Zak Bagans Talks Ghost Adventures – Part 3: What’s Next and Fan Questions
Steve Barton
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Here we are. Finally at the conclusion of our in-depth interview with “Ghost Adventures” frontman Zak Bagans (read Part One here and read Part Two here). Closing things out, Zak talks about what’s next for him, shares his dream investigations, and answers some of YOUR questions.
Having been to and investigated so many different haunted areas across the world, Zak waxed on about what would be his ultimate ghost adventure … “I’d like to kind of get a break from American history and American spirits. Go deeper. I’m so interested in how certain cultures, thousands and thousands of years ago, had the beliefs that they did. How they were able to build the way they did. They lived on a different planet, man. They didn’t live on Earth. Or Earth as we perceive it today. As far as I’m concerned they were like different beings. They knew things then that would end up having such a big effect on us today. How did they know these things? It’s so mysterious. In the present day we look at different stories and the story of Christ. How he died for our sins. It’s based upon these handed down stories and what not. Then on the other hand you have these cultures like the Mayans and the Egyptians. What they did and were able to accomplish … it’s just so fascinating to me. In our investigations we sometimes go back in history about a hundred years to come to our conclusion. That’s what we’re doing now, but can you imagine going back 2,000 years, or 3,000 years, or 5,000 years, trying to capture voices or evidence of their spiritual beings or where they’re at? Just to see. You know what I mean?”
Bagans continues, “The spirits who we investigate nowadays died 100, 200, 300 years ago. We’ve got evidence of that. I really want to see if we can get evidence of human beings that lived three or four thousand years ago. They had so many spiritual thoughts, their hieroglyphics … everything, Their whole culture was based on spirits and gods. Like the American Indians. I want to know how they came up with this. How did they know? Without any technology, no transportation, no history, no nothing. They just existed. Their history was prehistoric. How’d they come up with these pictures? How’d they come up with their language? Where’d they get that from? I just want to try and get evidence that they’re still there. If I can’t get evidence that they’re still places where they dwell, then I know that they knew something that we don’t. If they are at a different place; their spirits are in a different world somewhere. Look at the spirits of those that are now trapped. You can see how our culture has caused us, living people, to be trapped in our own lives. There is so much bullshit out there right now. It causes our souls to be trapped. It would be kind of be cool to see how the ancient past would compare to more of a modern day past.”
But what of caveman ghosts… Could they possibly exist?
“I’m sure they’re out there. *laughs* That would be cool, you never know who’s coming through. I haven’t heard any grunting lately. The caveman ghost is Aaron’s. *laughs* He’s our caveman investigator; he would be the best to communicate with them dudes.”
With that it was time for some fan questions. We weeded out the three hundred or so asking if he was single, if he had a girlfriend, or would he be interested in … well … let’s just leave that right there. You guys are wonderfully sick. We love you.
Q: Will there ever be a day when you retire from ghost hunting.
Zak: “There will never be a day that I retire from it because I don’t have to leave my house to hunt for ghosts anymore. The friggin’ things live with me now. I built them a dungeon. They are in my house, ya know. It’s probably two or three nights a week that I’ll communicate with them there. Last we spoke was just a few weeks ago. I’m doing a new project now with spirit communication, and there’s some nasty ones here that said they wanted to kill me and shit. I think now they are starting to say, ‘Hell, this guy’s crazier than we are; let’s just leave him alone.’ *laughs* It’s weird in my house; I can feel them here and usually in a couple weeks they’re, like, gone. Yeah, I’ll never stop investigating. I love it.”
Q: What’s your all time favorite location that you’ve investigated?
Zak: “All time favorite location? I liked the underground vaults in Edinburgh, Scotland, and the Ancient Ram Inn in England. I just love the era of medieval Renaissance time periods. Going there for an investigation is like traveling back in time and hopefully communicating with the spirits. It was awesome. Guys like watching the movies Gladiator or Braveheart; for me it was going there and transporting back to that time. Like I said, just having all my senses be in that time. It was awesome. I loved it.”
More questions are on the next page along with other interesting tidbits.
Q: If you had another career besides ghost hunting, what would it be? You were a DJ, right?
Zak: “I was a DJ once, but I hated it. I love music, but you know what? I would probably be a gold miner because I still believe that in a previous life, somehow, somewhere I was a reincarnated gold miner. I don’t know where, it’s just whenever I’m around that environment, I just feel things. That this is where I was or something, ya know? I love gold, for some weird reason I love digging in the ground and shit looking for treasure. So something like that. I could never be an office person or a 9-5 guy. I’ve always wanted a job that was adventurous.”
Q: Have you ever used a Ouija board, and what’s your take on it?
Zak: “A Ouija board is no different than using a digital recorder to get EVPs. Any communication-based object, from digital recorders to Ouija boards to dowsing rods, they’re all the same. You’re trying to communicate with spirits. I did that when I was younger and I remember we were at this girl’s house, this girl that I had a big crush on. A bunch of us were there. I was like fifteen or something. The girl I was crushing on said that her house was haunted. So like eight of us went downstairs with a Ouija board, and these two girls were on it that I had never met before. I started asking the Ouija board questions, and it answered my birth date – April 5th – right off the bat. That kind of freaked me out. Other stuff started happening, but like I said, it’s a tool to try to communicate with the dead. I think it is kind of weird how Hasbro or whoever the game company is sold those. That was like prompting our kids to communicate with spirits. To ghost hunt. There’s no difference.”
Q: Have you ever had to leave a lock down because of the activity?
Zak: “No, the only lock down I left was the Winchester Mystery House. That’s when my grandmother died. That’s when I was using the Mel-Meter and it started going crazy. It was a bad feeling that I got at exactly 1:00 am. In the morning I found out that my grandmother died at 4:00 am in Michigan, which was 1:00 am there. That’s the only time we have really had to leave a lock down due to something bad. However, when we went back to Bobby Mackey’s, we wrapped up the investigation there rather quickly, too, after something happened. I basically had to get an exorcism performed on myself, and Aaron had some really bad shit happen to him there, too, that wasn’t really on camera. We had to end the investigation there.”
Being a bit pressed for time, the interview then shifted to what’s coming up for Zak in the near future. “In 1995-96 I was a huge fan of the band Lords of Acid. They had a lot of great songs and they were my entrance into electronic music, which is my passion outside of ghost hunting. I started following them on Twitter, started showing them some love and stuff like that and they reached back to me. The founder of Lords of Acid, his name is Praga Khan, he is a genius. A pioneer of the rave music scene that’s credited for creating a good portion of that style of music. I’m a huge fan of his. They asked me to do vocals for a song on their new album, Deep Chills, called ‘Paranormal Energy’. Praga coincidentally was having some type of paranormal experiences at his studio in Belgium which influenced him to do a song about this. So Praga talked with his agent, who’s based in LA here, who mentioned me and my support for Lords of Acid and that brought us together. They had me go to LA and record vocals with Chris Vrenna, who was with Nine Inch Nails for nine years and had just retired from Marilyn Manson after spending three years as keyboard player and drummer. The man is now a Grammy winning producer; it was an honor to go there and record this song”.
“After that I had an idea, I was like, ‘Wait a minute,’” says Bagans. “Music is the most powerful way for us to communicate. If you listen to the lyrics of any song, whether it be rap, rock, country, whatever, it is sending powerful messages that we as humans listen to with the utmost emotion. I then thought to myself that I have never heard spirit voices in music. That being said, recently I have been having some amazing results with spirit voices. Mark and Debbie Constantino, whom I met after they approached us with an EVP that said, ‘Thank you, but we’ve done it’, which was a Class A EVP that they captured with a Reno news crew pertaining to the flying brick incident that had happened to us at the Goldfield Hotel (Season 4, Episode 19). I started building up an EVP library. Honestly, I didn’t really start getting good EVPs until like Seasons 4, 5, and 6. Now the EVPs we are capturing are amazing. I have been traveling outside of ‘Ghost Adventures’, these voices are not from ‘Ghost Adventures’. They’re voices I collected while conducting investigations on my own, some of which even come from my own house. Some specific spirit voices that have been recorded for my album are believed to be that of demons from Mackey’s – a spirit named “Rhonda” who actually sang there, assorted spirits that have followed me home, and others that have committed suicide at a Las Vegas Motel. As a result of all these events and happenings coming together, we are doing a 13-track album, of which we have about 9 songs completed. Praga is in Belgium, and we have a guy named Wonkap who’s like a European Skrillex. We have been making some absolutely amazing music involving my vocals and spirit voices in electronic music. We do dubstep, we do electronic, trance, ambient, rock. I’m not here to pump my own shit. If something sucks, I say it sucks. But this is going to be truly amazing. It’s going to be released probably in May, and it’s a pretty cool project that I hope people will dig.”
There you have it, folks. Surprising insight into the world of a man who walks with the dead. Big thanks to Jon Condit, who helped with the transcribing. For more info be sure to visit “Ghost Adventures” on Travel Channel. “Ghost Adventures” Season 6 premieres on March 9th, 2012.
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