<span class="SFPTagline"> From SCIFIPEDIA </span>

 

From SCI FI: Ghost Hunters is an original TV series being produced for original broadcast on The SCI FI Channel. It is part of SCI FI Wednesday.

Show Concept

Plumbers by day—ghost-hunters by night. This one-hour weekly docu-soap from the creator/executive producer of American Chopper follows a group of real-life paranormal researchers as they investigate haunted houses throughout the country, encountering every type of imaginable haunting.

Jason Hawes and Grant Wilson, plumbers by trade, head up TAPS: The Atlantic Paranormal Society, a group of intrepid souls who are far from the usual collection of bespectacled Ph.D.s. They're ordinary, everyday people—office managers, factory workers, teachers and even psychic-hotline gurus—with an interest in getting to the bottom of your otherworldly disturbances. Jason, Grant, and their team of moonlighting ghost-hunters are our first and last defense against uninvited paranormal visitations. Tom Thayer and Craig Piligian of Pilgrim Films (American Chopper) are the executive producers.

About TAPS

Do you sense a paranormal presence in your own home? Life after death has been a central belief among billions of people for millennia—and contact between this existence and the next is no more far-fetched than sending sound and pictures through the air must have seemed to the ancients. You can report evidence or request an investigation directly at the TAPS site.

Sure, those spooky sounds may just be air-vent echoes or water backflow in your pipes—and if so, TAPS can tell you that, too!

The Principals: Grant Wilson and Jason Hawes

TAPS (The Atlantic Paranormal Society) is headed by Jason Hawes and Grant Wilson and includes a close-knit group of paranormal researchers. Built on Jason and Grant's mutual interest in getting to the bottom of everyday, paranormal occurrences, TAPS is an eclectic but unified bunch— and certainly not what you'd expect to find at the forefront of paranormal investigation. They're neither Ph.D. scientists, nor zany, theatrical hotline psychics. Jason and Grant are plumbers by trade, and their TAPS colleagues are in similarly ordinary professions. Factory worker, office manager, teacher—these are respected members of a small, blue-collar Rhode Island community where many of the TAPS members were born and raised.

Upon meeting, Jason and Grant became fast friends; both possessed a marked interest in paranormal research. Soon, they began to seek out others like themselves—people with a level-headed, driving interest in the paranormal. Within a year, TAPS was formed, and through word of mouth it developed a reputation for helping people with unusual domestic problems. Originally headquartered in a spare room of Jason's apartment, TAPS fields phone calls, emails, and personal visits from people who have—or claim to have—a nonphysical entity interfering with their lives. Depending on the nature of the haunting, a select group of TAPS field researchers will load equipment into a van and drive sometimes as far as 300 miles to investigate. Despite the expenses they incur on gas, equipment (infrared cameras, night-vision goggles and the like) and time off from their day jobs, they know they could never charge for their services—that would make them much more likely to be labeled charlatans.

It has been more than a decade since Jason and Grant met. Since then TAPS has grown in size and scope to become one of the most respected paranormal-investigation groups in America. It now has branches across the United States and affiliates in 12 other countries. TAPS members are, like Jason and Grant, humble, self-assured, distinctive, and inquisitive; they search for answers, but are comfortable with unsolved or unproven conclusions. Through the years, Jason and Grant have not forgotten why they do this—to find answers for themselves, and to help others who have experienced paranormal activity but don't know what to do about it.

Today, TAPS' founder, Jason, is in his early 30s. He is a plumber and the father of three girls and twin sons. Jason enjoys spending quality time with his children, deep-sea fishing, and writing screenplays—he has written four in the sci-fi/thriller genre.

Grant, the father of three young boys, is also a plumber, as well as Jason's confidant and best friend. Their families are close—Jason's kids consider Grant an adopted uncle and Grant's kids view Jason the same way. Their wives, also friends, are respectful of the TAPS mission but keep their distance. Each one has asked her husband not to bring his paranormal work home with him.

When he's not hunting ghosts or holding down a day job, Grant enjoys whipping up a mean Italian dish (he spent two years in Italy and speaks the language fluently), writing songs on the piano and guitar, and penning a 25-volume series of high-fantasy novels.

Over the years, TAPS has accumulated clients with surprising speed—victims of troubled or restless spirits who needed their help. Jason, Grant, and the others who have joined the group investigate haunted houses throughout New England and encounter all types of human ("regular" ghosts of dead people) and inhuman (entities such as demons) hauntings.