Celeb reality show takes ghostly turn

Celebrity Paranormal Project is:

a) a Hollywood red-carpet show

b) a top-secret military program

c) redundant

d) somehow connected to Gary Busey

If you answered D, congratulations. The mesmerizing actor is featured in the first episode of the new VH1 ghost-hunting series (Sunday, 10 p.m. ET/PT).

The premise is mystifying yet simple: Take five celebrities and put them in an historically scary place, such as an abandoned prison. Then, give them every device this side of the Mystery Machine to search for otherworldly occurrences.

Cris Abrego and Mark Cronin, executive producers of the eight-episode series, say that many people are open to the prospect of paranormal activity and that the numbers may be higher for artistic types.

“The percentage of celebrities who have had these kinds of experiences or are open to them is enormous,” Cronin says. And “they’re very expressive. They’re very open to how they’re feeling at the moment, which works very well where fear is involved.”

In Sunday’s episode, Busey and four others — fresh-from-Celebrity-Duets Hal Sparks, Donna D’Errico of Baywatch, Jenna Morasca of Survivor and Toccara of America’s Next Top Model— spend the night exploring Kentucky’s Waverly Hills Sanatorium, an abandoned hospital where thousands died from tuberculosis. Next week’s stop: an asylum for the criminally insane. “It’s kind of like dropping cast members into the middle of a horror movie,” Abrego says.

Busey was a natural to lead “Team Crazy,” as Morasca nicknames Sunday’s poltergeist patrol.

“I have been in the position where I’ve been to the other side, after my motorcycle accident and my death after brain surgery,” Busey tells the camera.

Sparks was intrigued by the show’s concept, saying he had a paranormal experience when he was 5. But it was Busey’s involvement that persuaded him to join. “I had the chance to spend a night in a haunted sanatorium with Gary Busey,” he says. “I’m there.”

Busey doesn’t disappoint, holding a group hug with the women to give “a blessing of my energy” and later getting into a screaming match with skeptic Toccara, who participated with him on Celebrity Fit Club. (See a pattern?)

The team broke into pairs to explore the operating rooms and patient wards, outfitted with tools that apparently can detect everything but an A-list: electromagnetic field meters, laser thermometers, thermal imaging cameras. “It’s great ghost-hunting equipment,” Abrego says.

To heighten fear, cameras were mounted on walls, and the celebs were fitted with body braces holding two cameras so they can be isolated without a cameraman or crewmembers.

It worked. In one scene, D’Errico feels a presence in a darkened hallway and lets out a scream worthy of Scream. In others, shadows move through an operating room, a ball appears to roll by itself in a children’s ward, and the celebs talk of feeling cold and pushed.

An upcoming episode features an instance of bloodcurdling fear unconnected to the paranormal. As Abrego describes it, American Idol’s Kim Caldwell is walking in the darkness with comedian Gilbert Gottfried when something mysterious happens. “Are you feeling my butt?” she asks. He confesses.

Producers say they had nothing to do with any strange events. “It wasn’t rigged at all,” Abrego says.

Sparks backs them up. In one room, he says, he felt the presence of a woman who had committed suicide or was murdered. On the stairs, his laser thermometer measured a huge temperature drop. And he and Morasca felt an unexplainable wind. “Even if there were people monkeying with us, they didn’t have to,” he says. “I didn’t need any help from them to be scared.”

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