I soon realized that I’m probably not the only person curious about this, so I reached out to Bagans himself to answer all of my burning ghost-hunting questions. Not only did Bagans agree to the interview, but he was blunt and honest about his quest to investigate the paranormal.

Even if you’re a skeptic, I invite you to take a closer look at my chat with Bagans. It may have you thinking differently.

E! News: What do you think it is about the paranormal that keeps fascinating audiences?

Zak Bagans: The paranormal is a mystery, and people are drawn to mysteries because it’s a thrill. We all have intelligent minds and we all have a consciousness, and we all sit and think about life. When we have others around us that pass away, we start thinking about those experiences that we all have that we never forget, with spirits or things like that…And we don’t want to think that, you know, this is it, that after we’re gone that’s it. There’s way more to it. There are so many mysteries that scientists can’t explain, with a lot of things, and the afterlife is one of those things.

And I think with everybody having telephones these days, iPhones, everybody’s got, you know ghost-hunting gear right in their pockets and purses at all times. They’ve got a camera, they’ve got an audio recorder, they’ve got ghost apps, they got all this. So there’s a bigger platform to share the experiences as well.