Freeing us all from the tyranny of hostile spirits—and also a pronounced lack of riveting dialogue like “Hey, did you hear that? I definitely heard that. That was definitely a ghost”—A&E announced today that it’s bringing long-running “paranormal” “reality” series Ghost Hunters back to life, presumably in an effort to use up our entire yearly allotment of scare quotes in one fell and spectral swoop.
The original Ghost Hunters ran for 12 years on Syfy, inviting viewers into the world of professional paranormal investigators/plumbers Grant Wilson and Jason Hawes (among others, not all of whom were also Mario-esque masters of the lavatorial arts). The show’s various investigation teams ended up filming 230 episodes or specials of television in their hunt for definitive proof of the afterlife, a pursuit only mildly stymied by the inconvenient fact that ghosts do not exist, and that death is simply a featureless black void into which we all must go, and from which there is no actual return.
Unless, of course, you’re a reality TV show. Then you end up getting brought back three years after your initial cancellation, with A&E announcing that Wilson (who left the original show in its eighth season) will be leading a new team of spook-hunters for a 20-episode new season of the series. And that’s not all: The network’s Ghost Hunters revival is only one of five ghost-based shows it’s putting into production this week, including Trey The Texas Medium (12 episodes), Celebrity Ghost Stories (6 episodes), World’s Biggest Ghost Hunt (two-hour special), and—and this is the one where the vein in our heads really started to twitch, probably because of hostile ghouls or some shit—Psychic Kids, another revival show in which former “psychic” children who are now adults mentor other “psychic” children in their “gifts,” and how the fuck is this an actual “reality” TV show, and not the premise for the latest single-season CW series? (Episode count: Unlisted.)
Ghost Hunters returns to TV this August.