The Scariest Investigation Ghost Nation's Jason Hawes Has Ever Been On

Not many of us have the courage to do what Jason Hawes does for a living. We're talking about both terrifying elements: paranormal investigation, and hosting a reality show. There's something about knowing that millions of viewers are watching you check out allegedly haunted mansions and insane asylums, something that none of us (or darned few, anyway) are psychologically prepared for. Luckily, that doesn't happen to Jason Hawes very often. After all, he's been at it for quite a while.

Hawes first rose to fame with The Atlantic Paranormal Society (TAPS) and the crew when Ghost Hunters aired on SYFY in 2004, where he worked along Grant Wilson to instill a primal fear of the dark into the American public. Hawes left the show in 2016 and didn't return when the production got a reboot from A&E, because he was busy with a different, also chilling reality series: Ghost Nation.

Television wasn't his first introduction to paranormal investigation. The guy had been doing it for years before it started paying the bills. Sometimes it was at the behest of religious officials; other times, to check out a family haunting. Regardless, the wealth of real-life horror the paranormal investigator has experienced could certainly fill volumes with interesting, if not terrifying, tales. And one of those tales stands out clearly in Hawes's memory.

If you've watched Hawes on either Ghost Hunters or Ghost Nation over the years, you might find it difficult to imagine a situation in which he becomes so terrified he freezes. It's never happened on television, even though his crews have been through some bone-chilling experiences. There was one investigation. however, that had Hawes sitting on a staircase, afraid to move. In a recent interview on an episode of the Geico-ad-heavy SUS: Share Ur Scare YouTube show, Hawes dives into his most terrifying experience. It's seriously horrifying.

Hawes and the rest of his paranormal investigation team had been "sent up north" by a religious organization to check out a supposed haunting, which is something that comes up more often than you'd expect. The team was under the assumption this investigation would turn out the way the majority of investigations do: bunk. "We went up there thinking nothing was gonna happen," Hawes tells the SUS hosts, but something would happen. When the crew arrived at the house, according to Hawes, "all Hell broke loose."

The haunting was bad enough that Hawes believes the family ended up moving out of the house, but that's only the tip of the paranormal iceberg. "It was one of those situations where I — I was terrified. I sat on the stairs with other investigators because you didn't know where to go. Because you didn't feel anywhere in the house was safe," Hawes admits.

The investigator claims there was a birdcage that shook through the kitchen and a refrigerator pushed itself out of a recess, both with no explanation, but that's only where the horror starts. The father of the household was talking to the crew, his hand resting on the door frame in a relaxed pose, when the door slammed shut and removed his finger. Not simply removing it from the door frame, but from his entire hand. "It was two days in Hell that I never want to experience again," Hawes says during the interview.

Checking into the history of the house, the investigation crew uncovered a dark past. The house was once used for monstrous acts against indigenous Americans. According to Hawes, years and years ago, the early owner of the house would hang bodies of native people upside down and bleed them out in the basement. The house also has a history of occult activity.

The history alone is traumatic enough to cause a haunting (if you believe in that sort of thing), and what they found in the walls didn't help. The owners at the time of the investigation had just bought the home and were beginning renovations. When they dug into the walls, they found all sorts of creepy stuff. Among the artifacts were baby shoes, bloody clothes, and an old-timey scrapbook containing photos of families posing with diseased loved ones. It was definitely an investigation you wouldn't want to be on.