It was a dark and stormy session at the Writing Lab (!thunderclap!). The student was struggling to form words. Our eyes locked. She had been trying to interpret the meaning of Charlie Chaplin’s costume in “The Gold Rush.” She stared at the ceiling. I wanted to help, but I waited. Suddenly, she looked behind me at the door, stuck up her splayed hands, and let out a blood-curdling scream.

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I am a great fan of reality ghost shows. For years, I have been hooked on the premise of people subjecting themselves to terrifying, haunted spaces for my entertainment. This was a big thing on cable TV for a while. Swaggering hosts would lock themselves in mansions and taverns with all the latest equipment to detect spirits. The promise was always, “Finally, we will know!”

They placed cameras strategically and set up their mission-control monitors, motion detectors, and laser grids. They always saw something they hoped the camera caught, saying, “Literally! A black shadow just crossed that light.” The camera would not have caught it, but a motion detector went off somewhere, and I would still revel in their breathless exposure to invisible forces. The wrap-up was always, “Amazing how that shadow actually happened.” I started to notice that all ghost hunters used, “literally” and “actually.” These words created their proof.

Eventually, I discovered how many YouTubers were influenced by paranormal cable content. Dozens, if not hundreds of ghost hunters put out YouTube shows. I have a strong five in constant rotation:

• I go to “Paranormal Quest” to hear Ryan and Dave coax conversation with their southern drawl from troubled, dead prisoners in West Virginia. 
• I watch “Amy’s Crypt” for the globe-trotting Australian couple who are more likely to giggle at the random comments from ghosts on their spirit-detector app than be frightened. Their ghosts refer to toilets a lot. 
• However, by far, my favorite Youtube ghost show is “Paranormal Nightmare” with the dedicated paranormal team known as the Fourman Brothers.

Rocky, Josh, and Shaun of “Paranormal Nightmare” shared a childhood riddled with demons. As adults, they travel around the country to help families similarly bullied by swarms of entities. Josh’s interview of the family members is a big part of the content, which makes any conversation the team has with ghosts more relevant. Josh takes the lead on what equipment to use when, as well as whether it’s time to let ghosts respond to questions on a phone app or through the static of EVP on a recording device. He might use an SLS camera to look for skeletal structures on an iPad screen. Ghosts show up as stick figures popping into the room, waving their arms and generally trying to touch things.

The Fourmans ask ghosts why they are hanging out and messing with such nice people! Do they have unfinished business, or are they lost? Are they evil or just bored? Once they have all the responses on camera—the bangs and knocks, cuss words and cries for help—they banish the ghosts in a righteous, prayer-blitz cleansing.

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Here’s the thing: I did not literally have a student look at the door behind me and scream during a Writing Lab session. But things actually do occasionally get dark and stormy (!lightning! !thunderclap!).

Students come to the Writing Lab looking for answers from their haunted drafts of research papers, essays, and personal statements all the time. They arrive, their minds filled with static, trying to tune into the concepts from class, wrangling with ghostly, abstract language from texts of all types. They try to sponsor it here in the concrete world of their writing. As a Writing Lab consultant, I do my best to help them while simultaneously trying to stay out of their ways.

Just like Shaun Fourman filtering through the static of an EVP to find words and phrases relevant to his conversation, students must filter through the jargon of source material to find the relevance to their own argument. When Rocky Fourman spots a stick figure on the SLS camera, he immediately tests it for the false reading of a lamp or coat rack. Similarly, students must navigate the false-positives and possible hallucinations of AI to ensure the accuracy of their work and develop critical-thinking skills. When Josh Fourman, the ultimate ghost diplomat, interrogates a spirit through a phone app, he is creating a conversation that mirrors the same kind of conversation that students navigate while researching. They ask questions of their evidence, challenge historical claims, or validate previous scholarship in support of their work.

There’s nothing actually paranormal about the work students do in the Writing Lab, even if it sometimes feels that way. And very unlike the Fourman Brothers and their YouTube show, it’s no nightmare. In fact, nothing could be more normal and, frankly, good for the soul than wrangling our thoughts onto a page. Do I sometimes get frustrated with the demons that students wrestle with and want to yell at them, “Why are you hanging out and messing with such nice people?”? Yes, I do. Nonetheless, I am a great fan of this work and the students who show up to grapple with their ghosts, whatever their business may be.