Nick Groff Talks Ghost Adventures Part 2: Facing His Fears
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Okay, “Ghost Adventures” fans. Our interview series now continues with Nick Groff, who talks spectres, Bobby Mackey’s, and more. Sit back and gear up for another in-depth interview lockdown.
In Part 1 of our interview with Nick Groff, we discussed the group’s origins, and now we kick off Part 2 by heading back into the dreaded Bobby Mackey’s.
“We were still new,” says Groff of his “Ghost Adventures” team. “It was 2008 and we had just we come off the documentary, and a couple months later we geared up for Bobby Mackey’s. In retrospect we still weren’t fully able to comprehend and understand negative energy on the side of what we know as demonic. These types of happenings have more of a negative effect on your own spiritual self. You can lose track. That’s the number one scariest thing that somebody can encounter… negative impact or negative energy at locations. They have lingering effects. If you’re good and healthy, you go to your everyday work atmosphere, and then boom, you go to one of these locations and you’re calling it out and opening yourself up to this negative effect. It attaches itself to you. It can cause disruptions in your life, your family, your health. It will screw you up big time. All three of us, majorly, have suffered that effect. It doesn’t matter if you’re the toughest, strongest guy in the world. Mentally you have to be strong and spiritually you have to be content with yourself, or else you will be a train wreck. I have seen it happen to people and it is very difficult thing to watch. I’ve learned over the years how to balance myself because having it affect me or my family is the one thing that I don’t want to happen.”
“Bobby Mackey’s (Season 1, Episode 1; Season 4, Episode 3) was a different scenario than other locations, and yeah it did affect each one of us in a very different personal way. It affected Zak and Aaron a lot more severely than it did myself. I have had other locations that have really dramatically hit home with me. Like when we we’re at Moon River Brewing Company in Savannah, Georgia (Season 2, Episode 7). To this very day it’s scary to think about. I’m always saying things like ‘lock me in a morgue’ or ‘put me in the craziest most screwed up locations you can think of’, but when it comes down to dark energies taking over your own spiritual self and disrupting your inner positive light, whatever you want to call it, that’s where it gets scary. I was affected badly at several different locations like the Washoe Club (Season 3, Episode 6) and The Return to the Goldfield Hotel (Season 4, Episode 16) but that’s the type of stuff we are dealing with. It’s more dangerous than anything. More dangerous than confronting a spirit full on and it throwing you across the room, beating the shit out of you. *laughs* Seriously, because those dark energies can have a severe affect because you cannot fight back. You just have to fight your inner self. It’s complicated.”
Groff continues, “I would say it’s one of the most dangerous [professions] in the world. I know it’s not… well, actually it can be physical at times, ya know? You’ve probably seen me flip over a chair into rusty, broken metal scraps and glass on the ground and of course after things like that it’s off to the hospital to check for infections. Speaking of dangerous, usually when exploring these various locations asbestos and black mold is all over the place. When we can we wear protective masks; however, doing your job with them affixed to your head can get difficult at times. Number one it irritates the hell out of your face, and number two you really can’t hear us that well. It gets really muffled and mumbled, and sometimes that can have the effect of contaminating the audio from the breathing with the vents. Thankfully we’ve worked them out and we’re able to use them pretty well now. Zak has to use one because his lungs are really sensitive to the dust from doing this for so long. Aaron and I, sometimes we’re just like, ‘Screw it.’ We do this because, I guess, of a passion of pushing ourselves so everybody else can see what we’re capturing.”
Seeing as he’s been to so many insane places over the course of the past several years, we prodded Nick a bit to talk about the times he found himself most scared.
“For some reason every time I try to go to the bathroom at a haunted location, the spirits try to freakin’ attack me,” Nick says with a laugh. “I let my guard down a little bit and they come out to try and attack me. It’s crazy and even kind of funny because when you watch the Bobby Mackey’s episode and you see me go into the bathroom, no cameras are on because, well, I’m going to take a piss. Zak goes up to get the camera out of the attic and Aaron is taking care of the gear or something. When I went into the bathroom at Mackey’s, I had no idea what was about to happen. Then I hear this scratching on the walls. I had got done taking a pee, I didn’t even have time to zip up my fly and the whole bathroom begins shaking. Like literally rumbling. Chaotic. Like the energy in the air has become dramatically changed. I was literally frightened for my life. I just jumped the hell out of that bathroom and ran into the other room like, ‘Holy crap! Get the cameras; you don’t even know what’s going on in there.’ We go back in after Zak and Aaron get their cameras, and we’re standing there, and I’m like, ‘Come on, do it again!’ and it happens again, all these rumbling sounds. It was so freakin’ scary I literally jumped of the bathroom. That’s when you hear Zak yell ‘Stop running!’ The thing is. though… I wasn’t necessarily running. I was jumping, leaping forward out of the bathroom because I thought the whole thing was collapsing. That’s how scary it was. That was one extremely scary moment. Especially for me because I was not expecting that… I was totally vulnerable.”
Read on for more.
“The second time I had the hell scared out of me was at Linda Vista Hospital in East LA (Season 3, Episode 23). We were in the trauma center area investigating, At this point I’m extremely tired as it was toward the end of the night. I was doing my usual thing, calling out to the spirits there. I had a digital recorder in my hand and you can see me on camera. Zak was filming me from one angle and Aaron is filming me from the other room. When I looked into the trauma center room I didn’t see anything there. You know how your eyes adjust in the dark after a while? I’m in there and just looking. I look back and I’m like, ‘All right, I’m rolling on my digital recorder.’ It’s so redundant I said that a thousand times that night. ‘I’m rolling on my digital recorder trying to capture unexplainable voices.’ Then I look back into the trauma center room and boom. There is this solid figure, a lady, standing literally two feet in front of my face. It scared the ever living shit out of me. Like being in a haunted house and then all of a sudden someone just jumps out at you when you least expect it. That’s what it felt like. The crazy thing is I could make out every single detail on this lady. She and I connected for that split second before I freaked out and I jumped back. The recorder flew out of my hand and I almost fell backwards on my ass. My heart…” Nick pauses to reflect. “I thought I was going to have a heart attack. I run out of the room for a second to catch my breath. This lady was so clear. She had this short brown hair. Our eyes connected, brown eyes. Her face kind of had like this white glow to it. It was really creepy. That really stood out to me, but the one major thing that stood out big time, that made me think, ‘Okay, this was a patient or somebody there, of the past’ was her hospital gown. It was like this short hospital gown. I could only see her from the waist up, and her hospital gown had these small little patterns on it of these flowers and stuff with different colors. She looked angry… like she had her head kind of tilted down like a slant looking at me. It was almost like she was reaching out at me at the last second before I turned away and jumped backwards. That, right there, was probably the biggest experience I have had in my life because it opened up my mind to knowing that there is more to life than just death. This was the part that I have been looking for all my life. It is what opened up my views and changed everything.”
No matter what, though, there are always going to be skeptics, including some of the proprietors of the places the GAC visit.
“Red at the Goldfield is hardly ever there. He goes there and works on the doors during the day and then he’ll take off. He’s told me that he has stayed overnight; however, he’s kind of hard of hearing so he rarely experiences anything. Then there’s Bobby Mackey himself. It was funny because we were doing an interview with Bobby and all of a sudden we heard this music playing. We were sitting there, it was completely silent, and we all heard it. We were like, ‘What the heck is that noise? Where is that music coming from?’ We searched it out, we looked for it, nobody had a clue. Bobby basically just shrugged and said, ‘Oh that’s weird.’ We’re like ‘See! Maybe we got something out of them.’ There was a split second where Mackey was actually intrigued by something unexplainable. When we go to places like these. we go looking for the unexplainable. It’s a different scenario for people like Bobby and Red. They only go there for a limited amount of time. They’re not spending the night searching things out. They just go in, do their thing and leave, but everybody there, especially the people who have worked there… they report seeing all types of stuff; they’ve had experiences there.”
With so many possible locations around the world, we asked Nick what his dream investigation would be.
“There’s a place in New York, a psychiatric facility along the riverfront there, I forget the exact name. I actually started a petition to try to get us in there. I have our researchers, every year, for “Ghost Adventures” calling the owners trying to convince them to let us in. The problem is the place is government-owned so it makes it really impossible. It’s like 400 acres of abandoned mental asylum and buildings and such. It has insane history. I wish we could get in there. That’s one of my dream locations.”
And what of international places …
“There’s so many. So many I don’t even know where to begin. From England to… we’ve done Scotland. Italy. Poveglia Island when we went to Venice was one of the biggest locations I’ve been dying to do for about 12 years. I knew about Poveglia Island before we even started ‘Ghost Adventures’.”
Speaking of Poveglia (Season 3, Episode 19)… if their visit there taught them anything, it was that machetes can be bad things to have around if shit goes haywire. Case in point: when an armed Zak momentarily lost control…
“Yeah, just try taking that machete away from him. That’s a story right there. He wouldn’t give us the machete, and he was creeping Aaron and I out. We’re stranded on an island with nowhere to go. So yeah, that was a little creepy. All jokes aside, that hearkens back to the dark energy I was talking about. Zak had something come over him. We couldn’t snap him out of it. I was the only one to go in there and kind of strong-arm him and be like, ‘Let’s go; let’s get out of here.’ Aaron had to back up because Zak was trying to attack him. It was crazy. Later Zak went back in to confront that evil energy or whatever had taken over him. I don’t recommend doing that to anyone thinking of searching out the paranormal. You have to be aware of what you’re actually doing, of who or what you’re talking with. That’s the scary part. You might think you know who you’re conversing with, but you really don’t. This is a being on the other side. Again, I don’t recommend it but that’s the type of stuff that we do. We try to push the limits to try to capture good evidence to show the world that there’s more to life than just dying.”
Many fans of “Ghost Adventures” decide to go out and conduct investigations of their own. To them Nick has this bit of advice…
“Be cautious,” Nick warns. “Make sure you don’t just go somewhere by yourself. That’s the key. If you’re going to try and do this, you should do it with somebody that you can trust dearly. Someone close to you like a best friend. Make sure you are aware of your surroundings. Again, you don’t really know what you’re communicating with if contact is made. Manipulation is one of the scariest things that evil can do to somebody. It can convince you that it’s harmless. You may think it’s all fun and games at the time, ‘I’m catching a voice!’ or ‘This is happening to me! I’m feeling this weird dramatic change in my body; this is interesting.’ However, what you may not realize is that when you leave a location, after they have that exciting rush for that second, this stuff does linger and can follow you home. That’s where it can have an effect on you, and that’s the primary reason that you have to be cautious.”
Join us next week for Part 3 of our interview with Nick, when we’ll find out what’s next for him, what’s coming up on “Ghost Adventures”, and of course … he’ll be answering fan questions.
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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