For once, I beat the FoF team somewhere. Last year (mid-2010), I was down in San Diego with my wife. While she attended a conference, I searched the net for local haunted spots and found Whaley House, supposedly the only haunted house certified by the US Government! I packed my gear into the car and drove on over.

In 1852, "Yankee Jim" Robinson was hanged for grand theft riverboat. Attending the hanging was wealthy merchant Thomas Whaley, who later realized that he could buy the site of the hanging cheap. After all, who else would want it? There were consequences, though. According to the Whaley House's web site, Whaley was haunted the rest of his life by the sound of heavy boots tromping around his home, and believed he was being tormented by the late Yankee Jim. (Ignore the stock gallows photo on the show. They improvised a gallows for Yankee Jim out of some wooden beams, a mule, and a cart.)

More on FoF: Whaley House

The second part of this episode, the Ghost Light of Portland, Oregon, is one that Austin says they’ve never done before.  That’s true.  They’ve never investigated a light in the sky in Portland before.

The footage shows a bluish light traveling above a bridge on the Willamette River and then changing colors, turning and doing a dramatic dive into the water where it disappears.  At least three “wows” are uttered as the clip is being cued up, even before it airs.  This has to be good!  It’s not. More on FoF: River Ghost

Christmas came early for FoF and the first set of presents appears to have been NEW CLOTHES!  First up of this duo of episodes is the Honey Island Swamp Monster which was selected during the usual sit-around session.  They started even earlier this time, I think they’re just messing with us now.  I do want to bring up something from the introduction, though, where they are flashing videos and introducing characters.  They flash on the screen the words “Unexplainable Videos”  Point of order, but that would more properly be shown as “Unexplained Videos”  and even that would need an asterisk. More on FoF: Bayou Beast

Larry the Tie Guy brings us the UFO footage shot in Gulf Breeze, Florida.  This footage consists of a golden-colored classic UFO-shaped object floating behind some trees and exhibiting an otherworldly speed. Otherworldly?  This one could have been solved easily with a phone call: More on FoF: Tropical Intruder

“That’s one small step for Austin, one giant plummet down the stairs for the FoF series.”  In this episode, FoF investigates the Moon Landing and tries to determine whether or not it was Fact or Faked, and in the process, succeeded in ticking off this reviewer like never before.  Which is saying a lot considering we’re dealing with FoF here. More on FoF: Lunar Landing Hoax

The Ghostly Guardian is introduced by Larry and is the story of a little girl and her grandmother in Mililani, Hawaii.  It consists of pictures taken of the little girl in which anomalies appear that are supposedly of her “guardian spirit”.  The girl is now 16 and the objects still appear in the photos.  The object never appears by itself in photos, nor does it appear in photos of any other person and the granddaughter says that she senses the appearance of whatever this is.

This is not isolated in that she has used seven different cameras and she cuts the strap off them so as to rule that out as a possibility (remember this later).  Ben (for some reason) asks Austin if it’s worth going out and doing this one and Austin replies that it is.  “Yeah, I think it’s different than what we’ve done and I’m always up for trying new things.”  He’s right, they’ve never had white blobs appear on photos before…oh, wait a minute….! More on FoF: Ghostly Guardian

The team wakes up earlier for this episode (or else they realized finally that there clock was stuck) and the latest meeting of “Whatcha got to show?” starts at 9:03 am in the Situation Room.   Although they start the meeting two and a half hours earlier, they are still wearing the same clothes.  Time warp?

The “Whatcha got?” for this sequence is footage of a Mermaid shot off the Great Barrier Reef by a filmmaker who wishes to remain anonymous.  That whooshing sound you just heard is a flag going up the pole so fast that it actually rips itself free and sails up into the high reaches of the moronosphere. More on FoF: Mystery Mermaid