Watch Paranormal State Online

The show is produced by Four Seasons Productions International and Go Go Luckey Productions (which produced MTV's Laguna Beach: The Real Orange County and Newport Harbor: The Real Orange County, and A&E's now-cancelled Rollergirls). Gary Auerbach and Julie Auerbach (who head Go Go Luckey Productions) and Betsy Schechter (Four Seasons) are the executive producers.

The show was tentatively titled "Out There," "Dead Time" and "Paranormal U" before the name "Paranormal State" was chosen.

Each episode of the show is outlined by the production team first, co-executive producer Tina Gazzerro has said, to ensure that a produceable episode will result. "We try to identify where we get our discovery moments, our 'Ah-ha!' moments," Gazzerro told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Information about the event under investigation may also be held back from the students in order to create dramatic tension, and only situations which will have a conclusive outcome are investigated. "We may have information we don't give to [the PRS team]," Gazzerro said, "but we need to make sure [the episode is] produceable." Story arcs are also outlined for each "character" on the show, and the production team has publicly expressed its hope that a romantic relationship will develop between Buell and one of the women on the series. The production team and the show's researchers say that no pressure is put on the research team to act in certain ways or make paranormal discoveries.

A&E had high hopes for the new series. Cable television reality shows about the paranormal require only about a quarter of the budget for a scripted show of the same length. They also draw much-coveted younger viewers, and skew slightly more female than male (a difficult demographic to draw for most cable networks not explicitly targeting women).

Fourteen half-hour episodes were ordered for the first season. A&E upped that order to 20 shows after seeing the pilot and the first few episodes. Had the show not been picked up by A&E, Buell said he had another series deal in the works with the Auerbachs and their production company.

The show was initially scheduled to debut in May or June 2007, but was pushed back to December 2007 (although no reasons were reported).

The show debuted on December 10, 2007, with 2.5 million viewers watching the first two back-to-back episodes, making it the third-most watched show on A&E since 2004. The cable network reported that this included 1.6 million people aged 18 to 49 (a highly coveted demographic by broadcasters and advertisers). It also included 1.5 million viewers in the 25-to-54 age range, A&E's target demographic. The show's second season began on July 28, 2008 on A&E; it's third season, on January 19, 2009 on the same channel.

Its visual, musical, and editorial style, was inspired by MTV's Fear

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