Bagans, Groff, and Goodwin investigate reportedly haunted locations, hoping to collect visual or auditory evidence of paranormal activity. Each episode begins with the trio touring the investigation site with its owners or caretakers. These introductions typically include Bagan's voice-over of the "dark" histories of the places and interviews with people who claim to have witnessed paranormal phenomena at the location. The crew places X's with black or gray tape at the sites of alleged activity and later returns to set static night vusion cameras on these "hotspots."
After completing the walkthrough, the three men plan their strategy and then are "locked down" into the location by themselves ("to prevent any kind of audio contamination") for an overnight ("from dusk until dawn") investigation. During the "lockdown", they use a variety of equipment, including digital thermometer, EMF Meter, handheld digital video camera, digital audio recoders,the Ovilus and infrared night-vision cameras in an effort to document evidence to support paranormal events. On some investigations, the members follow provocative techniques, such as using "trigger objects" and aggressive language, in an attempt to increase their chances of capturing such phenomena. At the end of some episodes, the investigators analyze their audio, photos, and video footage (often with the assistance of "paranormal experts") and present any unexplained phenomena that were captured.
