Paranormal Stoogefest

I sat through another episode of "A Haunting," Discovery Channel's answer to the widely popular "Ghost Hunters." My wife enjoys these shows. Don't ask me why. From watching this garbage repetitively I've extrapolated a pattern that seems consistent with each episode.

1. The actors hired to reenact paranormal events look nothing like the real people, who are shown commenting after each scene.
The real people all look completely insane, the kind of people you would avoid making eye contact with if you happened to
encounter one on a city street.

2. Everyone is haunted by a ghost that hasn't "passed on," whatever that means. Evidently one has to employ the skills of a priest
(For some reason priests are authorities on ghosts), a spirit medium, a Wicca skank (They all seem to be morbidly obese and hideous),
or a paranormal investigator (Who knew a thermometer could be used as scientific proof of the existence of ghosts?).

3. During the reenactment segments, you have to play eerie music and disturbing sounds to represent "negative energy."

4. The homeowner has to participate in a seance to get rid of the spirits. For some reason you can't do one without candles, nonsensical
chanting, or a big fat lady with red hair and clown make-up.

5. A priest must rebuke the house in the name of the Lord. Couldn't the priest merely refer the homeowner to a qualified psychiatrist?

6. All spirits show themselves as glowing orbs?

Tonight's shows were real jaw-droppers. In the first, a crazy looking woman with a lazy eye and an obvious detachment from reality recounted horrifying events from moving into a home occupied by the victims of a stagecoach serial killer. The second involved the torment a family experienced after converting a funeral home into a private residence and making the old embalming room a bedroom for their two sons. Are you catching this? Even better, their father was so cheap he pulled all but one bulb out of the overhead lights in the room, I assume to terrify the young boys even more.
Obviously these people are seeking attention when contacting Discovery Channel with their stories, kind of like the hundreds of trailer park dwellers who insist they have been abducted by aliens. We owe it to them, and ourselves, to ignore this boobery. And anyone who claims psychic power, the ability to shape-shift, talk with the dead, see the future, cross into another dimension, converse personally with God, or levitate, should be immediately forced to take the James Randi challenge and prove it. Either that or be set on fire and thrown down an elevator shaft.