‘Ghost Hunters’: Why Steve Gonsalves Still Hunts Ghosts Even Though He’s Never Seen One
Ghost hunting has become a kind of subgenre of reality TV, and there are fans flocking to the series that promise up-close-and-personal encounters with the paranormal. With multiple shows taking slightly different perspectives, the basic premise remains constant. A team of ghost hunters investigates some kind of abnormal occurrences and captures it all on film. The result is a thrilling ride for viewers who are left wondering what’s real about the encounter.
Steve Gonsalves, who has a long resume of ghost-related positions, admits that he’s never seen a ghost. However, that hasn’t dampened his belief in their existence.
Steve Gonsalves has played many ghost-related roles
Gonsalves has many ghost-related credits to his name. Perhaps most notably, he was a member of the team on the series Ghost Hunters from 2005 to 2014. That means that he spent nearly a decade investigating potential paranormal activity with a camera nearby to capture all that he found. He took that experience and spun it into a role on the lighthearted comedy Ghost Team, according to IMDb. This 2016 film starred Jon Heder and Justin Long and poked some fun at the career Gonsalves has built for himself, but his appearance in the film suggests he’s OK with the joke.
More recently, Gonsalves has served as executive producer of the show Ghost Nation, a Travel Channel series that follows the now-familiar formula of sending in a team of investigators to see what’s up with various haunted locales. The show premiered in 2019 and is currently in season 2. Ghost Nation was designed to be a replacement for Ghost Hunters after it went off the air, but now the original series has returned and we’ll have to see if there are enough ghosts — and ghost-hungry viewers — to go around.
Steve Gonsalves has never seen a ghost
You would think with more than a decade of experience searching some of the world’s most haunted locales, Gonsalves would be seasoned when it comes to spirit encounters. However, according to Fox News, Gonsalves admits that he has never seen a ghost. “What you would think of as the floating apparition, I’ve never seen that,” Gonsalves explained.
This statement would seem to throw fuel on the fire for those who say the entire show is fake. Many critics believe that the creators manipulate what’s shown on-screen in order to make for a more spectacular entertainment experience. Some of the biggest critics of the show are real-life ghost hunters who don’t work in front of the cameras. While some of these academic-minded paranormal experts are upset by what they see as faked footage, others are mostly frustrated that the flashier television version is getting more attention and taking away their opportunities for speaking engagements.
Steve Gonsalves still believes in ghosts
Despite never having actually seen a ghost himself, Gonsalves is convinced by his experiences with the different shows that there is something paranormal taking place. While he admits that he has never seen an “actual ghost,” that doesn’t mean he hasn’t had some freaky experiences. “I’ve seen a lot of things I can’t explain – objects moving, things falling that doesn’t make sense, smells, black masses, that sort of thing,” Gonsalves insists.
Gonsalves also doesn’t just think it’s the spirits of the living that are haunting us from beyond the grave. “We do have an inhuman type of haunting, which is a little bit, never was it on Earth in living form, just an energy, and you could say that’s a demon . . . but it’s so rare that you don’t really have to worry about it unless you’re seeking it or you have some reason for it to attach to you. It’s not just going to come and get you,” Gonsalves went on.
