Over the years my wife and children have subjected me to just about every paranormal show there is. Sometimes I enjoy them for what they are but a majority of the time I simply laugh at them, being as that I’m a skeptic when it comes to the paranormal. Trust me, I’ve been dragged on Ghost Walks and everything and never once saw an inkling of the dead trying to make contact. In any case I had high hopes for Paranormal Witness since SyFy does some pretty cool shows like Destination Truth and Ghost Hunters, one of the only shows bold enough to show an episode where hauntings are debunked by logic and the crew find nothing. While I believe that there is nothing to be found anyway, at least there isn’t a string of episodes where the extraordinary occurs.

So Paranormal Witness. The good part about the show is that it had my kids freaked. They can usually go through episodes of shows like Ghost Adventures or Psychic Kids without really getting too flipped out with fear. This one had them so freaked out they couldn’t even look at the television and plugged their ears to avoid the eerily done soundtrack that accompanied the spooky stories unraveling on screen. I’ll hand it to the show, it’s here that they succeed. Now where they fail isn’t really failing, its just lack of originality.

Now before there were all these shows where paranormal research groups would grab their gear and spend a few hours or agree to be locked inside of a haunted location there was Unsolved Mysteries and their paranormal, UFO, and Strange Legends segments, which would later become seasoned volumes on DVD. I know, we used to own them all. Unsolved Mysteries had the real life haunting victims rehashing their stories while showing a dramatization of the events happening in between the interviews. There was also A Haunting which followed the same routine, but was eventually cancelled after four seasons. Paranormal Witness follows in the exact same vain. They have the victims talking about their haunting and they have a dramatization happening between interviews. If you’ve seen Unsolved Mysteries Paranormal then you’ve seen this show.

The positive side to Paranormal Witness is that Unsolved Mysteries Paranormal has long since been dead and if your looking for a show to take up the mantle Paranormal Witness will no doubt be that show. While the first half of the episode, Emily The Imaginary Friend, felt a bit, “been there done that”, the overall feel of the show felt slightly fresher, especially the second episode, “The Lost Girl”. While UMP seemed a bit cheesy, what with Robert Stack’s trademark voice narrating,  Paranormal Witness leaves the chills up to the story and the music. In any case, living in a household of Paranormal fans, despite being paralyzed with fear, everyone is looking forward to seeing more, even myself. As always final judgment is yours. Enjoy.