For this investigation (and one other) our favorite ghost hunting team went down to Ybor City, Florida and brought Britt with them — good thing too, because Jay apparently took ill part-way through the investigation at The Cuban Club and Britt had the rare treat of duoing with Grant Wilson. The Cuban Club was a large part of the cuban community in the mid-twentieth century and had a whole lot to offer, including a theater and apparently even a pool, all in a single impressive building. Many of the reports of paranormal activity center around historic events (apocryphal or otherwise, it's never determined) and includes a fair number of visual "full-bodied" phenomena, none of which TAPS managed to capture on video — I hope that's not giving too much away.

As the investigation got underway some of the non-visual phenomena did seem to be confirmed when Kris and Amy began hearing sounds like footsteps coming from the dance floor in the ballroom. At one point there was a particularly loud noise but no explanation was found. They decided to ask Jay & Grant to swap locations so the dynamic duo could take a shot at finding the source of the sounds. They didn't, but not for lack of trying. In what seemed to be an ill-advised and potentially dangerous side-trip, Grant even climbed out onto the roof above the ballroom and stomped around on the (slanted) rooftop above — although the lack of sound this produced in the ballroom did allow them to rule out one very likely-seeming possibility (animals on the rooftop). Shortly after this Jay said he was going to investigate downstairs (or something) and when he came back he said he was leaving.

In the pool area Steve & Dave proved that they knew a few spanish words in their commendable attempt to contact departed souls by speaking what would almost certainly be their native tongue. Unfortunately it didn't yield any better results, but at least they thought of it and tried it.

Out in the theater Kris and Amy began hearing sounds coming from the stage. There were a number of camera shots from the production footage which seemed to show someone in a short-sleeved shirt standing mostly behind one of the curtains, but from the large number of shots and the consistant positioning throughout my initial excitement at having caught someone in the act of hoaxing the girls waned and I'm now fairly convinced the outline that seems to be part of a shirt is likely either part of the curtain itself or some stationary object backstage. Too bad they're filming in the dark or maybe we'd actually be able to tell what we're looking at when something interesting appears on camera.

Back in the pool area Grant and Britt decided to try the old flashlight trick, but instead of using a push-button flashlight they used Britt's twist-on one — which Grant made a big deal about but to me it seems an irrelevant detail. In both cases they turned the flashlight on and unscrewed it to the point where it can flicker between on and off with the slightest provocation. In this case, Grant claimed he could see the actual base of the flashlight turning — but of course there is no video verification of this. The timing of some of the on/off events seemed impressive, enough even that they began a K-II style question and answer session which Grant deemed a success, but we weren't provided with enough of a sampling that I was comfortable the few impressive-seeming shots weren't just a coincidence. On the contrary, throughout the segment and during the reveal we were shown a number of less impressive shots showing Grant receiving much-delayed responses or no responses.

What irked me the most though, was something inexcusable — and all the more so because it's happened before in almost an identical fashion. When they concluded their session with the flashlight Grant commented that it was "freezing" cold as he picked it up. The same thing has happened before (reports of the light being extremely cold after supposed spiritual activation) and yet just like the first time (despite my comments on it) there was no IR digital thermometer in sight to verify this observation and turn subjective reporting into objective fact. We know TAPS owns all sorts of thermometers, back in the first few seasons it seemed every team had one and were always walking around with them (and/or an EMF meter) like they were Egon's PKE meter from the movie Ghost Busters. Yet these days whenever there is a report of abnormal temperature it's almost an absolute certainty that no one will product a thermometer to confirm the "cold spot" and instead it will simply skip the step of scientific verification and go straight to being reported to the client as a fact.

Of all the things I can (and do) criticize, I find this sort of thing simply felonious — an absolutely intolerable and completely inexcusable act of omission. Why? Because it's so simply and so potentially compelling. The flashlight turning on and off could be caused by the camera operastor tapping his foot for all we know, but Newton's laws of thermodynamics explain why it's pretty much impossible to fake a sudden temperature drop. While we can't be sure what was causing the flashlight to turn on and off, we can be (relatively) sure it was only in contact with the air and the floor beneath it. With three on-camera temperature readings we could have gotten a much better picture of what was going on.  If the ambient temperature in the room was 70F and the floor was 70F but the flashlight was 55F, well that would have been a genuine scientific mystery. Unfortunately, the best thermometer used on this case was a human — notoriously unreliable and imprecise as scientific measuring tools — and worse, it was the one known as "Grant Wilson" — notorious for a whole slew of other reasons.

Speaking of which, that brings me to the major piece of evidence discovered during the analysis. Staff had reported hearing footsteps (and in some cases, seeing the apparition responsible) coming up a particular staircase in the main entry hall. In a smart move, TAPS placed two recording devices in the room (each on a different staircase) to better localize any sounds they might pick up during the night. This allowed them, after reviewing the evidence, to reasonably claim they captured footsteps which sounded like a lady's high heel on the particular staircase where reports of that exact sound had been heard previously. The two caveats, not properly identified as such by the show, were: 1) the footsteps occurred immediately following Kris & Amy being close to the recorder (two women, either one might have been wearing shoes that could have made that sound) and 2) Grant asserted that everyone was wearing soft-soled shoes.

Now, forgive me for Grant-bashing, but this isn't even related in any way to suspicions he's been involved in anything untoward. He's simply, in my opinion, unreliable. How many times has he made questionable assertions about how evidence couldn't possibly have been contaminated in the past?  It's usually he who claims "everyone was accounted for" or "no one else was in the building" — or one of my favorites, in Fort Delaware a warm body made an appearance on the FLIR and Grant asserted that it would have been "too difficult" for someone to sneak into or hide out in the maze of tunnels in which they were filming, and therefore it must be a ghost they caught on camera; because apparently Grant Wilson thinks capturing ghosts on film is more common than people doing things that are "difficult" — and honestly, how difficult would it be, really, for someone who worked at the fort and knew it like the back of their hand to hoax TAPS if they wanted to?

The fact that we know two women were in the area moments before the sound of heels were heard walking up a staircase seems reason enough to discount the evidence, but Grant's attempt to reassure us the two things are unrelated was a welcome laugh to close out this investigation.