Adam Berry

Adam Berry has had quite a year. It was a little over a year ago that he was notified that he’d been accepted as a participant on Ghost Hunters Academy – a “competition” version of the hit SyFy reality show Ghost Hunters, about paranormal investigators.

Filming began in February, and by May he’d won the competition – a fact that the rest of the world wouldn’t learn until July, when the finale aired. Shortly thereafter, he joined the investigators on the flagship show full-time. He appeared in a handful of episodes last fall, but his first full season as an “investigator-in-training” begins this month.

Why does AfterElton.com care? The boyishly handsome 26-year-old, a professional singer and actor based in Provincetown, is gay and out.

He’s also a heck of a nice guy as we discovered when we checked in on him by phone about the current season of Ghost Hunters:

On how crazy his life has become: It doesn’t seem like a year – it’s gone by extremely fast. We’re still filming for Season Seven – we’ve been doing it all year long. Twenty-six episodes! Sometimes there’s two locations in one episode, so we’re constantly working all year.

On being out and gay on reality TV: I think what’s good is that we’re continually expanding our horizons. There are a lot of people, different ethnicities and minorities, that are interested in the paranormal. [Being gay], I’m just another aspect. Ghosts are not prejudiced. They experience no hatred or prejudice – they will interact with anyone. I’d love to investigate something [gay] in Provincetown.

On whether his gayness has come up on the show yet: Not yet, but I’m not afraid of it. If it needs to happen, it will.

On the difference between coming out as a person who believes in the paranormal and coming out as gay: I think coming out of the paranormal closet is a little easier because it’s widely accepted. Some people are skeptical, but it’s mostly accepted. I’ll tell you, I had no fears of coming out of the paranormal closet. I didn’t feel threatened or afraid. Coming out of the closet [as gay], there are always those insecurities – how are my friends and parents going to react? I came out the summer my junior year of high school.

People contact me on the internet sometimes and say things that are just bigoted and stupid – you have to ignore that. Most of the people I encounter respect the field and the paranormal.

On his relationship: My boyfriend [Ben Griessmeyer] and I have been together almost five years. We live in Massachusetts, so we can get married, thank God. We’ve talked about that, we do wear rings. We both enjoy the paranormal. We started the Provincetown Paranormal Research Society together.

Being away as much as I am, it’s harder to have that alone time, that quality time. He’s with me now, listening to every word I’m saying, critiquing my outfit.

If [the show is filming] somewhere local in New England, he’ll drive up and bring the chihuahuas, our dogs, our babies. He’ll spend the week, and I’ll have someone to cuddle up with.

On what we can look forward to in the upcoming season: The first episode [which aired Wednesday, February 23rd] is going to be amazing. It’s an entire haunted town. We do things we’ve never done before. Season Seven, they’re pulling out all the stops, because there are so many people coming to us wanting to know if their location is haunted – and sometimes it’s a lot of effort to get there.

We went to Mackinac Island in the Upper Peninsula [of Michigan], and we had to get there by boat, and the entire lake froze over while we were there, so we had to take these tiny planes home with all our equipment. But this Mission Point Resort needed our help, and the only time for us to investigate a summer hotel is in the winter.

[Season Seven] is a lot more residential cases – a lot of the fans wanted us to get back to the Ghost Hunter roots, and we’re doing that. We’ve done the big castles, but there are families out there that need our help – they don’t understand why things are happening in their homes, and they feel frightened and alone. We’re there to help them and let them know they can call on us at any time.

Next Page! The most shocking ghostly encounter Adam has had to date!

Adam Berry sees shadows in the Sloss Furnaces

On the most shocking thing he’s experienced in his investigations so far: The most shocking thing would be Sloss Furnaces [an episode from last year], Meat Loaf and I and Amy seeing the shadow in the tunnels. Honestly, it’s one of the most incredible things I’ve ever seen, and of all people, Meat Loaf is sitting a foot away from me and freaking out as much as I am. It lasted almost a minute. We put up a laser grid to catch shadows. Amy says, “They claim to see shadows down here,” and right away, Meat Loaf says, “You mean like that one right there?” It looks like a man standing against the wall. We see it plain as day. Our camera operator is freaking out. It was the scariest thing he had ever seen.

On what else is new on the show: We’ve added Maddy, a dog. The theory being animals can experience things that we can’t sense. I think the team now is very bonded and very strong. It’s a great team – we get along well, and the investigations are out of this world.

On whether he gets to see the episodes in advance: We don’t. We see it when everyone else sees it, which is kind of great. We see it along with the fans. They ask us questions and tweet us during the episode. I’ve only been on three episodes in Season Six, and I’m really looking forward to [being part of a full season]. We always look forward to Wednesday nights – if we’re not investigating of course, we try to sit down and watch it first-hand.

On how much of the show gets left on the cutting room floor: There’s only so much you can cram into an hour. We investigate a really, really long time. Amy does research – she meets with someone from the town. She goes through town records. There are three teams, sometimes more. They do an extremely good job of showing you the best of the best moments, the things we experience that we’re excited about, the things we talk about. We obviously spend hours and hours reviewing evidence that you don’t see.