The Big Picture

Jack Osbourne discusses his mother’s unexplained medical emergency during the season premiere of Night of Terror and how it shook him. The creepy doll with teeth was one of the most terrifying things encountered during the season, leading to questions about its creation and purpose. Osbourne reflects on the concept of a possible multiverse and the idea that different time periods could exist simultaneously, as explored during the investigation of Virginia City in Nevada.

The Travel Channel series Night of Terror follows Jack Osbourne on a journey of paranormal investigation, alongside members of his famous family and some of his celebrity friends (Jenny McCarthy and Jamie Kennedy & Jason Mewes). Whether it’s a century-old hotel, a prison or a small Old West town, each location has its own history and each experience its own outcome.

During this 1-on-1 interview with Collider, Osbourne talked about the wild and inexplicable medical emergency his mother Sharon Osbourne experienced during the season premiere, getting the audience invested in the history of the locations he’s investigating, crossing paths with a creepy doll with teeth, his sister Kelly Osbourne’s own possible psychic ability, having high standards for the mediums they use, pushing the boundaries into the concept of a possible multiverse, the ghost experience he shared with his father Ozzy Osbourne, and what his next investigation could be.

Collider: I love how much history you include for each of the locations in this series. I so enjoyed learning about each of the places you went to.

JACK OSBOURNE: Yeah, we try. I think what pulls people in is when you get invested in the story and the history. Other than that, it would just be, “Oh, I’m investigating this building.” “Why?” “I don’t know.” It helps to set the vibe.

Image via Travel Channel

What was the most terrifying thing you came across this season, and why was it the creepy doll with teeth? That is going to give me nightmares for the rest of my life.

OSBOURNE: How weird was that? We filmed so much that I forgot we saw that thing. I was talking to someone I work with and I was like, “What was the thought process behind that toy creator being like, ‘Oh, we’re gonna give this doll teeth’?” Honestly, the craziest thing that happened, we got really wild evidence in Virginia City in Nevada, which is an old mining town that I went to with Kelly. But the thing that happened to my mom really shook my foundation a lot, in numerous ways. My mom had to get rushed to hospital and it was a whole freakin’ thing. On a deeper level, the strange thing with that is she went to hospital and they ran every test imaginable, from brain scans to MRIs to CAT scans, everything that could have possibly caused someone to lose consciousness for 20 minutes and stop breathing, and they couldn’t find a damn thing. It really freaked me out. It was like, “Was that a demonic attack?” I don’t know. I’ve always been someone who’s like, “Yeah, the demon stuff is BS. I don’t believe people can get scratched.” I’ve always been that kind of investigator. And then, when something like that happens, it really makes you reevaluate things.

Is it a situation where, if she gets really mad at you, she brings that up again to remind you about it, or have you all decided never to discuss it again and just move on from it?

OSBOURNE: We filmed that in December of 2022, so it’s nearly a year now. I’ve brought it up a couple of times being like, “What do you think that was? What do you remember?” We just don’t know. We have no idea what that was. And she was like, “I felt fine. I was a little bit tired before then.” Here’s the crazy thing, and it didn’t make the edit just because we only have 42 minutes to make an episode, but my mom jokingly said, before she went into the room to do that investigation, “I’m getting tired, I’m just gonna pretend I get possessed, so we can go home early.” I was like, “Ha ha ha.” That’s why, when I went in the room, I was just like, “Mom?” I thought she was fucking around, and she wasn’t.

Did you ever think, “Okay, that’s it, we’re not doing the rest of this season”? How did you get past that moment?

OSBOURNE: We shot that episode, and then we went dark for three weeks because of the holidays. There was a three-week break, and I knew I had to finish. We committed to doing six episodes, so it was like, “All right, I’ve gotta finish this out.” But I definitely was in a bit denial and just shell shocked about what happened. Honestly, it wasn’t until June or July that I really had a moment to just sit back and go like, “Yeah, what the fuck was that?” Maybe it was a bit of PTSD. I just hid it away, and then once things had slowed down for me, I was given a moment to process it and it definitely has changed my perspective on things. I keep asking myself, doing ghost shows, are we helping or are we hunting? Are these not good shows to make? I personally have never had an experience like that, so I don’t know how to really process it when you have something like that happen.

Image via Travel Channel

And then, there are other episodes where you got your sister, Kelly, involved. Did you ever think maybe you should involve her, or were you like, “Kelly can take care of herself”?

OSBOURNE: Kelly is a tough cookie, to begin with. Kelly has become a pretty seasoned investigator, herself. We’ve had some remarkable things happen in the investigations that we’ve done together, and she started out with the mindset that paranormal investigating is just nerds playing in the basement with toys. That’s what she thought it was. So, fast-forward four or five investigations later, and she’s very much a believer. She has seen things and felt things, so she gets that there’s something to it. Me turning around and being like, “I’m scared for you,” that’s not really my place. She had the information about what happened to my mom. I showed her the footage, immediately when it happened, and she still wanted to do it.

As you’ve done this together more, what’s it been like to see Kelly come into her own with these kinds of experiences?

OSBOURNE: This started as something where it was COVID and everything was shut down, when she first did an investigation with me. She was like, “All right, I’ve got nothing going on. Let’s do it.” But it changed her. Kelly is a phenomenal investigator. She has a real knack for it. Chip Coffey is a medium we used a lot during the season and he’s always like, “Kelly’s got the ability. She’s psychic.” I don’t know how to ever tell if someone’s really psychic or not, until they start spewing out stuff there’s no way they could have information about, and Kelly did that a few times. I don’t know what to make of it. I just hope I see an infomercial at midnight on some random cable channel where Kelly is like, “Call me now for your free reading.”

I was fascinated learning about the history of these buildings, but I also got so invested in the lives of your mediums, Chip Coffey and Michelle Belanger. How did you come across each of them? What is it about them that makes you feel like you can trust them?

OSBOURNE: We have high standards with the mediums we use on the show, and Michelle and Chip are in that very small pool of mediums that I’ll pull from because they are so spot on. I produce these shows, so I know the information that they’re being given, and when you only tell someone the airport they’re landing in, and you don’t tell them what hotel you’re staying at or any information, and then you whisk them away to some random location and they start spewing out facts about the place that there’s no way they could possibly know, I don’t know. I don’t understand it. If it’s some kind of trickery or some parlor trick, it’s still phenomenal that they have the ability to do that. I don’t think I’ve ever done an investigation with Michelle where she wasn’t blindfolded, from the moment she gets in the car to go to the facility or house or whatever building we’re in, and I’ve been in places where she’s told me the color of the room that we’re standing in, with the lights off and she’s blindfolded. I don’t know how that’s even possible.

Image via Travel Channel

I fully believe in energy existing in a space. I’ve never had an experience where I’ve seen, heard or felt a ghost, but I feel that there is good and bad energy in specific places, especially places like hospitals or prisons where a lot of people have been and died. It’s more difficult to wrap your head around something like the concept of time-bending and two time periods existing at once. What was it like to experience the experience you had in Virginia City, Nevada?

OSBOURNE: It’s a conversation that has happened so many times, amongst people I’ve worked with that do paranormal shows. We always discuss, what do you think this is? Do you think ghosts are just the energy of a once-living human, or is it something else? Is it interdimensional? Is it aliens? We don’t know. But what we do know is that since written language was created, people have written and told stories about ghosts. They also used to write stories about dragons and all sorts of stuff, and as time has gone on, you realize that was just made up. But for some reason, we still keep telling ghost stories, so there’s gotta be something to it. The thing with Virginia City is that it starts leaning more into the multiverse concept and that we’re just layered realities, which are thousands of existing realities just occupying adjacent space to us. Is Virginia City a place where the timeline of 1850 is still playing out, at the same time we’re living in 2023? Obviously, it’s a real heady, more quantum physics type of concept that strays away from the average campfire ghost story, but it’s just as likely to have that as the spirit of a once living human.

Did that experience change how you feel about it, at all?

OSBOURNE: Yeah. The more I’ve done this, the more I’ve realized that ghost hunting and looking for this stuff and having these experiences is not all the same, so there’s gotta be different things going on. I just don’t know. The only time I think we’re ever gonna figure out if ghosts exists is if someone realizes you can make a weapon out of it, or you can make a billion dollars out of it. That’s the only way research is ever gonna be diverted into it. Other than that, people have made religions out of it, so that’s one way to start figuring out what the spirit realm is. I just have more questions as I’ve gone.

When you started down this path of paranormal investigation, what was your goal? Did you always hope that it could evolve into doing these sorts of TV shows?

OSBOURNE: I never, in a million years, thought that I would be making ghost hunting TV shows. For me, my journey with it was purely hobby. I would read books, I’d watch documentaries, I’d go on the occasional ghost hunt or UFO night watch, and I just had fun with it. I loved the mystery surrounding it. In 2011, that was when I did the first paranormal show I hosted, which was Haunted Highway, and that launched me into the space. I was like, “Oh, wow, this is a thing. You can actually have a job out of this.” And then, I just kept my shoe in the door.

Image via Travel Channel

You’ve previously talked about how you grew up watching The X-Files and you’ve always been fascinated with anything paranormal, but had you ever had any of your own experiences? Was that also part of your interest?

OSBOURNE: Yeah. I’d seen weird stuff in the sky, a couple of times, when I was a kid and even actually in my early twenties. And then, I’d had some weird ghost stuff, but it wasn’t stuff that I had solely witnessed. One of them, my sister was there for it, and the other was my dad. My dad is the biggest nonbeliever when it comes to ghosts. He’s all on board with aliens and UFOs, but with ghosts, he just thinks it’s all bullshit. The one and only time that I feel like I, clear as day, saw something, we were at our beach house and the way that my parents’ bedroom was situated, if you sat on their bed, you could see the TV facing forward, but over to your right and down a small hallway was the door that took you to the staircase. It was a three-story house and the floor above was where our bedrooms were, my parents were on the second floor, and then there was the living room and kitchen downstairs. Beach houses tend to be narrow and tall. So, my dad and I were sitting on his bed watching TV and we saw someone run down the stairs and come past the bedroom, clear as day. We both sat up and were like, “Who’s here?” It was just me and him, and my mom was in the bathroom getting ready. It was a woman with long, dark hair and I thought it was my eldest sister, Aimee. I was like, “Is Aimee here?” So, I went downstairs and no one was downstairs. We have the door beep, so when the door opens, you would hear it. There was nothing. But we both saw the same thing. Having those experiences, it suddenly planted a seed to where I was like, “There’s gotta be something to this. It can’t all just be people having a collective psychosis.”

As this paranormal investigation shows became more and more popular, how has it changed? Are there things that you don’t do anymore, or are there things that are possible now that weren’t before?

OSBOURNE: Good question. There are certainly fads in the paranormal genre. It used to be poltergeist, and then it was demons, and then it was portals. And then, in the last five years, I fall into this category, but celebrity paranormal became a thing. Like anything, there has to be evolution and you have to keep it fresh, so you’ve gotta find a way to do that. I could see the genre going more down the road of exploring more science-based quantum type stuff. I could see that being a bit of a fad in the coming years with the genre. But because it’s a limitless space, since there really are no parameters and you can’t really apply the scientific method to it, the sky is the limit. You could literally run around being like, “Oh, no, it’s the ghost of Sponge Bob. I saw it.” What if you did see the ghost of Sponge Bob?

When you bring along different celebrities, like you do with this show, do people just go running from you when you say, “Hey, I have an idea for a trip we could take together,” or do you know who would be game for it?

OSBOURNE: I get so many people asking to do it. Friends of mine, who are actors or whatever, are like, “I wanna go. When you bring it back, let me know, please. I wanna do a ghost hunt.” I think people who enjoy the genre and enjoy this kind of stuff, everyone wants to have that, “Oh, my God!,” experience whether they’re scared or not.

Image via Travel Channel

Do you try to only involve people who are really into it and really want to do it, or is the fun of it sometimes convincing people to come along when they don’t want to?

OSBOURNE: I haven’t had anyone that really put up resistance. Early on, I did an episode a couple of years ago with Jamie Kennedy and Jason Mewes, our first one, where Jamie was really like, “I don’t know about all this. I’m interested, but I don’t know.” And then, we had some experiences where he was like, “Oh, my God, this is freaking crazy. What is this?” And it ignited a fight with him, where he was like, “All right, I wanna do more.” I feel like every season, I’m gonna have to do an investigation with Jay and Jamie. We have to do it. I feel like we’re the Three Stooges of ghost hunting, at this point.

How did you decide where to go for each episode? Do you have a list of places?

OSBOURNE: It’s a couple of things. We’ll find places, but Discovery has a grid. They have so many paranormal shows that they have this spreadsheet grid with a window where you can’t go investigate the same thing that one of the shows did within the last five years. You can go to the same location, but you have to investigate something different about the location. It has to be a different storyline or a new piece of evidence had to be uncovered. And then, we scour the internet. There are a couple YouTubers and Instagram folks that I follow and have a friendship with, and we communicate about whether they’ve found anything new. There’s a guy on Instagram that I follow, who’s a haunted historian. He gets access to the most amazing places, and he’s a great resource for us. So, it’s either word of mouth or deep dives into the internet. We try to mix it up. We don’t only want to go to asylums or prisons, and not everywhere we go is a super evil, scary place. The episode I did with Jenny [McCarthy], it was a cool story. It was an amazing house, it wasn’t the most evil, sinister, demonic place ever.

Are there locations that you’d still really like to investigate? Are you hoping to do another season of this show, in particular?

OSBOURNE: If I were given the keys to the kingdom to make whatever I want, I would love to do a series where I just go and investigate battlefields and places with war or a military history component to it. I think that would be fun. I have friends in the military who have had paranormal experiences while they were deployed in Syria and Afghanistan. If there are ghosts, surely a battlefield should have them, and sure enough, some of these guys are like, “Weird stuff has happened.”

Night of Terror airs on Travel Channel.