A lot of people believe in the paranormal, and although not many could claim to have experienced something like it, many have been intrigued by the idea and definitely wouldn’t pass on the opportunity to watch “Ghost Adventures.” Paranormal investigator, Nick Groff, catapulted to fame when he starred in the highly-rated reality television series from Syfy, formerly the Sci-Fi Channel. Fans were shocked when it was announced that he would be leaving the show at the height of its popularity in 2014, which led to various speculations, considering that he’s also one of its creators and executive producers.
Early life and family
Nicholas Groff was born on 19 April 1980, in San Jose, California USA. His father David, was a lawyer, and his mom Maureen worked at his law firm. Nick grew up along with his sister, Dianna, in New Hampshire, as his family moved to a small town called Nashua when he was one year old. At age six, they moved to Salem, New Hampshire, which just 26kms away. His home was surrounded by forest, and he loved to explore the woods and all their mysteries. They later moved to Pelham, a short distance away.
At St. Patrick School, Nick wanted to make people laugh and be the center of attention so much so, that his teachers called him a ‘distraction in class.’ It didn’t help that he was ‘a smartass to his teachers.’ He daydreamed a lot in class, as he loved creating scenarios in his mind in which he became part of a movie he’d recently watched. ‘I was right there with the characters having an adventure. And when I left the theater, those adventures would continue, in the woods and in my head,’ he said. His teacher noticed, and helped him write it all down, which was how he started to develop his skills in storytelling.
However, his troublesome behavior at school resulted in his parents often being called. It came to a point that he was asked to leave, as the school couldn’t handle him anymore. He transferred to a Pelham public school in his sixth grade, and the kids yhere who were bigger, tougher, and crazier than him. Fortunately, with the help of a newfound friend who turned out to be his neighbor in Pelham, he was never bullied.
Journey to the paranormal
Horror has been his favorite genre in movies since he was a kid. He’s a huge Stephen King fan, and watching “Nightmare on Elm Street,” “Children of the Corn,” and “Twilight Zone” would give him nightmares such that he usually ended up sleeping in his parents’ bedroom, at the foot of their bed. However, it never stopped him from watching scary movies, as Nick loved the adrenaline rush brought by fear.
Nick has been sensitive since he was a kid, and would feel a presence in the room with him, but he would sometimes chalk it up to having an overactive imagination until it faded from his memory for a while.
Near-death experience
At age eight, Nick climbed a tree that was old with parts that were rotten until he was 12 feet – about four meters off the ground, and then a branch snapped and he fell. His left arm was cut open by a cyclone fence and his mom could see his torn muscles as his biceps was hanging from the bone.
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His mom was a former nurse and pressed a shirt to the wound. Had his mom not see him fall, or didn’t know what to do, he would have bled to death. He ended with 50 stitches on the inside and another 50 on the outside of the arm. Nick had been on the swim team since he was four, so his coaches and parents forced him to swim, even if each stroke was painful, to help rehabilitate his arm.
The accident didn’t stop him from going on adventures, and he was still as reckless as ever. After a year, he was back in the woods and attempting to swing using a rope attached to a branch; it snapped, and he fell on top of the leaves with rocks underneath. Nick lost consciousness and woke up feeling dizzy, and felt blood at the back of his head. He went home and his mom took him to the doctor again, and he had three stitches.
His brush with death when he was eight made him more open to all things paranormal. His first experience with a ghost was when he was 10. After school, he was dropped off at his house.
How’s your Monday going?
Exploring new haunted locations. #deathwalker pic.twitter.com/eU6j8xNrtt— Nick Groff (@NickGroff_) September 27, 2021
And although he was used to being alone, there was a sense of foreboding that time, and as he peeked into the dining room, he saw a tall black figure by the glass door. Nick was so scared that he ran out until he reached his neighbor’s yard, where he waited for his mom to arrive. He never talked about it to anybody, not even to his grandmother who was interested in aliens and ghosts.
Interest in television
His high school had a television station, and he started running the channel with a friend. Nick took a telecommunication class from a member of the faculty in charge of the station, and learned the basics of TV production, from running a switchboard to doing deck-to-deck editing, and became good at it. He made his first short movie for a class project in psychology – ‘I loved watching movies and film, and now I had a taste for making them,’ he said.
After he matriculated from high school, he studied film at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. where Nick met Aaron Goodwin, as they both attended a lecture about producing movies.
Aaron wasn’t a student there, but was interested in filmmaking. He helped Nick with a short horror movie project he was working on, and they became friends. Nick later produced the feature film “Malevolence”in his senior year, which was screened in 2004 at the CineVegas Film Festival.
Veronique
Nick met Veronique in science class when they were in sixth grade in Pelham public school; they dated each other’s friends before developing feelings for one another in high school, and Nick proposed to her in his senior year in college. After graduation, she worked as an event co-ordinator at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel, while he did video production work for weddings and commercials. They were married on 25 September 2004 – Aaron filmed it, and Nick edited it. He went online and hired a Vegas Voltage DJ named Zak Bagans for the music. The couple now has two kids, Annabelle born in 2010, and Chloe in 2014.
Four Reel Production Company
Nick kept in touch with Zak, and worked with him for wedding gigs, with Nick as the videographer and Zak as the DJ.
The two established Four Reel Production, as they wanted to do other production work. They were hired to film actors during the “Ocean’s 11” premiere, and to do a presentation video for the American Heart Association, to honor Siegfried and Roy.
They were making money but they also wanted to produce their own project. As Nick was watching a paranormal show, he said to Veronique – ‘How awesome would it be to go out there and see if there are ghosts, and try to capture them on camera?’ She encouraged him to do just that, so he broached the topic to Zak, who liked the idea as he’d once saw a ghost when he was a kid. They talked about doing a paranormal documentary film, with themselves as the investigators. Nick brought Aaron into the project, as the latter was good with camera work. Nick then asked his parents for a loan, to buy the equipment that they would need.
Investigating paranormal activity
For their first documentary, the three went to Virginia City, where Nick and Veronique visited in 2001 on their road trip to paranormal hot spots.
Where are you going this weekend?
Me – #exploring the #unknown in a reported #haunted location with a lot of #history#paranormal #deathwalker pic.twitter.com/CFHPUG0tJF— Nick Groff (@NickGroff_) September 17, 2021
The desert town looked like the Old West, with saloons, an opera house, and old mansions. A lode of silver ore known as the Comstock Lode was discovered in 1859, and the town boomed, with its population reaching 30,000 by the 1870’s. When the output of the mines started to decline around 1878, people began an exodus as well, and it eventually became a ghost town. The town wasn’t without its tragedies, from cave-ins to the great fire in 1875, so much so that even Mark Twain reportedly said that ‘the paper never lacked material for its front page’ because of it.
The crew stayed at the Silver Queen Hotel, and this was where they started provoking a ghost, which was Zak’s thing. In reaching the spirit of a prostitute who took her own life in Room 11, Zak pretended to do the same thing. This method was controversial, as some people in the paranormal community felt that it was disrespectful, not to mention dangerous as it could lead to possession, but Nick said that they get results with it. They found evidence of haunting as sounds of water filling the bathtub were heard, and Nick saw a strange mist forming by the door, followed by knocking sounds.
The phenomena were captured on their night vision camera.
They next stayed at the Miner’s Lodge at the Gold Hill Hotel and their audio recording captured an electronic voice phenomenon – on playback, they heard a voice saying, ‘Is it the devil?’ Their first apparition happened at a local establishment called the Washoe Club. Nick was watching the footage from the night vision camera that he set up in the former ballroom, and saw a semi-transparent ghost walking through the middle of the room.
Their first poltergeist activity was in Goldfield Hotel in Nevada. The spirit of a girl named Elizabeth was haunting the hotel, as she was killed in room 109; she was said to have been chained to the radiator while pregnant with the child of the Goldfield owner. When she gave birth, her baby was thrown down the basement’s mineshaft, and she was left to starve.
Just stepping inside the hotel gave Nick an ominous feeling, as it looked like something from a horror movie; it was the first time that Nick and Zak experienced a ‘lockdown’ in investigating paranormal activities.
It was dark, with only the LCD screen giving them light. Zak was taking photographs and Nick was filming him.
Nick could feel a presence following him as they explored the place. They saw someone peeking at them, and it was captured on film. While they were in the basement, they saw a brick levitated and hurled across the room; other things were thrown as well. They realized then that this invisible force could hurt them, so they ran out of the room. As they reviewed the footage, a disembodied voice was heard calling out Nick’s name; it was a first for him. After that, they escaped the place through the fire escape on the second floor.
“Ghost Adventures,” the movie
After all the filming was finished, Nick edited the documentary, and the music, which a friend wrote was added. They found an agent in Los Angeles who was interested in their work, and he advised on how to polish it. Syfy then got on board, and the “Ghost Adventures” documentary film originally had seven air dates in 2004 – nearly two million people watched the first one. It was a hit, and so another airing date was added.
They started to become popular, as their work was talked about online. They also formed the Ghost Adventures Crew, an organization composed of fans and paranormal investigators, and took the crew to the locations in the film so that they could have the same experience.
“Ghost Adventures,” the series
Nick made a sizzle reel, and he along with Zak and Aaron pitched the series to several networks. An executive from the Travel Channel liked the idea, and Matt Butler, the one who brought the British TV series, “Most Haunted” to the network in the US, came to view their work. After that, an eight-episode series was greenlit. Working on a series had a time limit, as they had to film for four days for an entire episode including reenactments, interviews and lockdown. The first episode, “Bobby Mackey’s Music World,” aired on 17 October 2008.
Their roles in the series just fell into place, with Zak having the front-man role who would relate the history of the place, Aaron the funny guy, and Nick the voice of reason.
Nick’s scariest moments in “Ghost Adventures” include an entity calling him by his full name at the Washoe Club, a spirit using him as an unwilling channel at the Moon River Brewery in Savannah, Georgia, and locking eyes for two seconds with a full-bodied apparition of a woman at the Linda Vista Hospital in L.A.
Nick’s exit from “Ghost Adventures
The TV series was quite successful, but Nick announced on 24 November 2014 that he wouldn’t be returning for the 11th season. He thanked everyone for their support, and said, ‘I am honored to have helped build an amazing paranormal phenomena that has touched people’s lives all around the world.’ No reasons were given for his departure from the show, but Nick further shared that he would continue to investigate and research all things paranormal in the next stage of his life.
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Back in September 2014, he addressed a rumor posted by a fan on Twitter and said, ‘I did not quit Ghost Adventures.’
In December 2016, Zak, in his Twitter rant, accused someone of being deceptive for including “Ghost Adventures” in his ‘resume of achievements’, considering that he was fired from the show for doing ‘bad things’, but not specifying what they were. It was said that Nick violated the terms of his contract, and went behind their back to produce another paranormal show on a depsrate channel in 2014 – “Ghost Stalkers” aired on Destination America. Zak also tweeted, ‘Disgusted to see someone using our show name ‘Ghost Adventures’ to keep promoting shows & himself that we want absolutely nothing to do with.’ Around that time, Nick was promoting the second season of TLC’s “Paranormal Lockdown”, in which he was the paranormal investigator, and one of its executive producers.
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Nick continued to delve into the paranormal in his TV projects, but hasn’t found one that was as successful as “Ghost Adventures.”
In his personal life, Nick and Veronique were divorced in 2018, after he was allegedly caught having an affair with Elizabeth Saint, another paranormal investigator who appeared in all 15 episodes of the “Ghosts of Shepherdstown” (2016-2017). Whether it’s true or not, their professional relationship was not affected, as she also worked with Nick behind the scenes in “Paranormal Lockdown” from 2018 to 2019, and “Death Walker” in 2021. Nick is currently engaged to the psychic medium, Tezza DelZoppo, whom he often referred to as his soulmate. ‘I have two girls and Tessa DelZoppo has two boys and we all love each other as one big family. We are very happy,’ he wrote in his Facebook post.
Even with all the rumors and speculation surrounding his work and love life, it was evident in his social media posts that he couldn’t be happier with everything that has happened in his life.
