Originally published May 16, 2016. Updated October 2026 with additional broadcast history, investigations, and viewing links.
Tim Wood and the Ghost Hunts Behind LiveSciFi
Tim Wood is a ghost hunter and paranormal investigator who founded LiveSciFi.tv in 2006. His original productions include The Demon Files and In Search of the Paranormal LIVE. For Wood, ghost hunting was never supposed to be something audiences saw only after cameras stopped rolling. The idea behind LiveSciFi was to bring viewers along—inside reportedly haunted houses, former hospitals, historic buildings, and other locations—while investigations were actually happening.
That approach shaped years of interactive, livestreamed ghost hunts. Viewers could follow the team as it prepared equipment, explored a location, asked questions, reviewed unusual sounds, and sometimes spent long hours waiting for an event that might never occur. The broadcasts preserved more than the dramatic highlights: they documented the process and invited the audience to be part of it.
How a Childhood Experience Led to Paranormal Research
Wood’s interest in the unexplained began with experiences he recalls from his childhood home in the San Francisco Bay Area. Those events left him wanting to understand why people describe apparitions, haunting activity, and experiences that seem to resist easy explanation. Rather than limit that interest to ghost stories, he began investigating locations and speaking with witnesses about what they had experienced.
After studying history at the University of California, Davis, Wood pursued parapsychology studies with researcher Lloyd Auerbach in 2004. He also gained field experience with Northern California paranormal groups, learning to combine location research, witness interviews, environmental observations, and audiovisual documentation. Historical research became a foundation of his ghost hunts: a reported haunting is much more interesting when investigators can explore the people, events, and records connected with a place.
From Early Livestreams to Multi-Day Ghost Hunts
LiveSciFi launched in 2006, and its ghost hunts were being broadcast through early interactive platforms such as Justin.tv and Ustream in 2007. Viewers did not have to wait for a television episode. They could watch live as the team investigated and communicate through the broadcast chat. Some investigations stretched across entire nights; others became events lasting 48, 72, or 96 hours.
A defining event came in April 2012, when LiveSciFi conducted a multi-day livestreamed ghost hunt at the Sallie House in Atchison, Kansas. Contemporary media coverage reported more than five million views for the event and an extension from 72 to 96 hours. Those figures refer to the reported audience response to that broadcast, not to a current analytics estimate.
Over his career, Wood reports visiting more than 1,000 reportedly haunted locations and taking part in over 700 livestreamed ghost hunts across different platforms. Those are his reported career totals, rather than independently audited statistics. LiveSciFi’s continuing work is visible through the paranormal episodes and ghost-hunt archive and the site’s collection of historical investigation articles.
Locations and Investigations That Defined the Work
Wood’s field investigations have taken him to many places associated with reported hauntings, including the Welles House in Pennsylvania, the Sallie House in Kansas, the USS Hornet, the Winchester Mystery House, the Queen Mary, and the former West Virginia State Penitentiary. Each location presented a different combination of history, witness accounts, site conditions, and paranormal claims.
The Welles House
At the Welles House in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, Wood documented a location with a long history of disturbing reports and later revisited that history through LiveSciFi. Read the Welles House haunting investigation for the site’s background and the original broadcast context, or watch the complete 51-episode Welles House series.
The Sallie House
The Sallie House was particularly influential because its reports of scratches, basement markings, and frightening experiences could be examined alongside LiveSciFi’s original field footage. Wood has written about the possibility that the reported entity called “Sallie” was not what it appeared to be. His Beelzebub history and Sallie House evidence article shares photographs, audio recordings, and the investigative interpretation behind that theory.
ZoZo and Spirit-Board Experiments
Wood also documented years of accounts connected to the name ZoZo during spirit-board sessions, including his own experiences and extended livestreamed experiments. Those investigations became part of his published work. His first-person ZoZo investigation history explains the background, the experiences he reported, and what the surviving broadcasts allow viewers to examine.
Television Appearances and Original Paranormal Programs
Years of live fieldwork also led to national television appearances. Wood’s credits include The Ghost Town Terror, It Feels Evil, Paranormal Declassified, and Haunted Salem: Live. LiveSciFi’s independent production work includes The Demon Files, an edited paranormal series distinct from the long-form ghost hunts that were streamed live.
In Search of the Paranormal LIVE
Wood also hosts In Search of the Paranormal LIVE, a LiveSciFi series built around the experience of investigating reportedly haunted places as events unfold. Rather than presenting only edited highlights, its livestream format gives viewers a longer look at the questions, equipment, location history, and unexpected moments of a ghost hunt. Explore the In Search of the Paranormal LIVE episode archive for available recordings, including investigations involving ZoZo and the Bone Walker legend.
The Demon Files and In Search of the Paranormal LIVE show different sides of Wood’s work. Produced episodes combine selected field footage, interviews, and location history, while the live investigations preserve more of the original process. Browse the LiveSciFi episode library to watch both formats.
Why the Original Recordings Matter
Wood’s approach is closely connected to the early history of paranormal content on YouTube. A peer-reviewed study published online in 2023 identified LiveSciFi as the earliest paranormal-focused YouTube channel among the 60 channels in the researchers’ sample, dating its YouTube presence to 2007. That finding concerns the study’s sample; it is not independent proof that any one producer created the world’s first paranormal livestream. Read the academic study.
For Wood, the value of the recordings is also personal. They show what the investigators were doing, what they witnessed, and what cameras and microphones captured. He has spent years examining the relationship between witness testimony, documented history, and the unsettling experiences associated with reportedly haunted places. The broadcasts let viewers encounter those investigations in their original context and draw their own conclusions.
Watch the Ghost Hunts and Explore LiveSciFi
Start with the original live ghost hunts and paranormal episodes, read the historical paranormal articles, or learn about the cast and team behind LiveSciFi. For a broader professional biography—including documentary filmmaking, education, and television credits—visit Tim Wood’s official personal website.
About this page: This is LiveSciFi’s historical profile of its founder and lead ghost hunter. It preserves the original 2016 publication identity while expanding the page with distinct LiveSciFi investigation history and archival viewing links in October 2026.