Burt Bucher, associate professor of art, will make his television debut on the Travel Channel’s The Dead Files tonight at 9 p.m.

The Dead Files travels to haunted locations all over the country and always uses a local artist to draw what the psychic medium Amy Allen sees.

Bucher will act as the forensic sketch artist in Friday’s episode, which chronicles the mysterious happenings at Newton County Sheriff Ken Copeland’s house in Neosho.  

 “My job is basically to interview her,” Bucher said. “That’s what a forensic artist does, so I would say how old was the person that you saw? Did they have any defining characteristics? Is it male or female, those types of things.

As we go through those description processes, she would tell me what she saw, and then I’d draw a composite image of that.”

At the end of the episode, the drawings are shown to the family to see if they match up with what they’ve been seeing in their home.

Bucher had never done forensic drawing before, but the sherrif’s office contacted him based on an article about the professor’s work on the Gateway Mural in downtown Joplin.

 “I’ve taught figure drawing for 10 years,” Bucher said, “and before that I drew a lot of stylized comic book work and cartoons so I’m used to drawing figures quickly. The difference between a forensic artist and figure artist is that the forensic artist gets a description and has to draw from memory; a figure artist draws from what they see, so I had to train myself to work from my imagination as opposed to from sight.”

Another new experience for Bucher was that of being on a film set, going through hair and makeup and getting all the microphones put on. He also got some new insights on behind-the-scenes reality TV.

“Reality TV is not just filming what happens, it’s somewhat controlling what happens,” he said. “So you go through takes, and you go through different lines and it kind of controls the mood.”

He even said that they did takes of him showing Amy Allen a blank sheet of paper — as if it were one of his sketches — so they would have the footage for later on.

A realization that gave the idea of a reality show a very different connotation.

Bucher himself, a self-proclaimed skeptic of the supernatural, had a spooky experience in the possibly haunted house.

“I was one of the last people in the house, the crew had all left, and I was finishing up a photo of this shadowy figure that was haunting the young girl’s room, and as I’m finishing this drawing, there’s a loud bang, and all the family photos fall off the wall behind me,” he said.

So is Sheriff Copeland’s house haunted?  Tune in tonight and find out.