“They didn't want a Bigfoot enthusiast necessarily or somebody that would rubber-stamp paranormal claims. They wanted someone who just had a passion for travel and could really be a proxy for the viewer and get out there in the world and be opened-minded enough to go to these places and ask these questions,” explains Gates, whose preconceived notions are often tested. “I find myself in a constant state of being surprised on the show, by the culture, the people and stories, when I meet eyewitnesses who claim to have some sort of strange experience and then I go out and actually mirror their experience. Anytime someone says, ‘We heard strange voices,’ and I go out and hear strange voices, I’m amazed. “Anytime I’m able to validate someone's experiences, it's pleasantly surprising.”
A bachelor suited to spending his life on the road, Gates admits he hasn’t quite figured out “how to manage a wife and kids and international monster hunting,” and shares other details about his life and investigations past, present and future in this interview that took place during a publicity stop in Los Angeles.
Where is Destination Truth headed this season?
We’re going all the way around the world. We’ll be doing episodes on various islands in the Pacific. We’ll be stopping in Guam, going through Micronesia. It’s a great part of the world and I don’t think it’s featured nearly enough. We’ll be going to Cambodia to do an episode at Angkor Wat, up through Japan. We’ll go from Pompeii through North Africa and East Africa; we’ll be spending a lot of the season in Madagascar. We have eight new episodes in about 15 locations. We touch down on about double the amount of countries than, say, The Amazing Race would in a season. Over the course of a full cycle, we span the planet twice.
Are these locations pretty open to having you come in?
Every place we go, we want to make sure we have the access so we work before we leave with local producers in those countries and officials to make sure we’re going to have access. I’m pretty amazed that over the last few years at some of the places we’ve been able to get into. We spent a night in King Tut’s tomb last year. It’s intense. This year we had the opportunity to go to Angkor Wat in Cambodia, which is supposedly haunted. It was originally built as a funerary temple. Some people believe it’s haunted by the builders who built it, or by the kings, or by the Gods themselves. No one has ever filmed there at night before. We were able to get the first permission for that. To film in Pompeii overnight was a permission few people have. There are people who say that at night they see strange figures in the city. When you do these paranormal investigations in places that look and feel the way they were when they were alive, it makes it a pretty intense experience.
What’s the creepiest place you’ve been to?
In the history of the show, probably Chernobyl last season. We spent a night in Chernobyl, in Hasmat suits. Chernobyl is a really scary place. It’s an abandoned city, an overwhelming place to visit. You wear a personal radiation detector and it goes off as you walk around. It really is not safe to be there for long periods of time. This season we did an episode in Micronesia investigating a sunken fleet of Japanese warships. I had the chance to drive down to these ships. People claim that the wrecks are haunted. Are they?
You’ll have to watch!
What scares you most?
I don’t like the water stories. I scuba dive—I’ve been scuba diving since I was a kid. But when you go to a place and meet the people and they say, ‘There’s something living under the water here,’ whether there’s a monster or not there are plenty of other things that live in the water that are dangerous. We do a lot of diving in murky, dark places.
Do any of these fears keep you up at night?
No. I try to leave my work in the field. Otherwise I’d never get to sleep!
What about Loch Ness?
We haven’t done Loch Ness yet. We’ve talked a lot about it. It’s been done so much that we feel like if we’re going to do it we want to be able to really bring something new to it. If we can find a way to do that I think that’s a story I’d love to go after.
Is Nessie real?
I don’t know. The lake monsters are hard to substantiate. They need food and they need to be able to reproduce. The more you think about the less likely they become. But so many people have seen the Loch Ness monster for hundreds of years—I’ll give it a ‘maybe.’
Is there a myth or monster that’s so out-there that even an open-minded skeptic would dismiss as crap?
There are a lot of alien stories. We’ve done extraterrestrial stories on the show and as interesting as they are they’re pretty tough to validate. But during one investigation in the desert I saw some lights, and it flew around. I was really convinced I saw a UFO.
Do ghosts exist?
Unconvinced.
Really? Why?
I’ve never had an experience that left me feeling as though it was….I mean, everyone has had those experiences where they think they hear something, see something or feel a certain thing, but it’s so difficult to make the leap and say ‘it’s a ghost.’ The whole notion of ghosts is something that is so hard to substantiate and I haven’t had an experience that’s left me with that kind of faith. I would love to believe that there are supernatural, paranormal things in the world. I think that would make the world a more interesting place. I just don’t know if they’re there.
How about things like ape men, Yeti, dinosaurs? Is there a fascination with these cryptids because they’re more in the realm of possibility?
I think so. Some of these primate stories in Indonesia are kind of promising and may turn out to be a new species of orangutan or something like that. If you were to discover evidence of a living crypto-zoological creature it’s probably going to be a new species found in the oceans—there’s a lot of work still to be done in the world’s oceans. I don’t think Bigfoot is going to come walking out of the woods, but you never know. Part of me feels like even though there are big stretches of wilderness in the Pacific Northwest, I think by now we would have evidence of it. But that’s something we haven’t gone and looked for yet. It’s a great story and the most popular crypto-zoological story in the United States. It’s something we would love to go and investigate. I like the Yeti story in the Himalayas. That’s my favorite.
Why?
It’s just romantic. I just think it’s a cool story. British explorers came back in the ‘20s with reports of this strange primate living up in the Himalayas. The people there have such a respect for the story and the place is so difficult to investigate so it’s shrouded in mystery. It’s the greatest of all stories.
You've found some compelling Yeti evidence...
That’s one of the more promising things that we’ve looked for. We found a mysterious footprint a few years ago plus hair fibers in Bhutan last year that have been analyzed and also are difficult to identify so it certainly keeps the mystery alive.
There’s so much attention and fascination these days on vampires and werewolves, with all the books, movies and TV shows. What’s your take?
Hollywood has had a fascination with them forever. It’s big right now. I don’t fully understand the fascination with vampires. We did werewolves last year and we’re talking right now about doing a vampire story because it is so of the moment.
Where would you search for vampires?
We want to go and do stories in places where people are reporting things, believing in things. You don’t want to go look for a myth that nobody’s talked about in a long time. If you hear about any living vampires, call me!
What do you think about the Chupacabra?
The Chupacabra is not a real monster. It’s other things that are killing livestock. I think people are quick to associate any slaughter of farm animals with it.
Where did you acquire your fascination with the strange, unexplained and paranormal?
For me, it’s more a fascination with stories in general. The show is equal parts paranormal, crypto-zoology and adventure and I think these types of stories are universal. When people hear about a haunting or a mysterious creature in the jungle, they’re kind of salacious stories. So it’s an opportunity for me to go and try to hunt these things down and see if they’re there.
Did you have any experiences with the paranormal growing up?
No, for me it was more the adventure side of it. I was an Indiana Jones nut as a kid. And Star Wars, Han Solo. Harrison Ford was my idol. Now I’m just living out a childhood fantasy. It was Hollywood adventure movies and realizing at an early age that there’s a big world out there.
Were there any books that made an impression as well?
The first author that got me excited about reading was Ray Bradbury. As a kid I had a real interest in Bradbury. So many of his books are about adventure and for me that was a real kick-start to my imagination.
Let's talk a little bit about your background...
I grew up in a small town called Manchester-by-the-Sea, Massachusetts, near Gloucester. My father was a commercial diver, a deep sea diver. So he was always traveling, he was always overseas. My mother’s British. As a kid I’d go to England or visit my dad in all these exotic ports of call. I went to school at Tufts University in Boston for archaeology and drama. I had an interest in the performing arts, and that’s what brought me to L.A. I found a way to marry an interest in television and performing with an interest in history and archaeology. It’s been a good journey for me so far.
Is there a destination you haven’t been to that’s on the top of your must-visit list?
I keep trying to get the channel to send me to the South Pole. Still working on that. I want to go to Antarctica. I love the islands in the Pacific and there’s great mythology there, these isolated interesting cultures. Any opportunity I have to work there I love as well.
What kind of fan comments do you get? Do you interact with fans via social media?
I do Twitter. The fan base for the show has been amazing. Certainly it’s grown every year since we started. The fans of Syfy in general have a lot of ownership of the material and are really excited to be involved. Our fans have been great and the thing we hear from them a lot is they’re pleased that the show has taken them to interesting places they’ve never seen before, and for us that’s what it’s about. If we can make people excited by travel, by adventure, by these stories, that’s really our goal.
Do fans suggest places for you to go?
All the time. They’ve suggested a lot that we do here in the States. We got a lot of requests to do the Jersey Devil so we did that last season. This season, we had a fan write us about one of these locations in Micronesia that he visited years ago and we went there based on his request. It’s exciting to be able to fulfill a fan request.
Do you watch the other paranormal TV shows?
I watch a lot of travel adventure shows. I watch [Anthony] Bourdain on Travel Channel and I’m a big fan of Mike Rowe, Dirty Jobs. If the host is facilitating enough to take me on a journey, I’m engaged. What makes Destination Truth work is it’s taking our viewers on an adventure. When I watch a show that transports me somewhere, takes me to a place I’ve never seen or tells me a story I’ve never heard, that’s what gets me excited. When shows do that I’m in.
What goals do you set now? Any other projects in the works?
I am writing a book right now about the show. I don’t have a title—I’m open to suggestions.
How about A Skeptic’s Guide to the Paranormal?
That could be good. It’ll be out, I believe, in the spring. It’s going to be about my travels for the show. Right now we’re focused on getting the new season ready and we’re planning on filming new episodes this fall. We’re throwing darts at the world map and figuring out where to go.
Any advice for people who want to do what you’re doing?
People write us a lot asking how to get into this kind of stuff, and the answer is so simple: You have to just do it. People say, ‘I wish I could travel to those places,’ and the fact is you really can. A lot of the places we go to are in developing nations and are a lot more affordable than you’d think. If you have the spirit of adventure and really want to go into the unknown, you’ve just got to get up and do it. In America we’ve become very insulated, we’re not traveling as much as we used to. I think a lot of people are daunted by travel. But with a little fortitude and a little initiative you can get out there and do your own investigating.
