30 Best Ghost Adventures Episodes Ranked

Zak Bagans, host and lead investigator on Travel Channel's deathless series "Ghost Adventures," is a great big scaredy cat. Which isn't a knock on Bagans or a criticism of the show, but rather a cornerstone of its appeal. 

For nearly 14 years and 300 episodes, Bagans and his team of paranormal researchers (known simply enough as the Ghost Adventures Crew, or GAC) have traveled to remote, possibly haunted locations around the country, learned a little local history, then locked themselves in overnight to get scared silly by every cold spot and bump in the dark they encounter. It's a tried-and-true formula, as reliably entertaining as trying to conjure Bloody Mary at a sleepover; whether there is anything spooking them — other than their own imaginations — is beside the point.

But that's not to say that every episode can be so easily explained away; the series has had its share of genuinely eerie moments. Even when a spectral encounter is less than convincing, an episode can be buoyed by a compelling history, colorful locals, or the frat house camaraderie between Bagans and his bro-ish co-stars. Whether you're a longtime fan up for a debate or a newbie wondering where to jump in, here are the top 30 episodes of "Ghost Adventures," counted down.

The spirits hit close to home in this Season 20 episode, as the GAC investigates a haunting in the Las Vegas home of crew member Aaron Goodwin's father Don. 

Aaron calls out to the presences — the apparition of a little girl, and a "witch" with no eyes or mouth — and asks probing questions such as, "What's with the no eyes or mouth?" Zak, meanwhile, grows unexpectedly (perhaps supernaturally) lethargic, collapsing first on the stairs and later on a bed, as their motion sensors and EMFs (electromagnetic field meters) go haywire elsewhere in the house. The family connection between GAC and the haunted party makes up for the fact that the location is a somewhat boring suburban house.

When a New Mexico man purchases a former saloon and brothel to make into his new home, a former client makes his displeasure known.

Owner Jesse Herron feels a dark presence pressing down on him as he sleeps, and later his dog is left with a bloody wound on his neck. At first, he suspects it might be the ghostly remnants of a woman who was murdered within the brothel by a jealous husband, but a neighbor (who also claims to be a psychic medium) informs him that it is an angry, male energy that haunts the property. When the GAC gets pushed around by this angry frontier spirit (whom the episode would love us to believe is Billy the Kid), they enlist this psychic neighbor to enter the house and protect its owner from further harm.

The Berkeley, a restored ferry from the 1800s, was already thought to be haunted. But after months without visitors, thanks to COVID-19 shutdowns, its employees believe the hauntings have intensified in isolation. 

Zak and the GAC investigate the mysterious sound of footsteps on metal and cold spots, and record two notable instances of EVP, or electronic voice phenomenon, where a recording picks up voices and sounds that can't be otherwise heard. In the first, GAC's digital recorder picks up a high pitched scream that no one had heard in the moment. Next, in response to Zak's question of what the spirits might want, a voice is heard saying, "Cake." Same, friend, same.

This episode benefits from a genuinely upsetting location, an abandoned state-run children's home in Montana. 

Its crumbling walls and exposed hallways would be spooky enough, without knowing that the facility has a disturbing history of abuse. The GAC, along with psychic Deanna Jaxine Stinson, hole up on a particularly cold night, armed with motion detectors and a device called an Ovilus, which allows spirits to communicate via a word database (sort of like an electronic Ouija board). 

When Deanna's Ovilus spits out two women's names — Harriet and Ann — it begs the question whether these were workers at the orphanage, or students.

Alton, IL, just across the river from St. Louis, has a reputation as one of the most haunted towns in the world. That reputation is largely built on McPike Mansion, a Victorian-style mansion with a checkered past that Zak Bagans describes as "a house of chaos." 

After a preliminary visit sends every GAC member scrambling to get out of the house, and suffering from bad dreams all night, Bagans and company regroup to enter the house again the next evening. The discovery of a broken-apart crypt on the property blows the investigation wide open; could this disturbed burial plot be the cause of all this spiritual turbulence?

St. Ignatius Hospital in Washington state has been abandoned since the year 2000, and the local chamber of commerce hosted guided tours through its famously haunted walls until 2018, when they suddenly stopped. Was it because the hospital ghosts had become too aggressive? 

The GAC certainly thinks so, as they initially stick together while inside, rather than splitting up to explore, for safety reasons. After Bagans records an EVP seemingly calling him by name, the crew is beset upon by a "demonic" presence that wraps itself around Bagans and GAC member Billy Tolley with cold, ghostly tentacles.

The Union Hotel near San Francisco has been open for 170 years — through earthquakes, epidemics, two world wars, and various eras when its clientele was not the most savory (or legal), so any number of entities could be haunting its halls. 

The GAC is called in by two long-time employees who have felt attacked and even stalked outside of the hotel by a presence in one of the rooms. Can Zak and company uncover what's disturbing these spirits before more employees suffer scratches and nosebleeds?

A visit to a famous California ghost town gives Zak Bagans the opportunity to cowboy up in flannel and a wide-brimmed hat as he scours the ground with a metal detector looking for old weapons; he finds a nail. 

Many miners lost their lives down Cerro Gordo's nearly 1,200 foot-deep mine shaft; as the GAC lowers a camera and tape recorder down the shaft to try to coax any restless spirits into identifying themselves, an unseen force pulls at the camera, thoroughly freaking out Billy and the entire crew.

The GAC heads to the Victorian-style Pasadena home of occultist Richard Lael Lillard to participate in a seance at the start of their lockdown. Lillard is upfront about his beliefs as a Satanist, and that the rituals he performs can lead down some dark, dangerous paths. 

As worries mount about the sinister, possibly satanic force they could be unleashing, a presence seems to attach itself to Aaron Goodwin, trying to communicate. A turn at the Ouija board confirms that Aaron is indeed the target of the spirit's intentions. Even for "Ghost Adventures," there are perhaps some forces that should not be tested.

Los Angeles' famed comedy club The Comedy Store gets the GAC treatment, as rumors have persisted for years that the building hosted illegal abortions, torture, and murder before it hosted stand-up comics. 

A journey down to the basement, where the bodies of victims may have been once buried, uncovers voices speaking Zak's name, a mysterious white mist that appears in a picture but not on camera, and nothing less than a portal to the other side. The episode is most notable for capturing the series' first ever murder — as Zak is roasted alive by comedian Jeff Ross.

This abandoned facility in Fayetteville, TN has become a mecca for ghost hunters and fans of the paranormal, with its history as a hospital for the mentally ill giving it an enhanced aura of pain and malevolence. Nearly everyone in Fayetteville has a connection to the hospital, as it was a main employer in town for almost 70 years. 

The GAC encounters what they believe to be the spirit of a young girl in the hallways. Trying to communicate with the spirit, Aaron turns to perhaps the most tried and true way of getting kids to follow directions: Bribe them with candy.

The Castaneda Hotel in Las Vegas was originally opened in the 1890s by southwestern hotel magnate Fred Harvey. In the decades since its closing in the 1940s, the building has fallen into disrepair, occupied only by the disenchanted spirits of its former residents and workers, the famous "Harvey Girls." 

Zak and the GAC lock themselves in to see if they can make contact with anyone still occupying the space. In the still-operating Plaza Hotel down the street, the GAC stops by to follow the trail of a spectral child looking for her grandmother; Zak attempts to bribe her with a teddy bear.

The apparition of a young boy with no face haunts a Navajo family living on a New Mexico reservation. The members of the Harris family have each had an eerie, invasive encounter, and when the GAC set up surveillance cameras around the house, they pick up what certainly looks like a four-legged shadow appearing from the ground and disappearing into the night. It is one of the most compelling pieces of video evidence the show has ever produced, even if Zak tries a little too hard to make a connection to Navajo cultural beliefs.

Zak Bagans returns to the Old Washoe Club in Virginia City, NV — the site of the 2004 "Ghost Adventures" documentary that inspired the series — for the third and final time. Bagans claims that he has not come back just for fun, but that he has been receiving visions and dreams compelling him to return for some unknown purpose. 

Along with the requisite strange bumps and voices, the episode serves as a fitting tribute to late paranormal investigators Debby and Mark Constantino, who appeared in those first two visits to the haunted hotel.

There are many spirits in this episode, and many sources. Despite its title, the epicenter of the hauntings is the many, many macabre tchotchkes on display at the Adobe Deli Steakhouse, located where the rebuilt Lewis Flats School once stood (the original school burned down in the 1940s). The steakhouse employees have reported many strange experiences revolving around the animal heads mounted on the restaurant walls, its collection of Native American pottery, and the owner's collectibles from nearby notable crimes. On top of all that, the land was the site of many violent skirmishes between white colonizers and Apache war parties during the years before New Mexico was part of the Union. How could a place like this not be haunted?

The waters of Eureka Springs, AR were rumored to have healing properties, and people flocked there throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries to be cured of their ailments. The Crescent Hotel is a monument to this era in Ozark history, and known as one of the most haunted hotels in America. 

There's an unexpected poignancy to the episode, courtesy of Zak Bagans, surprisingly, whose father died of cancer shortly before filming. In between staged moments like asking random passersby in the middle of town where the hotel is, and tracking down "Michael," the hotel's most famous haunting, he wonders aloud that his father wasn't so different from those people who came to Eureka Springs a century before, hoping for a miracle. The search for healing and the search for the dead, it seems, are in many ways the same impulse.

A family of 12 has rehabbed the former Idaho State Tuberculosis Hospital into an inn, but now they and their staff are being terrorized by an angry male presence seemingly left over from the site's more gruesome days. 

The GAC interviews a housekeeper who came face to face with this spectral man, and the memory of his violent energy brings her to tears. As with their other former and/or abandoned hospital episode, there is also an element of child spirits in the mix, alongside some surprisingly legible (and unsettling) EVP recordings of the male presence they seek. Plus, an ill-timed sneeze from Billy sends Zak out of his skin.

This two-hour Halloween special takes a look inside the farmhouse that inspired James Wan's "The Conjuring." 

The 300-year-old farmhouse has been the (alleged) site of murders and suicides, and many ghost hunters have investigated the house over the last 50 years, including the famous Ed and Lorraine Warren. As for the GAC, Zak Bagans hypes up the episode as containing the most compelling evidence of ghostly activity that they had ever found, and while that reveal is a perfectly predictable bust, the episode does score a coup by bringing in Keith and Karl Johnson, paranormal investigators who (while not as famous as the Warrens) were actually the first team to investigate the Harrisville Farmhouse.

It's a lockdown on wheels as Zak and the GAC investigate reports of terrifying visions involving a 100-year-old steam train traveling the historic Nevada Northern Railway. 

While walking through the railway depot, Zak and Aaron are scared breathless, first by a cat that ran past, and then by literally their own shadows — which seems appropriately childlike, given their excitement to jump on a steam train and ride the rails. But when the current railway foreman informs them that eighteen people have died on the train over the last century, their anxiety begins to make sense, and as their investigation takes them out to literal frontier ghost towns, there is soon more than shadows and cats to frighten them.

This home in Utah once housed a polygamist sect, but now its tenants report ghostly activity centered around the basement. 

Notably, Zak elects not to go into the house with the rest of GAC, citing an upper respiratory infection. He stays behind in the production van, AKA the "nerve center," communicating via walkie-talkie and watching the action on monitors. But just because he is not in the house doesn't mean that he is free from demonic intimidation. As the GAC prepares to enter, Bagan's Ovilus spits out the words EVIL, CENT, and TABLE (just like the one Bagan is sitting on), and later on, the more alarming ABORT, UNHOLY, and CHILLS.

A 19th-century Utah grist mill has been inoperative since the 1940s, but the spirits inside are very busy, and of such variety that there is something for everyone. 

Echoes of the West's genocidal past can be found in a Native American shadow figure seen on the grounds, while a ghostly couple in white tours the main building. Poltergeist activity in the old school building is thought to be brought on by a young girl's death in the nearby pond. While Zak's crew strains to attribute every creak and groan inside a 150-year old wood mill to supernatural sources, a sudden moan captured via EVP literally knocks Jay off his seat.

Yuma Territorial Prison in California earned the nickname "Hell Hole" due to its extreme temperatures and the even more extreme punishments visited upon its prisoners. Conditions are perfect for a run of the mill investigation for the GAC, and for most of the episode that's what it is, but toward the end of the episode Zak and crew become interested in the history of the Yuma prison band. 

The faint sound of music compels them towards a stage, where their heat sensitive equipment captures several prison band-shaped anomalies, seemingly performing for their guests. It's one of the show's most memorable moments, a perfect coming together of the show's one-ghost-fits-all methodology and a site's specific history.

Salt Lake City's industrial district would not seem a likely hotbed of ghostly activity, but when a recent break-in to a century-old building reveals the evidence of a possible dark ritual having been performed in its basement, who you gonna call? 

Zak Bagans, of course — and soon enough the GAC is down in the basement, tempting a female spirit known as the Old Hag. A disembodied voice laughs at Billy as the crew picks up something passing through an old mirror and bouncing around the room. If the evidence presented is perhaps a little dubious, in comparison to the outsized reaction of the investigators? Well, otherwise it wouldn't be an episode of "Ghost Adventures."

This Halloween special rides the coattails of the 2020 Netflix hit documentary "Tiger King," following the GAC's investigation of the animal park formerly owned by incarcerated big game collector Joe Exotic. 

While they are nominally on hand to investigate a purported haunting by Travis Maldonado (whose off-screen death by accidental gunshot was a key sequence in "Tiger King"), the crew doesn't capture much more than the incredible bad vibes of the filthy, overrun compound. At a certain point Joe Exotic's former zookeeper Erik Cowie, who has been guiding Bagans and crew around the area, can't take it much more and excuses himself from the room; Cowie would be found dead less than a year after this special aired.

A polite poltergeist in a Satanist's haunted hotel is a rare thing indeed, but that's just what the GAC uncovers at the Stone Lion Inn in Guthrie, Oklahoma.

Current owner Becky Luker operates the inn as a bed and breakfast, performing a regular murder mystery show at a local cemetery, where some believe that the rituals she performs as part of the show are in fact actual wiccan and/or satanic rites. As the GAC investigates the Inn, a door mysteriously opens on its own. 

For most episodes of "Ghost Adventures," that would be enough meat for a month, but then Zak asks if whatever force opened the door could please close it. Amazingly, the force complies and the door slams shut — throwing the entire crew into a justified frenzy.

The GAC had previously visited Vulture City, Arizona for an episode in 2010. At the time, the town's mining operations had not been operational for years. But now it is 2021, things are back up and running, and the local spirits do not seem pleased. 

When the attendees of a local paranormal convention suffer from mysterious ailments, some requiring hospitalization, Zak Bagans investigates the cause. Dark energy is felt around a tree that had been used for lynchings at one point, and it is presumed that much of the ghostly activity has its roots in the frontier violence between white miners and Native American tribes. These conflicts are often the historical subtexts of "Ghost Adventures" episodes taking place out west, but rarely is it so explicit or central to the investigation as it is here.

The GAC travels across the pond in this two-hour Halloween special, headed to Ireland to investigate the country's rich supernatural folklore, tour haunted castles, and squeeze in a quick portal to hell if time allows. 

The true appeal of this special is the gorgeous footage of the Irish landscape, which even the show's notoriously fuzzy nighttime photography can't fully diminish. The Irish locale allows Zak and company to practice their schtick with a different set of paranormal tropes, and there's the feeling here — as when they consult a "pagan witch" to cast a welcoming spell to explore Krohne Cave (the aforementioned portal to hell) — that they are merely tourists getting taken for a ride.

Ranch Island is a commune outside of Las Vegas, where the spirit of a man who hanged himself may be trapped. As the GAC investigates, Zak is overcome with dark energy and believes himself to be in contact, if not outright possessed, by this shackled spirit. 

Jay Wasley rigs up an experimental energy circle with a Tesla coil, as the spirit presses down on his shoulders and envelops the crew in cold spots. "We're here to help you!" Aaron exclaims into the darkness. "We don't want anything else!" While that last part isn't necessarily true, the first part is surprisingly sincere. It's a rare thing when the GAC is here to help the living, more so than the dead.

This two-hour Halloween special from 2016 is "Ghost Adventures" at its finest, showcasing the ultimate expression of the show's rustic Americana aesthetic, Route 66 — renamed Route 666 here for maximum cheese — in another example of the show firing on all cylinders. 

Traveling across Texas to investigate a trio of haunted sites — the De Soto Hotel, Concordia Cemetery, and Goatman's Bridge — the GAC confront spirits and each other, as supernatural bad vibes (or perhaps just the bad vibes that can creep up during a long car trip) threaten to tip over into violence. On Goatman's Bridge, Aaron Goodwin males the ill-advised move of breaking away from the group, only to be thrown to the ground by an invisible force. 

"I'm bleeding everywhere, dude," he says as he examines a wound on his arm, despite no evidence of any blood anywhere — perhaps the most "Ghost Adventures" moment of them all.