Live Q&A With Jason Hawes and JV Johnson: Your Paranormal Questions Answered

There's nothing I enjoy more than connecting directly with the people who've followed this work for years — the skeptics, the believers, and everyone in between. That's exactly what JV Johnson and I did in our recent live session, sitting down to answer your questions, swap stories, and just hang out the way we used to back in the early TAPS days. If you missed the stream, here's a breakdown of what we covered and why these conversations matter to me.

I've been doing this work for a long time — longer than I sometimes care to admit — and one thing that's never changed is how much I value hearing directly from the community. JV and I have been friends and collaborators through so many investigations, so many late nights in genuinely unsettling locations, and so many moments where we had to make a call on whether what we were experiencing was paranormal or just the building settling. Sitting down live with both of you watching gave this conversation a different kind of energy. It felt honest in a way that a produced episode sometimes can't.

A big part of what JV and I talked about was methodology — specifically, why I still lead with skepticism no matter how compelling a location seems on paper. People ask me all the time why I work so hard to debunk things, and my answer is always the same: if I can't rule out the natural explanation, then I haven't done my job. The methodology I built TAPS around wasn't designed to find ghosts. It was designed to find the truth. Sometimes that truth is a faulty pipe causing infrasound that makes people feel uneasy. Sometimes it's carbon monoxide affecting perception. And sometimes — not often, but sometimes — you rule all of that out and you're still left with something you genuinely cannot explain. Those are the cases that stay with me.

We also spent time fielding questions about the evolution of paranormal investigation as a field. When JV and I were starting out, the equipment was basic, the methodology was largely self-taught, and there wasn't a roadmap. Now there are hundreds of teams across the country, new devices hitting the market every year, and more public interest than ever. That's largely a good thing, but it also means there's more noise to cut through. My advice to anyone getting into this work remains what it's always been: document everything, question everything, and never let excitement override critical thinking. The moment you start hoping to find something paranormal is the moment your objectivity starts slipping.

What I appreciated most about this live session was the range of people who showed up and engaged. We had longtime TAPS fans who remember the early Rhode Island days, newer viewers who found the work through more recent projects, and plenty of people who came in as skeptics themselves — which is exactly the audience I want. JV has a way of keeping a conversation grounded and moving, and that made the whole thing feel less like a broadcast and more like a genuine back-and-forth. We'll definitely be doing more of these. The paranormal community is at its best when it's asking hard questions out loud, together.

Whether you're a lifelong believer, a committed skeptic, or somewhere in the middle, these live conversations are for you. JV and I will keep showing up, keep answering honestly, and keep doing this work the way it was always meant to be done — with open eyes and no predetermined conclusions. Stay connected, keep the questions coming, and we'll see you in the next one.