Live with Jason Hawes and JV Johnson: Your Paranormal Questions Answered

There's nothing I enjoy more than connecting directly with the people who've supported TAPS and Ghost Hunters over the years — the fans, the fellow investigators, and the skeptics who keep me honest. That's exactly what JV Johnson and I did in our recent live session, opening things up for a real, unfiltered conversation about the paranormal, our methods, and everything in between. No scripts, no edits — just two guys who've spent decades chasing things that go bump in the night, talking with the community that makes all of this worthwhile.

JV Johnson and I have been doing this long enough to know that the best conversations happen when you throw out the agenda and just let people ask what they actually want to know. That's the spirit behind these live sessions, and this one was no different. From the moment we went live, the questions started rolling in — and they ran the full spectrum, from hardcore technical questions about investigation methodology to people just wanting to know what it's really like to walk into a genuinely unsettling location at two in the morning.

One thing I always try to hammer home — whether I'm talking to a seasoned investigator or someone who just watched their first episode — is that skepticism isn't the enemy of paranormal research. It's the foundation of it. I've built my entire career on the principle that before you can call something paranormal, you have to exhaust every possible natural explanation first. Drafts, infrasound, electromagnetic fields, faulty wiring, confirmation bias — these things account for the overwhelming majority of what people report as hauntings. When JV and I get into it on these live streams, that philosophy tends to come up again and again, because it's not just a methodology, it's a mindset. You owe it to the people living in these locations to be honest with them, even when the honest answer isn't the exciting one.

We also spent time talking about the evolution of paranormal investigation as a field — where it's been, where it's going, and what separates serious research from entertainment. JV always brings a sharp perspective to these conversations, and the back-and-forth we have reflects years of working through cases together and separately. The community that showed up in the live chat brought incredible energy to the whole thing. There were questions about specific cases, requests for advice from people just starting out with their own local groups, and some genuinely thoughtful challenges that kept both of us on our toes. That's the kind of engagement that reminds me why I've never stopped doing this work.

At the end of the day, these live Q&A sessions serve a purpose that a produced episode can't fully replicate. You get to see the process from the inside — the reasoning, the second-guessing, the humor, and yes, the moments where even after all these years, something gives you pause. JV and I don't have all the answers. Nobody does. But we've put in the hours, logged the cases, and developed a framework for investigation that we stand behind. If even one person walks away from a session like this with a more disciplined, evidence-based approach to the unexplained, then it was two hours well spent.

These live conversations with JV are some of my favorite things we do, because they strip everything back to what this has always really been about — curiosity, community, and the honest pursuit of answers. Whether you came in as a true believer or a hard skeptic, I hope you left with something to think about. We'll keep doing these, so bring your questions — I promise we won't sugarcoat the answers.