Ghost Adventures' Zak Bagans Finally Opens Cursed Dybbuk Box: 'I Saw an Entity Crouching Down'

In a new four-part special, the Ghost Adventures team quarantined themselves for two weeks inside Bagan's Las Vegas Haunted Museum during the COVID-19 pandemic

It was two weeks of intense moments and terror.

Quarantining themselves inside Zak Bagans' Haunted Museum in Las Vegas in late March and early April, Travel Channel's Ghost Adventures team spent 14 days investigating heightened paranormal activity during the COVID-19 pandemic.

"It was an anxiety-driven investigation as raw and intense as we have ever done before," Bagans tells PEOPLE. "I firmly believe the global pandemic caused the manifestations of spirit activity to be at an unprecedented level."

Their experience is now airing as a four-part miniseries for Travel Channel's highest-rated series, Ghost Adventures: Quarantine. With no production crew, Bagans and fellow paranormal investigators Aaron Goodwin, Jay Wasley and Billy Tolley filmed the special, which culminated in Bagans' decision to open the infamous Dybbuk Box, believed to have "cursed" rapper Post Malone after one of his visits to the museum.

Courtesy Travel Channel

Courtesy Travel Channel

"The scariest moment for me is what I saw and felt," Bagans says of opening the box. "We captured on-camera an unbelievable mist coming out of the box that manifested eyes." The lead investigator also believes he saw the dybbuk entity "crouching down towards the wall behind the box."

Courtesy Travel Channel

Sequestered together, the men cooked all of their own meals and slept at the museum every night. "The easiest part was being with the guys," Goodwin says. "But the whole time was scary."

Unlike anything the team had taken on before, the 24/7 investigation was "definitely taxing on all of us," Tolley adds. "There was no time to recover. All during the height of a worldwide pandemic."

One of Bagans' biggest concerns for filming the special was taking "all precautionary measures to ensure we were all safe being locked inside an insanely haunted building downtown, while also social distancing," he adds. "So much was unknown at that point and the anxiety of that, coupled with the fear of our investigations, made an intensity we haven't felt before."

The museum, renown for its haunted artifacts, including the Devil's Rocking Chair (from the estate of Ed and Lorraine Warren) and Peggy the Doll, "has always been incredibly active," Wasley says. "But the opportunity to dedicate so much time and attention to investigating and performing experiments resulted in some very tense, scary moments and mind-blowing paranormal evidence."

With help from electrical engineer Bill Chappell, the team was also able to build specialized equipment to replicate an experiment "that possibly took the life of a woman, who was found surrounded by all of her own electronics that were still powered on," Tolley recalls.

That moment "was scary as hell but the evidence collected was remarkable," he adds. "I'll never forget it."

The four-part miniseries Ghost Adventures: Quarantine begins Thursday at 9 p.m. ET/PT.