<I've written this purposefully without reading any "spoilers" on this episode, so these are all my untainted observations. As always, if I missed something or got something wrong, let me know!>

So… Ghost Hunters International is back, eh?  And in Peru, no less.  They've added another member to the team: Angela Alderman, an investigator Robb knew from his Florida Ghost Team before he was tapped for the job of leading GHI. Speaking of adding a new member — every time that happens someone gets axed fromn the team, and I am left to wonder where is Andy Andrews, master debunker? If he is no longer with GHI, that strikes me as quite a loss. He was far-and-away the most thorough (and therefore credible) investigator on the team.

Brandy, who joined late last season after Donna left, is still on the team — thankfully. I mention this because for some reason I can't put my finger on, I think that girl rocks. I think maybe it's because she's the first female investigator who seems to get her hands dirty (and do evidence reviews) just like the guys, and to be quite frank we did have a long run of female investigators who seemed to go out of their way to reinforce stereotypes of women. Oh no, a bug! AHHHHHHHHHHGH!!

…but I digress — I really wanted to start by pointing out how humorous Robb's re-introduction of GHI to the general audience was: "The whole team on GHI comes in as skeptics."  Really, Robb?  As Inigo Montoya (of The Princess Bride, for you non-movie-geeks) might say, "Skeptics? You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."

With the obligatory dismissal of Robb's skeptical assertions out of the way, I should also mention that when the team wraps up the investigation their host tells Robb how excited everyone is to have a "real scientific research team" investigate the fortress. Yes, we're all very lucky Robb was willing to take time out from his busy schedule at CERN.

The Real Felipe Fortress (pronounced Ray-al) itself is enormous. Located in Callao, Peru, the fortress was built to protect gold mined locally on behalf of the King of Spain. Because of the huge amount of wealth (in gold) being generated in the area, piracy became an enormous problem and this fortress was one of Spain's ways to combat it.

Far less impressive was the first potential "diagnosis" of the evening, which came from Robb. Upon hearing a report that a woman heard her (female) friend's voice calling her name, but discovered there was actually no one around at all, Robb said, "It sounds like a mimic". He then went on to explain that a mimic (in ghost terms) is when a spirit imitates a verbalization, often from one of the investigators. For movie geeks, the easy reference is Predator, where the alien is recording things he watches the humans say, and playing them back later — most famously, "Anytime…"  How this has any bearing on the woman's report is another matter entirely. It has absolutely none — the woman wasn't mimicked, she heard her friend's voice — who wasn't even there. Robb is simply determined to come out of the gate flailing about with poor reasoning and nonsensical conclusions, perhaps to lower our expectations for this season. Who knows?

I'll take a moment to stop (deservedly) bashing Robb and compliment him on one thing he said: "Some of the activity reported here could be quite dangerous." Specifically, he was referring to a report of a man who had jumped off the ramparts and killed himself in the middle of a battle — apparently at least one man who was taking a tour of the fortress suddenly had an overwhelming urge to do the same, and was only stopped by his family holding him back.  It's important for a team leader to keep an eye out for any potential dangers to his team — and perhaps especially important for Robb, who's team often finds themselves in castles built on mountain-tops with sheer drops all around, running about in the dark without any lights.  In this particular case though Robb was referring to the spirits potentially being dangerous and that got me thinking about how many times Jay & Grant have told parents that yes, their house is haunted but no, they don't have to be afraid because ghosts can't hurt anyone. Assuming ghosts exist (which the declaration of "Yes, your house is haunted" would seem to require) there are plenty of reports of ways people have been hurt (or nearly hurt) by them. This is just one more example. I'd rather Jay & Grant went all Paranormal State and tried to rid the house of spirits, because at least then I wouldn't be wondering whether they're being deliberately dishonest or they're just so deep in their own double-standards of science and methodology that they believe their own B.S.

Another point for GHI came early in the investigation when Brandy & Barry were asking for any spirits to give a sign of their presence, suddenly there was a loud BANG!  Barry was visibly shocked, recovered slightly and said in an offhand, half-joking way that he'd be very impressed if the spirit could do that again — only for it to happen again almost immediately. This was quite impressive, to say the least, but then of course upon further investigation it became less impressive, as is only too common in paranormal investigations. The noise came again, and again and Barry radioed to Robb to see if he was hearing it too. Robb was hearing it all right, and seeing it. Someone was putting on a fireworks display in the nearby town. So, big kudos for debunking what could have potentially been left an "impressive" mystery — but I do want to point out that this is a very good example of why it's important to be skeptical. If there had only been two bangs this might have been in the Reveal with the team and their host all nodding and patting themselves on the back about what impressive ghostly response they had gotten. Maybe I have too little confidence in their brand of skepticism, but I suspect that could have easily happened.

Dustin was investigating with Angela for most of the evening and they were doing EVP sessions with an EMF detector — NOT a K-II for those who were wondering. They did however seem to get a response in a similar way that Jay & Grant were, asking questions and asking the spirit to manipulate the EMF detector for "yes" answers. The footage shown of this wasn't nearly as impressive as some of J&G's sessions, so thankfully I don't have to start wondering if Dustin or Angela (or their camera operator) are involved in anything untoward, but they did seem to get a little bit of a response to a few questions. What confused me was that although you could hear a rapid clicking sound coming from the device, the needle hardly seemed to move at all. In fact, later on they tried another session outside and the needle seemed to sway more than it did during the first session, but there was no clicking so they determined no response. Maybe someone who is familiar with the particular meter they were using can shine some light on this?

Also, I wanted to say something else positive about GHI here: Although from a scientific perspective it wouldn't be uncharitable to describe their methodology as "riddled with incompetence" I must say I don't think I've ever really seen any "red flags" that left me wondering if everyone on the team was "on the level". Especially in light of this past season of Ghost Hunters (and the LIVE show in particular), I think it's an important thing to note because as long as they're presenting all the evidence in an honest way then we can come to our own conclusions about what that evidence means. I very much dislike suspecting a member of the investigation team of dishonesty and in this regard I actually enjoy watching GHI more than the original, because while most of the team members have given me reason to doubt their abilities to reason scientifically, none of them have given reason to doubt their honesty.

Back where Barry & Brandy were investigating, Brandy began seeing shadows darting around and she did acknowledge they could be her eyes playing tricks on her, but suspected it was not. The room they were in contained a row of pedestals all along the walls, each with a bust atop it.  Now, to me that seems like a surefire recipe for seeing figures in the dark, but Barry reported he was seeing the figure(s) as well and then at one point he said he had his first-ever experience seeing a full-bodied apparition — which he described as stepping out from behind one of the pedestals and looking past him (never at him) down the hallway. That level of detail would seem to debunk my suspicions of "eyes playing tricks in the dark", but then again we have no film of where Barry saw this occur

Shortly afterward Barry caught what seemed to be a very clear image of a person in one of the showcases. He had Brandy going back and forth to try and determine if maybe what he had recorded was her reflection in the glass, but he concluded it was not. This seemed to confirm reports of a little boy who was spotted by these showcases. My problem with this is that TAPS at least has a very poor track record of successfully recreating reflections and then erroneously declaring them not to be reflections. That being said, the image in the showcase seemed very clear and there didn't seem to be any "noise" around it like you would expect to see in a reflection. It really did look like something was in the showcase. Still, I suspect it was Brandy's reflection and the conditions just converged which made the image look like it was not.

The team captured one EVP, which seems to be saying the word "Reina" — which means Queen in Spanish — as the team was walking into the "Queen's Tower" section of the fortress. Robb said he could "hear it perfectly" and that there was "no mistaking it" and I couldn't have disagreed more, yet when they played it again during the reveal with the subtitle writted on the screen suddenly I changed my mind entirely. I'm not sure if this is because I wasn't listening to the correct frequency originally (the word seems to come from the level I would normally ignore as "hiss") or if there is some magical trick the brain plays when the word appears on the screen with the sound… I dunno, maybe both. The client did seem to pick up on it immediately though, and it is in Spanish; both of those facts lead me to cede a little more credibility to the EVP than I originally thought.

No GHI investigation would be complete without Barry breaking out his beloved "Full-Spectrum" camera, and he did catch something on it during this investigation. For those who may not have followed GHI last season, Barry takes photos side-by-side and simultaneously with a standard camera and a "full-spectrum" model that can see into the infra-red and ultra-violet wavelengths of light. In a nutshell, Barry had four sets of photographs. At first, both cameras show nothing. Then a blur (or something?) seems to be present on the full spectrum photo while the standard photo still shows nothing. The next shot taken with the full-spectrum shows the blur has now moved to the right a noticeable distance, while the standard photo still shows nothing and then finally the next two photos both are anomaly-free. I'm not sure what could be causing this but it's not the first time Barry has caught an anomaly only on the full-spectrum while using it side-by-side with the standard camera. I really like this investigation technique and I and very curious what sort of phenomena could show up in the ultra-violet (or infra-red) spectrum, but would not be visible to a standard camera (or the human eye).

To me, this always hearkens back to tales of dogs barking at an empty doorway, or cats seeming to watch an invisible person cross a room. Many animals have eyes that can see deeper into the infra-red or ultra-violet spectrums than our eyes can. Whether they (and Barry's camera) are seeing spirits I wouldn't venture to say but with the evidence Barry has captured it does appear that there may be something in those spectrums to see every once in a while.

Perhaps the most confusing part of the investigation for me was the part where Dustin & Angela said they heard people talking. When the team went through the evidence it was mentioned that this was classified as a "personal experience" because they were completely unable to capture any of the sounds on tape, or with the microphone on the camera. What confused me was that I thought I heard exactly what they were talking about when it happened. I wasn't sure it was voices, sounded to me like it might have been some sort of environmental sound, but I thought I heard *something* on the tape so I was surprised when they said there was nothing. Did anyone else notice this too?

…anyway, To the next!