I’m not a big fan of reality television. (Of course, I’m not a big fan of reality, either.) Most of it is clearly scripted and not all that novel. Of all the brain-draining reality shows on television, none instantly lowers the IQ further than Ghost Adventures. Each week Zak Bagans goes looking for spirits from the NetherWorld and remarkably, each week he finds one, and always an evil one at that.

According to Wikipedia—and I’m not making this up—“Bagans has been criticized for the aggressive and confrontational methods he uses during investigations.” His response is that he “only provokes evil entities in order to elicit responses.” It has apparently never crossed Bagans mind that he is creating a vicious circle. I’d be evil, too if some great idiot entered my house with a camera crew in the middle of the night and started provoking me.

If Ghost Adventures is true “reality” then we can objectively conclude that all evil spirits are completely incoherent. Inevitably, Bagans hears some noise, one that sounds suspiciously like the cameraman accidentally bumping into the china closet, and immediately hollers that the ghost has declared, “I know you I kill!” (It naturally follows that an incoherent ghost would demonstrate syntactical difficulties.) We know that the ghost has declared, “I know you I kill” because that’s what the written translation at the bottom of the screen clearly reads. Later in the show, we find out from the owner of the property that in fact, someone was killed on this site when a propane gas tank exploded on the patio during a cookout and a party guest was horribly shish-kabobed to death when skewers were sent flying in all directions. It now occurs to me that the ghost might actually be saying, “Don’t go near the grille!” but I still think the noise sounded more like the cameraman bumping into the china closet.

We can also conclude that ghosts are remarkably similar to those college dorm posters from the ‘70s only instead of showing up under a black light, these ghosts require that official ghost hunting green light to appear. Apparently, only when the green light is on will a ghost zip past a crew member, although “the ghost” looks suspiciously like the reflection from the cameraman’s watch face. Remember the kid in 5^th grade who would catch a sunbeam on his watch face and then wiggle the reflection up and down in the eyes of a girl he claimed he didn’t like, but really did? That kid grew up to be the cameraman on Ghost Adventures, but I digress.

Now that Bagans and his clumsy crew have thoroughly riled up this week’s ghost, they simply pack up without so much as a “Thank you Mr. Ghost for your time,” and head off to another spot next week, where they will proceed to annoy the Hell out of some other poor unsuspecting spirit who no doubt longs for some company, but not for the kind who runs through his house knocking over the knick knacks in the china closet.