Humans have always had an interest in the paranormal, worlds beyond ourselves and perhaps some people, places, and even things that appear to transverse between our current reality and anything and everything in between. Women in particular have always appeared to have a stronger relationship to the occult, mediumship and spiritual communications, notably dating back to the Victorian Era and beyond (Gavan, 2).
Jill Gavan hypothesizes that this is due to women’s necessity to have traits like sensitivity, vulnerability, and susceptibility; all traits that are deemed necessary when scouring haunted locations for activity or requiring a heightened skill of communication. While her research in ‘The Sympathetic Medium’ analyzes gendered communication of the occult and technological kind, she also applies this idea to literature, which also lends itself to examining the phenomenon of ghost hunting films and television as a medium. This research when paired with Karen Renner’s analysis of the hypermasculine ghost hunting television and movie tv shows create an interesting question: if women are considered to be the more ‘sensitive’ by necessity, then why is it that a majority of television programming and movies rely on an overt masculine personality leading the charge between the paranormal reality and our own?
As technology as well as human intrigue continue to expand into the world of ghost exploration, IMDB has recorded around 50 ghost hunting series from the 90’s to today, with many having episodes into the hundreds (this is of course excluding shows like ‘Ghostbusters’ the series) making their way onto our televisions. Many of these ghost hunting shows had come to peak around mid 2000’s into the 2010s with one of the (arguably most) memorable being Ghost Adventures (2008-present) as well as it’s parody found footage counterpart Grave Encounters (2011).
Renner believes that the reason Zak Bagans and similar stand ins are hypermasculine in these ghost hunting scenarios is due to “ - the potentially emasculting circumstances in which the male participants find themselves. In addition to declaring their belief in the paranormal - an act that goes against the traditionally masculine principle of rationality - these men participate in a genre that demands ostentatious displays of emotion” (Renner, 201). We can watch a great example of the gendered differences, performances and expectations discussed by Renner and Gavan in the film, Grave Encounters, a 2011 parody film directed and written by The Vicious Brothers (Colin Minihan and Stuart Oritz).
As a person who loves all things spooky, scary and ghostly in nature, I always found Ghost Adventures interesting due to its bombastic nature, cheesy camerawork and the hypermasculine nature of ‘hunting ghosts’ set out by the (almost entirely) male crew involved in the investigation. After all, rationality is seen and toted as a masculine trait, and ghosts appear outside of the idea of rationality. While this is common in a lot of ghost hunting media, “...Ghost Adventures offers the largest variety and most obvious display of ‘manly’ markers” (Renner, 206). The entertaining mediums lead to a fantastic commentary in movies like Grave Encounters.
The incredible one shot for one shot opening between Grave Encounters and Ghost Adventures makes it immediately clear what The Vicious Brothers were going for. With the same faux hawk and leather jacket as Bagans, Sean Rogerson plays the lead investigator, Lance Preston. Both men incredibly driven to ‘hunt’ ghosts to prove their existence as a form of conquest. Ghost hunting could be more accurately described as ‘listening,’ ‘connecting,’ or ‘communicating’ to/with figures outside of the human eye. However, the verb ‘hunt’ is used.
...the Ghost Adventures crew continually emphasizes that what they are doing is an adventure, a term that, like ghost-hunting, diverts attention from the spirital nature of their activity by likening it to more masculine endevours and implying that the men are therefore agents of their own destiny, predators, rather than prey (211).
One could argue that hunt implies a masculine need to conquer, attack, control. This also turns the men from entering a potentially hostile space as the ‘hunters’ as opposed to those being hunted themselves. This is also seen in how Bagans and his parody counterpart, Lance Preston, also use provocation to entice or threaten ghostly activity. “‘In fact, Bagans makes it clear that his crew prefers to encounter malicious and dangerous spirits…” (Renner, 208). This is another tactic in which Lance Preston is imposing masculinity and violence as a means to prove a point to viewers. This is another way their masculinity appears in ghost hunting performance.
The team in Grave Encounters consists of Lance Preston, the head investigator, surveillance tech guru, Matt, cameraman T.C, and fake psychic medium, Houston Grey. The one female among them is introduced as an ‘occult specialist,’ Sasha; this already immediately proves Galvan’s hypothesis regarding this film, that the dedicated female character be connected to the occult, albeit not in a psychic character herself. It is pretty non-descript how Sasha’s character relates to the occult, but we can see how some of her feminine sensitivities affect her character later in the film. Renner discusses the phenomenon of male heavy reality television through the behaviours we see the characters use in Grave Encounters, and the men use in Ghost Adventures,
What is striking about these programmes is that even though spiritualism and mediumship has been strongly associated with women, men not only dominate ghost-hunting reality television but have transformed it into a hypermasculine arena through a variety of behaviours: proclaiming and proving physical toughness; treating fear as ‘girlish;’ physically sacrificing themselves, soldier-like, for the greater good; declaring a desire to seek out truth and justice regardless of danger; substantiating emotion and intuition with evidence; heftily pronouncing their heterosexuality; expressing a need for ‘extreme’ experiences away from the staid norms of everyday life” (203).
What we can see in both Grave Encounters and Ghost Adventures is the same behaviours noted by Renner. Fear, despite being an aspect they want to evoke in the audience, is seen as feminine. And our protagonists are deemed as heroes for not only not being afraid, but for conquering the entities that others find frightening.
Lance, Matt, T.C, Houston and Sasha approach their investigation at an abandoned Collingwood Psychiatric Hospital, where ghostly phenomena had been occurring. Clearly, ratings were top priority for them as their show was gaining popularity. Their tactics include bribing a gardener to speak on a haunting that was manufactured on the spot. It is important to note that Sasha is noted to be one of the first characters to articulate that “something might be real this time.” Or, “What if it’s real this time?” Implying that she’s receiving some kind of awareness to the energy of the building, and foreshadowing of what’s to come.
The movie’s only medium then appears, Houston Gray. While Houston being a man originally appears to go against Galvan’s and Renner’s theories, the audience quickly catches onto his grift. After Houston shares the story of a ghost girl in a bathtub that had taken her own life in a bloody manner, given to him in a vision, T.C yells, “Cut!” Prompting Lance and Houston to laugh and marvel at Houston’s imagination being perfect for reality T.V as a faux psychic. Galvan writes, “For feminine nerves and temperaments were seen as crucially distinct from men’s: only women generated what we might phrase as a sympathetic excess—an affective or spiritual quality—that could transform mediating apparatus into the carriers of intentional self-to-self communication.” X. The fake male psychic appears to once again parody the traditional female psychic that can appear on ghost hunting reality television, but is often overlooked, or replaced by a man despite the history of women having a stronger paranormal-communicative history and connection.
As the evening continues and the team remains locked in a haunted asylum (locked? Very dramatic), Matt goes missing. Sasha, our one female character is the first to really notice and push that Matt might have hurt himself setting up a camera elsewhere in the building. She is the first character to demonstrate the expected female compassion, fear and worry towards her fellow castmate. Fear is noted throughout most of Bagan’s Ghost Adventures, fear is girlish. Fear is womanly. “Fear, Bagans suggests, is for the feeble and female” (Renner, 208). This themeing is seen throughout Grave Encounters, even as the situation gets more and more dire.
Sasha is also the first investigator to claim she made actual contact with a ghost. In a scene down a dark hallway, Sasha screams, revealing that she has been touched by something and wants to return to the team’s home base. This once again is proving a hypothesis that her sensitivity to the living (and the dead) makes her the first point of contact in this team of men, leaving also a traditional hysterical woman - which should be expected given their haunting circumstances.
T.C is the opposite of Sasha in this moment, with not long after him receiving a phone call from what appears to be his young daughter. Off camera he confidently comforts his daughter saying that, “He [I] can take care of the monsters. He [I] can take care of anything. There’s nothing to be scared of.” This is an excellent written example of a level of machismo disguised as parental comfort, which lines up with Renner’s theory. TC - completely not believing in ghosts - is blindly reassuring his daughter (another girl/young woman who may genuinely be sensitive enough to be contacting real ghosts), that he can take care of anything.
Matt is still missing, and things get worse for the ghost hunting gang as the night goes on. Labrythian hallways repeat themselves endlessly. The food the crew bought begins to rot as if days had passed, rather than mere hours. Tim distorts. The team continues to slowly lose their sanity as the haunting becomes more and more real, much to their dismay. Lance still clings to the camera, desperate to prove that once they get out, “people will want to see this.” Clinging to his bravado at a time of crises. This makes for both a moment to demonstrate to the audience Lance’s character, as well as a way to continue the found-footage conceit.
As the team gets picked off one by one, Lance and Sasha do eventually rediscover Matt. He has transformed into a believed patient of the asylum, completely losing his sense of self. Sasha, is touched by a ghost again; but this time much more aggressively. Her back is scratched with “HELLO” carved into her pale skin. As they document her back she continues to plead for a way out, and that she wants this nightmare to end. Galvan writes of a woman’s manipulability to be relevant to the world of ghost hunting, “...in several works, she is not an individual in herself but rather the tool of another’s, usually a man’s, design of gaining information or social power. This was the gender dynamic that was obtained in offices and other telecommunication sites, where female workers carried out the business of male managers; it also characterized the relationship between mediums and psychical researchers” (Gavan, 13). The use of the “Hello” is particularly interesting, as once again we see literally any occult or ghostly apparition using the one female character to make contact, and to be heard.
After many (albeit a bit predictable) character deaths, Sasha and Lance, our two remaining survivors, are still fighting a way out of the asylum through a previously mentioned tunnel underground. Sasha continues to experience the most intense bodily horror with her scratched back and the coughing and hacking up of blood. As Sasha is stolen by a mysterious mist while the two are resting, Lance is left alone to deal with his own insanity - inside the asylum that drove him to it.
Interestingly, the movie ends with ghostly apparitions of the asylums rumoured barbaric physician that completed many, many, many lobotomies. This movie ends with Lance, completely driven mad by this haunting, to receive said lobotmoy from the ghost physician. This was a particularly interesting end, as a lobotomy was a traditionally female ‘cure’ for different hysterias and conditions throughout history (Johnson, 50). To end the movie with the male protagonist, who was the beaming icon of hypermasculinity and provoking ghosts receiving a hysterical woman’s treatment proves the perception of women and the occult. Lance Preston gazes into the camera with bloody eyes declaring that he is now, finally, “cured.”
While occasionally predictable, Grave Encounters successfully parodies the machismo ghost hunting trope that reigned supreme in the early to mid 2000’s. There are clearly defined gender scripts among ghost hunting investigations filmed for movies and reality tv. Women are to be used as a vessel for supernatural/paranormal forces due to their sensitivity, vulnerability and social acceptability to show emotions like fear. Acknowledging that this is a parody of the ghost hunting genre, Grave Encounters both behaves in the traditional way women in the ghost hunting world are looked at, as well as offers a surprise twist or two from horror expectations more broadly. Grave Encounters does see a downfall of the hypermasculine Bagan’s type, and continues to have us ask the questions surrounding gender in various aspects of the media we consume, no matter how niche.
Galvan, Jill Nicole. The Sympathetic Medium: Feminine Channeling, the Occult, and Communication Technologies, 1859-1919. Cornell University Press, 2010.
Grave Encounters. The Vicious Brothers. Digital Interference. Twin Engine Films, 2011.
Hollinger, Ryan. “GRAVE ENCOUNTERS: A Perfect Parody of Ghost Hunting Shows.” YouTube, YouTube, 28 Mar. 2021, www.youtube.com/watch?v=thtWR6kFHBk&t=1s.
Johnson, Jenell (2014). American Lobotomy: A Rhetorical History. University of Michigan Press. pp. 50–60. ISBN 978-0472119448.
Renner, Karen J. “Negotiations of masculinity in American ghost-hunting reality television.” Horror Studies, vol. 4, no. 2, 1 Oct. 2013, pp. 201–219, https://doi.org/10.1386/host.4.2.201_1.
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