Courtesy: Timeless Media Group/Shout! Factory
Paranormal shows are quite popular right now across the television spectrum. Bio channel is frontloaded with paranormal shows including: Celebrity Ghost Stories, My Ghost Story, The Haunting Of, and re-runs of Psychic Kids just to name a few. Travel Channel has Ghost Adventures. Syfy has Ghost Hunters and Haunted Collector. At one point, the network even had Ghost Hunters International. That show was short-lived, though. And at one point, A&E had Paranormal State. That show ran for five seasons before being moved to Bio Channel and re-run. And even Discovery Channel for some time had its own show in A Haunting. It lasted for roughly four seasons on the network before pulled it and it was moved to Discovery’s digital “sister station”, Destination America. The show aired its fifth season on Destination America after having been off the air for five years. Now fans of this show can watch all ten episodes from Season Five any time they want thanks to Shout! Factory and Timeless Media Group.
For those that have never experienced this show, it is one of the scarier of the crop of paranormal programs out there today. So what is it that makes A Haunting stand out? Let’s start with the most obvious of factors. It isn’t a reality show. That eliminates Paranormal State, Psychic Kids, Ghost Hunters (and its spinoff), Ghost Adventures, and Haunted Collector. To a certain extent, one could also argue that The Haunting of would be eliminated, too. Having eliminated all of those, that leaves just My Ghost Story and A Haunting. My Ghost Story seems somewhat hokey with its re-enactments. Sure, A Haunting uses re-enactments and interviews, too. But the production values of the re-enactments in A Haunting are far more professional. The re-enactments are so well done that they play out like something straight out of a horror movie. Because of that, it is so much easier to suspend one’s disbelief and be pulled into these stories of ordinary individuals that have been affected by or have encountered something which they cannot explain. In turn, it is so much easier to be scared regardless of whether or not one believes in the unexplained.
Each professionally re-enacted story told by the ordinary individuals is the main key to the success of this show in scaring its audiences. The stories are so well told through the course of each episode that even those that don’t believe will find themselves not wanting to watch any of the chill inducing episodes alone or in the dark. Through the course of the 2012 season, audiences are introduced to a family in Winston-Salem, North Carolina that was at one point, haunted by the spirit of a civil war soldier that had been killed in battle. Viewers are also introduced to a family whose story doesn’t exactly have a happy ending. The family in question ends up moving out of its house because an evil spirit is not just haunting the house, but also physically assaulted one of the young ladies in the family. It becomes so brazen that it lays down in one of the girls’ beds right next to her solely to terrorize her. The visualization of this evil spirit and the actress’s reaction will frighten any viewer with even the strongest constitution.
One can tell by now just how scary the episodes contained within A Haunting: The 2012 Season is. There is still another factor that must be noted about this set that audiences will appreciate. That factor is the double-disc set’s packaging. Timeless Media Group, being associated with Shout! Factory, it is no surprise that the discs contained in the case for this season both have their own space within the case. Shout! Factory was one of the first companies to actively start packaging its multi-disc sets in more ergonomic packaging. This set is no different. All ten episodes on both discs are kept safe in their case as one disc is placed in its own spot on one side of the case, while the other is on the other side of the case. This preserves the quality of the discs as it prevents them from becoming scratched up unlike say, the packaging method for Syfy’s Ghost Hunters season sets. The discs in those sets are packed one on top of another with no regard for the discs’ safety. This makes the new set of episodes from A Haunting that much more worth the money for those that are fans of the paranormal sciences and paranormal programming in general. A Haunting: The 2012 Season is available now in stores and online.
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