This investigation began with Donna going back to the states, unable to stay with the rest of the Ghost Hunters International team because of an attack of Crohn's disease. Crohn's is a chronic illness which affects various parts of the digestive tract — it's rarely fatal and can be kept mostly under control with proper treatment and diet but outbreaks can still occur and when they do it can be severely debilitating. All our best to Donna, I'm sure we'll see her back with the team soon. For today, Dustin will be filling in as the team's historical researcher.

Woodchester Mansion was abandoned by its builders in the middle of construction and left unfinished. Many of the construction workers' tools are still found on-site and legend has it that they were scared off by supernatural goings-on. GHI's host and tour guide, Chris, says since coming to Woodchester Mansion he had gone from "complete skeptic" to "firm believer".

The mansion was not the original building on the lot — as one might expect considering the haunted reputation of the building's construction. The original building was knocked down and the new (enormous) building now stands unfinished in its place. Within the mansion's walls is a Catholic chapel and throughout that chapel are specific pagan symbols that are there for unknown reasons and considered a mystery.

I must point out, having read Dan Brown's "The Da Vinci Code" I'm having some sort of memory glimmer that he visited a Church with similar symbols during his research for the novel — that such symbols are not completely unknown within Churches. I forget the real historical explanation, but I'm fairly confident there is a non-controversial, historically accurate and unexciting reason those symbols are there, even if I can't quite remember what it is right now.

Some of the other reports are of hearing women talking and sightings of a black dog. One woman was alone in the building and on the phone when she heard loud footsteps coming down the corridor towards her. The footsteps were so loud that the person on the phone asked her who was coming, but no one was there.

Robb proved yet again that the team leaders need to take notes or something during the initial walkthrough. At one point Chris had shown them a staircase and explained that a little girl had been seen running up and down the steps but later when the investigation begins we see Robb showing Dustin the same staircase and explaining how a "little boy" sometimes runs up and down it. Not as bad as misremembering "musky" as "musty" like Grant did at the Ruffstone Tavern, but certainly indicative of a relatively simple (and silly) problem that shouldn't exist.

The team whipped out their FLIR camera right out of the gate and in the chapel they immediately hit on a black spot hovering near a window. What's that? Oh, I'm now being told the black spot was a hole in the window. Good eye, Andy Andrews! Excuse me? I'm now being told Andy said, "It doesn't appear to be" a hole in the window, Dustin was actually the one who confirmed, Yes it is. In a related story, moments later Dustin referred to Robb & Andy as "Abbot & Costello". Robb riposted, "I prefer to think of us as the THREE stooges". Good one, Robb!  Larry, Curly, and the guy who doesn't get excited by holes in windows.

Elsewhere (and elsewhen) Brian & Barry are playing with Barry's "Full Spectrum" camera which can see deeper into the IR and UV spectrum than the human eye can. They're doing standard EVP work when Brian said he saw a blue light in the stairwell. Yes, Brian saw something. He also demonstrated that when he rubs his eye, it makes a loud squeaking sound. If I might suggest something, perhaps he should return it for a refund or maybe an upgraded model.

In the basement, where a black mass has reportedly manifested between people (so that it partially blocked the view of someone nearby in the same room) along with a black dog traveling the halls, Robb is working with an EMF meter.  Personally, I love this thing.  First of all, unlike the K2 this meter has an actual needle and that's just old-school.  It's probably less helpful, since you can see (and get excited over) every little jump of the needle but it's a lot more interesting to watch than the K2 meter's 5 lights or 4 lights (hidden STTNG reference). Also, this meter makes a really cool, high pitched whining alarm sound when it triggers.

The coolest thing though, is that even though the meter was red-lining (from zero) seemingly in response to some of Robb's questions, Robb acknowledged it wasn't consistent and therefore he didn't feel comfortable citing it as evidence. Kudos to Robb for good science. Only one stooge left. Care to redeem yourself, Andy?

Barry actually joined Robb briefly in the basement and when he asked any spirits to confirm their presence they heard what they described as a door slamming. Other than that, not much appears to happen in the basement. In fact, the entire night seemed a bit unexciting, but as Jason is so fond of saying, you can't make ghosts perform on demand.

Since Dustin had to take over Donna's research duties he left Barry and Brian to go over the evidence themselves. Impressively, Dustin didn't seem to turn up anything particularly solid but (presumably from snippets of historical documents) he got a better idea of what was going on when the mansion was built. Most likely, he determined, the workmen left the job unfinished because the builder ran out of money to pay them. As for the tools left behind, they very likely thought the delay was temporary and they'd be back to work in short order. Alas, it was not to be and now people tell stories about how they were scared away in the middle of construction by a black dog or other odd goings-on.

On review, one piece of footage from the basement seemed to include the sound of a tin whistle. There was a very shrill sound that had no obvious origin. Strangely, evidence like this is some of my favorite. On the surface there's absolutely nothing sexy about it, but when closely examined it really is decidedly odd and a true mystery.  I can offer one possibility though: electronic interference.  To me it sounded like the sort of interference you can hear on some AM radio stations, which is caused by extraterrestrial radiation.  No, it has nothing to do with aliens.  The sharp EMF spikes Robb got could also be indicative of some natural phenomena that could have potentially interfered with his other electronics.  Then again… maybe it's a SUPERnatural phenomena.  We just don't know.

Also in the basement, there was an EVP of… a dog growling.  I couldn't really make it out clearly enough to agree on the characterization, but upon hearing it Chris also seemed to immediately interpret the sound the same way the team had without any prompting on their part. Certainly, I don't think this EVP is like any other we've heard from other investigations. Another decidedly odd thing.

…which brings me to the part where I apologize for making fun of Brian's eyesight. Sorry Bri. As it turns out, when Barry went through his still photos from the full spectrum camera he saw a blue orb in one of them. He said if that had been it he wouldn't have even bothered mentioning it, except from video of around the same time he found what appears to be the same orb in the same place, but in motion. It drops down from the ceiling very quickly and vanishes off-camera. It certainly does not look like a piece of dust.

Now, if you'll recall this was also around the same time Brian said he saw a blue streak of light go into the stairwell. Well, at the top of that stairwell was Andy Andrews, and a piece of production footage tells an interesting story: Andy had been upstairs with Dustin when he looked down the hall and saw a blue light seem to come out of the stairwell. He asked Dustin (who was farther down the corridor) if he had just turned on a blue light, but Dustin replied he hadn't turned any lights on.

If the timeline constructed by the team is correct, then we have an anomalous orb (which honestly does not appear to be dust) which is caught on both camera and video, seen going into the stairwell on the first floor and seen coming out of the stairwell on the second floor. The caveat here is that we don't know if the timeline is accurate. We have to take their word on that, and one thing I thought was a bit odd that made me question what we've been told even more than usual is that Robb claims after Brian saw the blue light that Barry ran into the stairwell and saw it too. If this happened, we weren't shown it. If it didn't happen, then Robb is embellishing his non-evidence which would mean we can't even consider taking anything he says at face value.

I've noticed a couple of other things in past investigations where Robb says something during the reveal that I didn't remember seeing during the investigation. Granted, we see only an edited version so it's entirely possible what Robb said happened really did happen and it was just cut from the episode. Still, footage of Barry running into the stairwell and also seeing that blue light would have lent additional credibility to the incident, so I've no idea why Pilgrim would leave it on the cutting room floor.  I think it's important to keep a close eye on Robb to be sure (as much as we can be) he isn't adding details to his investigation ex post facto. That would be really disappointing.

As it stands, we have two pieces of tangible evidence which both show what appears to be the same blue orb, one of them is video and the orb does not appear to look or behave like dust, and we have at least two confirmed eyewitness reports that we are told took place consecutively around the same stairwell. Altogether, that's a rather interesting set of events that I have no explanation for.