I’ve given up on Battlestar Galactica. From what I understand, I watched the last good episode four weeks ago. I’ll make an attempt at the finale, but somehow my zeal for Admiral Adama, the loveable Colonel Tigh, and that wacky Kara Thrace, has been subsumed by hackneyed allusions to Bob Dylan songs, and the final season’s unforgivably meandering story line. I hereby hand in my geek badge and my replica Star Trek phaser.

I now have a new obsession from the Sci-Fi Channel—one I’m ashamed to admit—that has effectively taken over my life. My lack of control over watching hours and hours of Ghost Hunters is beginning to feel completely unhealthy. Yes. Ghost Hunters.

I know you’ve seen promos for the show while watching Battlestar. And if you’ve stopped yelling at the television long enough (damn you Mike Taylor!), you may have thought to yourself, “what’s this crappola they’re airing now?”

Well, I can tell you. It’s the best crappola I’ve ever had the pleasure of being psychically abused by, and the new season premiered last night.

Labeled by Sci-Fi as a “docusoap” and created by the same folks who brought you West Coast Choppers, Ghost Hunters is about two Roto-Rooter plumbers Jay Hawes and Grant Wilson who’ve made it their altruistic mission to track down paranormal activity for distraught and haunted house owners. Along the way they visit a spooky lighthouse or two, some defunct prisons, and the occasional rotting insane asylum, all in the hopes of catching physical evidence of the paranormal. Their organization the Atlantic Paranormal Society (TAPS… get it?), is armed to the teeth with cameras and gizmos and gadgets which they use to document activity. Most of the time they find nothing, debunking claims of the paranormal as banging pipes, poorly insulated windows, accidental chemical poisoning, or sensitivity to high electro-magnetic fields. But sometimes they catch the odd anomaly that is “unexplainable.” WooooooOOOOOOOOoooooooooo!!!

After being glued to the screen for the last two weeks, watching episode after episode, I have come to two conclusions: there is something terribly wrong with me, and the producers (Hawes and Wilson) are either fantastic frauds, or our only defense against dead people.

There is, obviously, a huge group of skeptics who are practically rabid in their cries of "foul play" on the part of the TAPS team. To be honest, their re-creations of supposed TAPS evidence are almost as entertaining as the program itself.

But I wont let the skeptics ruin my love of Ghost hunters. It’s just a television show, after all. Still, I have an overwhelming desire to find a haunted house and do some investigating myself. All I need is some cojones and one of these…