Review of SyFy's "Haunted Highways"

On Tuesday December 17th the SyFy Channel presented a brand new episode of their show “Haunted Highways”.  In this particular episode, the second segment had Jack Osborne and Dana Workman investigating the legends of hauntings surrounding “Shades of Death Road” (yes that is the real name of the road) in Warren County, NJ.

I admit to being a fan of the show since it first premiered last year, although I also admit to being a bit peeved that SyFy ripped off my own YouTube series of short documentary films entitled “Paranormal Highways”, where my team and I investigate strange roads and other exterior locations that are rumored to have paranormal activity.  With Haunted Highways, the show’s producers hired two teams of two investigators each, and follows the same basic concept of investigating strange outdoor locations across the country.  The “hook” for this show as that each team films the entire episode themselves with “no big camera crews following them around”.  Oh wait, that’s Ghost Adventures.  Still, the Haunted Highway teams do film the entire episode using their own cameras which are rigged to shoot both what is in front of the camera as well as another camera pointing back to capture their own facial reactions.  So far this season I’ve been enjoying the show as they have investigated some unusual areas, and some of the evidence of paranormal activity looks impressive at first glance.

But then there was this Tuesday’s episode, and my faith in this show has been torpedoed by the greedy, stupid and moronic producers and executives at SyFy who have proven once again that they can’t present a serious show on the paranormal without trying to twist facts and manipulate the outcome in order to present something that is not reality.

This past February I was contacted by the producers of Haunted Highways notifying me that they were going to shoot an episode on Shades of Death Road, and that they were looking for people who had paranormal experiences on the road.  My team and I, New Jersey Paranormal Research, had conducted an investigation of the road a couple of years prior (which ironically became an episode of my own Paranormal Highways series) and I agreed to be interviewed on their show.  So arrangements were made to meet up with Jack Osborne and Dana Workman in March at a specified location to shoot a brief interview with me, presumably before they would do their night time investigation. 

I arrived at the small deli where they wanted to shoot the interview to find several other people milling about, all waiting to be interviewed as well.  I found out that my friend Chris Nicolletti from SCREAM Paranormal was also shooting an interview with them earlier in the day, and Chris called to tell me they had finished with him and they were on their way.  Not long afterwards a black SUV pulled up with Jack and Dana, and following on their heels were several other vehicles including a motor home.  That’s when it hit me that the whole concept of having two investigators out in the middle of nowhere all alone with no back-up was a sham.  Jack and Dana are followed around by a large crew of about 15 people including producers, production assistants, and even a caterer!  They began shooting interviews with some of the other people while I patiently waited for my turn.  Having a background in film and television production I understood the process.  Finally Jack approached me and we started to do the interview, and I explained how my team and I had heard about the paranormal activity on Shades of Death Road and how we conducted our investigation.  I was about halfway through my story when this woman entered the deli holding a clip board and a walkie-talkie – obviously a producer – and stopped the interview.  She then asked me to tell the story again, but this time don’t mention that I was part of a paranormal team, but that I just happened to be there with some friends and experienced activity.  I was dumbfounded that she was asking me to change the facts of my story.  I told her that’s not how it happened, but she said that they can’t mention any other paranormal groups and I needed to tell the story as if I was just a witness, not an investigator.  I retold the story, and although I downplayed my group’s involvement, but it was still clear that I wasn’t just a witness but that I was there doing an investigation.  After the interview was over I got a photo of myself with Jack and Dana and I left while they shot more interviews.

It was when I drove away from the deli that I began to become angry and upset with myself.  In hind site I understood that I should have stuck to my full story, and if that wasn’t good enough for them then I should just walked away.  It was at that moment that I vowed I would never do another TV show unless I had 100% control over what I could say and how it was presented to the public.  Too many of these so-called “reality shows” are not reality at all.  They are scripted and manipulated in the editing room to portray whatever the producers or the network want to portray, whether it is real or not.  After my previous bad experience with Paranormal State I should have known better to trust working on any show that I have no control over.  I had also learned that the SyFy channel has a standing edict that they will not mention or promote any other paranormal research groups other than the ones on their own shows.  I learned this when I was approached by the producers of Haunted Collector and set them up with one of my cases to do for their show.  I was supposed to be interviewed by the cast, but an executive at SyFy wouldn’t allow it because I represented another paranormal group.  So in essence they reach out to other groups looking for cases for their shows, and once they get them they toss them aside.

After several months of waiting, I finally received an e-mail from the producers that the episode would air on Tuesday night.  So I told all my friends to tune in and see me on TV like most people would do.  I was very curious to see how the rest of the episode would play out and if Jack and Dana would capture any of the same evidence we encountered in our prior investigation of the area.  When the episode aired I quickly realized that I had been cut from the episode entirely.  To be honest I was relieved.  I would rather have my story not heard at all than to have it twisted around by these scumbag producers and executives to serve their own agenda.  As the rest of the episode unfolded I began to see how the network altered the footage to mislead the public, and how they may have faked some evidence.

Let’s take a look at some of the highlights of the episode.  When Jack and Dana pass underneath the overpass they loose their external cameras.  I have no explanation of that phenomenon.  However, the tire on their vehicle blew and Jack had to change the tire while Dana walked back to the overpass to do an EVP session.  After seeing the large production crew following them, I can tell you right now that I do not believe for one second that Jack actually changed that tire by himself.  Remember that these investigators are followed everywhere by a large production crew.  Jack was diagnosed with MS, and they shot the new season during the colder weather as it wouldn’t affect him as badly.  So while they may have filmed a couple of shots of Jack looking like he changed the tire, the actual work was most likely done by one of the production staff.  When the tire was changed they drove further down the road until Dana saw what looked like a man standing next to a tree on the side of the road. They backed up the car to find that no one was standing there at all, and they were all excited to have seen an apparition.  But in my opinion there was nothing paranormal about it….it was a live person standing there, either one of their own crew members or someone who lives nearby (yes, people do live on the road). 

At this point Jack and Dana jump out of the car and start to explore the woods looking for the person. They find a run down shack and Jack captures what looks like the figure of a person quickly disappearing inside the shack on his thermal FLIR camera.  This figure was all black in the thermal camera indicating extreme cold.  I couldn’t help but be struck by the fact that the figure looks identical to other figures captured on the FLIR camera during several other investigations on the show.  In the past I was impressed with the thermal footage and thought they had captured real apparitions, but now I’m not so certain.  Since we can not see the menu on the screen that shows the levels of hot and cold, I have the feeling that SyFy is trying to pull another fast one on us by inverting the color palette.  So where a living person’s heat signature would normally look red or white, inverting it could make them appear black.  Apparitions are extremely rare and difficult to capture, and in this season alone the show has captured 3-4 similar black so-called apparitions on its thermal cameras.  As I have recently learned, when something appears too good to be true, it usually is.

When Jack and Dana leave the shack they walk through the woods and suddenly find themselves standing next to Ghost Lake.  I laughed at this bit of editing deception as the lake is surrounded by high cliffs on the side of the lake where they “appeared”, and the only way to reach is it to park their car in the nearby parking lot.  Jack stayed to investigate the shore while Dana hiked back to where a small cave used by the local Lenape Indians sits.  In the episode Jack mentions that the Indians used it for rituals and ceremonies, which is not true.  Archeologists feel the cave was used more as a rest stop for hunters and did not involve ceremonies.  The rest of the episode shows Dana doing an EVP session in the cave and encountering some possible activity in the form of disembodied voices, which is consistent with the activity my group and I encountered when we investigated the cave.  However, at one point Dana reacts to something brushing near her, and at the exact same time a shadow moves in front of the camera.  This seems to indicate that what she reacted to was related to the shadow, yet SyFy choose to completely ignore that piece of evidence and it wasn’t mentioned again in the episode.  Also, while Jack was standing on the shoreline he sees through the FLIR camera two large pillars form in the center of the lake.  He becomes excited as it seems to corroborate other witness testimony of people seeing two figures appearing on the lake.  Yet once again SyFy cut to commercial, and when they came back from break it was as if the incident never happened, and the footage was not seen again.  This type of poor editing and story telling seriously irritates me as SyFy is only concerned with showing something creepy, yet they have no intention of attempting to explain it, something real investigators would have done.  I got another chuckle when Jack says that the sun is coming up so they will have to go back to base camp to review their evidence, yet the clock in the corner of the frame says that it’s only 1:45 AM.  Seriously, the sun comes up at 1:45 in the morning in New Jersey?  Who’d have thunk it?

The final insult came in the last scene where Jack and Dana supposedly review their evidence the next morning and have a conversation with the other team members via Skype.  The insult comes from the fact that their car is parked in a forest, but it’s the wrong forest!  The camera shows them standing amongst a grove of California Redwood trees…something we don’t have here in New Jersey.  They are also not wearing jackets, showing that the scene was shot in warmer weather, weeks to months after the episode was actually filmed.  And most of the more interesting pieces of evidence from the investigation, including the shadow in the cave and the pillars on the lake, were completely ignored; while the figure of the very much alive person standing on the side of the road was the highlight of the investigation.

Let me say upfront that I don’t have a problem whatsoever with Jack Osborne or Dana Workman.  Meeting and talking to Jack I found him to be very pleasant and friendly.  Dana was more quiet and didn't say much to me, but that doesn’t mean anything negative against her as a person.  My issues are directed at the producers of these programs and at the executives at SyFy in particular!  Let this serve as a warning to all other investigators who are contacted by these shows to be careful and realize that when you work with these production companies you are working with the devil.  They don’t care about you, and they certainly don’t care about the truth.  They only want to sell their product and make money, and they will lie, cheat, and manipulate the facts in order to do it.  I will never, ever, do anything for the Syfy Channel again, not until they change their policy of not mentioning the other hard working paranormal groups out there who they contact for cases and give them credit where credit is due.  I won't play their game or put money into their pockets.  They don’t care about the paranormal, they only care that it’s popular at the moment and they can make money off of it. 

It's time for these TV shows to go away and to leave the investigating to real investigators.