We have been following this story ever since the YouTube channel Lainey and Ben started covering it a few weeks back. Ben Hubbard has used his channel to call out Ghost Adventures host Zak Bagans in a bevy of accusations about his conduct and the sway he has over Travel Channel and other paranormal investigative series. These allegations have been backed up by some investigators who worked with Bagans.
But, we are only getting half the story since Bagans himself has not addressed the claims and has been radio silent ever since they came forth. From a public relations standpoint, accusations such as these are harmful, and the host should have made a statement by now. It doesn’t help that, according to some disparaging comments on social media, Bagans’ popularity rating is dropping quicker than his f-bombs.
Now, an actual client of Ghost Adventures has come forward with his own experience, and the story is quite disturbing. Keith Linder, participated in the show back in 2015 as a victim of a haunting in his house. The Ghost Adventures episode in which they investigate Linder’s house is titled Demon in Seattle (Season 10, Ep. 10).
In a nutshell (you can watch Linder explain it in his own words below), Linder says that the Ghost Adventures team came to his house to inspect the property after he and Tina, his girlfriend at the time, were experiencing poltergeist activity.
Zak’s team did as they normally do, but this time they found no evidence of a haunting and left the residence empty-handed. Linder says after the episode aired that’s when the online hate started. “We were attacked,” he says, “we were attacked and viewed by many as wasting Ghost Adventures’ time.”
It should be noted that other respectable investigators who came to explore the house actually captured evidence of a haunting since then.
Linder says that Tina took the brunt of the online hatred and had to suffer through “caricatures” of herself, and as Linder says, “racial epithets.” He goes on to say that he reached out to the production company of Ghost Adventures in hopes they would release a statement to quell the social media attacks, but he says they did nothing.
Fanning the flames even further, Linder says his episode was edited in such a way that made him look suspicious and nefarious, or that he was creating a hoax even though the Ghost Adventures team already knew of the home’s previous occupant’s reports of paranormal activities. As stated before, other investigators have substantiated Linder’s claims of a haunting.
That aside, Linder then goes into the recent allegations against Bagans about using clout to cancel other paranormal investigative shows on Travel Channel. He says Bagans plays, and these are his words, “a mafia-esque type role within the paranormal entertainment industry.”
Linder says that after meeting Zak, he, personally, “never viewed Zak as a real, true, ghost or paranormal researcher…he’s a ghost hunter.”
With the accusations mounting and 15 reality shows streaming on the Travel Channel that carry the Bagans name, it is no wonder why people are questioning his dominance over the genre.
And in case you are wondering if you can watch Linder’s Ghost Adventures episode, that season is missing from the line-up on Travel Channel’s menu.
You can watch Linder’s entire video below:
Lainey and Ben:
*Images are from IMDb
