SCARIEST PLACES ON EARTH - General Review

SciFi - Original Air Date: 2002

I like a good ghost story as much as anyone else.  Hell, I love a good ghost story.  What I don't like is ghost stories masquerading as "true" -- and that's what this show seems to be all about.  Over and over, strange and haunted things are turned up, but a scientific eye is never cast on the "evidence."  Mostly, this show seems to be an excuse to put ordinary people and "psychic investigators" in creepy places and try to scare them.  One show featured a bunch of kids out in the woods looking for vortexes and orbs. Know what?  They got scared!  I have advice for all shows of this ilk: never put cameras to discover "evidence" in the hands or people who have no idea what the technology's limitations are.  Again, we get bugs and dust masquerading as "orbs."  Don't blame the kids; they don't know any better.  Heck, they even though it was strange to hear odd noises in the woods at night.  (Clearly, they never lived in the woods.)  One thing I'm noticing more and more is that most of these shows visit the same "haunted" places -- like the vaults in Edinburgh, Scotland -- turn up the same dubious "evidence," and do nothing but grow the mythos these shows thrive on.  Another thing I've noticed is that the "adults" in many of these shows are more cowardly and less rigorous in their "investigations" than the teen hosts of Mystery Hunters.  (See review.)  Unless you have a very high tolerance for baloney, or a crush on host Linda Blair, give this one a wide berth.