‘Haunted Encounters: Face to Face,’ silly

Having scored big (for second-tier cable) ratings with its reality series "Celebrity Ghost Stories," Bio is expanding its programming in the paranormal-investigations genre, a genre in which people with dubious credentials check dubious claims using dubious means. Some of these shows make it easier for viewers to cut the investigators some slack by throwing in a little humor.

 

But since a totally credulous and totally serious approach has worked for Bio so far, the channel's new series "Haunted Encounters: Face to Face" is completely deadpan. The actual evidence we see in the course of the investigations is so skimpy and silly that few viewers will be spooked, intrigued or amused and most will simply be bored.

 

In the premiere episode, airing tonight at 10, a team of four nice-looking people who call themselves the Paranormal Syndicate looks for ghosts in the home of the suspected double murderer Lizzie Borden, in Fall River, Mass., and in a silent-movie theater in Los Angeles that was the site of a contract hit.

 

In both cases, the narrator solemnly recaps the crimes, and we hear from people who say they have been spooked in the locations. In the Borden home, where Lizzie allegedly murdered her father and stepmother in 1892, a caretaker says that she suddenly became dizzy and nauseated in one of the bedrooms. A patron of the movie theater says he felt a cold hand touching his neck while he was sitting alone.

 

The team visits both locations after hours, of course, so that everything can be shot in night vision, a technique that has long ceased to be scary. In the Borden house, they first go in the basement, where they say there has been a lot of "activity."

 

They hear footsteps upstairs, so they go into the bedroom where Lizzie's stepmother was killed while making a bed. That very bed is now unmade; the investigators say it was made when they went downstairs. They wouldn't have any reason to lie, right?

 

The team's "lead investigator," Daniel Hooven, points out two handprints in the bedclothes, which most people would see as a sign of normal human involvement but which he sees as the handprints of the ghostly victim.

 

The team's "case manager," Jordan Murphy, goes into the bedroom alone with what they call Pandora's box, a machine that supposedly captures EVP. Although we're never told what EVP is, it means "electronic voice phenomenon" and is supposedly the paranormal voices that can be filtered out from white noise.

 

Jordan asks the spirit that is presumably present some questions, and an indicator on the box lights up. When she plays the recording back, it makes some ambiguous noises which are helpfully translated in subtitles as "Lizzie…Lizzie Borden."

 

Daniel uses a technique he calls "a ripple in time": He takes the role of Lizzie's father, trying to provoke her into a response. "What kind of sick girl are you?" he says. "What would make you try to kill your own father?"

 

If Daniel has hopes of being an actor, we would normally say here that he shouldn't quit his day job, but his day job is ridiculous too.

 

The segment ends with all of the team members agreeing that the house is haunted. No one examines the evidence further. For example, it would be interesting to see if an impartial observer would hear the same words the team members think they've heard.

 

Taking up the second half of the show, the investigation of the movie theater has an additional element: The team's "special K9 investigator," a dog named Captain, who has supposedly been trained to detect electromagnetic fields, comes to sniff around the movie seats.

 

When Captain becomes agitated, that is taken as proof that he has located where the spirit of the theater's original owner remains — and not, say, where some popcorn was recently spilled. Another ripple-in-time skit produces an absurd result on Pandora's box; Daniel takes it seriously.

 

The show could be a subtle spoof. Even its pages on biography.com have howlers. Jordan's bio lists her academic credentials as "a BS degree in sport and exercise psychology from West Virginia University."

 

"Haunted Encounters" is probably relying more on viewers' gullibility than on their sense of humor. But if we're going to have someone messing with our heads, we'd prefer it be done with a little more skill.