TAPS And Trickery At The Pasadena Playhouse

Britt Griffith, star of Syfy’s Ghost Hunters and Ghost Hunters International took the stage Saturday night at the Pasadena Playhouse to deliver a lecture on ghost hunting and to do a Q&A with excited fans. Tickets to the event, originally $30, were lowered to $5 due to poor sales. By the time Griffith took the stage, only about 1/3rd of the available seats were taken. 

After saying that he was a bit rushed and would only be able to talk for about an hour, Britt kicked off his performance by stating, unequivocally, that he never faked evidence on Ghost Hunters, nor did he ever see anyone he worked with fake anything. “I don’t know how they do things on other shows,” he said. “But we never faked anything.” And if that sounds like a weird way to kick off a show to you, I would agree. But roughly 35 minutes later, these words would blow up in his face. 

Lou Castillo, an independent paranormal investigator in California and self-proclaimed “believer,” attended the evening’s festivities and reported what went on directly to me throughout the night. A longtime listener of the internet radio show and podcast,Strange Frequencies Radio, that I host along with my friend Bobby Nelson, Lou is affectionately known by us as our “West Coast Correspondent.” 

Britt put on an entertaining show, Lou told me. He told jokes, regaled the audience with tales from behind-the-scenes of the Ghost Hunters program and showed clips of pranks the cast has pulled on each other. He also gave advice to would be paranormal investigators, explaining why the crew uses certain pieces of equipment and warning that should they ever be traipsing around in abandoned locations, it may be smart to invest in a carbon monoxide detector. Later, creating a bit of an “Us vs. Them” atmosphere, Mr. Griffith gave a few of his thoughts on skeptics, pooh-poohing “what skeptics would have you believe” as it pertained to paranormal photography and EVP recordings. 

What really got the audience excited, however, was Britt’s buildup to a secret piece of video never before seen from one of their televised investigations. “West Coast Correspondent Lou” described it as “black and white night vision footage of a hotel where, down a hallway, what looked to be an elderly man moving right to left, then left to right” could be seen. It never made air, apparently, due to the request of the proprietors of the location itself. They felt that showing this on television would possibly scare clients away, or maybe even stir up activity at the location more. 

Griffith stated that there was no one down the hallway who could have been pulling a fast one on them. Certainly no one that could have escaped the watchful eye of the video recording equipment set up. And if a skeptic tells you that it could have been faked by the crew themselves, well remember, TAPS never faked anything while Britt Griffith was around. 

It was at about this time, when the atmosphere in the Pasadena Playhouse was at its peak, that something strange happened. A light fixture which was placed up on-stage began to flicker a bit. What was happening? Was the power going to go out? Then, quickly, it moved, right around 3 inches or so and seemingly on its own, back and slightly toward to left of stage. The audience gasped and one attendee shouted out, “Did you see that? It moved!” Tension was beginning to mount and excitement at what was thought to clearly be a paranormal occurrence was at a fevered pitch.