October 25, 2007
GH: Lyceum Restaurant
(Salem, Massachusetts) - The Lyceum Restaurant was built on the location formerly occupied by the home of Bridgette Bishop, one of the most famous "witches" to be hanged during the Salem witch trials. During the investigation Jason received a phone call from his wife telling him that his son had been injured and was going to the hospital. Jason rushed off to be with his family (his son broke his arm in two places in a fall, but we are told he is recovering) and left the investigation in Grant's hands.
For the most part, this investigation was uneventful except there was an odd incident where the restaurant's computers (where the waiters place the orders and print the bill from) seemed to have their monitors go on and off for no apparent reason, other than as a possible response to Lisa & Grant asking spirits to make themselves known. This event culminated in one of the receipt printers spitting out a receipt that said "1:26 Good Morning" (1:26 am was the time) for no apparent reason. The restaurant's owner was asked about the monitors going on and off and about the unsolicited (through normal means) "good morning" receipt and she claimed none of that activity was normal for her computer system.
So, this is all well and good — we have a very intriguing experience with no clear explanation but nothing that definitively suggests paranormal activity. With more investigations like this one they might actually be able to keep their viewer base entertained without completely alienating their more scientific-minded fans. In fact, the primary reason I mention this episode in the first place is Steve. I may lose popularity points here, but lets face the facts: Steve is a bit of a dolt sometimes and that wouldn't be quite so bad if he wasn't so unjustifiably sure of himself.
During this particular investigation Steve was present (as per normal) during the guided walkthrough and heard the same explanation we (the audience) did regarding a particular mirror which was in front of a staircase. Some people in the restaurant have reportedly looked in the mirror to see a woman on the landing of the stairway behind them, only to turn around and find the landing empty. Seems pretty cut-and-dry — people claim to see a full-body apparition in a mirror and that apparition is consistently standing on the landing.
Apparently Steve somehow misinterpreted this to mean that people are seeing faces in the mirror, and wasted some portion of time during the investigation staring at the mirror close-up, eventually deciding that the presence of cracks, dirt and smudges leads him to the conclusion that people are seeing faces because of the brain's natural tendency to turn random patterns into familiar objects — most commonly faces.
I applaud his intention to debunk an apparition sighting, I really do, but maybe he could try to debunk what was actually reported — a woman standing on the staircase landing — instead of debunking things no one ever claimed happened. This isn't the first time he's done this either, but I still might have just let it go if it weren't for this next thing: He saw a car go by the window and noticed that the headlights reflected off the mirror and spread light around the room.
So guess what? That's right, Steve then proceeded to spend time investigating car headlights and came to the conclusion that it's entirely possible that whoever reported seeing a woman standing on the staircase landing may have actually been seeing lights bouncing all over the room. Because clearly a woman in period clothing looks just like a bunch circular lights dancing around the walls.
It's entirely possible that someone looked into that mirror and saw something ordinary out of the corner of their eye that their brain interpreted as a woman standing on the landing, but it probably wasn't smudges and dust and it certainly wasn't a car's headlights. Of particular note is that Steve was present for the Reveal and when he told the restaurant's owner about his debunking, her response was cut and it went straight back to Grant hitting the next bullet-point in his presentation. If I thought I'd seen something like that I'd be open to debunking it, but Steve's "explanation" is nothing short of insulting.
Filed under Ghost Hunters, Posts by Logisti
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Comments on GH: Lyceum Restaurant »
Tony S @ 2:53 pm
I too was glad for this episode, after a string of episodes where they seemed to 'catch' something everytime, it was refreshing to see one where they caught nothing.
The POS system.. They should have run that incident by the manufacturer. My thought was maybe it was rebooting, which might explain the screens switching on an off, and the receipt printing as a test and to say that it's ready to go. It didn't seem likely that a ghost from the 17th century would be so proficient with modern technology
I agree about Steve's debunking. It was pure speculation. My idea of debunking is that if you come up with a theory like his, you should have to test it before you can say with any certainty that it accounts for what it going on. The street that resturaunt is on is pretty busy, so car headlights would hit it often. You would think the people there would be able to tell headlights.
Jason @ 10:47 pm
This goes to the previous post about the shadow figure. I noticed it as well and rewound the TiVo and showed it to my wife and I came to the conclusion it was a real woman standing there. You can see skin and almost a breast. Definitely stages in my opinion, or taken out of context and used incorrectly. But I also have a few other comments:
Firstly I believe Brian needs to be removed, if you want to help your credibility… In a room of 100 people he would be the only one to witness a ghost and see aliens all at the same time while nobody else in the room witnessed a thing. The guy can not be trusted.
Secondly they do not know how to handle their equipment and I get sick and tired of the members walking with their cameras and it can be seen they are not even pointing it, it’s just hanging and then they go, did you see this… Of course we didn’t because you are not even using the video camera you brought with you… Also a perfect example is the bird cage footage in Tombstone, Az. They mention a figure that walks down the stairs, and during the show they run around the place because they saw a figure; however the camera placement wasn’t up the stairs, but actually at the bottom around the corner… Why? Once again they proved that with the equipment they have, they still don’t know how to use it.
Lastly, they need to stop the music in the background. It’s annoying and when they hear something you can’t because the music is going. Plus I do think it helps with the tension.
MeanGirl @ 3:36 am
Thanks for this post about the Lyceum. I was thinking the same exact thing! But I was questioning myself. I mean, I really like Steve. He's always making me laugh and what you may consider being a "dolt" is actually very endearing to me. (Well most of the time, maybe not when he played those jokes on Tango in the very beginning…) I still laugh when I think about that remark he made about hemorrhoids in an older episode. I think he must have really good timing, or they just edit it that way. I don't know, but I am always being caught by his charm.
All this fawning is to say that I've noticed this same pattern in previous episodes as well, but I think that his apparent charismatic influence on me has caused me to try and explain away my initial impressions. I assume he must be going off on these strange unrelated tangents due to things and events that have happened that we as an audience do not see. Often they we will see them discuss certain sightings and experiences during the tour, but then later during the investigations the conversations will reveal additional or altered information they received that we did not get to witness.
This has always lent a feeling of incomplete knowledge to me as an viewer. I have used it as a license to suspend my disbelief on a regular basis. Surely, I think, Steve cannot possibly be so dense as to think that a matrixed face from mirror smudges could be mistaken for a woman standing on the stairway behind someone. There must be some other explanation for this. Maybe faces appearing in mirrors were reported at several other locations, but that part of the tour was edited from what we saw. And it would be easy to confuse reports from one part of the tour with another.
Maybe Jason and Grant began referring to the mirror reports in a shorthand form, similar to "seeing faces", which stuck more in Steve's mind than the initial tour information. Maybe there WERE faces seen in that mirror (in addition to the woman), but that part of the explanation was cut from what we saw. Maybe, at the exact moment the mirror experiences were described during the tour, Steve was distracted by a painful burning and itching situation down below (see hemorrhoid reference above), and he matrixed the story he could only half pay attention to into something a little different.
Can you see where I'm going with this? I just have such a hard time believing my beloved Steve could possibly make such an obtuse error that I am willing to stretch my imagination to consider some very remote and somewhat inappropriate possibilities to explain it. I can very easily see other viewers possibly performing these same mental gymnastics. But after reading your post, I have to step back and admit that maybe, there could be a chance, perhaps… Steve could sometimes (gulp) be a little, um, offbase. I feel all my idealizations crashing down around me as the white pedestal beneath his feet is beginning to crumble.
Sigh… I guess it doesn't help the way that Steve pulled that weed out at the Sanatorium and waved it madly in the air, making some sort of side handed comment about it being nothing, and that he eats these types of weeds for breakfast. That seemed a little rash. Where was my levelheaded rational Steve, looking to find alternative explanations and recreate experiences? How could he try to recreate it now? All is lost. All is lost.