Your cable is haunted

Vampires may be getting all the glory these days, but when it comes to day-in, day-out spooky family entertainment, it’s hard to beat ghosts.

The popularity of ghost and paranormal stories are nothing new -- from the King’s ghost in Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” to Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” to the phenomenal box office last fall for “Paranormal Activity.”

But it’s on the small screen that ghosts are most alive -- a staple of the medium, so to speak. The first two hours of CBS’ Friday night lineup are devoted to “Ghost Whisperer,” now in its fifth season, and “Medium,” which joined the network last fall after five seasons on NBC. Both dramatic series revolve around women who can see dead people.

Several of the cable networks have built their lineups around ghost/paranormal reality shows. These series follow investigators going to residential homes, historical locations, abandoned hospitals, prisons and even aircraft carriers that are supposedly haunted. They claim to use scientific methods and equipment, such as digital tape recorders to capture EVPs (electronic voice phenomena), which are believed to capture the voices of spirits.

Thanks in part to the success of these shows, ghost hunting has become a big business. Several Internet sites including Amazon offer equipment for sale for the budding paranormal investigator.

So why are so many willing to see spirits?

“Some people would say it’s a trend, but I think it’s always been a trend, this borderline between the apparently civilized world and the wider, larger, scary world whether it’s literally the wild or unseen,” says Marjorie Kaplan, general manager of Animal Planet.

The network has two paranormal series, “Lost Tapes” and “The Haunted,” the latter about people whose pets feel the presence of spirits; it began in November and returns to the lineup with new episodes Jan. 15.

Ian Sander, an executive producer and director on “Ghost Whisperer,” believes these shows give audiences hope that there is an afterlife. “We live in a time, God knows post-9/11, that people need to believe in more,” Sander says. “They want to be optimistic.”

The majority of these series attract more females than males. “Women love horror movies and haunted shows about the afterlife,” notes Mark Stern, executive vice president of programming for Syfy, home to the popular “Ghost Hunters” series.

“If you look at these shows, they deliver a real mix of emotions -- a visceral one about the investigation and another about who might still be here and what happened to them.”

Here’s a look at several of the most watched cable paranormal series:

‘Ghost Hunters’

(Syfy)

The cable network has the top three paranormal series on the air. “Ghost Hunters,” which begins its sixth season in March, averages 3 million viewers weekly.

The show’s spinoffs “Ghost Hunters International,” returning Wednesday, and “Ghost Hunters Academy,” which concluded its first season in December, also have performed well. Another popular paranormal show, “Destination Truth,” is on hiatus.

“Ghost Hunters” is led by Roto-Rooter Rhode Island plumbers Jason Hawes and Grant Wilson, who formed the Atlantic Paranormal Society about 20 years ago after what they say were personal paranormal encounters. They investigate homes and hotels like the Stanley, the basis for “The Shining.” They also have done live investigations over the seasons.

“Ghost Hunters,” says Stern, takes a “very sober-eyed” view of the paranormal.

“Their success rate [at finding ghosts] is so low that in the beginning it was counterintuitive for us. There was a concern if they were not finding a ghost in every episode why are people watching the show. But we quickly found that that is what gave them total credibility.”

Hawes and Wilson, who still work as plumbers, are surprised they are heading into their sixth season. “I never thought we would survive past 10 episodes,” jokes Wilson.

“None of the other shows can probably say this, but Grant and I have Pentagon clearance to get into some of these [government] locations,” says Hawes of their investigations of military bases and even battleships.

‘Paranormal State’

(A&E)

This 30-minute weekly series, now in its fourth season, revolves around the case files of the Paranormal Research Society, a group that began several years ago with Penn State University college students.

Ryan Buell, the soft-spoken director-founder who says he had his first paranormal experience as a child, leads his teams in investigating cases of possible haunting and possession.

Spinning off from the series is “Psychic Kids: Children of the Paranormal,” in its second season. Atlanta-based psychic-medium Chip Coffey appears in both series. And set for a Jan. 19 premiere is “Paranormal Cops,” about a group of ghost-hunting Chicago police officers.

Coffey says these shows have brought paranormal activity into the open. “When I was a kid 50 years ago, people didn’t talk about it publicly if you were living in a haunted house,” he says. “Now it’s almost fashionable. There are websites that sell haunted houses, and people buy them. In some states, if you think your house is haunted you have to disclose it to your real estate agent if you sell.”

Buell compares ghost hunting to detective work: “It’s like trying to solve a mystery. There isn’t just one type of phenomenon out there. We have dealt with monster-type hauntings, abusive spirits and suicide spirits.”

‘Ghost Lab’

(Discovery)

Discovery entered the paranormal series field in October with this hourlong show, which features Texas brothers Brad and Barry Klinge, who operate their Everyday Paranormal inside a 24-foot “ghost lab” filled with scientific equipment. The places they visited include Alcatraz. The series concluded its first season Dec. 29.

“Discovery has been involved with paranormal shows for a long time but not as a series,” says general manager John Ford.

“We can’t come from the true-believer side,” Ford says. “We want to come from more of the impartial-science stance. And the Klinge brothers have erected and assembled this toolshed of measuring devices to allow them to measure things like extreme temperature changes and other things they think are indicators of paranormal activity.”

Locations are handpicked by the brothers. “A place has to have some sort of history to it,” says Brad Klinge, who says he had a paranormal experience with his brother in 1990 at Gettysburg battlefield.

“Then we have to look a little bit deeper -- are the stories recent, are the people reputable?” says Brad. “That’s when the investigation really starts. We do real-time analysis inside our ghost lab. When we find things are happening, we go immediately back to the spot to see if we can get more evidence.”

‘Ghost Adventures’

(Travel Channel)

The network’s entire Friday-evening lineup is devoted to ghostly tales, with this spooky show anchoring the evening. The one-hour series, which premiered in 2008, chronicles the investigations of documentary filmmaker Zak Bagans, who says he had an encounter of the ghostly kind some six years ago, along with those of his cohorts Nick Groff and Aaron Goodwind.

Each week they are locked overnight in a haunted location -- recently they visited the Linda Vista Hospital in Boyle Heights. Bagans antagonizes and berates spirits to get evidence. When “Ghost Adventures” goes on hiatus after Jan. 22, the long-running British ghost series “Most Haunted” returns for a new season Jan. 29.

“What is really interesting about ‘Ghost Adventures’ is that it is driven by these three personalities who are impassioned insiders,” says Travel’s senior vice president of content, Michael Klein. “When they are investigating and searching for answers, their curiosity comes from a real place of truth inside of them, and that resonates with the audience.”

“Ghosts are real. It’s not my job to try and persuade skeptics,” declares the formidable Bagans. “We are getting very much involved now in scientific research. You can’t persuade somebody with just a feeling. We have so much scientific equipment now; it’s hard to ignore what’s happening. I will stop at nothing to prove that ghosts do exist.”

susan.king@latimes.com