*sigh* A Haunting. Where to I begin with this festering pile of intellectual pus that the Discovery Channel has degenerated into? First off, let me start by saying what the channel it's on it SUPPOSED to be about. The discovery channel. Its supposed to be something you and/or your kids can tune into, and by the end of the episode has learned something new (weither or not they're really aware of it). Discovery, and its sister channels have the obligation to be EDUCATIONAL, and SCIENTIFIC, Or at the very least provable. Whether its showing the lives of crab fishermen and the technology they use and the troubles they go in their daily lives in order to bring you that high dollar meal at Red Lobster, or whether its following the life and times of a pride of lions in the Sahara, or whether its showing how your car is made and how it works. This is NOT Sci-fi or Spiketv we're talking about here. But it seems the new execs of Discovery (And the rest of the educational channels, especially the History Chall... though Animal Planet still has some dignity left at least... for the moment anyway.) have seem to totally forgotten what educational tv is supposed to be about. Instead, let's make way for pseudo-scientific new-age junk, sensationalist and boring drama shows... anything that grabs ratings and gets money, nevermind our dignity. And this is how we've come to this show, the worst of the worst in this latest trend of new-age, christianised, anti-intellectual garbage. The show, as it been said, is based around first hand accounts and dramaizations of scary ghost stories.... and that's pretty much it. NO skeptic point of view. NO science involved (if it were, you wouldn't even have this sort of thing actually) NOTHING educational at all. At least ghosthunters PRETENDS to be scientific in this regard, though it's still pseudoscience. You are meant to believe these stories right off the bat. You are meant go into the show believing without a doubt that these stories are true because it says the narrator and the person telling it says they are true. And because its being aired on Discovery Channel. After all, its not like they would embellish or doctor even make up these ghost stories just for ratings. (That was sarcasm btw.) The stories themselves almost always seem to follow the same general plotline. First *insert couple, family, or single woman with a live in friend here* moves into a fixer-upper house dirt cheap, or something similar (such as getting a bar or club, or getting or finding an object they'd forgotten about that's seemingly innocuous that later turns out to be haunted such as a painting.) Or start changing something in their current house. Er protip for you kids, ghosts hate change of any kind, and will enter Rage Mode for putting a china cup in the wrong place. Then they start having nightmares and start feeling uncomfortable, but nothing out of the ordinary. But as a certain blue hedgehog would say... "That's NO good!" which becomes quite obvious rather fast as demonic possession and/or poltergeist attacks start to kick in, growing worse and worse. Then our heroes start looking and snooping around, usually in the form of looking at the library, asking the neighbors, getting a medium or channeler or ghost expert, or a mix of the above. Then they try to get rid of the ghosts, and this is where our religious zealot (usually christian, but Wiccans have on rare occasions taken this position.) pops in and does an exorcism. Usually it works but sometimes it doesn't, and the attacks continues. On very rare occasions this step is replaced with a sayonce which gets rid of the spirit. Note that the above two steps may be interchangeable to give the illusion of variety to the episodes. If the Exorcism works... everyone is then happy and relived, end of episode. If not, our heroes high tail it to another house, someplace not possessed by ghosts and demons, end of episode. And so what exactly have we learned through all of this, hmm? That ghosts don't like change, that demons are lurking around every corner waiting to possess unsuspecting people at every opportunity and you should always be fearful of them? Nightmares are the results of ghosts and demons? When you see something you can't explain and/or have disturbing thoughts you should say "ghosts/demonsdidit" and seek out medium frauds and religious zealots in the hopes of making your problems go away? Not only are these not the sort of lessons to be teaching kids (or even Adults in general), but they're just very dangerous ideas in general. The show is NOT educational, and if taken that way it gives the totally wrong lessons as I said. The real point of is: This program has NO business being on Discovery Channel. Its not educational, its not factual, its not based on demonstrable evidence. If this show was on Sci-Fi or Spike TV or even FOX, none of this would be an issue. None of those channels have any real obligation to be either factual or educational. But instead it masquerades itself as established fact on a channel that SHOULD BE publishing things that are established fact. I mean, really. What's next, a show about ancient aliens, or peddling the 2012 fearmongering myth, or JFK conspiracy theories, or Crop Circles, or the wonders of Homeoapathy, or... Oh wait, that's right.. We already have this. it's called the (pseudo)History channel -_-U.