Hollywood Ghost Hunters Co-Founder Rick McCallum on Hunting Ghosts with Kane Hodder [Interview]

Welcome back to DEAD Time. A group of terrifying, hulking horror villains getting together to hunt ghosts may sound like the plot of a movie, but it’s not.

Meet the Hollywood Ghost Hunters. The paranormal team includes actor and stuntman R.A. Mihailoff (Leatherface: Texas Chainsaw Massacre III, Death House), as well as actor and stuntman Rick McCallum (Hatchet, The Devil’s Rejects), who co-founded the group with actor Kane Hodder (Jason X, Victor Crowley) more than a decade ago.

Hollywood Ghost Hunters co-founder Rick McCallum has been an actor, stuntman, and stunt coordinator for more than 42 years. He’s worked on countless horror movies like Deepstar Six (1989), DarkWolf (2003), and the Hatchet series under makeup in character and coordinating the stunts on set. When McCallum discovered his longtime best friend Kane Hodder shared his love of the paranormal, they decided to form the paranormal team Hollywood Ghost Hunters with friend and fellow actor R.A. Mihailoff.

McCallum travels all over the world to hunt for ghosts and is an honorary Lifetime member of Scottish Paranormal, as well as being in the group’s Hall of Fame.

McCallum is also the author of the books Ghosts Believe in Me: Playing monsters by day, seeking spirits at night and The Spirits Are Out There, and they are waiting for you, and donates the proceeds from book sales to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.

Bloody Disgusting had the pleasure of chatting with Rick McCallum about co-founding Hollywood Ghost Hunters with Kane Hodder, his favorite haunted locations, and a lot more.

Bloody Disgusting: You’ve worked with Kane Hodder on movies like Hatchet (2006) and Victor Crowley (2017). What inspired you and Kane to put the Hollywood Ghost Hunters team together?

Rick McCallum: It was very strange. We were working on a movie at Mansfield Reformatory in Ohio, which is very, very haunted. I’ve been ghost hunting since I was 13 and had an occurrence with my mother that got me hooked. I didn’t know that Kane was interested in ghost hunting. Kane is my best friend; I’ve known him for 43 years [laughs]. We were walking along way in the back of the prison. If you know what it’s like there, it’s the perfect horror movie set [laughs]. There were rusted bars and the moonlight was coming in. As we were walking along, Kane said to me, “You know, we should ghost hunt.” I never knew that he was into it. So, I said okay. We saw some things happening and Kane went right after it. I’ve always wanted to start a group and I’ve always had people that would tiptoe and go backwards if anything happened. I wanted someone who would go forward. Kane was diving into everything. So, I decided he and I needed to start a group together, and we did. That was about 12 or 14 years ago, and we got to go to some pretty spectacular places.

BD: You just mentioned it, but I was going to ask, how old you were when you had your first paranormal experience, and can you tell me about it?

RM: I was 13. The circumstances were, I lived with my mom in Chicago, and we didn’t have a lot of money. She was a hard worker and provided everything I needed, but we didn’t have a lot of extra stuff. My grandfather, who I barely knew, died in one of those gun cleaning accidents. I’m doing air quotes, if you get my drift. He wanted to be buried in Paducah, Kentucky, so my mom and I went to Kentucky to bury him. This all happened very quickly, so we didn’t have time to get a hotel or anything else. We took the casket to the funeral home and then we started walking, because we didn’t have extra money for cabs and things, and we came across this hotel. If it didn’t look like it belonged in the movie Psycho, it should have been in it. It was a two-story brownstone with a neon sign outside flickering in a bad part of town. My mother walked in, and she said, “Do you have any rooms?” The guy said, “I have one left.” When she asked how much it was, it wasn’t very much. It was probably overpriced for what it was [laughs]. The guy said, “But, I have to warn you, it’s haunted.”

I wasn’t very close to my grandfather, and I was 13 years old, so I was like, “Woohoo! This is great!” [laughs] So, we went upstairs, and you have to imagine a volleyball court, because that’s exactly what this room looked like. It was a long rectangle and on each side were rolling beds. We had had a very long day, so my mother and I both went to sleep. All of a sudden, I heard my mother scream. I sat up and looked over at her and her bed was rolling very fast towards me. That’s when I realized, my bed was rolling very fast towards her. The two beds collided in the middle of the room, and we just sat there looking at each other and my mother said, “I think that guy downstairs was right.” So, we tried to debunk it.

Now, this was a very long time ago before any of the paranormal shows, no one was writing books, and no one had heard the word debunking, but we decided we had to figure out what was going on. We thought maybe the floor was warped and when trucks drove by the vibrations moved the beds, but that wasn’t it. We put a glass on its side on the floor and pushed it and it didn’t move, so the floors weren’t warped. Then I put my bed back up against the wall and I shoved it as hard as I could, and it went about 3 feet. So, that was my first real paranormal experience, and I was hooked. I’ve been all over the world to some iconic locations and it’s been a really good ride.

BD: You’ve traveled all over the world hunting ghosts. Do you have a favorite haunted location and if so, why?

RM: Oh yeah, there is one that is definitely my favorite. It’s Balgonie Castle in Scotland. The in-house ghost hunting team is called Scottish Paranormal. If you’ve ever seen Haunted Scotland, the tech guy on there is the guy who started Scottish Paranormal. I’ve ghost hunted with a lot of teams and I’ve got to say, Scottish Paranormal is the best ghost hunting group in the world. The man who was the laird of the mansion was in his late eighties when I met him. For some reason, he took a real bond to me and I to him. He was so talented at everything. He carved all the wooden doors, all the filigrees and everything, in his own castle. There were 31 crests from the former lairds of the castle, and he painted all 31 of them into the ceiling in the main room upstairs. He even represented Scotland in the leatherworking championship. The guy was fascinating. He said he was going to take me upstairs to his private residence and one of the guys from Scottish Paranormal said, “He’s never taken us up there,” so I realized we had really connected.

When I was about to leave that night, he called me over and he said, “Can you keep a secret?” And I said, “Yes.” So, he told me this story and my jaw dropped. I wanted to tell everyone, but I didn’t tell anyone. A couple of years later, I went back there with Jay Bluemke and Catherine Burns who were going to film something for Dark Zone TV, and I had some of my friends there and we were ghost hunting there. We had some pretty cool things happen there. By that time, the laird was bedbound and in his early nineties and he couldn’t go upstairs anymore. I wasn’t sure if he remembered me, but at the end of the night he called me over to talk.

About a week later, we went back for a big ghost hunt, and I was the celebrity guest. At the end of that night, me and Gregor, one of the lead guys at Scottish Paranormal, were in there talking with the laird. As I started to leave, he called me over and he said, “Did you keep my secret?” And I said, “Yes.” He said, “Good. I’m going to tell you more.” I was flabbergasted by what he told me. About a month later, he died. Just to tell you how cool this guy is, he had made his own coffin. All they had to do was put the year he passed away and put him inside. He was just so cool.

I only tell people what he told me because it was in his obituary. What he told was that there really are Knights Templar around the world and there is only one person in charge of them. It was him.

BD: Oh, wow!

RM: So, I don’t know how big of an organization it is anymore, but the fact that the grand master of the Knights Templar actually took a liking to me is really something [laughs].

BD: Definitely! So, the castle is your favorite haunted location?

RM: Oh yes, it’s very haunted. I just love the place. I’ve slept in a chair in the entryway next to the chapel overnight. If I had a billion dollars, I’d buy the place and live in it.

BD: Can you tell me about a paranormal experience that scared you, and how you handled it?

RM: There have been so many [laughs]. I went to see my dad in Texas. A friend and I drove all the way there from Chicago. When I got there, my dad and one of his salesmen had been drinking for his birthday. They said they needed to take the guy back to his car. So, everyone left, and I was the only one in the house. I laid down on the bed in the room I was going to sleep in, and the moonlight was coming in the window so I could see the entire room. When I laid down on the bed, I heard, [makes loud breathing sound]. I opened my eyes and I said, “What the hell was that?” I laid back down and I heard [makes loud breathing sound]. I didn’t know what was going on, but I thought maybe my dad had gotten a dog. So, I got out of bed and looked under the bed. No dog. I looked in the closet. Nothing in there. When I got back in bed, I heard [makes loud breathing sound]. I looked up and I saw the air conditioning duct, so I thought maybe it was the air conditioning. But then I realized that if it was the air conditioning it wouldn’t have turned off 3 times.

I sat up and was looking out the window and suddenly I felt hot breath on my neck and heard [makes loud breathing sound]. I jumped up and I wanted to get out of there so badly, I yanked the doorknob and busted the door frame to get out and I ran outside. As I was standing outside my dad’s house he came back with my friend and my dad looked at me and said, “He got you, didn’t he?” I said, “What are you talking about?” And my dad made the sound I had heard. I said, “You know about that?” My dad said, “He gets everybody.” That place turned out to be, far and away, the most haunted place I’ve ever been.

BD: As someone who has been in several horror movies and is also a paranormal investigator, how do you feel about the way the paranormal is portrayed in film?

RM: To be honest, it depends on the film. Some are pretty straightforward, but most of them are way over the top. There are some movies and television shows that are so outlandish, it’s like a comedy and then there are others that are pretty good. My group Hollywood Ghost Hunters was on the TV show Ghost Adventures. We were the first group to ever ghost hunt with them. Usually, they have people who tell their stories, but we actually ghost hunted with them. Their show was above board because Kane and I are really wary of our reputations. So, we watched them like hawks and everything they did was above board. If anyone says anything about the team on Ghost Adventures, I’m like, “Hey, I watched them up close and personal and they are the real deal, so shut up [laughs].” Some people like to talk about Zak Bagans, but he’s a good dude. I used to have an online magazine and the very first person I interviewed was Zak. But it depends on the movie or TV show because there are some people who are trying to be paranormal stars. You just have to use your own judgement.

BD: Do you, Kane, and R.A. have plans to get Hollywood Ghost Hunters together to ghost hunt anytime soon?

RM: We used to be within 20 miles of each other. We haven’t been able to get together in a couple of years because we’re all living in different states now. It’s really hard to get together now and when they do have time, Kane is at a convention or R.A. is at a convention. We haven’t been able to ghost hunt together lately, but we will get back together some time.

If it doesn’t start to happen, we’ll make it happen.