Investigating the Paranormal with Painless Productions

Jim Casey, CEO of Painless Productions, talks to TV Real about The Holzer Files, which is launching its new season with a special Halloween week premiere on Travel Channel.

Often referred to as the “father of the paranormal,” Hans Holzer’s four-decade exploration into hauntings such as the Amityville Horror house has had a lasting impact on pop culture. His work helped create legions of supernatural enthusiasts, more than 120 books and even inspired Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis to write Ghostbusters.

Holzer’s paranormal mysteries are explored in-depth in The Holzer Files, which is launching its new season with a special Halloween week premiere on Travel Channel. The show, from Painless Productions, follows a dedicated paranormal team—led by paranormal investigator Dave Schrader, psychic medium Cindy Kaza and equipment technician Shane Pittman—as they revisit Holzer’s most captivating cases with the help of his daughter, Alexandra Holzer, and researcher Gabe Roth.

“In our never-ending search for what’s next in the paranormal genre, my team reached out to Alexandra Holzer, the daughter of America’s first paranormal investigator, Hans Holzer,” recalls Jim Casey, CEO of Painless Productions, on the series’ origin. “Alexandra mentioned she was in possession of several boxes of old films, audio recordings and journals from her father’s hundreds of paranormal investigations. We immediately developed four or five possible creative directions for the series, one of which I took to Matt Butler at Travel Channel. I’d barely begun pitching when Matt stopped me; he got it instantly. Few people understand the genre like Matt.”

“We knew when we greenlit The Holzer Files we had something special on our hands, but we didn’t realize just how much of a paranormal Pandora’s box we’d opened until we started filming,” adds Butler, general manager of Travel Channel. “The freshman season of this series was an immediate hit and reached nearly 10 million viewers. Hans Holzer was a prolific chronicler of hundreds of ghost hunts, preserving everything from photographs, case notes, letters, film footage and chilling audio recordings from his interview subjects and trance mediums. Most of this material has never been seen before, and we’re just getting started.”

Casey says he knew the series was a hit, but what surprised him most was the instant social media support it received. “The paranormal community is protective of their favorite shows, and I expected some harsh criticism from fans of other series—even my own,” he tells TV Real. “But I was (happily) totally wrong. The response was overwhelmingly positive. Then, something amazing happened between seasons one and two: we located another massive cache of Hans’ recordings we never knew existed. We’ve now got terrifying cases to reinvestigate for years to come.”

Premiering on October 29 at 11 p.m., the second season comprises 13 new one-hour episodes. It follows the team on the haunted trail of legendary cases—from an elegant mansion in New York City, home to one of the world’s most infamous hauntings, to the historic Maryland tavern that hid John Wilkes Booth after he shot Abraham Lincoln. The premiere episode, “Phantom Hand,” takes viewers back to 1963, when the Todd family of Cleveland encountered a ghastly hand reaching toward them from the basement door in their Mason Court apartment.

“Paranormal programming asks what might be the only truly universal question: is there life after death?” Casey says. “I believe paranormal is also popular for the same reason true crime is popular: you’re helping the audience unravel a mystery. In true crime, the murder is just the beginning; we also need to learn why and by whom. It’s the same with paranormal programming; establishing that a location is haunted is only step one. I think producers and networks that recognize this are the ones who succeed most in the genre.”

The genre has evolved over the years, he notes, and The Holzer Files takes a fresh approach. The series “gave us the opportunity to tell origin stories, connecting cases from the beginning of modern paranormal research to the present-day reinvestigation of the same hauntings 50 to 60 years later with updated methods and technology,” says Casey. “I believe paranormal shows need visual style and good scares, but strong storytelling and organic investigation techniques will always be critical to growing the genre.”

Overall, he says that Painless Productions looks to tell stories that are “compelling and entertaining,” and The Holzer Files fits the bill. “We constantly remind ourselves of what we all learned in 5th grade: character, conflict, plot, theme and resolution,” Casey says. “A good-looking show is never enough. Regardless of the genre, keep the story always moving forward to keep viewers dying to know what’s next.”