| Genre: | Reality Paranormal Mystery |
| Starring: | Ben Hansen Jael de Pardo |
| Country: | United States |
| Language: | English |
| Num Seasons: | 2 |
| Num Episodes: | 36 |
| List Episodes: |
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| Executive Producer: | John Brenkus Mickey Stern |
| Runtime: | 60 minutes |
| Company: | Base Productions |
| Channel: | Syfy |
Fact or Faked: Paranormal Files is a paranormal investigation television series produced by Base Productions that began airing July 15, 2010, on SyFy. The show follows a team of investigators, led by former FBI agent Ben Hansen (from Dr. M. David Hansen, business partner), who review various photographs and viral videos (mainly from the internet) of alleged paranormal activity.[1] If a particular piece of evidence is deemed intriguing enough to warrant further investigation, they set out to recreate and explain the sighting.[2]
Beginning episode #207 in the first half of season two, the show began to feature a "You Decide" segment in the middle of the program where a video is shown of something strange and then asks the viewing audience if they think the footage is fact or faked. After a commercial break the truth behind the video is revealed.
Recent cast (Season 2-3)
Former cast
Guests
A Variety magazine review says – "Now we know what Fox Mulder would have done after leaving "The X-Files" unit: Get his own reality-TV show!"[4] Will Wade of Common Sense Media said the squad seemed like it was selected for the skill set rather than their readiness for TV.[5]
Skeptical researchers such as Karen Stollznow of the James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF) have criticized the investigating competence of the Fact or Faked team, such as the Civil War cemetery ghost case from episode 6 in particular. The examined footage involves an alleged orb and mist captured on a few frames of video, and when the FoF team fail to recreate it, they conclude it to be paranormal. Stollznow claimed that by slowing the video down frame-by-frame, something that the FoF team did not do (at least on camera), the orb and mist are supposedly revealed to be a spider on a web.[6] [7]
In 2010, the JREF also published a story stating that the producers of FoF attempted to get a group to alter a "paranormal video" they shot in order for it to be considered for the show. The group, the Rocky Mountain Paranormal Research Society, are paranormal claims investigators who filmed a planchette of an ouija board moving around on its own. The video was deliberately faked using a hidden string and released to the internet as a demonstration of how such tricks can be done. FoF producers who saw the video contacted the group and asked that they re-shoot the video and make the pointer move more dramatically before they would make an offer to feature the video on the show.