Ghost Hunters Creator: "I Would've Started YouTube 16 Years Ago"
YouTube Creators Hub
Dusty Porter
4.7 • 551 Ratings
🗓️ 24 April 2026
⏱️ 37 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
What happens when the guy who created one of the most successful paranormal TV shows of all time walks away from network television and plants his flag on YouTube? In this episode, Jason Hawes — creator, lead investigator, and original host of Ghost Hunters — sits down with Dusty to break down what 20 years of mainstream TV taught him about storytelling, why he let his YouTube channel sit dormant for 15 years before launching it, how he thinks about monetization (including why he removes 50% of YouTube's ads), and what's next for his channel "Unlocking the Unknown."
About Jason:
Jason Hawes is a paranormal investigator, television personality, and New York Times bestselling author best known as the creator and original lead investigator of Ghost Hunters, the series that helped bring real-world paranormal investigation into the mainstream. For over two decades, he has approached the field with a grounded, no-nonsense mindset focused on finding answers, not chasing hype.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello everyone and welcome to this week's conversation on the Creators Hub podcast. I am delighted |
| 0:05.6 | today to be joined by Jason Haas. He's a paranormal investigator, television personality, and New York |
| 0:13.5 | Times best-selling author, best known as the creator and where I've known him from, and |
| 0:18.8 | original lead investigator of Ghost Hunters, the series that |
| 0:22.4 | helped bring real-world paranormal investigation into the mainstream. |
| 0:27.0 | For over two decades, that's crazy it went on for that long, that's awesome. |
| 0:31.3 | He has approached the field with a grounded, no-nonsense mindset, focused on finding answers |
| 0:36.9 | and not chasing the hype. He is now on |
| 0:39.8 | YouTube, where he has amassed a super large audience already, doing well over there. Jason, |
| 0:46.3 | how are you doing the day? Good. How are you? Doing wonderful. Now, I would be remiss if I didn't |
| 0:52.7 | ask you before we got into the YouTube stuff, |
| 0:56.9 | doing a television show, doing a show for 20 years, why do you think that show had such |
| 1:03.6 | longevity? And you mentioned to me off air that there was a possibility that they wanted to |
| 1:08.8 | continue on so it could have gone even further than that. |
| 1:11.8 | Why do you think Ghost Hunters did so well? Well, I think first off, Ghost Hunters was the first |
| 1:16.3 | show of its kind. We were, it showed a bunch of ordinary people who were going in and looking |
| 1:21.7 | for answers, trying to figure out what was truly going on. And also, I think the show was very different because we didn't work |
| 1:29.8 | for a production company. And that was a big difference where even a lot of the shows today, |
| 1:34.3 | you see, all these people are hired in by a production company or they're casted by a production |
| 1:38.5 | company. But this show was about us and the production worked for me. So I ran the show, but you could never really tell |
| 1:45.6 | because everybody did their own jobs. But it was just one of those things where it was always about |
| 1:50.0 | keeping it real. Run tape. Tape is cheap. You know, if you catch it great. If you don't, you're out |
... |
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