A Haunting: The Discovery Channel's Spookiest Look into Real Life

Halloween is rapidly approaching, meaning its that time to get out those costumes, pull out the obnoxiously large bags for candy, and prepare yourself for the scare of your life. But why wait to entertain yourself on Halloween if you can have a good scare every weekday? Now before you get yourself excited about some wacky 24-hour haunted house, put your money away and sit back down. The fear-fest I'm speaking of doesn't require you to leave your house. Instead, all you need to do is grab the remote, sit back, and get prepared for a spooky time with the Discovery Channel's new original show: A Haunting.

First airing toward the end of 2006, A Haunting has managed to frighten home after home with chilling real-life tales of a person's or family's spooky encounter with unseen and uninvited guests. Each one-hour episode highlights some of the scariest stories in America and beyond, following the unfortunate victims through their month-long, yearlong, and often times, decade-long fight to free themselves from the grips of a ghostly stalker who refuses to let go of their earthbound existence - or their victim.

Being an avid fan of chilling shows with a real-life bend, I took to A Haunting immediately. The stories are already interesting enough to pull any spook-fan in, but their production work does the rest of the work. Chilling piano chords being played at the right time accompanied with abrupt close-ups and ghostly high-speed camera adjustments help to not only make the story flow, but also move your heart from your chest to your stomach.

Stories can range from the lost child who passed over and wants to find a parent, to the evil murderer who tortured innocent souls when alive and has decided his work is not yet finished. But the most chilling episodes, by far, involve those entities claimed to have never been earthbound and are instead fallen angels, or demons. These entities take it upon themselves to prey on the families that inhabit areas that they wish to haunt, possess family members, and essentially try to tear them apart. Amazingly, it appears that this happens more often than the one instance we saw in The Exorcist. There have been multiple episodes that chronicle demons possessing individuals and actually managing to destroy the families before an exorcism or house blessing is performed. The show not only opens the doors to a new and unseen world, it also alerts us to the importance of strength and love in a family unit. Definitely much more than I bargained for!

So if you ever have the urge for a midday scare, be sure to tune in to A Haunting, airing weekdays at 2 p.m. EST on the Discovery Channel. You might walk away with new information and a fun spook, or be forced to sleep with your lights on. Which one will you do? You'll need to watch and find out!