Ghost Adventures Zak Bagans Faced His Fears to Write New Film for Halloween: 'I Want to Make You Scared'

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Ghost Adventures' Zak Bagans never hesitates to face his fears.

As the founder and lead investigator for the Travel Channel and discovery+ hit series since 2008, he has spent years chasing down the paranormal with his team of Aaron Goodwin, Billy Tolley and Jay Wasley. Bagans opened The Haunted Museum in Las Vegas in 2018 to share his vast personal collection of oddities and frightening objects with the world.

Now he's bringing a new niche of terror to the small screen for a two-hour Halloween special. "It's funny because the idea and story for it started before I even began investigating the paranormal or had the museum," Bagans, 45, tells PEOPLE exclusively of writing his scripted horror film The Haunted Museum: 3 Ring Inferno. "I went to a film school back in 2002 and I'm more into the documentary stuff. But it just became so visual for me, I started writing it down. I was like, What does this mean? Why am I thinking about the circus? It wouldn't get out of my head."

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The film, produced by Bagans in collaboration with filmmaker Eli Roth, was inspired by the relics on display in his museum.

It tells the story of a father and son who steal an old suitcase from an antique dealer, not realizing it holds a vintage circus tent that becomes a terrifying portal to the past.

When Bagans first opened the museum, he felt strongly that it needed to include a miniature diorama of a circus. "All of a sudden I get contacted by this guy whose mother was a circus collector on the East Coast," he recalls. "He said he had some circus stuff and would I be interested. And then I see this old circus diorama."

Adding it to the collection "was like a puzzle piece, then I built this old vintage fun house," Bagans explains. Informed of an auction of a costume worn by a clown named Jackie LeClaire, who witnessed the tragic Hartford circus fire in 1944 where 167 people died, Bagans knew he had to have it as well.

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"I didn't even put it on display, I put it underneath the circus diorama on the second floor at the end of the fun house because I wanted the spirit of that clown to exist within that little diorama," he says. "Once I did, [guests] and my staff in the funhouse started seeing a very large shadow figure."

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Bringing the film to life meant battling down his own terror of clowns. "I'm attracted to the things I fear," Bagans insists. "I like that rush that I get from facing it. And I want to make you scared the way that it makes me scared. I'm going to admit it."

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Bagans hopes audiences find it especially compelling for Halloween. "From the first rough draft, there have been so many cuts to watch," he adds. "Every time I watch it in my house, I turn it off and look at all the dark corners of my room just waiting for that clown to start chasing me."

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The Haunted Museum: 3 Ring Inferno premieres Monday at 9 p.m. ET on Travel Channel and streams on discovery+.