I’m so Pissed at Zak Bagans.

Last night, I gave watching Ghost Adventures another try. It was short-lived, I just can’t get into that kind of manufactured drama. It did leave me with a major takeaway, and perhaps the root of my distaste for those types of shows. They make death seem scary; something to fear. I fail to believe that these shows truly aim to honor lives by telling stories, but instead demonize death.

Ghost Adventures courtesy of HBO

“Her grandmother died in that room…creepy!”. From my perspective, your grandmother dying in her home is a wonderful place to end life. Typically, when you read “so-and-so died peacefully, surrounded by their loving family” in an obituary, it means they died at home or under hospice care. About one in ten house calls (transferring a decedent from their home to the funeral home) I go on are for someone who was found deceased during a wellness check, and the majority of those are folks who were already ill, had known health concerns, or died in a manner that was not deemed suspicious by the medical examiner (more on that in a later post). During the other 90% of house calls, the home is filled with friends or family, and the deceased is softly tucked into bed, covered with a blanket, surrounded with love, whatever that looks like for them. Peaceful. Not chaotic. No blood and guts. 

Maybe spirits linger, but the act of simply expiring in a place does not deem it “haunted”, “creepy”, “scary”, etc. This assumes, unfairly, that when we die we become ghosts with a vendetta. If ghosts exist, are they presumed to be spirits that have not crossed over? Energies can not be destroyed, so can spirits remain? I personally believe that what is “scary” is the unknown. The fact that science cannot prove or explain what happens to a living being’s energy once their body dies, is fascinating and will continue to be a curiosity until the end of time. But for today, portraying these sacred spaces in this way feeds on anxiety, and instead of sharing someone’s story respectfully, it is catastrophizing. The bed in which someone had their last breath should be honored, not feared. Are we afraid of dead bodies, the act of dying, or what comes after?