Ghosts, Limited

As I've written about before, despite having a complete disbelief in an afterlife, spirits, and hauntings, I do still enjoy watching shows and or movies about them. Although sometimes over the top, Ghost Hunters and Ghost Adventures can be entertaining, perhaps precisely because of their hammy performances.

So I tuned in last night to Animal Planet's "Demon Exorcist." I was first surprised to see it had nothing to do with animals -- which was good, because I never would have tuned in, and besides, I think they already have a haunted pets show or something -- and then surprised to find out it had no exorcisms either. Seriously, unless you count wiping some "holy water" on the doors and walls of a house, it was an hour of nothing.

I'm sure Father Karras would have been surprised to find out as well that all it took to remove a spirit from a house was a brief group prayer, the aforementioned holy water dispersal, and a simple incantation to leave the house. Poof! Gone!

Particularly since one of the "victims" had been haunted by several specters her entire life after giving herself over to the dark side to save her sister from the fate when they were just children -- sacrificed, as they were, by their own Satanist parents no less! -- basically saying "boo" to the demon sent him hightailing it out of the house. The woman and her sister seemed more to have some deep emotional problems than a case of demonic possession.

The second case had potential though. A family with three kids lived in a house that was supposedly possessed by a demon and they've been forced to resort to sleeping together in one room because of the haunting. The interviews with the kids built up some suspense that maybe there would be some raucous goings on, but alas! no. Results were the same: group prayer, a holy water dousing, and begone! It was laughable when after wiping the holy water all over the house the "demonologist" was surprised to see the remaining water turn cloudy. "I've never seen that before." Hey buddy, do you think you might have been transferring some dust from the walls to the water? And the wife seemed to describe what sounded more like having a wet dream rather than being attacked by an incubus.

Proof the "exorcism" was successful lie (lay? I can never remember which) in the reaction of the homeowners when they returned to the house. If they felt good about the place, then all was well. Seeing the mother and son stand looking into a closet and the mother saying, "Now that feels like a closet" was hilarious.

In short, there was nothing "there" there. It was just an hour long talkfest. Jason and Grant at Ghost Hunters, along with Zac and the boys at Ghost Adventures, have lowered the bar so far that shows like Demon Exorcist can get greenlighted. How many years has Ghost Hunters been on and they've never caught anything on camera that hasn't been able to be debunked as Grant pushing the envelope? Those darn ghosts only want to be filmed at the very edge of sight, not up close and personal, no matter how many cameras are placed in a house.

And other than Ghost Adventures flying brick in the first(?) episode -- where Zac and the others inexplicably ran screaming from the building rather than investigate further -- have been unable to catch proof of anything either.

So Demon Exorcist can now come on and purport to exorcise spirits from a house with little more than what you'd see staged by kids playing with an Ouija board -- and again filming even less "proof" than Ghost Hunters/Adventures -- and getting it on the air.

Don't waste an hour of your own life watching another episode of Demon Exorcist. It was simply awful.