Grant Wilson

Grant Steven Wilson (born July 3, 1974) is an American plumber and the co-founder of The Atlantic Paranormal Society (TAPS), which is based in Warwick, Rhode Island. He is also the former star and co-producer of SyFy's cable television reality series, Ghost Hunters.

Personal life

Wilson and his wife Reanna have three sons. After an early career in web design, Wilson became a plumber and works for Roto-Rooter, a large plumbing service company based in Cincinnati, Ohio. His hobbies include writing and illustrating fantasy and role-playing game characters as well as playing and composing music on various instruments including guitar and piano.

Career

Wilson first met TAPS co-founder, Jason Hawes, after offering to redesign the website of the Rhode Island Paranormal Society (RIPS), a support group Hawes had formed for people who had paranormal experiences. Wilson subsequently admitted that the real reason he wanted to meet Hawes was that he had undergone an intense, recurring paranormal experience beginning at the age of fifteen. Hawes and Wilson went on to found TAPS together. According to his own account, Wilson's recurring experience involved seeing an unidentified entity in the Rhode Island woods on a regular basis.

Ghost Hunters

Ghost Hunters is an American paranormal reality television series that premiered on October 6, 2004, on Syfy (previously the Sci Fi Channel). The program features paranormal investigators Jason Hawes and Grant Wilson, who investigate places that are reported to be haunted. The two originally worked as plumbers for Roto-Rooter as a day job while investigating locations at night. Since the show's success, the series now takes precedence in their lives, but they are still honorary employees with the company and continue to do jobs for them if time permits.

The series is unrelated to the original 1996 Inca Productions' Ghosthunters produced for the Discovery Channel. The format was sold to Pilgrim Films & Television in the United States to become Ghost Hunters. The only link between the two series is presenter Ian Cashmore who anchored the UK/Europe series. Cashmore piloted the U.S. show, but chose not to remain part of the U.S. venture after he filmed the promos.

Investigative procedures

Ghost Hunters (video game)

Ghost Hunters is an platform/action video game written by the Oliver twins for the Amstrad CPC and ZX Spectrum platforms and published by Codemasters in February 1987. The game combined platform-style action with shooting gameplay similar to that found in the game Operation Wolf. The game is the second release by the Oliver twins, published when they were just seventeen years old and still going to school. It was conceived as a sequel to their first commercially successful game, Super Robin Hood, although it has little to do with this game other than using a modified version of its engine. The game is arguably an early example of the survival horror genre of computer games. The twins have credited the film Ghostbusters and the cartoon series Scooby-Doo for influencing the game.

Control Scheme and Gameplay

Like their previous game, Super Robin Hood, the player controls a character (named Hunk Studbuckle) around the platform style screen using the keyboard or joystick. Uniquely, to attack the enemy, the player must temporarily use the cursor keys to move targeting cross-hairs to shoot ghosts and demons (in a similar manner to Operation Wolf), causing the character to stand still. This results in the player requiring to shoot the targets quickly and operate their character to move around the screen before more would appear. In addition to being able to walk, the character can also jump and climb ladders. In addition to enemies to be killed, the environment contains items that can be collected, including 'macho energy' top-ups and 'key' items that unlock further areas. The game is one of few available on the CPC and ZX Spectrum platforms to feature low resolution clips of human speech, although playing them was so CPU-intensive that the game was required to freeze for their duration.

Jason Hawes

Jason Conrad Hawes (born December 27, 1971) is an American plumber and the founder of The Atlantic Paranormal Society (TAPS), which is based in Warwick, Rhode Island. He is also one of the stars and co-producers of Syfy's Ghost Hunters, which finished it's tenth season.

Personal life

Background

Hawes was born in Canandaigua, New York and moved to Warwick, Rhode Island in 1979. According to his own account, Hawes began to see apparitions at the age of twenty after a girlfriend who practiced Reiki manipulated his life force energy. Paranormal researcher John Zaffis told Hawes that he was becoming sensitive to paranormal phenomena. Hawes founded the Rhode Island Paranormal Society (RIPS) in 1990 as a support group for people who had paranormal experiences. When Hawes was twenty-two, he first met Grant Wilson after Wilson offered to redesign the RIPS website. Wilson subsequently admitted that the real reason he wanted to meet Hawes was that he had undergone an intense, recurring paranormal experience between the ages of fifteen and seventeen. Hawes and Wilson went on to found TAPS together.