Is this Sam and Colby‘s spookiest series yet?!
For years, the longtime best friends have explored the paranormal on their joint YouTube channel — which has racked up nearly four million subscribers since its launch in 2014 — and now they’re taking their expertise to the vertical video world with their Snap Original “Stranded.” The series (which officially premiered on Saturday) follows Sam Golbach and Colby Brock to Centralia, Pennsylvania, an off-the-grid ghost-town that’s been abandoned for decades and choked by constant smoke from never-ending fires. But what starts as a routine excursion quickly takes a terrifying turn! You can watch the eight-episode run by opening the Snapchat app and swiping right of the camera to the Discover page, or by using the Search feature.
Want to know more? We caught up with the 22-year-old ghost hunters to find out what *really* went wrong. Keep scrolling to get their take on the terrifying decision they made to split up and search for an escape, why they couldn’t trust their “Stranded” camera crew, and what they have to say to naysayers who doubt the authenticity of their experiences!
What inspired you to team up with Snapchat for this series?
Sam: I never imagined we’d get to do something like this, the opportunity to do a Snap Original…We wanted to step outside of our comfort zones. We’ve been doing YouTube for a long time, but this is our first production outside of our own accounts, so we wanted to test the waters with something with a completely different format and style.
Colby: With all content, I think our main goal is to be the best ghost hunters, and that’s what we set out to do [in “Stranded”].
How is “Stranded” different from the series you’ve done in the past?
Sam: Before this, we never produced any short-form content. All the videos we were producing were 30 minutes to an hour long. Only having five minutes to tell your story is definitely different, but more action-packed! It’s so jam-packed and quick.
Colby: With our YouTube videos, we talk to the camera, talking to fans as if they’re there. But one of the cool things about “Stranded” …this series is more of us versus the producers, because the camera people were on that journey with us.
Sam: Originally, it was meant to be a documentary about us filming one of our series, but because things went wrong, it has a completely different feel than all of our other YouTube videos…it’s about us as opposed to the adventure…a completely different mindset!
What’s one thing you learned while filming this series?
Sam: Trust was a big issue, knowing what was for the camera [and what was real]. We didn’t know who was trying to trick us because we didn’t know these people. It taught us a lot about our own group, because we [usually] do everything by ourselves…it’s always the same group…so branching out with other people made us feel uncomfortable. Trust is a big issue…make sure you do your research before going into places!
Speaking of trust, what do you have to say to viewers who doubt the authenticity of your videos?
Colby: No matter what we post, there are going to be people that try to debunk it…even if we somehow film an uncut scene of Sam levitating and being slammed into a wall, there will be those comments that say, “fake.” We don’t pay attention to those comments. If they don’t believe, that’s cool because five years ago we were in the same boat! We were very skeptical, but our channel and the show are more so about getting people to believe and showing them what we captured.
Sam: We’re not saying you have to [believe], but we’re just saying we went through all this! Like Colby said, we were very skeptical people, [and so] we take a very skeptic stance on our videos. As soon as something crazy happens, we always question it first. ‘Is this real?’ How does this happen?’ And we explain that on camera. Ninety percent of the time we can debunk it, so it sucks when people don’t believe us.
Typical to the horror genre, there are a lot of moments in the series when viewers will surely be sitting at the edges of their seats. Looking back, are there any instances that you regret not taking the safer route?
Colby: It’s terrifying every single time we go to one of these places and there have been countless moments where there’s a dark, gloomy hallway or some room where we’re like, ‘ah, do we really have to go in here?’.
Sam: We can’t give too much away, but in “Stranded,” there is a time when we decide, because we’re all kind of freaking out, that we have to split up. Obviously, the biggest thing in horror movies is that you don’t want to split up, but the only way that we’re going to find our way out is that we do split up, and that was one of those moments where we were like, ‘we probably shouldn’t do this’ but it increases our odds too much to not do it.
Obsessed with all things spooky? Get behind-the-scenes set secrets from the “Are You Afraid Of The Dark” cast!
