blog assignment #1

Taps: The Atlantic Paranormal Society

Taps is a show on the Sci-Fi channel. It follows two men and their team all over the United States looking for paranormal activity. This team was founded by two men, Jason Hawes and Grant Wilson. These men have a strong interest in the paranormal and investigate cases brought to them.

The show begins in one of two ways. First, it could begin with Jason and Grant working at their other job, Roto-Rooters where they work as plumbers. Second, they could be at Taps headquarters in Atlanta. They are always getting requests to come and look at possibly hunted places, some they consider looking into. Jason and Grant go to each place and they take a team with them to check it out.

The first thing they do when they get to their location is sit down with the owner(s). They ask what’s going on in the house or building, and the owners then list their experiences in detail. Next they go through the residence and check out all the rooms in the house that these experiences happen.

When working on site Taps usually only has a few hours to try and catch some activity on their equipment. They set up cameras in all the rooms and recorders to catch any noise they can. They have a device to pick up electromagnetic waves which helps explain things and they use this to look for major changes that indicate paranormal activity. The team will sit in every room and try to initiate contact with anything that could be in the room.

The setting always seems to be slightly eerie, and the music in the background is usually a little creepy. A lot of the time all the lights are off and the viewer is looking through night vision on the camera.

After they have collected all the evidence they can in the time they are given they go to a hotel to review the evidence. Jason and Grant are usually are not the ones doing this, they have other members of the team look through the information. More than never they find something interesting, whether it is a loud noise in the background or if something moved etc. Next whoever is looking at the information calls Jason and Grant in to look at the findings. Right away they try to come up with logical answers as to why this happened.

The last thing they do is go back to the owner and go over their findings. They will bring video and audio clips and play them for the owner. Jason and Grant will give their interpretations and then leave it up the owner to decide what he or she wants to do about it.

Analysis:

I believe this show has become so popular just because of the content. Everyone is intrigued by the possibility of a supernatural world. This show is meant to entertain the people, even though the business may not be. They way you get to see exactly what they are doing to capture these experiences, and when they actually get something it’s very exciting to the viewer.