy, radiation therapy, or other cancer treatment. It’s similar to the Make-A-Wish Foundation but has no paid employees—everything is done by volunteers. Kevin called me once to ask if I would visit a dying teen who was a fan of
Ghost Adventures.
Of course I agreed.

I met Kevin at the family’s home. The boy was in a hospital bed in the middle of the living room, and the cancer was so advanced that he couldn’t move or speak. It doesn’t take an expert to see when a person has very little time left on this Earth, and it startled me. I’d never been done anything like this before, so I’ll admit that I was uncomfortable and didn’t quite know what to do with myself. I wanted to be there to put some form of joy into this kid’s life, but deep down it was hard for me, because as an empath I could feel his pain. On the outside I was trying to smile and be positive, but it was tough to see a child who should have had his whole life ahead of him losing it.

I felt for the family, too. Every bit of their son’s life—every birthday, every school field trip, every bike ride, every friend who came over to play—all those moments they stood by their little boy were in the past, and now they had to watch him wither and die. It was gut-wrenching. I had to stay strong and be there to help make these last memories mean something to this family that had been through so much.

I brought a flashlight that I’d used on the show and autographed it for the boy. He couldn’t move, so I had to open his fingers and place it in his hand. It would be one of the last times he ever found the strength to smile. The family got emotional, and so did I, even though I didn’t know him. But that’s the thing: You don’t have to know someone for years to give a shit about him being in pain. That’s just part of being human, isn’t it?

I was sad to learn that the boy passed away a few days later. I’d never seen a vibrant young life dragged down by the dogs of disease up close like that. It really taught me to appreciate everything around me. The sun hitting your face, a lungful of fresh air, the ability to walk pain-free, sharing life with your family and friends…these are things most of us take for granted, but people like this boy yearn for. A life shouldn’t be spent lying in a hospital bed waiting for the icy fingers of death to drag you into the unknown. Kids are supposed to play and have fun. As I write this, I’m at a hotel, and outside my room I can hear kids playing in the pool. That’s how life should be for them.

The boy’s smile stays with me to this day, but it scarred me, too. So when Kevin asked me to visit another dying teen, I was apprehensive. Would I end up inviting another terminally ill kid into my life and make another meaningful connection only to have him taken away in an instant? Maybe, but what else was I going to do—pretend it doesn’t happen? Wish the cancer away?

Kevin asked me to meet the 15-year-old boy at Randy Couture’s gym in Las Vegas one afternoon. When I got there, a few mixed martial arts fighters were teaching the boy to grapple and do some MMA moves. Kevin introduced me to him, and once again it didn’t take an expert to see how sick he was. The cancer was doing its work, but the boy was lively and enjoying himself around all the fighters. I took off my socks and sat down on the mat next to him, and we talked about the spirit world and my life as a paranormal investigator. He asked a lot of questions, and I soon found myself in a real conversation about life and death with someone who would soon know much more about it than I do.

Suddenly he turned to me and said, “I’m learning how to fight so when I die I can beat the shit out of the demons that gave me this disease.” It was one of the most powerful moments of my life. I’ve stood toe-to-toe with demons, but seeing a sickly teenager look death in the eye like that sucked the wind right out of me. He went back to training with the fighters while I stood there watching in stunned silence. I couldn’t move, couldn’t talk, couldn’t do anything but admire his bravery. One of the reasons I’ve always loved MMA is the incredible courage it takes to get into a cage and fight. This boy’s body was his cage, and he was slugging it out with cancer. That takes guts, but unfortunately that wasn’t enough to beat the disease. A few weeks later he passed away, and again it hit me hard.

I believe everything happens for a reason, but I don’t know how to interpret moments like these. I fear death, I really do. Maybe it’s partly because of these encounters with people who are about to cross over at such a young age. We have so much to live for in this physical world that I want to stay here and enjoy it for as long as possible. And I don’t mean that in a materialistic way. It’s not the houses, cars, or belongings that make life wonderful; it’s the forests, the canyons, the oceans, and all the nooks and crannies and mysteries in between that make it so special. I fear the thought of no longer being able to feel. Maybe that’s the reason I was guided to help Kevin: to teach me how precious life is and to make me stronger.

IF THAT’S TRUE,
THEN MY ARMOR IS SOLID.

What do we do?

“What do you do on lockdown day?”

I get this question all the time, so here’s the deal.

Lockdown day is usually day three on location of a
Ghost Adventures
shoot. The first two days we knock out all the research, tech setup, background shots, B-roll footage, interviews, re-creations of events, and adventure sequences, where we do something risky to enhance the investigation. I like to find something that connects to the story of the location, like take a boat ride to the sites of shipwrecks off the coast of Point Sur, ride along with cops to see human trafficking prevention in action, or rappel into an abandoned mineshaft (I will never do that again). It’s one of the things we do to distinguish ourselves from everyone else.

The third day is lockdown day, and it’s always a special day for me. I usually contact Billy and Jay (who start their day at the ass-crack of dawn) to see what’s going on with the tech setup. They’re responsible for setting up the nerve center and wiring the four X-cameras, and being a hands-on guy, I like to know how that process is going. Early on, I go through with them where we want the cameras because camera placement is crucial to the success of the production. Like real estate, X-cameras are all about location, location, location, so I’m picky about where they are set up. I want them in reportedly haunted hotspots and at intersections where they can cover lots of ground, so we place them where they can see down long hallways, especially if the camera can shoot down another long hallway easily when turned remotely. Some of them have remote heads that can be controlled from the nerve center so that Billy and Jay can see more of the location and become a fourth and fifth set of eyes for us.

The X-cameras are awesome because they’re like robotic investigators. They watch our backs and help us capture evidence (both audio and visual) that we might have missed on our own. More important, they can clue Billy and Jay in if any of us are being affected by dark forces. Billy and Jay can contact us by walkie-talkie if they notice one of us behaving strangely so that we can close in on the person being affected and help him out. For example, when we were investigating the Overland Hotel, the X-cameras helped Billy and Jay see that Nick and I both needed help. Nick was definitely under the influence of a spirit downstairs, and I was on my back in the upstairs hallway after some invisible force had run through me. Billy and Jay saw it all happen on the X-cams and got us help.

These cameras also catch anomalies that manifest near us that we can later connect to a period of our being affected. I can’t tell you how many times we’ve caught balls of light disappearing into someone’s body at the same time that person became someone else.

So the positioning of the X-cams is very important, and on lockdown day I’m making sure that they’re good to go. After I get out of their hair, Billy and Jay finish setting up all the electronics, which takes about five hours. Aaron and I each spend time alone and go through our own individual routines to get ready for the investigation. As you’ll read about later, a lot of weird and hazardous things happen to us during these investigations, and they don’t just go away when the sun comes up. A lockdown is draining and frequently takes days to get over, so we don’t take this significant event lightly. I’m a big fan of mixed martial arts, so I compare my preparation on lockdown day to that of an MMA fighter on fight day. I imagine it’s like a pilot who has to land a jumbo jet on a tiny dirt strip at night. He knows how to do it, but it’s nerve-wracking, and throughout the flight it’s in the back of his mind that a lot of people are counting on him to put this beast safely on the ground.