(Note: I'm shifting style a bit and offering more commentary and less recap. Let me know if I should switch back.)

It was pretty disorienting to see a good, old-fashioned Ghost Hunters fake-plumbing opening, with Jay and Grant pretending that, A., they have a camera crew follow them around while they fix air conditioners, and that B., they fix air conditioners. I mean, does Roto Rooter even do that? Never mind, rhetorical question. Kris Williams calls them up to let them know that they have a case at the Otesaga Resort Hotel in Cooperstown, but I'm still too distracted by the mechanics of this bit of nonsense to care. Which bit do they shoot first, Jay and Grant's, or Kris in the office? Do they memorize the script, or is it written down somewhere in that cramped little room? These are all questions which are, honestly, somewhat more interesting to me than the episode itself.

More on GH: Otesaga Resort Hotel

Stephen interviews Benjamin Radford, author of Scientific Paranormal Investigation: How to Solve Unexplained Mysteries and editor of the Skeptical Inquirer magazine.He also does a roundup of recent episodes of Ghost Hunters International and Fact or Faked.

Links:

• Scientific Paranormal Investigation: How to Solve Unexplained Mysteries (affiliate link– buy here to support Skeptical Viewer!)
• Benjamin Radford's web site

Download the podcast here.

While Austin, Jael, and Ben go to Indiana, Larry, Bill, and Chi-Lan go to the San Luis Valley in Colorado to investigate the cattle mutilations which were the subject of the other chosen video. The video was in the form of a news story.

In the car ride there they recap the video and Chi-Lan mentions that the rancher saw lights. So, of course, Larry brings up extra-terrestrials and that maybe it was a UFO. Off to a great start already. They meet first with Chuck Zukowski who is billed as a UFO Expert. Chuck investigated this case when the rancher first found the cow and will be taking the team to the area. More on FoF: Cutter (Cattle Mutilations)

We start the season finale (er, the summer season finale, that is) with something a bit different. Different clothes, that is. Other than that, we have the same problems. I screwed up my DVR recording of this one right from the get go but fortunately it was aired again an hour later so I caught it and got the whole thing. Why did I have a problem with the recording, you might ask? I’m glad you asked that. I tried to do a playback during the initial sit-around discussing videos scene. I shall go into more detail later….

As I mentioned, a change of clothes was ordered for the last episode. They discuss a few videos like the Skunk Ape and the Linda Vista place and decide on a cattle mutilation and a ghost in a graveyard that some paranormal researchers captured. They didn’t notice it at the time but when reviewing the “evidence” later, there was a ghostly figure with a light that seemed to go right by the cameraman.

This is the story of the Cemetery Phantom, known as the Caretaker for some reason. More on FoF: The Caretaker (ie, THE SPIDER!)

Once upon a time, in Tallinn, Estonia, a mysterious man in black came to rent an apartment. He offered to rent a room for three nights, on the condition that no one, not the landlord, nor any snoopy neighbors, look inside. The landlord agreed, and the man in black handed over his cash and moved into the room. That night, however, the sounds of a loud party emanated from the room, and the landlord could not contain his curiosity. He knelt at the door and put his eye to the keyhole. What he saw made him draw back in horror. "The Devil!" he cried to his wife. "It is the Devil, and he is having his wedding!" He died, horribly, the next day.
More on GHI: "The Old House", Tallinn, Estonia

I'll admit it: GHI got me twice with this investigation. First, when Barry and Susan ran off into the forest in pursuit of mysterious screams, I started hitting wildlife sites, trying to match the sound to a known animal sound. Then I gritted my teeth and realized that this was just the sort of thing they loved to throw out during analysis. They did.

Next, when Robb was showing off a mysterious face they'd caught on camera, I wasted about twenty minutes trying to get a screen grab of it into an image editing program so that I could try to match it against the back wall. Then Robb did the very debunk I was aiming for once I unpaused the video. So I write this with a mixture of frustration and agreement.

More on GHI: Fredriksten Fortress

Hitler, Hitler, Hitler. Even the name is enough to throw any Internet discussion into a tailspin. Is it any wonder that GHI will take any opportunity, no matter how flimsy, to try to summon his ghost? I will confess that I was tempted to create yet another Downfall parody, with Hitler's officers trying to explain to an increasingly enraged Fuhrer that the GHI team is trying to find his disembodied spirit in Poland with cheap audio recorders and gimmicked camera. Free T-shirt to the first person who does that.

Now, I'll admit that, in hunting Hitler, GHI is moving a step up from hunting Robin Hood, Sweeney Todd, or John Jarman. I'm afraid that there's no possibility that Hitler was a fictional character, as much as we might wish he were. So the GHI team heads to Wolfsschanze in Ketrzyn, Poland, on the occasion of Hitler's birthday. Wolfsschanze was a military headquarters in Poland where Adolf Hitler lived from 1941 to 1944. This was the site of the July 20th plot to kill Hitler, which their guide incorrectly identifies as "Operation Valkyrie", but ever-correct Wikipedia tells me was in fact the conspirators' proposed method of taking over Germany after Hitler's death.

I'm a little unclear on my ghost physics. I've generally assumed that ghosts, in popular imagination, have to stay somewhat near where they've died, or at least have to have an extremely strong connection with a place. This was a place where Hitler was nearly assassinated, which seems like a strange place to hang out. To give credit, Robb brings this up himself: "…how much range do you think a spirit would have? If Hitler, theoretically, if his spirit was in Berlin somewhere, could he come here if he wanted? Y'know, I don't think that he'd necessarily need bus fare." So if ghosts can go anywhere or everywhere, why go to haunted locations? Why can't I hunt for the ghost of Abraham Lincoln in my living room?

More on GHI: Wolfsschanze