Ah…Halloween must be in the air!  Monday night a new paranormal show premiered on A&E called “Extreme Paranormal”.  Now, I wasn’t holding out MUCH hope but at least a LITTLE hope.  I always do when there is a new paranormal show on but I’m starting to think that I need to count my blessings that “Ghost Hunters” keeps spinning off new shows and just stick with that.  In case you haven’t heard in November Sci-Fi (which, as a refresher, I refuse to call SyFy), has a new spin off from “Ghost Hunters” coming called “Ghost Hunters Academy”.  This show will be featuring groups of college students and would be ghost hunters working with Steve and Tango from the popular Ghost Hunters franchise as they learn the ropes with paranormal investigations.  I have hope there.  “Extreme Paranormal”…no.

“Extreme Paranormal” appears as though it will be the latest in the A&E psychic and paranormal shows, something that the channel is getting quite deeply involved in. The cable channel is airing the two part pilot on the two Mondays leading up to Halloween (naturally).  On October 19^th the first of the two shows aired and it was quite a scene.  This show is very similar in style to “Ghost Adventures” (which you can see how I feel about that here).  Basically three guys with equipment that go running around provoking spirits only to later run away.  And they seem to have no purpose for doing what they do other than to freak each other out and “catch evidence” of a spirit.

The best, or really worst, part of the show is the “occult expert” Nathan, AKA “The Demon Hunter”.  I can’t even being to tell you the number of eye roll/giggles that this guy gave me in the hour of this show.  In this episode Nathan, along with Shaun, AKA “Ghostman” and Jason, who has no cool “Top Gun” call sign, went to visit the New Mexico State Penitentiary which saw some of the most brutal inmate deaths during The New Mexico Penitentiary Riot during two days of February 1980.  One of the brilliant ideas that these guys come up with is to visit the cell of a victim that was pulled out and burned alive and use fire and blood to try and draw his spirit out to make an appearance for them.  They get one guy to lie on the floor in the exact spot where the inmate died (there are burn marks on the floor showing how he was positioned at the time of his death), they outline the body in chalk, use a flammable gel to outline that, Nathan cuts his hand and draws out blood to draw “The Tree of Death Rune” inside the outline and then lights it all on fire to get the inmates spirit riled up all while basically verbally taunting him as well.  Seriously!?!  As for “The Tree of Death Rune” I honestly don’t know what he was talking about.  The rune he drew looked somewhat like Algiz upside down which was interesting since that’s not so much a rune of death but protection.  If anyone could shed some light on this I would love to hear it because I’m seriously wondering if this guy maybe spends too much of his time playing World Of Warcraft when he’s not being “The Demon Hunter”.  Which, by the way, they have the nicknames because they have a site and podcast called “Ghostman and The Demon Hunter”.

But after going nuts cutting bars off cell doors, lighting fires, screaming like little girls and generally acting like idiots they just leave.  No discussion, no assessment of evidence, no real purpose to their visit.  “Hi, we just want to come in and light shit on fire and maybe use a power saw to bust up some cell doors.  Mind if we spend the night next week?”

And then they went to a lake to hunt down a serial killer which was even more ridiculous.  They constructed a large circle with pentacles and a triangle attached to it out of foam with bit clear plastic party cups glued to the top to act as makeshift candle holders for tea lights and then they send it off afloat into the lake where this spirit apparently resides.  Nathan tells Shaun to go in the water but to stay in the circle because he’ll be “protected by God” as long as he says in it…because meanwhile Nathan and Jason will be, you guessed it, lighting a circle on fire on the beach and summoning the spirit of the serial killer out of the water.  Yes, a fiery ring of invocation, complete with skulls and all, on a beach at a lake while some guy is floating around with a flashlight in the water inside some rejected NERO prop.  Really!?!  And naturally they piss off the ghost which comes up from the water and grabs Shaun by the back and tries to pull him under, however Nathan will be sure to point out to him that it happened because he left the circle!  OH NOS!!!

Honestly, this is just getting to be too much!  There are enough of these paranormal shows on and a few of them, mainly the “Ghost Hunters” shows, seem to serve a purpose in trying to help the living and the dead cope with and understand their unique situations.  Things like this and “Ghost Adventures” are just silly and pointless.  At the beginning of “Extreme Paranormal” there is a disclaimer stating that portions of the rituals have been cut and that you shouldn’t try this at home.  I can only assume that the reason for “cutting out parts of rituals” is so that they don’t encourage people to light their living room floors on fire or anything like that in order to call on spirits that might be in the house.

On a somewhat brighter note, after that monstrosity ended a show I hadn’t seen before came on called “Medium/P.I.” This show stars one of my favorite magickal people and psychics, Jackie Barrett as she works with her friend Sean Crowley who is the Captain of the cold case homicide division of the NYPD to try and solve cases.  This was an interesting show and I enjoyed it since it showed people with the gift of sight working to HELP people, not just piss off ghosts for the hell of it.  Besides, it was nice to see Jackie Barrett back on TV.  She was the runner up of Lifetime’s show “America’s Psychic Challenge” back in 2007.  Sadly this didn’t seem to list any upcoming episodes beyond the one that I saw.  However another episode of “Extreme Paranormal” will air next Monday what the paranormal triple threat visit an insane asylum and put Jason in a straight jacket in an effort to “draw out ghosts”!  Good times.