Monday, October 31, 2005
The paranormal group investigates claims of unusual activity. ZAP2IT.COM The stated mission of the investigators on Sci Fi Channel's reality series "Ghost Hunters" is to probe the paranormal, but in a special episode airing at 10 tonight the mission expands to saving a friend from troubles of a more temporal nature. Early in the show's second season -- which concluded with high ratings Oct. 19 -- technical manager Brian Harnois left The Atlantic Paranormal Society (TAPS) after a demanding romantic relationship caused friction. His former investigative partner, the tattooed Steve Gonsalves, stepped into Harnois' position in the group, based in Warwick, R.I. "Brian called me," recalls Jason Hawes, co-founder of TAPS (with fellow Roto-Rooter plumber Grant Wilson), "after breaking up with the girl he was with. We sat down. We talked. He laid it on the line. He apologized for everything he'd done, admitted to a lot of lies. "I asked him right out, 'Why did you call us here?' He said he wanted to get back involved with TAPS. That's beyond mine and Grant's choice. That's the group, because the group feels they'd been shafted." "At this point," Wilson says, "he's coming back like a new member. The groups got to vote him in. And he's got to start at the bottom." In the Halloween episode, Harnois rejoins the team for investigations of a supposedly haunted house, brewery and cemetery in Savannah, Ga. Part of the appeal of "Ghost Hunters" is its methodical procedure for investigating (and usually debunking) paranormal claims, but the rest lies in the quirky personalities of the TAPS volunteers. His turning point Long before there was a TV show, Hawes and Harnois were friends. Call it "the Yoko factor" if you want, but apparently it was a romance with someone who'd seen Harnois on the show that led him to abandon longstanding friendships and, eventually, TAPS itself. "She contacted me through e-mail," Harnois says. "We were talking as friends, and it escalated to the point where I was living with her. After I quit the show because of her, I think we separated because I was no longer Brian on 'Ghost Hunters,' I was just Brian the boyfriend." "It's funny," Wilson says, "because she wanted you to quit the show, then when you did, it's like, 'Oh, you're not Brian from "Ghost Hunters" anymore.' Right now, Brian is 'Brian on "Ghost Hunters"' and it's going to be hard to find someone who appreciates him for who he is, not the guy who's on the show." When they first agreed to let TAPS be featured on a TV show, Hawes and Wilson knew it would be about more than just seeking spooks. "We knew we were putting our lives out there," Wilson says, "and people were going to love us or hate us." "It's who we are," Hawes says, "what makes us who we are, what it takes to run a group like TAPS, the chaos that goes into it, the stress on family life." "It's like the whole drama with me," Harnois says. "Everybody knew Jay was like my big brother. They knew I was great friends with Grant. I was best friends with Steve. To have to leave like I did, it tore them apart as well as tore a lot of people in the fan base apart because they understood our relationships." According to Hawes and Wilson, the show's executive producers, Craig Piligian and Tom Thayer, decide on the balance between professional and personal. Nine additional episodes of "Ghost Hunters" premiere in January 2006.