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

schoolI took a telecommunications class with a really good guy, Ron, the faculty member in charge of the TV channel at the time. I learned a lot from him, like how to do deck-to-deck editing, how to run the switchboard that switches studio cameras, and how to do all the basics of television production. I got really good at it. Soon I was looking for what else I could capture on camera.
    I went out and made my first short film for a psychology class project. The movie was a series of nightmares about the Robaldo family. I was drawn to dark subjects even back then.
    The thing is, the Robaldo family was made up—invented by me and my friends. The film was about a guy named Antonio who owes the Robaldos a hundred thousand dollars and has to pay by tomorrow. I played the Godfather in the video. The film went into Antonio’s nightmare state about what he would encounter the next day. I never forgot this idea or those characters, and I would come back to them later on.
    Creating videos for the high school TV station allowed me to express myself creatively, but I guess I was pushing too many limits.
    After a few too many obnoxious videos, Danny and I were banned from producing anything else. I guess some of the school administrators felt the limits we pushed were in bad taste. It didn’t matter, because the fire had been lit. I loved watching movies and film, and now I had a taste for making them. I knew I’d be around video production in some way for a long time. I had to be. I couldn’t imagine doing anything else—other than being a professional athlete.

CHAPTER 3
FINDING VIRGINIA CITY
    D uring my sophomore year of high school, I had a party at my house for all of my friends. During the party I got a phone call from an ex-girlfriend, Janessa. We were good friends even after our breakup.
    “I’ve got the perfect girl for you,” Janessa told me. “You know Veronique?” I told her I did, as my memory shot back to sixth grade when I’d sat by her in science class and she laughed at my jokes. Then Janessa put Veronique on the phone and I said, “Hey, what’s up?” Yup, I was smooth even back then.
    Veronique and I had dated each other’s friends before that, but now we found each other. I liked her right away. She was also into movies—we saw a bunch throughout high school.
    One of the early movies we saw together was
Titanic
. I won’t hate on the movie here, but clearly this one was for the girls—Veronique loved it. (I promise I didn’t cry at the end.) But sometimes I got to pick the film. I rented Stephen King’s
The Night Flier
because I wanted to see a scary movie with Veronique, the kind where you cuddle close. That movie freaked her out somuch that she was seriously pissed at me for showing it to her. It took years before she’d stop talking about it.
    Later we saw movies like
Memento
and
Pulp Fiction
, which blew me away by how clever the story lines were. I told Veronique I was going to make films like that one day. I was determined to see my own work on the big screen.
    I didn’t study much toward the end of high school. If I could wing it, I would wing it. My SATs weren’t that great, but I still managed to graduate high school and get accepted to the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, to study film. I was psyched to be going into the film program, but I also wanted to play basketball and soccer for the school. Considering UNLV is a Division I school, the odds were stacked against me, but I didn’t care.
    My bigger concern was being so far from home. Leaving New England was going to be tough. My family was on the East Coast, along with my friends and of course Veronique, but I had to make my own way.
    After high school it was a rough time for me and Veronique. I was leaving; she was staying. We didn’t know what would happen between us. We agreed we’d try to do a long-distance relationship.
    During the summer before my freshman year at UNLV, I qualified for a traveling soccer team. Only a few