If you aren’t familiar with The Dead Files, it is The Travel Channel’s reality show about a psychic (Amy, pictured above) and an ex NYC Detective named Steve. They go from place to place helping people who have haunted houses. The ones that all the other ghost shows haven’t gotten to yet.

See, they are not simple documentarians of hauntedness.  You are not going to see people setting up cameras blah blah and talking about getting some EVPs.  Amy and Steve are a level past that. Amy doesn’t NEED proof we can see to know that that place is haunted, and Steve doesn’t care.

Lesson One:  If you have a haunted house and are worried that the ghost is going to kill you, go to Help Me Dead Files.  Honestly, what else were you gonna do?  Everyone else would laugh at you.

Once they get to your house, Steve plays it straight.  He treats the whole thing like a criminal investigation.  And he isn’t afraid to ask the tough questions:

He honestly asks pretty much the same thing to everyone. And everything he asks is done with the same tone that just makes you feel like he believes you. Really good cop stuff. You throw a fact out there like “the ghost bit my butt” and he will ask “You sure there wasn’t a person in the room, biting your butt?” And when you say no, he just says “Okay.” If this guy had investigated Hae Min Lee’s murder, the right person would be in jail.  He’d get the truth out of Jay!

Anyway, Steve investigates the town and the house and more often than not he finds out that the haunted place was the spot of a horrible death (or deaths). And there is always a twisty character in there somewhere.  For example, Steve might find out that the house used to be a blacksmith shop and the blacksmith killed fifty kids in the shop.

Lesson Two:  If you didn’t build your house, you better check to see how many people died in it before you got there, because the odds are it was a lot and they are still there.

So the murdering blacksmith is bad, but then he might catch a little tidbit from a local historian (I dare you to try to find a local historian in your town) about someone who owned the house fifty years later who also fell down a well.  Steve gets to the BOTTOM of things. And while this is going on….

Amy goes on “her walk” where we see the following:

1. The camera guy goes to the house and covers up all the pictures and knick-knacks and whatnot before Amy gets there. That’s because she is not supposed to get any clues about the house or the people in it.  It is all about the psychic-ness.

2. We see the camera guy doing this.

3. That means there are other camera guys.

So then Amy walks around the house and describes all the dead people running around. And I think that is the greatest part. She can really say whatever she wants. And boy does she ever!  She gets all sweaty and hits herself in the head and yaks about this dead guy and that one over there and hey there’s a closet filled with fifty kids and another guy in the corner who might be a black guy named….Smith?

This continues throughout the episode. She points stuff out even though we can’t see it and the camera dude asks her to elaborate. Here is a sample. It is actually the whole eppy but you will get the gist:

So they stress that they never talk to each other during the investigation until until they get back together for the big reveal at the end of the show. That keeps things compartmentalized so people don’t get the idea that Steve is telling Amy all the stuff she is supposed to see. And he always has her describe the boss ghost to a sketch artist.

Sometimes, like in the case above, it’s a demon.  But sometimes she will have the artist draw a person. Like the blacksmith or the guy who fell down the well. And during the reveal, Steve will show the sketch (it is in a sealed envelope like an award show!) and everyone will freak out. Sometimes it looks just like the old-timey picture Steve has, sometimes it is just some creep. Either way it is part of the REVEAL!

In the reveal, Steve tells the story of the house while Amy nods and says “that makes sense” a lot. The facts of the case always true up in SOME way with what she saw.  And if they don’t, then hey, it’s a demon! And then she tells the home owners what to do to fix their problem.  Sometimes it is as easy as rubbing onions (?) on the doorways, but it goes all the way up to getting priests and fire trucks and NASA and a voodoo shaman to help get rid of the ghosts. No joke, sometimes the stuff is complicated. And the clients never write anything down. I would be writing it down.

Lesson three:  If you hire a TV crew to come to your house and they say there are demons in it, you really should do what they tell you.

To sum up, the show tickles me pink.  Eva can’t stand it (which may be why I featured it this week – hee) and I have to say since she teed off on it I do find it funnier than I did. Maybe I am jaded, or maybe I was just fooling myself when I watched it before. Either way, it is on Netflix and I just keep watching it.  Try the episode up there and tell me what you think.  Or, if you are a psychic, tell me what I think!

Categories: TV & Film

Tags: Amy Allen, ghosts, haunted, reviews, The Dead Files, tv, tv reviews, TV shows