I've been slacking a lot lately, getting these reviews done almost a week after the show aired, but frankly I haven't found GHI nearly as riveting as I'd hoped. Thank goodness the original Ghost Hunters (TAPS baby, TAPS!) are back tomorrow night. I have a lot of respect for Robb and crew (and a lot of criticisms as well) but there doesn't seem to be much new to say. On the other hand, watching TAPS is almost like watching an episode of COPS where at any point the cops might try to use excessive force on the minority suspect without the camera seeing, and then claim they had nothing to do with the guy's face being heavily bruised.

Well okay, that's actually a terrible analogy, but it was good enough to convey the emotion: Ghost Hunters is visceral, it's voyeuristic. At this point many of us are just waiting for someone (no one in particular of course, of course…) to try something so we can attempt to figure out how they did it, and possibly even assemble enough evidence to make a provable case. I'm sure that's not the motivation Jay & Grant hope their viewing audience to have by-and-large, but it's definitely a fun reason to watch.

Getting back to the GHI matter at hand, this was the second investigation with Paul Bradford replacing Ashley, temporarily or otherwise. The location had a ton of interesting stories — in fact, considering the results of most of these investigations I'd almost prefer it if Robb & crew just went around interviewing people about their experiences at some of these places. In this case one woman reported seeing, on multiple occasions, a woman in a black dress who (I believe?) appeared to be the wife of the founder of the library. One of the times she saw the apparition, she looked down and noted that the lady had no feet — she was just there from the leg up, seeming to float through the room.

Another man was down in the basement when he looked at a glass window in front of him and in the reflection saw the old (recently deceased) janitor standing behind him. I mean, he didn't just think he  saw some guy in the reflection. He saw the guy clearly enough to recognize him, and there was in fact no one in the entire basement with him at the time. Could he have been mistaken? It seems less likely than in other cases, but still possible. Could he be  lying? That's a possibility that always needs to be considered. Still, these are some very interesting stories and really sets the audience up for a let-down when GHI inevitably comes up short-handed.

During this investigation there were only really two things worth noting. First, Paul introduced a data logging machine that continuously records temperature, humidity and dewpoint every few seconds. As I said in the write-up on the previous investigation, new gadgets are good, and in this case there was an event where one team member reported feeling a draft and then another said they felt it too, but the FLIR thermal imager and the data logger both confirmed there was no atmospheric variation in the room with them at that time. Could the initial feeling of a draft have been some sort of internal body temperature adjustment and the second report was just a psychosomatic reaction based on the expectation of experiencing the same thing? It may sound unlikely, but it certainly seems more likely than ghosts manipulating four different measuring devices into displaying falsely consistent readings.

The second thing of interest from this investigation occurred with Robb and Paul in a theater area of the building. They were hearing sounds coming from various locations around them, and at one point they asked the alleged ghost to sit down in one of the audience chairs and that request was quickly followed by what they both believed to be the sound of a chair being moved. The most interesting thing about this was that we can see from the production footage how both investigators react to the sounds. We can hear the sounds in the production audio but even if we couldn't, we could be sure they weren't imagining things because a number of times Robb & Paul — who were standing right next to each other and in camera-frame together — both turned their head in the exact same direction at the exact same time.

Still, because we can be certain the sounds were real does not have any bearing on what was causing them. Between steam pipes knocking and the ever-present possibility of rodents there are innumerable causes for random sounds in a (mostly) empty building at night. In the end, GHI didn't press the issue and said they didn't have any solid evidence to suggest the building was haunted. Frankly, I enjoyed watching this investigation more than the previous one in this episode, which is a rarity. Normally the second investigastion is a snooze-fest, but in this case I really did enjoy it. Unfortunately, there's just not much to say about it — which is another matter entirely