After the Investigation: Your Questions Answered Live with Jason Hawes

There's something I've always believed — the conversation doesn't end when we pack up the equipment and walk out the door. Some of the best moments in paranormal investigation happen in the hours after, when we sit down, decompress, and talk through what we experienced with the people who matter most: you. That's exactly what this live session was all about.

After every investigation, my mind is still running. I'm replaying moments in the dark, second-guessing sounds I heard, thinking about whether there was a rational explanation I might have missed. That's not doubt — that's the process. I've been doing this for decades, and the day I stop questioning is the day I stop being useful as an investigator. So going live right after wrapping up gives me a chance to think out loud with all of you, and honestly, your questions push me to be more honest and more thorough than I might be otherwise.

One of the things I love most about these live Q&A sessions is that you ask the questions I don't always think to ask myself. You'll catch something in the way I described a noise, or you'll wonder about a piece of equipment I mentioned, or you'll ask what I was actually feeling in a particular room — and that forces me to dig deeper. I'm not here to sell you a haunting. I never have been. My job, the way I've always seen it, is to walk into a location and try my hardest to prove it's not haunted. If I can't explain something after exhausting every rational possibility, then we talk about what might be left on the table. That approach doesn't make for the easiest television sometimes, but it's the only way I can sleep at night.

These post-investigation hangouts also give me a chance to be real with you about the less glamorous parts of the work. People see the highlight reel — the strange EVPs, the unexplained shadows, the equipment that lights up at just the right moment — but they don't always see the six hours of nothing, the debunked pipe sounds, the camera malfunction that turned out to be a dead battery. That stuff matters just as much. Every time we rule something out, we're doing our job. Every time we walk away saying 'we couldn't explain this,' that statement only carries weight because of all the things we did explain along the way. Your questions in sessions like this remind me to tell that whole story, not just the exciting parts.

I also want to say — and I mean this sincerely — that the community built around this work is something I never take for granted. The people who tune in, who follow along, who've been with TAPS from the early days and the folks who just found us last week, you're the reason these live sessions exist. Investigation is solitary work in a lot of ways. You're in the dark, you're quiet, you're waiting. But the moment we go live and the questions start coming in, it becomes something else entirely. It becomes a conversation about the unknown, and that's a conversation worth having.

Whether last night's investigation left us with hard evidence, a list of debunked claims, or something we're still working through, the process is always worth it — and so is talking it through with you. I'll keep showing up live after these investigations as long as you keep showing up with your questions. That's a deal I'm happy to keep.