So I am behaving myself for once on Twitter, minding my own business, and Gwen Acorah (The Wife and Boss of Derek) Tweets me.
I ask her when it is on, and I am informed that it has already aired last Tuesday.
Now I was aware of the show, but I had completely mixed it up with Celebrity Haunted Hotel, thinking they were one and the same.
Bit surprised when i heard that this guy was hosting, but I got the names mixed up.
A quick bit of googling, I find the catch up link, and here is my review. But just before that, it seems that Rylan (not the rat), has had a lot of people calling the show fake, here is his response to those accusations.
The fact that he says "Nothing on Celebrity Ghost Hunt is faked" amuses me, and after 20 minutes of trying to find it on catch up, and starting to watch last years live special by mistake, I eventually managed to find it, then it wouldn't work on any browser that has a built in ad blocker, so if you want to watch, you might need to use internet explorer basic or Microsoft Edge.
https://www.my5.tv/celebrity-ghost-hunt/season-1/episode-1
You see that disclaimer at the bottom of the screen?
So we get introduced to the "Celebrities" and the first one is someone called Bobby Norris.
No idea who this "Celebrity" is, but he has so much botox and filler in his face, he could be anyone on the planet. What a strange looking individual. Makes Stuart Torreville look perfectly normal!
Next up is someone from Love Island, Marcel Thingybob.
Again never heard of him, at least Five Star have bothered to put a token black guy on the show, Most Haunted in 21 series I don't think has had a single "ethnic" person on the show, and a perma-tan Derek Acorah does not count before anyone says it.
We get Marnie Simpson next.
Now I have actually heard of her, although again why at her young ages she needs to pump her face full of botox and filler I will never know, she is a naturally beautiful girl even before she had the nose job, most famous for having sex on a TV show, I know her from Celebrity Big Brother.
We get introduced to a couple of the "investigators".
This is Alex Gibbs, a ridiculously pretty Psychic, so she might just get a pass from me! Just kidding of course.
The "Celebs" are given pointless "Ghost Hunting" equipment, and cameras, and are then off to investigate on their own. Hilariously they are being filmed clearly by professional cameramen, who are already in rooms that they are going to investigate in. A huge fail here from a production standpoint.
Bobby Norris is doing his best Yvette Fielding impression, talking to the ghosts, and asking "is there anything here, give us a sound, touch one of us."
Bobby has an EMF meter, it suddenly goes up to 11, and Bobby brilliantly debunks it without realising, by pointing out the typewriter/printer thing they are looking at is electric.
The three of them enter a room, and a professional cameraman is filming them, at no point do they look at the cameraman/camera, talk to him or acknowledge he/she is there. This is really bad. And as you can see there is no need for "night vision" as it is clearly very bright there.
Bobby then tries to talk to the ghost of Margaret Thatcher. Yes really.
To recap, we started the show with Rylan, who then left 3 celebs on their own in a nuclear bunker to investigate, no format to the show, no official direction. Just 3 idiots wandering about, pretending they cannot see the professional cameraman, producer etc telling them what to do and where to go.
And we go to commercial, which is instantly more interesting and credible than anything we have seen so far. Luckily though it looks like we might get Rylan and the hot psychic in the next segment of the show.
As bad as Most Haunted is, it does have an easy to follow format, you know what to expect, and whether you like what they do or not, they do deliver.
Part 2 starts, and Bobby is shitting himself and calling out for Rylan. Hopefully he can drag this show into some kind of semblance of a ghost hunt.
Sexy Psychic Alex is with them now, and she is getting "feelings", says she feels sick and cant breath.
Rylan claims they have now turned off their camera lights, despite the fact there is still obviously a major light on them and they are perfectly lit up in night vision.
Then there is a knocking sound, which could be any of the many off camera crew.
Alex is getting a female presence, she then acts out the routine from Tragedy.
So all we can gather from this is that H from Steps is now a ghost and is haunting a nuclear bunker.
Notice how Rylan after less than 5 minutes "investigating" is already sat on the floor.
Ladies and Gentleman, host of the show Rylan.
He chooses to look like this you know.
To be fair, I will make fun of him, but I do like Rylan, he is fun, and made a career for himself with basically no talent, so good for him for getting paid for jobs like this.
Ghost investigator Ash, uses a "random word generator" to let the ghosties speak to them. Better known as a Spirit Box. Ash is a bit of a "geezer", so surprised that he believes in all this nonsense.
Bottom left of image, spot the professional cameraman, not fazed by anything, keeps his mouth shut and just does his job. I would love to speak to him.
We get a nice shot of the "REM - POD".
I had a look on Amazon and these sell for about £150. No joke.
Here is what it says he can do.
"The REM-POD has an EM Radiating antenna that detects energy disturbances & fluctuations around the antenna and displays any field disturbance using multi-coloured lights AND audible tones!!! The REM pod ATDD (Ambient Temperature Deviation Detection) has a telescopic antenna through which it puts out a EM field around the device.This EM field can be affected by persons or objects around it that conduct electricity. The lights on top will glow brightly depending on the frequency distortion and strength of the object (spirit or human) interacting with it. With the new ATDD(Ambient Temperature Deviation Detection) feature the Rem Pod will alert you of temperature changes using sound. A lower pitch means a drop in temperature, a higher pitch means a increase in temperature."
The celebs are all being silly and over reacting. Ash and sexy psychic are doing their best to take things seriously. And despite the ridiculous equipment and sillyness of the whole thing, I would much rather watch those two without the celebrities.
Alex has gathered them in a circle and is calling out to the spirits.
They can see something in the room behind, of course the cameras don't pick anything up.
They head into the darkened dormitory.
Investigator Ash wishing he hadn't agreed to do the show.
Psychic Alex really is the only one who seems to know what she is doing in this show, she is the "Yvette Fielding" of the crew, telling people what to do, where to go, trying to build the atmosphere and so on. She should have been hosting this show from the start and Rylan should have been one of the celebs taking part.
Thankfully the show hits another commercial break, and we can relax.
Back from break, and it seems like they have had a bit of a reset. They are now in the deepest part of this Nuclear bunker.
"I have been known to be wrong" - Psychic Alex Gibbs
Ash has a new kind of Spirit Box, which is strange since the last one worked so well.
Can someone give Alex Gibbs her own show! Seriously people, this girl is money! She is insanely pretty, very like-able, sounds down to earth. Yes I know she pretends to talk to the dead, but you cant have everything in life.
This is very much a feminism era we are living in, time we had our first ever Ghost Hunting TV show hosted by a woman. It's 2018 for gods sake! Get it done TV gods.
The spirit box is that annoying loud thing that they use on Ghost Adventures, but there is a funny moment here when Rylan shits himself at a static noise coming from the box.
The British Melania Trump.
They hear a noise, and Rylan starts asking if it is members of their production crew, of which there are shitloads.
They go to investigate further, and go into a small room, and Rylan insists they all stop moving. He then gets pissed off cause he can hear someone whispering OFF CAMERA.
Hang on a moment, isn't this John who was part of the Most Haunted crew years ago?
Rylan is listening to a clock. Scintillating television here.
Alex is getting the name "Ray, Raymond". Hmm. Maybe she is confusing herself and she is getting the name Roland. After all i made that mistake at first.
Did you know that Rylan is not his real name, his real name is Ross. And he was named after David Ross Lonsberry a Canadian professional ice hockey left winger who played 15 seasons in the National Hockey League for the Boston Bruins.
Of course that may be a lie I just concocted. But his real name is Ross.
Strangely they are playing faint groaning sounds in post production, and then lowering the volume when someone hears something. I guess it is for atmosphere. I just found it distracting.
Rylan has heard a whistle, I couldn't hear anything in the replay.
A cobweb blows past Rylan's face and he shits himself again.
If this was Most Haunted they would have had loads of things being thrown by now.
Ash has his spirit box out again, and its so annoying, one of the reasons I dislike watching Ghost Adventures so much..
And we go to break, which is good as it means there is only one more segment left.
And just as it comes back, the feed gets stuck and wont play, so I refresh the page and now I have to wait through 5 more ads. Wasn't catch up supposed to make life easier?
I thought I would check to see if I am blocked by Alex on Twitter, and yes I am blocked on my @JonDonnis account, so I am guessing I have had a run in with her before. But not blocked on my @TheBadPsych account! Woohoo!
Ok, we are now on ad 7, as it is running through all the ads I assume to start playing at where I left off.
Yay we are back on and only 10 minutes left.
Ash has a special Infrared camera, that can pick up things the naked eye cant see.
Hang on a second, that looks suspciously like a smartphone hooked up to a Kinect camera. Oh FFS, this has already been debunked. Ok let the sillyness commence.
As expected the device picks up a ghost sat at a desk.
It is definitely 100% a ghost, I am convinced, I can see the little stick figure. Time to close down the site.
Alex goes to stand next to the ghost, Alex is on the left in the image above, you can see her stick figure clearly, the mess to the right is the ghost.
We get a few minutes of this, Bobby goes and stands next to the ghost.
I suppose I better do my job, shock horror it is NOT a ghost. The Kinect sensor is set up to look for anything that could be a person, so that it can track your movements to play whatever game it is you have set up.
Now one of the problems with Kinect was that it was rather shit. You had to configure it in a well lit room, and ideally with a light coloured wall behind you. And you had to wear dark clothes. It would pick up shadows, and other things in the room, if you had a small area to stand in, it struggled to pick up your movements.
The problem with using it for "ghost hunting" is that you are using it in conditions it was never designed to be used. You are using it in low lit rooms, with lots of shadows, different objects in its depth of field, and worse still the Kinect unit itself is being hand held as opposed to being sat on a flat still surface like the top of your TV or Xbox.
As you can clearly see from the images, it can pick up Alex very clearly as she is stood there, but the ghost, is just a mess of dots that has lines connected, as it is trying to figure out if it is a person or not. This is a technical issue and not a ghost one.
Back to the show, and despite everyone being convinced they are looking at the worlds first ghost, they get bored and move on to investigate somewhere else, if that doesn't convince you they know its nonsense, nothing else will.
Ash is picking up another ghost on his portable Kinect sensor, but it is obviously just a shadow, as when they all move to have a look, the ghost disappears.
They move to an area with computers on desks etc.
Again more misunderstanding of how Kinect works. This is very frustrating for me, but I do understand how someone who does not have knowledge of the technology could confuse themselves and believe in a paranormal explanation.
This is not Ash trying to fake things, this is just Ash not really understanding the technology he is using. I feel a bit bad for him to be honest, because one day he will look back and feel terribly embarrassed that he tried to pass this off as evidence.
The whole final segment is this nonsense.
And with that the episode ends.
Summary.
I know nothing of Ash and Alex as investigators, although I may possibly have had run ins with them in the past, but I will judge them purely on this show. And I have to say that the show itself was not faked.
Nothing was being thrown, the reactions in general were mostly legit, if hammed up a bit. Alex did some of her basic psychic routine, of feeling strange etc, but kept the names to just one. So it is possible to give her the benefit of the doubt and say she is deluded as opposed to an out and out fake.
Ash had his gimmicks, but he didn't use any of them in any way to deliberately fake things, ignorance of the technology can explain everything he found. So again I cant say anything too negative about either of them. They believe in this, this is what they do, so that's that.
The celebs were a bit crap, Bobby had some fun one liners, Marcel didn't really do anything, Marnie was just herself. As for Rylan, again I like him, but this is not the show for him.
So overall I give this show a 5 out of 10. It was an ok effort I guess. I wont watch it again, I wont review it again.
Now I like to give advice as well as just criticise, so here is my advice to 5Star who air this show.
Give Rylan another show to host, this is not for him.
Give Psychic Alex the main presenting job, give her a good budget for outfits so she can look great. Get rid of Ash and replace him with Chris Howley from Ghost Chasers, and then you might have a hit on your hands.
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