Ask Jason Hawes Anything: Live Q&A With TAPS Founder and JV Johnson

There's nothing I enjoy more than pulling back the curtain and talking directly with the people who've followed this work for years. Last week, JV Johnson and I went live for one of our unfiltered Q&A sessions — no script, no agenda, just real conversation about the paranormal field, TAPS, Ghost Hunters, and everything in between. If you missed it, here's what we covered.

I've been doing this long enough to know that the questions people ask say just as much about the field as the investigations themselves. When JV and I sat down for this live session, I wasn't sure exactly where the conversation would go — that's kind of the point. These streams are meant to be organic. People show up, they type in their questions, and we just talk. No filters, no publicist sitting behind me telling me what I can and can't say. Just me and JV doing what we've always done best: having an honest conversation about the paranormal.

One of the things that came up early — and it always does — is my approach to investigation. People want to know why I lean so hard into skepticism before I'll even consider a paranormal explanation. My answer is always the same: if you walk into a building already convinced it's haunted, you'll find evidence of a haunting whether it's there or not. Your brain will fill in the gaps. Your fear response will manufacture experiences. I've seen it happen to experienced investigators. The only way to protect the integrity of an investigation is to exhaust every rational explanation first. That's not me being dismissive of the paranormal — it's me respecting it enough to take it seriously.

JV is a great foil for me in these conversations because he pushes back in the right ways. He'll bring up cases where the rational explanation just doesn't hold, and I appreciate that. We talked about some of the more compelling evidence we've collected over the years — audio captures that couldn't be explained by environmental interference, temperature anomalies that didn't line up with any HVAC or structural explanation, moments during investigations where multiple team members reported the same experience independently without having communicated beforehand. Those are the cases that stay with me. Not because I'm ready to stamp them 'haunted' and move on, but because they remind me why this work matters. There's something worth investigating. We just have to be rigorous about how we do it.

We also spent a good chunk of time talking about the community — the people who've been watching since the early days of Ghost Hunters and the new generation of investigators who grew up with the show and are now doing their own work. That genuinely means a lot to me. TAPS was built on the idea that everyday people could take a disciplined, evidence-based approach to paranormal investigation. We weren't academics or scientists — we were a plumber and his colleagues who took the work seriously. Seeing that ethos carry forward into a whole new wave of investigators is one of the most rewarding things about doing these live sessions. The questions are sharper than ever. People are thinking critically, challenging assumptions, and demanding better standards of evidence. That's exactly what this field needs.

Live sessions like this one with JV are a reminder of why community matters in this work — the questions keep me sharp, and the conversation keeps the field honest. I don't have all the answers, and I'll never pretend to. But I'll keep showing up, keep investigating, and keep following the evidence wherever it leads.