At long last, I present to you my review of this investigation. I apologize for the delay, finally last night I was able to watch the episode (thank goodness for DVR) and so without further ado:

Buffalo Central Terminal, it's a big place.  At over 14 stories tall, there's a lot of ground to cover, which is why for once I'm really glad they brought alone Joe Chin and Kristyn Garland.  Those two can finally clock some real investigation time without going back over rooms other team members already investigated, and maybe they'll get a bit more spotlight and finally some real recognition as team members and serious investigators.

Wait, what? They left Joe & Kristyn at home and took the bare-bones TAPS team out to this gargantuan building? Ummm… strike one?

But at least we didn't have to sit through a contrived Roto-Rooter intro where Jay & Grant pretend they happen to be "just about done" with a plumbing job and happen to have a camera crew with them when Kris mysteriously calls them out of nowhere to tell them of some fantastic new investigation she's got lined up.  I hate it when they do that, right! You know what I'm talkin' about?  Go GH!

…or not.  As it turns out they did start the episode off in exactly that manner. I won't say, "for shame" but I will say, "strike two."

But enough about baseball; how about that building, huh?  It was the central transportation hub for the Buffalo, NY area from when it opened in 1929 and for decades afterwards.  In 1979 the terminal was closed, but as a well-loved building it had people looking out for it. Tony Fedele was one such person, he spent years living in the building and attempting to restore it, but the job was simply too big for one man. In 1986 he defaulted on the taxes and was forced into foreclosure.  By the time TAPS showed up parts of the place looked pretty awful, and that's after 10 years of restoration by hardworking volunteers.

The beginning of this investigation also happens to be the end. Jay & Grant were in one of the hallways with the FLIR when Jay noticed two small heat signatures at the end of the hall where he thought there should only have been one (one of their cameras). Personally, I think there was nothing paranormal going on in this case and they didn't explore it any further, but shortly afterwards they started hearing sounds: a woman's voice? Footsteps? Jay kept saying he thought something was just out of sight in the shadows of the next room. To his credit, Grant later on suggested the large amount of water dripping might have contributed to what they had originally thought to be footsteps.

Still, they left their FLIR camera recording unattended at the end of the hallway and, crucially, right next to the infrared camera which was covering the same area.  This gives the audience something we've been asking after for some time: a side-by-side comparison shot between the FLIR and the regular infrared so any anomalies that might appear on one can be examined on the other. As I mentioned though, this is how it all ends and for now we must move on.

Elsewhere, Steve & Dave are walking through a section of the building when Steve tells Tango about a legendary sighting that occurred, specifically how a woman who was walking her dog saw something and then the dog reacted as if it had seen it too. Dave proved his debunking bona fides once again by responding with a simple question: why was some lady walking her dog through the upstairs office area in an abandoned building? Steve hadn't thought of that. Later on Steve & Tango put some thought into the fact that many of the windows to the outside were broken, allowing wind to come into the interior of the building (where you would normally never expect to have wind) and Steve suggested that could cause some of the anomalies, including potentially making sounds that could be mistaken for voices.

Due to the shortage of investigators, Kris was sent off on her own (with a camera-man in tow, she acknowledged) and nothing interesting happened. Except for one thing: we see that she was conducting an EVP experiment much like Jay & Grant do, with a digital voice recorder and a K-II meter, except unlike when Jay & Grant do it, Kris didn't get any response whatsoever. To me, at least, that is very interesting. Why should it be that Jay & Grant seem to get consistent (and consistently improving) results and yet others get no results at all?  I propose we all keep an eye out for other team members walking around with K-II meters, I'd love to see if we can keep tally of how many failures other team members experience while J&G seem to be batting a thousand.

In the rooms formerly occupied by Tony Fedele the most famous Ghost Hunters on the team were continuing their own investigating and again, more shadows seen out of the corner of eyes, potential footsteps, and actually a bit of banging. At one point Jay noticed the video camera was off despite having plenty of battery left, and he insists that he didn't turn it off. Unfortunately this is just one of those things where we have to assume it was accidentally turned off by someone (living) because it's by far the most plausible explanation, it's the sort of thing that can easily happen and frankly I'm disappointed to see a "seasoned" investigator like Jason Hawes seem to jump to the conclusion that it must be paranormal.

While there they hear what seems to be a voice not once but twice. The second time we can clearly hear it on the production audio as well (so this is not technically an EVP) although it's not immediately clear whether it is a voice for certain or what it might be saying. More startling however, was a short time later when the J&G were in the "central command" area monitoring the cameras and suddenly there came the sound of what seemed to be someone yelling, "Go home!"  Steve said he heard it too, and he was a good distance away.  Grant ran upstairs, in the direction he said the sound originated to check the DVR camera up there and confirmed they had captured it on tape.

…which is what I thought was a little odd.  The production audio caught one of the sounds that seemed to be a voice in the area of Anthony Fedele's rooms, but in this case where the sound was supposed to be much louder — someone yelling, in fact — I don't think I heard this from the production audio.  We saw Jay & Grant react from where they were sitting and we saw Steve react, but I don't recall hearing or seeing the few seconds leading up to those reactions. Were all the cameras off and suddenly turned on just in time to get reactions? Was the equipment all off and then turned back on in order to get reenactments of the reactions? I don't have an opinion other than that I find it odd that this very loud voice was only picked up by one recorder — at least, that we can be sure of. Considering it sounded to me like an "old man voice" and we know one of the investigators is prone to hearing "old man voices" I guess I'd just like the comfort of seeing his lips not moving when this event occurred, but that's just me.

What happens next is even more impressive, perhaps. Jay & Grant break out their K-II meter and voice recorder to do their own EVP session and we do see Jay explaining that lighting up the machine once means "yes" and don't light it up at all for "no". Grant sets the mood by saying he's seeing shadows moving slowly in the next room and he's not sure if it's his eyes playing tricks on him or if there really is a very subtle movement going on.  Almost instantly they appear to have activity on their K-II and they begin conversing with someone who claims to be a woman in the 1940's waiting for someone to come in by train. I won't belabor the conversation because after the experiment at Slater Mill I am officially convinced that this is no coincidence, that someone is in fact answering the questions being asked. What concerns me is: who?

First off, the high EM readings they get don't "just happen".  In some areas there may be higher base-line EM fields than others and there may be small spikes in the EM field but not on the level we're seeing during these experiments.  In the past we've seen them use this same meter and get no results whatsoever, or one light blinks intermittently, etc.  In this investigation Kris got nothing at all with the same device, and yet suddenly we have a situation where the device is not only detecting a very strong EM field but detecting it in a consistent way only in response to questions, and we've seen them ask the same questions multiple times and get the same answer (light or no light) consistently.

Now, part of this is depending on having a reliable narrator — we have to trust Jay, Grant and Pilgrim to be honestly portraying what happened, but this experiment has been done quite a bit and they've even gone the extra mile to include a demonstration of repeatability in their experimental method. At this point I don't think it is conceivable that they're just "fooling themselves" into believing it.  No, I think they are either dishonestly portraying the results of their experiment in a deliberate fashion, or else they are telling it exactly like it happened. And I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt and assume the latter, but that still does not answer the question of "who" is causing the EM spikes in answer to the questions.

One thing I did notice was that we could see both of Grant's hands, which clears him of any suspicion. Right? I mean, one hand was empty and the other was was holding… an electronic device: a video camera. And he was getting a nice close shot of the K-II meter also.  Does anyone recall if he was also videotaping previous K-II sessions with the handheld?  I hate to be a Suspicious Sally but it occurs to me that hitting rewind or even playing with the focus could potentially create an EM spike on the order of what we would need to reproduce the results, and that camera was the closest object to the K-II meter besides the chair it was placed on.

Clearly, I have my suspicions but the only thing I am fairly certain of is that the EM spikes were not coincidental.  In fact, it's fair to say that Grant and I are 100% on the same page.  This is what he had to say after the experiment: "It's beyond coincidence. Something was manipulating it, I'm not quite sure what it was though."

Due to the large quantity of evidence (or so we're told) Jay & Grant decide to sit in and help review all the recordings the team collected from the investigation. Jay took first pick and decided to review the FLIR footage. Now, this could just be a coincidence that doesn't mean anything, but considering what's to come I do have to consider that it may not have been.  There was one EVP (believed to say, "…not around here") and the potential voice from Fedele's apartment seemed to be saying something like, "Bring back the girls," plus we have the "Go home!" yell that Grant insisted couldn't have come from outside (without really explaining why not) but the crown jewel was the FLIR footage.

Looking down that hallway there comes a moment when the outline of a human figure bobs into view, then bobs back out of view. Less than a minute later we see essentially the same thing again, and then nothing. This is supposed to be all the more impressive because we have regular IR camera footage to compare it to, but the IR camera footage shows nothing.  Amazing?  No.

The IR camera requires IR light to see.  That light is projected from the LED bulbs around the camera itself and it does a great job, but like a flashlight it can only shine so far. When comparing footage from the two cameras side-by-side it becomes apparent that the figure we see on the thermal is standing in an area that is entirely black on the IR because the IR light didn't reach the very end of the hallway.

Neither here nor there is the fact that the figure itself seems to be doing the "goofy dance" (it's the only way I can describe it) because one thing we can be relatively certain of right off the bat is that this was not some sound guy who accidentally walked by. Whoever that is on the thermal, they seemed to know exactly where they could stand in order to appear on the thermal while still being safe from the prying eye of the IR camera.  Jay & Grant, however, entirely ignore the large black square in the IR footage that coincides with exactly where their "ghost" should be and instead claim whatever it was must be "invisible to the naked eye".

Nice try fellas, strike three.