INTERVIEW: Dakota Laden on the film that began it all, ‘Trail to Terror’

Photo: Brother-sister Dakota Laden and Chelsea Laden appear in Destination Fear: Trail to Terror. Photo courtesy of discovery+ / Provided by press site with permission.

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Amongst paranormal enthusiasts who can’t get enough of reality television, Dakota Laden is a household name. He’s one of the stars and the creative force behind Travel Channel’s ghostly series Destination Fear, which finds him, his sister Chelsea Laden and their friend Tanner Wiseman heading out to abandoned buildings and looking for a haunted good time. What fans may not know is that Dakota got his start with a self-made documentary back in 2015, and Travel Channel has decided to post the film — which is both terrifying and entertaining — on discovery+, the streaming service for the Discovery networks.

Now dedicated followers of Destination Fear can enjoy Destination Fear: Trail to Terror.

“We loved urban exploring abandoned buildings and hearing about haunted spots and road-tripping from our house to go and visit them,” Dakota said in a recent phone interview. “It was a major passion of ours, and the idea had been developing for a while in my head. Man, it would be so fun to do a documentary, something with the paranormal, and slowly it turned into this experiment idea where it’s like, let’s do a road trip for five days in a row.”

The “cherry on top,” as Dakota explained it, was that each member of the team would sleep alone amidst these dark corridors and things that go bump in the night. The burgeoning reality star knew how funny Tanner was in front of the camera, and Chelsea was “awesome” as a member of the team as well (for this journey they were also joined by friend Coalin Smith). In Dakota’s mind, placing them in these scary quarters could make for television gold.

“I knew it would be a really fun group of people to watch go on this terrifying road trip, so I did see the potential, like man this could go over well,” he said. “But I also had no clue what was going to happen. Based off of claims, these places seem to be haunted, but who knows. We could go and spend a night there, and maybe not a lot is going to happen. So really the whole goal was let’s go do it, and worst-case scenario I will put in on YouTube as a fun, crazy road trip video. And best-case scenario, maybe one day we can sell it as a documentary or get it released somewhere as a doc. After we shot it, that’s when I realized, oh crap, this could be a cool TV show idea, so I actually did cut a sizzle reel after filming it and started pitching it out there.”

Dakota said that unfortunately no one bit at the sizzle reel. It was only three years later that Travel Channel found a copy of the documentary, and the network became interested. The rest, as they say, is history. Dakota and the team now find themselves atop a paranormal franchise that continues to pump out new episodes of their never-ending adventures in ghost land.

Interestingly, Dakota said it took some time to get this early film uploaded to discovery+. The network was excited to broadcast the adventure, but there were some technical glitches that needed to be solved.

“My schedule got so busy with Destination Fear because I do a lot of the editing on that show, and I just couldn’t,” Dakota said. “The problem was, this is a little techie, but I edited Trail to Terror on an old program called Final Cut Pro 7. And in order to re-edit it, I had to figure out a way to get it from Final Cut Pro 7 to a new, more modern editing program, and I knew that process alone was going to take a lot of time, a lot of weird tech stuff there. But basically — finally — I had a break between seasons two and three of Destination Fear, and I was able to get it on that new program and start chipping away at it. I know Travel and Discovery, they’ve wanted it for a long time, but they knew also where I’m coming from. It’s going to be hard to pull off.”

Dakota called the Destination Fear team adrenaline junkies and fear chasers. They like to experiment with different challenges, including sleeping alone and feeling isolation amidst the fear-inducing surroundings. On their adventures, they also try to capture paranormal evidence, but unlike other shows, they don’t care whether they prove anything at the end of an episode.

“We’re really not trying to prove anything to anyone but ourselves, and that’s been our goal,” he said. “We’re not scientists. We’re not investigators. We’re explorers who are going to do our best to see if there’s paranormal at these places, but also doing things that will bring out as much fear as possible.”

By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com

Destination Fear: Trail to Terror, featuring Dakota Laden, is now available to stream on discovery+. Click here for more information.