Spirits and celebrities

ALEX STRACHAN
CanWest News Service

Wednesday, July 04, 2007

Celebrity Paranormal Project (Slice - 10 p.m. and 1 a.m.) is a new reality series in which a group of celebrities spends time together in a place reputed to be haunted. Think of it as The Blair Witch Project meets The Simple Life.

Each week, a different group of D-list celebrities is handed ghost-hunting devices and left alone - no film crew, just hidden cameras - everywhere from a closed hospital to an abandoned prison. The result is a goofy, mildly engaging TV show that adds whole new meaning to the word "shut-in."

In the opener, Hal Sparks, Survivor's Jenna Morasca, one-time Baywatch babe Donna D'Errico, America's Next Top Model's Toccara and Gary Busey spend a night at Waverly Hills Sanatorium in Kentucky, where the spirits of some 63,000 victims of the White Plague tuberculosis epidemic haunt the halls to this day.

Next week's episode drops five new celebs - Rachel Hunter, Godfrey, Traci Bingham, Tony Little and Ethan Zohn - into an abandoned insane asylum. It will have to go a long way, though, to top Busey's women-only group hug in tonight's opener, in what Busey describes as, "a blessing of my energy."