‘Ghost Hunters’: Grant Wilson’s Team Members Have Emotional Experience With Paranormal Entity

On Wednesday’s series premiere of A&E’s Ghost Hunters reboot, two of Grant Wilson‘s team members, Mustafa Gatollari and Richel Stratton, came face-to-face with a paranormal entity that stirred quite a reaction from the two and left fans in chills.

During the premiere episode, “School Spirit,” Wilson and his team travel to Idaho to visit Pocatello High School after receiving an email from the principal claiming several reports of paranormal activity. In addition to claims of a specter seen roaming about and lights flickering on and off intermittently, the principal revealed a claim from a former teacher whose children experienced a disembodied voice yelling at them to “be quiet” in the gymnasium.

During the first night, Grant sends his two team members, Mustafa and Brandon Alvis to the gymnasium who find themselves investigating the alleged reports. Meanwhile, co-lead investigators, Kristen Luman and Daryl Marston sat in the auditorium investigating reports shared by the principal of a figure, presumably of a woman, seen standing in the balcony. As the two delegate whereabouts they should be investigating, the lights begin to dim slowly on the two, with Kristen inquiring if someone was present.

Back at the gymnasium, Brandon and Mustafa hear a noise in the bleachers, as if someone is “settling in the wood” when responding to their questions. When the temperature drops in the room, Mustafa and Brandon head up to the bleachers, where the noise originated from. As Mustafa heads to the top, Brandon stays below the stands and asks questions to the supposed entity making the noise. With more noises persisting, Mustafa sits still in the stands and reports feeling a “lot of wood creaking” next to him, telling Brandon he is now “very cold.”

“Brandon, something’s touching me, dude,” he says. “It’s right above me.”

With Brandon hurrying over to him, Mustafa adds that his “vision’s blurry” and “something’s touching” his head.

When Brandon meets up with Mustafa, he shares his account of the paranormal activity he experienced: “I’m not scared, I don’t get a bad feeling at all, something went like this [gesturing his hands covering Brandon’s face], over my head like this, touching my cheeks like this and my head. And I was overcome with emotion. I didn’t get any bad feeling, it wasn’t scary. But very interesting.”

In an interview aside, Mustafa concludes two hours into their investigation that the experience “wasn’t scary at all.”

“It was actually almost loving in a way,” he says. “Again it’s only an experience, so we will have to review the footage around that experience but it is something definitely looking into.”

Cutting back to Kristen and Daryl, the two investigate what could have caused the lights to dim while visiting the tech room. Discovering that none of the lights are going back on, the two do not have any factual evidence as to what caused the dimming.

Upon review of their investigation before Night 2, Grant hypothesizes that perhaps there is a connection between the dimming of the lights in the auditorium with Mustafa’s emotional encounter in the gym.

During the second night of their investigation, Richel and Brian Murray head into the gym, where Mustafa had his emotional experience. Meanwhile, Grant talks to Brandon and Mustafa, theorizing the correlation between the lights dimming in the auditorium and Mustafa’s encounter.

“Based on our own experiences last night, we’re starting to see this emerging trend of a power draw and paranormal activity,” Grant says of his theory, revealing how the three will be creating energy in a small room to lure the entity’s presence.

As Brian and Richel are still investigating with Richel heading into the bleachers, asking the entity to try and talk to her, Grant, Mustafa and Brandon head into the breaker room, situated at the top of balcony, to find an outlet.

“If this is indeed an entity that is using energy and drawing energy, Grant said why not provide energy to this entity,” Mustafa says of their experiment.

In addition to using a Tesla speaker, a device capable of transmitting electrical energy without wires, the three also create a “smorgasbord” of energy in the room with a bunch of battery-operated flashlights to decipher a patterned correlation. After introducing themselves, they suddenly start to hear noises of a “warm up” humming. Mustafa heads out to investigate using his iPhone to capture anything as they all continue to hear noises from downstairs, unable to determine what is causing it.

As Brandon walks toward the door to investigate the noise, he notices on the table that the recorder that was placed among the flashlights had been turned off, despite it recording earlier with a full battery.

Grant, almost frustrated by the outcome, hypothesizes how the entity took power from the recorder instead of the flashlights laid out for it, stressing how it was “not draining the batteries,” but “drawing energy from it.” As they restart the batteries and record, they again call out to the entity, who suddenly starts to switch off the flashlights much to their excitement.

As the three experience an energy draw in the breaker room, Richel is still sitting in the gym’s bleachers, telling Brian, “This is the weirdest feeling ever… I feel like I’m getting a hug.”

“Do you really?” Brian asks.

“Yeah, look at this… like, I’m about to cry. Not in a bad way though, it’s like, comforting. I don’t want it to stop. Like, definitely whoever’s here, I feel is a good person.”

“Are you OK?” Brian asks.

“Yeah I’m good,” she replies. “It’s just really, really weird.”

Meanwhile back in the breaker room, Grant encourages the entity to take all the energy from the flashlights and asks it to confirm its presence, which results in the flashlights flicking on and off.

Upon review of all their investigative material, Grant concludes with Daryl and Kristen to the principal that there was definitely a correlation between the dimming lights and the experiences felt by both Mustafa and Richel. Additionally, he shares EVPs with her captured during their time in the breaker room, while luring the entity with the Tesla speaker and flashlights, along with the emotional experiences felt by his two team members.

Grant goes on to tell the principal that overall it was a “very positive experience” and whoever was present is “knowledgeable enough to draw power in here to enjoy the school.”

“Even though a place may have activity, it’s not bad,” he says. “And honestly, the people who come around here, probably love the school. I really feel like your school spirit is quite literally alive and well.”

Ghost Hunters airs Wednesdays at 9 p.m. ET on A&E.

Photo credit: A&E Networks