Zak Bagans

Zachary Alexander "Zak" Bagans (born on April 5, 1977, in Washington, D.C.) is the lead investigator and host of the series. Formerly working as a wedding DJ, he is also an executive producer and editor of the show. Bagans is the founder of the Ghost Adventures Crew (GAC), a worldwide community of paranormal investigators. Its membership consists of about 500 paranormal organizations. He currently resides in Las Vegas, Nevada.



Being a former skeptic himself, Bagans says that his passion for investigating the paranormal resulted from a face-to-face encounter with the spirit of a suicidal woman who haunted his old apartment building in Trenton, Michigan. Afterward, his life-changing experience caused him to actively pursue capturing video evidence of the afterlife. In the introduction of each episode, Bagans states:

Using a self-described religious, scientific, and emotional approach, Bagans is known and criticized for his aggressive and confrontational methods used during investigations; however, he maintains that he respects the afterlife and only provokes evil entities in order to elicit responses. In a June 2009 interview with the Paranormal Underground magazine, he stated, "I don't want the public perceiving us as the taunting, provocative ghost hunters. We do that only to the bad spirits who we know are attacking the living." Bagans also mentions this concept in various interviews and episodes throughout the series.

In season 3, Bagans summarized his greatest fears while climbing an aged staircase inside a shot tower at the Remington Arms factory: "Heights, snakes, and crazy-looking dolls...Those are on Zak’s top three I-don’t-like list." Zak encountered situations involving these fears in the episodes at Sloss Furnaces, Idaho State Penitentiary, and the Riddle House, respectively.

Most memorable experiences

 * 1) In season 1, three parallel linear marks appeared on Bagans' back as he felt a "burning" sensation in the basement of a former slaughterhouse at Bobby Mackey's Music World. After consulting with bishop, demonologist, and exorcist James Long, Bagans claims that a demonic entity had "scratched" him.
 * 2) In season 2, Bagans believes that he was partially possessed by a spirit for the first time in his life after behaving unusually at the Preston School of Industry.
 * 3) In season 3, Bagans believes that a demonic entity had possessed him on Poveglia Island and claims that he had "lost all memory of what happened" during the incident.