Just a couple of nights ago medium James Van Praagh
was a guest on Chelsea Lately promoting tonight’s E! Entertainment special Psychic Hollywood: The Search for the Truth. Interestingly, I don’t see a lot of hype around this show other than James’s guest appearance and some promos on E!. When you search for it on the Web, not so much comes up. Well, we’ll just have to see how it plays out. It airs tonight at 8 p.m., Friday at 11 p.m. and Saturday at 7 a.m.
Celebrity Ghost Stories airs on Saturday nights at 10 p.m. on Biography channel. I really like this show. It’s got celebrities and the paranormal. Put ‘em both together and wham! You’ve got a new sub-genre. Paranormal reality television has not yet been named as a genre as far as I’ve seen (and I’m looking), but it is. Every week you hear of new paranormal reality shows being added to the line up of even the most unlikely programming—i.e. The Haunted on Animal Planet. Animal Planet!!! It’s all about how the dogs and cats reacted to the haunting – but I digress. We’ll look at that one after I’ve had a chance to really check it out.
Celebrities have lives that fascinate people – who they date, who they marry, when they procreate, what their salaries are, what they’ve done wrong (Tiger?), where they live, how they dress…and on and on. Their personal encounters with the paranormal are not always very public, however. So I congratulate the GENIUS who put together the paranormal with celebrities and made it into television. We already know these people, we generally like them, we don’t normally see them as human, but when we hear them tell about being scared and having a weird, unexplainable incident happen to them, it’s interesting—more interesting than what they wore on the red carpet.
Some of the celebrities who’ve appeared on this show have surprised me. Joan Rivers talked about her experiences of living with the ghost of the woman who used to own the Manhattan building she lives in.
Scott Baio told a very emotional story about experiences after his father’s death. Dee Snyder talks about his brother-in-law, who was murdered, and seemed to be trying to get a message to Dee and his family. Justine Bateman tells a funny story about the happenings after her grandfather 
died, and Ali Landry talks about a phone call she received from the godfather she was close to just after he passed away.
What I like about this show is that celebrities know how to tell a story. What critics don’t like about this show is that celebrities know how to tell a story. While my point of view is that this quality makes the stories that much more interesting to watch, one such critic mentioned to me that, “Actors are good at pretending, so you can’t believe what they are saying here.” That may be true in some cases – they may be stretching the truth to be featured on a show when their careers are lagging. But in other cases, you see the tears in their eyes and the genuine sincerity in their comments, “I am not crazy! I do not attend séances, and I don’t look for this kind of thing.”
The format of this program is a dramatic re-enactment of the story with a narrative by the celebrity. Other shows that do this are Ghostly Encounters, A Haunting, Animal Planet’s The Haunted, and other shows like Psychic Investigators. It’s a sort of documentary style and at the end the person who experienced the phenomenon usually sums up what it meant to them and very often they say, “I know now that there’s more out there than just this life,” or “I know my [loved one] is still around.”
When you think that celebrity endorsements pay top dollar because of their effectiveness, one might wonder what a celebrity endorsement of the afterlife, or spiritual activity or the paranormal might mean to a viewer. Inquiring minds want to know.
Let me know if you have an opinion about celebrities and the paranormal or if you’ve had your own paranormal experience. I’d be interested in hearing about it.
was a guest on Chelsea Lately promoting tonight’s E! Entertainment special Psychic Hollywood: The Search for the Truth. Interestingly, I don’t see a lot of hype around this show other than James’s guest appearance and some promos on E!. When you search for it on the Web, not so much comes up. Well, we’ll just have to see how it plays out. It airs tonight at 8 p.m., Friday at 11 p.m. and Saturday at 7 a.m.Celebrity Ghost Stories airs on Saturday nights at 10 p.m. on Biography channel. I really like this show. It’s got celebrities and the paranormal. Put ‘em both together and wham! You’ve got a new sub-genre. Paranormal reality television has not yet been named as a genre as far as I’ve seen (and I’m looking), but it is. Every week you hear of new paranormal reality shows being added to the line up of even the most unlikely programming—i.e. The Haunted on Animal Planet. Animal Planet!!! It’s all about how the dogs and cats reacted to the haunting – but I digress. We’ll look at that one after I’ve had a chance to really check it out.
Celebrities have lives that fascinate people – who they date, who they marry, when they procreate, what their salaries are, what they’ve done wrong (Tiger?), where they live, how they dress…and on and on. Their personal encounters with the paranormal are not always very public, however. So I congratulate the GENIUS who put together the paranormal with celebrities and made it into television. We already know these people, we generally like them, we don’t normally see them as human, but when we hear them tell about being scared and having a weird, unexplainable incident happen to them, it’s interesting—more interesting than what they wore on the red carpet.
Some of the celebrities who’ve appeared on this show have surprised me. Joan Rivers talked about her experiences of living with the ghost of the woman who used to own the Manhattan building she lives in.
Scott Baio told a very emotional story about experiences after his father’s death. Dee Snyder talks about his brother-in-law, who was murdered, and seemed to be trying to get a message to Dee and his family. Justine Bateman tells a funny story about the happenings after her grandfather 
died, and Ali Landry talks about a phone call she received from the godfather she was close to just after he passed away.What I like about this show is that celebrities know how to tell a story. What critics don’t like about this show is that celebrities know how to tell a story. While my point of view is that this quality makes the stories that much more interesting to watch, one such critic mentioned to me that, “Actors are good at pretending, so you can’t believe what they are saying here.” That may be true in some cases – they may be stretching the truth to be featured on a show when their careers are lagging. But in other cases, you see the tears in their eyes and the genuine sincerity in their comments, “I am not crazy! I do not attend séances, and I don’t look for this kind of thing.”
The format of this program is a dramatic re-enactment of the story with a narrative by the celebrity. Other shows that do this are Ghostly Encounters, A Haunting, Animal Planet’s The Haunted, and other shows like Psychic Investigators. It’s a sort of documentary style and at the end the person who experienced the phenomenon usually sums up what it meant to them and very often they say, “I know now that there’s more out there than just this life,” or “I know my [loved one] is still around.”
When you think that celebrity endorsements pay top dollar because of their effectiveness, one might wonder what a celebrity endorsement of the afterlife, or spiritual activity or the paranormal might mean to a viewer. Inquiring minds want to know.
Let me know if you have an opinion about celebrities and the paranormal or if you’ve had your own paranormal experience. I’d be interested in hearing about it.
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