TV Review: Paranormal Caught on Camera

Paranormal Caught on Camera - a show the young Calum Henderson might have loved. Photo / supplied

Paranormal Caught on Camera (TVNZ 2, Tuesdays, 8.30pm)

As we get older, most of us will develop some powers of critical thought. In my life this has come as both a blessing and a curse. On the plus side, it's prevented me from falling victim to credit card scams and spared me the embarrassment of getting mad at obviously satirical news stories online. The price I must pay is that I can no longer fully enjoy television shows like Paranormal Caught On Camera.

As a kid, there was nothing more thrilling than seeing documentary evidence of the supernatural. I reckon I've probably forgotten 99.9 per cent of the TV I watched growing up but all the things I do remember seem to be from ghost or UFO documentaries, every one of which I understood to be the real deal.

There was one that proved the existence of ghosts simply by showing security camera footage of a rocking chair rocking all on its own. Unforgettably spooky. Then there was the special presentation of found Handycam footage shot after aliens landed on an American farm and made their way inside the house. That one was so intense I had to change the channel.

This credulous younger version of me would have buzzed out big time to Paranormal Caught On Camera, a cheaply-produced magazine-style show screening on TVNZ 2 that hoovers up clearly fake or easily explainable videos from the internet and gets grown adults to talk about them like they're Mulder from The X Files.

One of these experts is paranormal investigator Mark Moran, an author and TV host who appears to have built an entire career out of believing literally everything he sees. "These videos," he raves about the security cam footage of a poltergeist tipping over chairs at an Irish high school, "are probably the most convincing, believable and downright creepy videos of a supernatural nature that I have ever seen."

Like any good journalist, I quickly googled the name of school to check I had the correct spelling. One of the first search results was a Snopes.com page detailing exactly how (extremely basic editing software) and why (to promote a Halloween party the school was putting on) the videos were made. Rule one of being a paranormal investigator: never use Google.

The morning after the UFO documentary screened in 1997 there was a long discussion about it on the school bus (not sure how, but every single person had seen it). Some insisted there was no way it was real; I and others maintained it had to be and what's more, it was bloody scary. It was a good, robust, respectful debate.

Now, disappointingly, the only thing really up for debate is the paranormal investigators themselves. Do we think these guys' brains are genuinely wired in some back-to-front way, like that of a flat-earther for whom no amount of fact-checks or scientific evidence will ever change their mind? Or are they just saying every ghost video they see is real because that's somehow their job. Hard to say, but if it's the latter then you've got to respect the hustle.