Chasing Spirits: The Building of the "Ghost Adventures" Crew Read Online Free PDF Page A

Mike. They told me about what’s going to happen to you when you come to school. Don’t worry. I’ve got your back.” He opened up his jacket to reveal two BB guns stuffed in there. He was acting like a gangster and shit—it was so funny. Mike and I became best friends that day and have been ever since.
    So that first day on the school yard, people stared at me, but no one jumped. Mike was pretty respected in that school and he’d told everyone before I got there to just chill out. A few days later, when I started acting like a dumbass again, people started to like me and I made friends. I was getting in trouble in class, making everyone laugh, and earning some respect.
    In science class I sat near a girl named Veronique. This girl stood out. She was blond and more mature than the other girls her age—she just seemed to know herself better than the rest of us. I loved making people laugh, but especially her. Making her laugh was always an objective. Though it may not sound like high comedy now, back then the shit I pulled was comedic genius worthy of
Saturday Night Live
.
    The teacher would be in front of the class and I’d raise my hand and say, “Excuse me!” Mrs. LaBranche would roll her eyes because she knew I was going to do something stupid. I’d have my book open and I’d say, “I’m sorry. I just don’t know what this one word means in here…” I’d point to my book. She’d finally walk over to my desk and look at the word I’m pointing to. “That’s
A
, Nick,” she’d say, then stomp back to the front of the classroom. I did this to the teacher
a lot
. Veronique thought it was hilarious. I thought she was really cool… I still do.
    Once I got to high school, I was introduced to something St. Pat’s never had: a school TV station that ran on local public access. I was intrigued.
    Questions Fans Ask
    When you first started out, how did you get the money to buy your equipment?
    After we put together a plan for our documentary, I went to my dad and asked for a loan. It wasn’t the kind of “Hey, Dad, Can I Borrow a Few Bucks?” loan, it was a “You Will Sign This Loan Agreement” loan. I had a plan to pay the money back.
    I know you’re thinking that’s a place for A/V nerds, but I loved it. I quickly started running the channel with my buddy Danny Bedrosian, who now makes a living as a musician with George Clinton and the P-Funk All-Stars. In fact, in high school we were in a band together called Dysfunctional Family. I was the producer and wrote lyrics, while Danny was the musician. He’s just amazing. He can do it all—keyboards, drums, everything—and he’s a great singer too. We would bring people to my basement and put them on tape—we made a ton of those tapes, and some of them were really good!
    You should have seen the videos Danny and I made for our school’s TV station. I made a Mafia commercial in which I dressed up to look like the Godfather. We did that for a commercial for a new Italian restaurant that was opening up. On another video I’d follow Danny and Mike outside with the camera. We called it “’Fro Weather” because Danny kind of had a ’fro. We’d follow him around as he looked up at the sky, then back at the camera, and say something like, “It doesn’t look like anything’s happening today!” Okay—maybe you had to be there, but we were constantly goofing off on camera. If it made us laugh, we did it.
    Everything we did was an attempt at being as different as possible. Sometimes it was just dorky friends being stupid, but sometimes it was hilarious. We would make short videos too. Mike Anderson had a VHS camera that we’d use to make videos to House of Pain music. We’d start cutting videos like that together where it was straight-up cutting from the camera—meaning no editing afterward. We would stop the camera and set up for whatever scene was to come next, so when you watched it the whole thing would flow from beginning to end. In high