Going Live: Inside a Real-Time Paranormal Investigation with TAPS
“I don't walk into a location looking for a ghost — I walk in looking for every possible reason not to call something paranormal. If we exhaust every rational explanation and still can't account for what we're seeing, that's when the real conversation starts.”
— Jason Hawes
There's something different about going live — no edits, no cuts, no second takes. When I take TAPS into a location in real time with you watching alongside us, every creak, every shadow, and every piece of evidence gets examined exactly as it happens. That's the kind of transparency I've always believed paranormal investigation deserves.
I've been doing this for a long time, and one thing I've learned is that the best way to build trust with an audience — and with yourself as an investigator — is to do the work out in the open. No post-production cleanup, no convenient editing around the moments that didn't pan out. When we go live, you see everything I see, in real time. The misidentified sounds, the equipment malfunctions, the long quiet stretches where absolutely nothing happens. That's the reality of paranormal investigation, and I think it's important for people to understand that before they start jumping to conclusions about what's behind every bump in the night.
My approach has never changed, whether the cameras are rolling for television, a recorded session, or a live stream. I walk into every location as a skeptic. My first job isn't to find a ghost — it's to rule out every possible natural explanation for what's been reported. Drafts that rattle doors. Infrasound from HVAC systems that can trigger feelings of unease or even visual disturbances. Carbon monoxide. Settling foundations. Electrical interference. People are often surprised to find out how many "hauntings" turn out to have perfectly rational explanations once you start pulling the threads. That's not a disappointment to me — that's the job done right.
Going live adds a layer of accountability that I genuinely appreciate. When you're watching in real time, you become part of the investigation. You're seeing the same footage I'm seeing on my monitors, hearing the same audio, watching the team work through the same questions I'm working through. Did that sound come from outside? Is there a structural reason this room feels colder than the rest of the building? What's the history of this location, and does the reported activity actually line up with that history in a way that makes sense? These are the questions that drive every session, and doing it live means we're asking them together.
What I can tell you is that live investigations have a way of cutting through the noise — both literally and figuratively. Without the ability to pause and reconsider, you have to trust your training, your team, and your methodology. The TAPS approach has always been grounded in that methodology first. We document, we cross-reference, we challenge our own findings before we ever present them as significant. If something genuinely can't be explained after we've exhausted every rational possibility, then — and only then — do we start having a different kind of conversation. That's what makes those moments, when they do happen, worth paying attention to.
Whether we captured something unexplained or spent the night ruling out every logical cause, the value of a live investigation is the honesty of it — and that's something I'll never compromise on. Stay with us, keep questioning everything you see, and I'll keep doing the same. That's the only way this work means anything.