Ghost Adventures is a weekly American paranormal television series that premiered on October 17, 2008 on the Travel Channel. Currently produced by MY-Tupelo Entertainment (a merger of MY Entertainment and Tupelo-Honey Productions), the program follows and stars ghost hunters Zak Bagans, Nick Groff, and Aaron Goodwin, as they investigate locations that are reported to be haunted. Hosted and narrated by Bagans, the show initially airs new episodes on Fridays at 9:00 PM Eastern Time on the Travel Channel. The tagline of the series is: "Can you handle the lockdown?"
Self-considered "raw" and "extreme," the program originally began as an independent documentary television film, which was filmed by the crew in
2004 and produced by 4Reel Productions in 2006. The Sci Fi Channel first presented 4Reel's Ghost Adventures on July 25, 2007. The documentary centers on the trio's investigation of alleged paranormal activity in and around Virginia City, Nevada, which the crew returned to on the third season of the series, and in Goldfield, Nevada. Using a self-described religious, scientific, and emotional approach, Bagans is known and criticized for his aggressive and confrontational methods used during investigations; however, he maintains that he respects the afterlife and only provokes evil entities in order to elicit responses.
In a June 2009 interview with the Paranormal Underground magazine, he stated, "I don't want the public perceiving us as the taunting, provocative ghost hunters. We do that only to the bad spirits who we know are attacking the living." Bagans also mentions this concept in various interviews and episodes throughout the series. In season 3, Bagans summarized his greatest fears while climbing an aged staircase inside a shot tower at the Remington Arms factory: "Heights, snakes, and crazy-looking dolls...Those are on Zak's top three I-don't-like list." Zak encountered situations involving these fears in the episodes at Sloss Furnaces, Idaho State Penitentiary, and the Riddle House, respectively.