OCTOBER 11, 2018 // 3
SCRATCHPAD
‘Ghost Adventures’ lots of fun, except ghost part
By ERICK BENGEL
FOR COAST WEEKEND
W
ERICK BENGEL PHOTO
From left: Michael Guggino, Jay Wasley and Devin Lawrence
— all involved in the Travel Channel series ‘Ghost Adventures’
— play blues at Workers Tavern in Astoria in April 2018.
INSIDE THIS ISSUE
coast
weekend
arts & entertainment
4
7
8
COASTAL LIFE
Home & Chef Tour
Assistance League fundraiser has houses, flowers, food
COAST WEEKEND EDITOR
ERICK BENGEL
CALENDAR COORDINATOR
REBECCA HERREN
CONTRIBUTORS
MARILYN GILBAUGH
WILLIAM HAM
RYAN HUME
KATHERINE LACAZE
THE ARTS
Water Music Festival
Virtuosos’ selections span the globe
FEATURE
Local celebs
step up
ALSO INSIDE
WATER MUSIC FESTIVAL
A Q-AND-A WITH
AUTHOR ROBERT
MICHAEL PYLE
ASSISTANCE LEAGUE OF
THE COLUMBIA PACIFIC’S
HOME AND CHEF TOUR
Every Thursday
Oct. 11, 2018 • coastweekend.com
DANCING
WITH THE
CLATSOP
COUNTY STARS
TO SUBMIT AN ITEM
OCT. 18 AT THE LIBERTY THEATRE
DINING
Mouth of the Columbia
Bayway Tavern: no frills, no nonsense
FURTHER ENJOYMENT
MUSIC CALENDAR ....................5
CROSSWORD ...............................6
ASTORIA ART WALK ............... 14
CW MARKETPLACE.......... 15, 16
BOB PYLE Q&A ......................... 18
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Dancing with the
Clatsop County Stars
supports The Harbor
12
hen I met some of
the “Ghost Adven-
tures” crew last
April, they were playing the
blues at Uniontown’s Workers
Tavern — a sound engineer
on guitar, a writer/editor
doing vocals and harmonica,
a cast member pounding the
djembe.
They seemed like the
nicest guys in the world, very
patient with the questions of a
reporter who had never seen
their TV show and was intent
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on distracting them from their
drinks and jam session.
And indeed, in the first
episode of the show’s four-
part miniseries, “Graveyard
of the Pacific,” that debuted
Saturday, they come off as an
affable gang, almost childlike
in their eagerness to scare
themselves stupid in the dead
of night.
The episode, which takes
viewers beneath Gulley’s
Butcher Shop and the Liberty
Theatre, makes good use of
Astoria’s grim, gray palette.
Ah, those wet sidewalks …
that creeping fog bank ...
the pilings on the riverfront
peeking through the mist ...
the macabre, maritime atmo-
sphere. The wonderfully eerie
port town I love.
My enjoyment was
dimmed by one tiny, nagging
quibble: Ghosts probably
don’t exist.
There likely are better
explanations for bumps in a
basement and subterranean
tingles than, say, spirits lin-
gering from the Astoria Fire
of 1922. At one point, host
Zak Bagans speculates that
an ancient curse is sabotaging
the filmmakers — eleva-
tors getting stuck, internet
connections crapping out, as
if someone, or something,
doesn’t want these stories
told. Uh-huh. It’s hard to tell
how much the cast buys into
this and how much is pure
histrionics. I don’t know
about you, but whenever their
ghost-o-meter starts to ping,
so does my BS detector.
(Question: Why does
almost every supposed haunt-
ing in our area only involve
people and events of the last
100 to 200 years? Native
American tribes occupied the
region for thousands of years,
yet no one around here seems
especially wary of souls who,
say, perished in the great
earthquake and tsunami of
THOMAS ROTT PHOTO
Features Editor Erick Bengel.
1700. Just sayin’.)
I wonder about the cultural
effect of shows like this.
Though useful as escapist
entertainment, does such
programming quietly corrode
truth as a value, lowering
standards of evidence for
claims that demand a much
higher threshold, offering
caricatures of the scientific
method to a public whose
grasp of science is already
dubious? Don’t such shows
tend to make viewers more
credulous, giving them
permission to indulge their
fantasies rather than question
their premises?
I suppose that’s not the
point. It’s “Ghost Adven-
tures,” not “MythBusters.”
To the extent that I could
set aside the wet blanket of
my skepticism and simply
savor the great cinematog-
raphy — what magnificent
drone shots of Astoria! — the
endearing earnestness of the
cast, the nods toward Asto-
ria’s sketchy past and the glee
of pointing out sites that are
personally meaningful (Hey,
my apartment! Hey, I bought
a sandwich there once!), it’s a
fun show.
But I must tediously aver
that the evidence for ghosts is
thin at best, and it should take
a lot more than the “Ghost
Adventurers” investigations to
make someone a believer.
In any case, Astoria has
a rich history of perfectly
real-world horror sufficient
to freak people out; no need
to embrace murky meta-
physics. CW