They also spoke about what they learned from doing 'BuzzFeed Unsolved' for so many years.

The Ghoul Boys are back! Six years ago, Ryan Bergara and Shane Madej launched into the pop culture conversation with their BuzzFeed Unsolved web series, which delved into unsolved true crime cases and sought to prove the existence of the supernatural—well, Ryan was trying to prove the existence, Shane was just along for the ride as the skeptic courting demonic possession at every turn. A year after the final season of Unsolved aired, Bergara and Madej have returned to the paranormal scene with Ghost Files, an exciting new series from Watcher, the production studio they founded with Steven Lim.

Ahead of their glamorous Los Angeles premiere, Bergara and Madej spoke with Collider about their new ghostly series and teased the spooky locations they visited, including a highly anticipated return to the terrifying Waverly Hills Sanatorium. They also discussed how they created the Boo Bunker (or rather, “Boonker”), what they learned from BuzzFeed Unsolved, and the new tools they’re bringing to Ghost Files.

COLLIDER: I have to say that the entire Collider news team is so excited for Ghost Files, so congratulations from all of us.

RYAN BERGARA: Oh, thank you.

SHANE MADEJ: Thank you. Thank you. Appreciate it. That's amazing.

I’m so curious to know what it's like to have more creative freedom with Ghost Files. And then also, did Shane's demonic possession transfer over from BuzzFeed Unsolved?

BERGARA: Yeah. I mean, well, Shane's insanity is an ailment that can never be cured. That's not something that was contingent to either show, that's just Shane walking around on Earth.

MADEJ: Just part of me at this point, it's unfortunate.

BERGARA: It's just who he is. Yeah. I have a project every day—

MADEJ: They'll all be a little bit cursed as long as I'm there.

BERGARA: No, he's fully Joker-fied it at however old he is to this point. But as far as creative freedom, look, BuzzFeed did give us a fair amount of creative freedom. It was more that once the show, once Unsolved became kind of what it was... it's one of those things where it's like the old adage of, if it ain't broke don't fix it. You get kind of, I suppose, paralyzed in terms of wanting to change a format too much, because it's working. However, that being said, as we were doing that show, we did it for six years, there was naturally a bunch of things that kind of crossed my mind of like, oh, I wish we did that differently. Or I wish we could do this instead. Or it would've been better if the format was this way.

And so I was always stewing on another ghost show in the back of my mind, just kind of waiting for the chance if we ever were going to do another ghost show and if the opportunity arose. Lucky for us, we made Watcher, and Watcher did well enough where we could bankroll another ghost-hunting show. With that kind of just came like, oh, I could finally get to making that show that I wanted to make. It was really cool because Unsolved started as a seed of an idea with just me talking with my carpool mate at the time, Brent Bennett. And then just over time morphed into a more thought-out developed series.

Coming into Ghost Files we already kind of understand now how to make the series. So starting from that higher point was already really fun, and almost in a weird way, scarier, because there's a little bit more expectations. No one expected anything from Shane or I back in the day. So it's going to be cool to see now how people receive the show and what they think of it. But everyone here at Watcher is really proud of it and I could rest on that. So I'm excited for people to see it. For a long time, I had to fight the urge to leak it.

MADEJ: Ryan did. Yeah. He was like, let's just leak this. Let's get it out there.

MADEJ: Yeah, I think in many ways, like Ryan said, Unsolved was such a beloved property that we didn't want to tinker with it too much. And Ryan, I mean, as long as I've known him and as long as had been doing Unsolved, even throughout the years doing that, he was always thinking about ways that he could improve it, but you didn't want to mess with it.

BERGARA: You didn't want to mess with the DNA too much.

MADEJ: Yeah. But now this feels like Ryan throwing everything at the wall. Not to call Unsolved research and development, but in many ways, it was Ryan sort of researching how to make the perfect ghost show.

MADEJ: And that's this one. That's this one.

BERGARA: Exactly. After Unsolved ended, Shane said training's over.

BERGARA: It's time to go out there and actually kill some ghosts. So we feel very well versed in that area now, so.

MADEJ: We're thankful that Buzzfeed gave us the opportunity to study the paranormal for five years.

BERGARA: To give us our paranormal certification.

MADEJ: That's right. Yes.

Speaking to the popularity of Unsolved, I think one of the things that's like the largest component of that is the meme-worthy aspect of it. I say that as somebody who realized this morning that it was exactly five years ago today that I won the meme challenge on Facebook for BuzzFeed Unsolved. Five years to this day. It's absolutely insane.

BERGARA: Oh wow. That's amazing.

But what has it been like to become a meme? Has there ever been somebody who has used a meme from this show that you just could not wrap your head around, that they used your face for something?

BERGARA: Yeah. Yeah. You Shane, you've definitely been memed more.

MADEJ: Well, it's weird, because it is incredibly unpredictable. You have no idea what is going to catch. We're filming these episodes from sundown to 3:00 AM, so we're barely there mentally when we're shooting them. And then the edit happens and then goes out into the world. Even some of the stuff that caught on in the early years of Unsolved. Hey, there demons thing. Even when the episode came out that didn't hit.

MADEJ: It seemed to hit way later for some reason. Luckily—

BERGARA: And then that really went to Shane's head. Since then—

BERGARA: It's just, he's been maximum memage Madej. Anytime he could think of, how could I milk as much memage out of this episode? And it really changed his approach for the better, honestly. So thank you to whoever made that meme.

MADEJ: Any baristas who I talk to, I demand that they parrot some of my memes to me, otherwise I throw coffee in their face.

BERGARA: Yeah. Ice coffee, ice coffee, not hot coffee.

MADEJ: Luckily... Sure it is. I think in the early days, people would come up to us in airports and be like, they'd say the catchphrases to us. Luckily, I think we put out a broad enough base of work at this point that people more come up to us, and they're like, "Hey, I love the work. Nice to meet you." Instead of just saying, "walka walka" to us.

BERGARA: Though, that one guy at the airport the other day walked up to us, didn't say hello, didn't say anything else. All he said was, "When's Ghost Files coming out?" And we were like, "Next Friday." And he was like, "All right." And he walked away.

MADEJ: Yeah. But I'm sure there will be plenty of memorable moments from Ghost Files as well. We simply don't know what they will be, but I know that we went to six locations and were jackasses at all of them.

MADEJ: So something will come out of that.

On the production side of things. I've been in a couple of different ghost hunting shows, so I kind of know personally how things work, but I'm so curious to know what the process was like for Ghost Files. What was location scouting like? What was a typical time span of how long were you on set filming?

BERGARA: Yeah, so for Ghost Files, that was another thing that was really helpful was that we had a location scout the day before. Shane and I would not go because we want to try and preserve our natural reactions to the horrible locations that we go to. But we had a great team. Our producer, Lizzy Lockard, and our camera guy, Mark, and DP and director. What a multi-tool that guy is. And then other crew that would be on the shoot. Those guys would go out to location and scout out the building, because a lot of times you'll read about certain places in a haunted place, and it's like, oh, the most haunted room here is the garage. You get there, and it's like, oh, the garage got taken out two years ago, that's not there anymore.

So now perhaps, this happened a lot on Unsolved, I would literally write the script around, okay, the big bad of the episode is this one room, and I'd get there, and the room is condemned, or no longer there, or you can't go in it. So that just kind of became tiresome, so now we have that scout. Also, because of that, we're able to shoot more B-roll, which I don't know if that's, is that colloquial? Do people know what B-roll is? I guess, more footage of the location itself so that we could really feature these locations and make them more of a character. And I'm really stoked about all of the footage we have of these spooky ass places, because it looks great. Mark did a great job.

MADEJ: Exploration was also a little looser in this series. Definitely, we have key points to hit in each location, but I think going into it, Ryan wanted a little more sense of exploration.

BERGARA: Yeah, and we tried to get that to bleed into locations. Towards the end of Unsolved we really just started conquering room by room, which by irony, a lot of Ghost Files is breaking down the building room by room in terms of, we actually have a blueprint and then trying to systematically attack the building, almost kind of Kevin McCallister in Home Alone, where we have a big blueprint. We lay out our plan of attack in crayon. Not literally, but metaphorically and mentally, that's kind of the aptitude that we have for it, but in that we wanted to have more exploration.

We kind of allowed ourselves to know we're investigating the morgue for instance, but let's start away from the morgue kind of just work our way over there and have a sense of exploration so that you could kind of feel like you're walking through this really horrible place, because it would be a shame if people didn't feel like they actually got to walk around the place. Shane and I are big fans of those ambient, walking through city videos. So this is the worst version of that in a way. Then, of course, we kind of rejuvenated or just retooled the whole solo investigation process. Whereas before we were investigating for 10 minutes in one room in the building, the big bad so to speak, we would do that alone.

Now we have the entire crew leave the building, including either one of us, and then the other one is stuck in there for 20 minutes and have to do fun little challenges, almost like a horrible video game specifically designed to force me to go to terrible places in the building because before I would just kind of huddle in an area that I knew was safe. Now I kind of have no choice. Ironically, this was all by my own design. A lot of Unsolved was by my own design. I think things are really funny. I'm like, oh that would be good ‘tube right there to make me do that. Then I get to the location, and I'm like, oh I really am a masochist. This is a horrible idea.

MADEJ: Ryan, by and large, has gotten braver. I think he still believes in ghosts just as much as he always has, and now more.

BERGARA: What, do you mean you think I still believe in ghosts?

MADEJ: No, I was—

BERGARA: What is that? What do you mean by that?

MADEJ: I believe you believe, but I think with experience, he's gotten a little braver about facing stuff. Yet, there were several times this season where I seriously doubted whether... or you seemed like you may have backed down from doing the solo investigations. You were on the edge of not doing them.

BERGARA: Oh no, there was a couple times that if you told me you don't have to do it, which is really funny because I'm just hurting my own show. I was begging, saying, please, there's no reason why I need to do this. It's not necessary. It doesn't result in evidence, which is not even true because it has resulted in evidence, but I just didn't want to do it. In the first episode, I thought I was going to black out. I was so scared going into Waverly, a place that was horrifying the first time we went there, when we were just walking around with an audio recorder, and doing so with a group of people.

Now to do it, the whole building, alone. Oh man, my heart's actually kind of, every time I talk about it, my heart does start to beat way faster than it should. But yeah, there is another place this season, too, that I kind of had to log out mentally to get through it. It was weird because when the solo was over, I kind of felt like I had time traveled 20 minutes into the future because I had no real recollection of anything that had happened. It was bizarre. I'm sure I'll be talking to my therapist about it, but.

MADEJ: It is concerning. That's a concerning thing to say, but let's move on.

You've been to so many really interesting locations, and talking about these locations that you worked on for this season, are there any that you're like, no, I'm never going back? The vibes were just really off, too much. Never going back.

BERGARA: Honestly, I think there were two, to be honest. I won't say which ones they are, but yes, without a doubt. One for sure, and the other, maybe. Shane and I could offline about which. I bet you could guess the two that I'm talking about.

MADEJ: Yeah. There were two locations this season where I, as someone who doesn't believe in ghosts, and generally also doesn't have an issue with old dilapidated buildings, there were two that had some vibes to them where I was like, yeah, this is deeply unpleasant.

MADEJ: We still had a lot of fun there. We'd get in there, we'd have a good time, we'd mix it up, have a blast. But I will never, there are some places where I don't really want to return to. Having said that, we went back to Waverly and when we were standing in the body shoot, I was like, well I never thought I'd be in this body shoot again in my life, but here we are.

BERGARA: That's how I felt when I was there alone.

BERGARA: All 500 feet of it, underground. I just really started to question life choices. But yeah.

Speaking of good vibes, I love what we've seen so far of the Boo Bunker. I know it's supposed to look like a bunker but-

The Boonker, yes. The Boonker.

I'm so curious. What went into the inspiration for that? When I first saw it, I thought it looked very much like a submarine. So I was like, oh maybe it's the Queen Mary, they're referencing that super haunted location.

BERGARA: I kind of wanted it to look like just an old bunker, and Shane was actually really helpful because he has so much more of a visual mind. Shane actually made a mood board of almost a Soviet bunker, because I was kind of like stuff you would see in Alien or Stranger Things or something. And then Shane had this Pinterest board-esque kind of looking thing that really helped dial in the creative. We worked with this guy named Billy Jet, who our former production manager had worked with in the past. He was great, and he's just very thrifty, and able to cobble together some cool things. He's actually working with Shane on Puppet History. I don't know which one happened first. I think it was Ghost Files first, this second. But I just remember checking in with him throughout the process, Billy Jet that is, and always being just really surprised at how cool it is.

And he would message me pictures, because he would literally go to junkyards and be like, oh look at this cool prop I found, or look at this piece of old tech that I found. This could fit in this part of the bunker. We just kind of slowly started to cobble together the bunker, which I'm looking at right now. I remember when I first saw it, I was like, wow, that's really cool, because I really was so fond of the old Unsolved set. I love the aesthetic of an old detective's office, but I just felt like Ghost Files were going to have more tools than we ever have had, and why not go with a very techy aesthetic, but it just didn't feel like to make it look real. It didn't feel right to make it look like an Apple Store or something like that. So if we wanted to play in the tech theme, it felt like it had to be in kind of old tech or retro.

MADEJ: Retro haunted tech was sort of the aesthetic we were going for, which I think is echoed sort of in the logo and the whole package. We wanted to move away from, the Unsolved set was these warm wooden mystery office tones. So we went for more Dharma Initiative in this one. That was a big pin on my Pinterest board. These are the Pinterest boards that I have.

BERGARA: I told the logo designer, I wanted it to look like a security badge, something you would see on an old security office. And then once again, Shane came in with a bunch of security badge references. His mind is just more visual than mine. So I'd be like, "Oh, wouldn't it be cool if we did this?" And then no follow-through. And then yeah, Shane would come through with the swatches. If we were redesigning a house together I would be the armchair designer, and he would be the one who actually brings in the swatches.

MADEJ: The fun part about that is, anytime Ryan and I are sort of figuring out an aesthetic thing that Ryan always voices of what I'm thinking, and then I bring visuals to him, and he is like, yes, that's exactly what I was thinking of.

BERGARA: Yeah. It's great.

MADEJ: It's pretty sweet.

BERGARA: It's a perfect echo chamber. It's a perfect echo chamber. If either of us are wrong, the whole thing's wrong because we both agreed on it.

Any new tools this year that you're unveiling that you're so excited to share with Ghost Files fans?

BERGARA: Oh yeah. There's so many. We're going to use SLS cam, which basically Shane calls it the Xbox machine, which is true in a sense. But I like using tools that have some real-life application that you could then use, for instance, we have a touch lamp this season, which is quite literally a touch lamp. But the SLS cam basically retrofits the old Xbox Kinnect, which detects human outlines even in total black, in total darkness, because it uses IR, like an IR grid. Then when it detects a human body it kind of morphs onto them with a skeleton figure. I just think that's really smart, because I've heard of people even using Snapchat filters to investigate, because if it picks up on a face, it picks up on a face.

So I find that very compelling if it picks up something in the dark. What else do we use that I can? Another one, we have a new amplification system for our Spirit Box that kind of gets rid of the annoying noise, but just kind of amplifies the voices so that they're better. You're able to understand them a little bit more. We use the Ovilus, which is this little device that takes environmental readings and converts them into corresponding voices or words. So that's really fun too. Those are just a couple off the top of my head.

MADEJ: Methodology wise, we've got the Estes Method.

BERGARA: Oh yeah. That's true. Might as well. Yeah, we haven't said anything about that yet, too. That's a really fun way to do a Spirit Box session. So just mixing up methodology and tools themselves while still not going too overboard. But yeah, it was definitely cool to walk around houses with things other than just a Spirit Box or an audio recorder.

MADEJ: So far, I think the tools are great. On Unsolved I got pretty tired of the Spirit Box, but we've got a full season behind us and I don't despise any of our new tools yet. Obviously we'll get there.

BERGARA: Give it a couple years.

MADEJ: Yeah, we've got time. The clock's ticking.

Yes. I'm not a big fan of the Spirit Box either, so that gives me hope. Maybe this new methodology for the Spirit Box will be better. For my last question. It is spooky season. What are your go-to Halloween movies?

BERGARA: Oh yeah. For me, Halloween is my favorite movie of all time. The original Halloween. So I usually will watch that, and I usually will watch a couple of the sequels, too, just because they used to be on AMC growing up. I would just kind of flip on AMC around Halloween time and just let whatever movies they played. But the thing I'll probably bust out is my very beloved Bravo's 100 Scariest Movie Moments documentary, which just doesn't get enough credit for how hard it slaps. You wouldn't expect a Bravo countdown special to be so in-depth, but it has some of the best minds horrors ever seen.

And they do break down really fun, even art-house horror films in the 100 that they listed. It's a great watch, great quotes. They have some comedians in there, it's really fun. But I usually start with those two. And then from there decide if I'm going to go more modern horror movies, like The Witch or something, or It Follows. I just saw Barbarian a couple of nights ago. That movie fucking rules. But yeah, I have my kind of tent pole pieces I usually go back to, which is always Halloween and The Thing.

MADEJ: Yeah, Carpenter's Halloween is always my seasonal staple outside of that it's jazz. I'm just throwing in new stuff each season. I do tend to watch Trick ‘r Treat every year just because—

MADEJ: I like any movie that plays up the Halloween vibes where a neighborhood, like Hocus Pocus always does that, which I'm excited for that new one too.

BERGARA: I've actually never seen Hocus Pocus.

MADEJ: It's goofy and fun.

BERGARA: I think I was such a hardcore horror fan since even when I was a little kid, feel like 10 or 11, that I felt like Hocus Pocus was too—

MADEJ: You've got to make room for whimsy.

BERGARA: It was too whimsical. And I was like—

MADEJ: Make room for whimsy in your heart.

BERGARA: I'm not here for the... I think I'm going to make room for it now because I'm sure there's probably some fun screening of it in L.A. I’ve gotta check that one out.

Watcher's Ghost Files premieres this Friday. Check out the series' trailer down below:

Maggie Lovitt is the Lead News Editor at Collider and a lover of all things related to pop culture. In addition to reporting on the latest entertainment news, she is also an actor and member of the Screen Actors Guild based out of the Mid-Atlantic Region. She is a Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic, a member of the Hollywood Critics Association, Screen Actors Guild, and The Cherry Picks. She has a special taste for horror films that make you think, rom-coms that dole out a healthy dose of Fremdschämen, high-flying action flicks that deliver hits, and has an enemies-to-lovers relationship with superhero movies. In 2020, she co-founded the podcast “Petticoats & Poppies: History Girls at the Movies” with her longtime friend, and North Carolina-based film critic, Nicole Ackman. That same year, Maggie joined as a co-host on the Star Wars podcast ‘Outer Rim Beacon,’ and has appeared as a guest on numerous Star Wars podcasts and other pop culture podcasts. In 2021, she launched “Starbucks Lovers: A Taylor Swift Podcast” which allows her to geek out about her love for Taylor Swift and music. She also runs Millennial Falcon Reviews (@mfalconreviews). While she spends her time writing and editing articles about the entertainment industry, Maggie’s background is in history and anthropology. She earned her Bachelor’s in Historic Preservation from the University of Mary Washington, where she focused on Colonial American history, British literature, and historic architecture. She recently earned her Master’s in Engaged Anthropology at the University of Wales, Trinity Saint David, where she focused her studies on dark tourism, magic, and the politics of food.

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