Haunted Homes (2004– ) User Reviews

The only scary bits of this show are in the imagination of the people who live in the homes

[nancylmarine · 5/10 · 4 June 2022]

Having just finished watching the first one, any hope of seeing anything more than a good theatre show is dashed.

IN the very first show, the three girls are taken around the house after dark and each and every one of them experiences "something." All I saw were three young women who were scaring themselves to death simply with their imaginations.

No evidence whatsoever in the home. No bumps in the night. No falling objects. No voices. Nothing. Just three girls in their 20s scaring themselves to death by thinking about what "it" could be, even in the face of no evidence of anything at all.

Mia spins a good tale, for sure. She would make a great mystery writer, I think, and in the end, she did a ceremony to rid the home of ghosts?

What ghosts????? However, much like a placebo calms pain in a patient of a doctor, so does the placebo of a ceremony "ridding the home" of spirits allays the fears of the young women living there.

And, OF COURSE they feel better two weeks later. The sugar pill of a ceremony did what it was supposed to do, which is to help the girls think Mia did her job and all was right with the world again.

Utter nonsense, and boring too

[MartinPh · 1/10 · 19 July 2008]

Just when you thought the inanity of TV-programming had hit rock bottom, along comes Haunted Homes and brainlessness is again redefined. In this series a team of self-proclaimed 'paranormal investigators' visits families who claim to be bothered by ghosts. The formula for each episode is identical, and centers on a 'vigil', involving the victims and the team sitting around in the haunted house, at night, with the lights out, waiting for the ghosts to appear.

Why at night? Why in the dark? Why would the spirits of dead people care whether it is day or night, or light or dark? The only reason that night is the favorite playtime for ghosts, is the fact that humans don't see very well in the dark and want to be asleep at night. Tiredness, sensory deprivation and sitting still in a dark house, especially with the suggestion firmly in place that a ghost may manifest itself, will cause all kinds of sensations that the suggestible and the boneheaded may ascribe to supernatural activity.

Of course infrared cameras and sound recorders are set up – paranormal investigators tend to think their antics become 'scientific' as soon as an electrical appliance is involved. Needless to say, nothing of note is ever recorded on these devices, let alone anything that could serve as evidence for supernatural activity. Yet the team's psychic, the horrible Mia Dolan, oozes fantastical stories about everything she 'senses', and comes up with quite detailed descriptions of the alleged ghost and its history, though rarely are attempts made to verify these. I've seen one episode where they did; but the finding that historical records did not line up with Mia's tale merely got a passing mention and after that was simply ignored.

Interestingly, the team does comprise a token skeptic, a professor of psychology who will go into the haunted place and always finds he doesn't hear, see, or feel anything special and that as far as he's concerned there is no ghost. Again this seems to be done for form's sake only; his conclusions are simply brushed aside as Mia elaborates her spooky fantasies. Of course every random noise that is heard is immediately interpreted as evidence of a haunting; so are headaches, chills, 'the feeling of being watched' – indeed, in one case where the recorders hadn't recorded anything because the battery had run out they actually called that proof of ghostly activity! Never are these far-fetched interpretations challenged or obvious rational alternatives explored.

Episodes end with a 'cleansing', where Mia, amidst a sea of candles, removes the ghost from the house by reciting the De Profundis in what is probably meant to be Latin. It is all so utterly ridiculous that words fail to describe it. One or two episodes may amuse those with a sense of humor, or may educate viewers with an anthropological interest in the sheer nonsense grown people are apparently prepared to believe – but after that it all becomes just extremely boring.

Complete rubbish

[axxmqmcy · 2/10 · 21 February 2024]

The scariest thing about this show is that I actually lost hours of my life watching in the hope it might be the least bit entertaining.

Full disclosure, I am a skeptic, I love watching paranormal shows but do NOT believe in ghosts.

That being said, this show provides NO evidence or even suggested-evidence of proof of the paranormal. It's essentially a couple of Brit's talking about how they "felt" spirits Andrei acting confused that the camera's and other equipment captured no evidence.

There's a skeptic Brit as well, he's much nicer than I would have been as I most certainly would have laughed in the face of these ppl claiming their house is "haunted".

Right out of the gate, episode 1 features a group of high-strung, socially awkward women who feed into each other's delusions of ghosts.

If you're the tour of person who believes a feeling constitutes "evidence", you may actually enjoy this show, but if you require something more than a so-called psychic claiming to feel the spirit of "Beth and pat@ then I wouldn't waste a moment of your life in this ridiculousness.

The hunting of the snark-ghost

[rosalie-ivady · 9/10 · 24 October 2014]

Rare as it is to find a TV show that features such distinctive personalities together, this unique combination has its very own advantages with three protagonists as ingredients: Mia Dolan, a psychic, who claims to see ghosts - and also claims other people feel them. Mia Dolan captures ghosts by leaving her body and finding them, bringing them back to where her body is, then sending them over - whatever that means. Secondly, a quintessential member of the team, paranormal investigator (varies - Mark Webb appears most often), equipped with state-of-the-art tools to capture things that go bump in the night using hi-tech equipment. Truth to be told, hardly ever anything notably successful is captured and even when it is, some very compelling evidence has been downplayed (such as a Buddha figure landing on the floor in a room it was never supposed to be in). Finally, the third protagonist, a psychology professor and a skeptic, who captures the emptiness that he explains how that gets interpreted as a ghost, is professor of psychology, Chris French.

To see a team like that working together is rare indeed. If you appreciate the various explanations a single phenomenon might have and the limits of science and perhaps pseudo-science, you will truly enjoy this show.

psychic more like active imagination - pure nonesense

[petergoldsmith-45881 · 1/10 · 2 August 2022]

Snooze fest, the only thing that goes bump is your head in your hands. Psychic goes off on story time but when it comes to mentioning names she suddenly pauses, why, because this can be fact checked, and show she talking out of her backside. The sceptic says what most people with a brain would feel, nothing and it's all imagination. Walks into a basement, saying its cold and dark ,like you'd expect one to be. No wonder is now free on prime.