What qualifications do you need to host a show about ghost hunting? None at all

The first thing Luke Hutchie and Matthew Finlan would like audiences to know about their new show Ghosting — in which they investigate various potentially haunted locales around Southern Ontario — is that they are completely unqualified to be doing this. What are the qualifications for ghost hunting? Who knows? But whatever they are, the two actors definitely don't have them.

"The show is like The Simple Life, with Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie," says Finlan. "Except we're in a haunted place. That show has an objective: 'Can they work a normal job?' [Our objective is] 'Can we find out if this place is really haunted? We're completely unqualified to do it."

The pair came up with the idea for the show while in San Francisco for a movie premiere. 

"We were circling Alcatraz on this boat," says Hutchie. "I didn't know Alcatraz was in San Francisco, so that is a great starting point for my place on that show. I don't know anything about geography… there was just this joke of, like, 'Oh my God, we should go in there and see if it's haunted…' But basically it just sparked the conversation of 'What if you could go into these creepy places and just see if they're haunted?'"

In the show, Finlan is the true believer and Hutchie is the skeptic. Finlan says his interest in ghosts goes back to childhood.

"I was like a little theatre kid, and every theatre has a ghost," he says. "The theatre I grew up in — the Peterborough Theatre Guild in Peterborough —  had Chappy as the resident ghost. I had a couple experiences with him when I was very young that solidified my belief in the paranormal, and I didn't need to look back. I'm just like a bona fide believer."

For his part, Hutchie says he wants to believe in ghosts, he just needs to see the proof.

"I want there to be the Linda Blair moment, where you see my head spin all the way around," he says. "And you have to be like: 'this is a ghost, this is a demon, this is real.' I want to levitate and die and come back to life."

One question Ghosting asks is, does being in a horror movie make you more comfortable with the supernatural in real life? The pair have extensive experience working in the horror genre: Hutchie is the star and co-executive producer of sexy vampire series Ezra, which Finlan has also appeared on. In every episode, they bring a special guest along with them, including fellow horror vets Kevin Alves (Yellowjackets) and Devyn Nekoda (Scream VI). Some of them, says Hutchie, do not handle real life scares as well as you'd expect.

"You watch these people that are so confident squirm, " he says. "It's like a lab rat experiment. It's just so fun to watch them … Devyn was not OK."

Ultimately, Finlan and Hutchie have three goals for the show: the first is to get a second season greenlit, so they can explore haunted locales in the rest of the country, and for "ghosting" to become a verb that people actually use.

"We have skiing, partying, dating, but there is no word for ghosting," says Finlan. "And it really is an experience that bonds people together. So I would love if ghosting entered the vernacular and people were like, 'Yeah, I went ghosting on the weekend after this abandoned little place.'"

Ghosting premieres Jan. 26 on CBC, streaming on CBC Gem.