I can see from the number of comments already that this episode is a real conversation-starter. It starts out dull enough though, and I'd like to focus on some of the minutia we're subjected to early on. For instance, in the vans on the way to the investigation site we see Jay & Kris talking by radio. This isn't anything new, but I notice we're seeing less and less of Steve & Tango. Also, now Kris is driving one of the vehicles, yet still working the walkie. So basically, Jay is driving and talking on the walkie while Grant sits next to him doing nothing, and Amy is driving and also simultaneously working a walkie while Amy sits next to her, also doing nothing and looking quite bored for it.

Maybe this isn't the takeaway most people are going to come up with, but wouldn't it be safer for all involved if Grant and Amy were the ones talking on the walkie? Or if Jay and Kris are being showcased, then maybe Grant and Amy should drive — you know, so no one accidentally drives off a cliff while trying to simultaneously manipulate a steering wheel and a walkie talkie. Where I live it's illegal to drive while talking on a cellphone (assuming you're holding the phone in your hand) because it's seriously that dangerous/distracting, and those are slightly easier to hold while driving than the big, chunkie walkies TAPS has. Or maybe we could go the complete other way on this and have Jay & Kris text each other while driving.

Another deceiving event was a camera battery drain early in the night. That really had me thinking we were in for something truly mundane. Shortly after the battery drain Jay started saying he felt a static charge in the air, and not to be outdone Grant claimed something slapped his hand. They both found what they agreed was a pocket of humid, electrically charged air — unfortunately there is no way to measure such things… oh wait, yes there is and GHI actually has all the equipment necessary. If only Ghost Hunters had a budget one fraction the size of their less popular spin-off, so they could afford to buy proper equipment. Unfortunately, Jay & Grant only make enough money to purchase a 36 room Inn.

We are briefly treated to Steve and Tango finding absolutely nothing of interest before popping over to Kris & Amy, who discover that absolutely nothing of interest is also going on in the attic. While they are up in the attic though, Kris mentions a story about one of the coat racks falling over and then "thrashing around" on the ground. Amy points out that the particular racks they had aren't meant to hold nearly as many clothes as people tend to jam onto them, and therefore they have a tendency to become unstable and potentially fall over. Kris agreed, but pointed out that still didn't explain the "thrashing around" once the rack was on the floor. She can be excused perhaps because she likely got her information from someone else; Grant mentioned the same details of the story during the reveal.

In fact, what the person who actually experienced the event said was that one of the clothing racks was "pushed to the ground" and that it had "turned over violently". Maybe he meant it turned over violently once it was on the ground, but from the way the man explained (he was interviewed directly), it really seemed to me he was describing the same singular event in two different ways. First he says it was pushed to the ground, and then to emphasize the force with which it was "pushed" he says it "turned over" violently. In other words, if I am understanding him correctly, the rack was "pushed to the ground" and the rack "turned over" are simply two different ways of describing the same event of the rack falling over. If that is the case then there was no "thrashing around on the floor", so Amy's explanation makes perfect sense. Instead of putting Amy on the scoreboard for a solid debunk here, Kris and Grant instead push hard against a detail of the event which I think was misunderstood.

Of course, right about here is where the investigation gets really exciting. As Jason & Grant are walking out in the yard someone wearing what appeared to be a hooded sweatshirt runs by the thermal camera. The figure ran by from right-to-left and Jay makes sure he drives the point home that he "panned left" after the figure ran by and no one was there. Did you catch that folks? He "panned left". Maybe I'm just an oddball but if I see someone run right in front of my thermal camera I'm not going to "pan left", I'm going to turn my entire body left and then repeatedly sweep the area now in front of me with the thermal imaging camera. But no, what Jason did is turn the camera perhaps 45 degrees to the left, and then bring it back to center. That says two things to me: the camera did not turn far enough to see the area I would expect this figure to be after passing the camera, and considering this decided lack of searching to find the guy who just ran in front of the camera it seems fairly clear that Jay put less than zero effort into debunking the event.

By less than zero, I mean he did nearly nothing (just moved the camera slightly to the left) and then repeatedly made a big deal about how he "panned left" so therefore he would have caught the person running away if it were a real person. That's just plain dishonest; he did not react at all to that figure running in front of his camera the way a normal person would, almost as if he actively wanted to avoid catching the person in the act, but still claiming credit he attempted to and no one was there to catch. Grant also says there's no way they could have missed a living person walking right in front of them, but then he says to Jay they would have at least heard the person. That seemed odd to me, because they were outside; they must have had a decent amount of light to see with, from stars, moon, streetlamps, etc — especially for guys who are used to walking around in near pitch-dark conditions inside buildings. So basically, they should have been able to see if someone ran in front of them… I don't think anyone would dispute that, so I'm wondering why Grant seemed to suggest that but then back away and say they would have at least heard the person.  I don't know what, if anything, the inconsistency means but inconsistencies like that never smell good and always beg a closer look.

Jay also says to Grant that there was no heat signature on the ground. Now we've crossed over into completely-made-up-world. We do not see Jay panning the FLIR along the ground where the figure ran past, so immediately it's a little suspect he says this — but maybe Pilgrim just left that piece of footage out. The original footage definitely doesn't count though because we only see the figure from the waist up. The ground was definitely not in frame. Also, he ran past at high speed, followed by Jay "panning" left — and then back right — and then all the way right to Grant. If someone running by that quickly even left a thermal signature that could be seen by their camera, wouldn't it be gone after just a couple of seconds?  If he went back 2 minutes later to look at the ground and noticed there were no thermal footprints, that would absolutely not prove to me that someone hadn't run by.

Jay then records an experiment with Grant walking, and proceeds to assert Grant left thermal footprints. Frankly, I didn't even see a thermal signature on the ground where Grant had been standing much less where he walked past, and if there was a thermal signature then it was very light and must have faded quickly, bringing me back to my earlier point. Another way of putting that is: Jay went beyond "not understanding" science. After seeing the experiment with Grant it's very clear to me that he's either deliberately misrepresenting the facts — saying something is true even though the video proves it is not — or else he is deeply delusional. Along with this "panned left" nonsense I'm going to lean towards the former; the video shows fairly clearly he didn't turn anywhere close to 90 degrees left, which is approximately where one would expect the figure to be after passing them.

In fact, by the end of the investigation Jay & Grant were giving me a very Scooby-Doo vibe, although I wasn't sure if they were Scooby & Shaggy or the mean old hotel owners who were projecting holograms to scare off the riff-raff. If only it weren't for those meddling kids, they would have gotten away with it, too. Grant actually felt the need to point out that when Jay stopped "panning left" and came back right, we see him on the thermal behind and to the right of Jay. Considering the flack he's been (I would say deservedly) getting it's completely understandable he would want to exonerate himself — and the figure that runs by the camera doesn't look like he's wearing the same sweater as Grant anyway. I hadn't even considered the person who ran in front of the camera might have been Grant until he pointed out where he was on the tape. Non-matching sweaters aside for the moment, it's easily conceivable that Grant could in a circle from where he was standing, past Jay and the camera, around Jay's left side as Jay "panned left" and then behind Jay and right back where he'd been standing in plenty of time for Jay to bring the camera back and "prove" it couldn't have been Grant.

I mean, seriously — the fact that the figure on the thermal seemed to be wearing a hood was good enough for me to rule Grant out as a suspect, but then when I see for no apparent reason Jay not only fails to turn the camera far enough left to catch any potential perpetrator, but then also brings the camera all the way back right and points it at Grant for no apparent reason, now all of a sudden it looks like someone was manufacturing an alibi and I have to reconsider the possibility that maybe it was Grant after all and maybe he just pulled his sweater over his head or something. I dunno, but when Grant did his 'look, see I was standing all the way over there so it wasn't me' thing during the Reveal that just set off all sorts of warning bells in my head.

Perhaps the funniest insight of all was when Grant said that usually they get "atypical" thermal hits, but this one was odd because it looked like someone just walked in front of them. Nicely done, sir! In other words, "I know it totally looks like some dude walked in front of us, and not at all like a ghost — but that's what makes it so WEIRD!" Also, remember all those "atypical" thermal hits? Like the dude walking past the camera in that fort, or the dude leaning out and peering around the corner, or the dude standing next to an old stove down a corridor, or the dude who was rounding the corridors of that old Navy ship just ahead of them, always just out of sight? I guess those are all the exceptions that prove the "usually atypical" rule, because those thermal images — and by my recollection, the vast majority of all thermal images they've captured — looked like a living, breathing, dude.

During the evidence analysis Dave Tango did have a pretty good debunk. There seemed to be a sphere floating briefly above the pillows on the bed John Wilkes Booth once laid in — something about it seemed distinctly man-made to me, the way it appeared and disappeared, but I couldn't at all place it or justify that gut feeling — Dave was able to determine it was likely a reflection from a flashlight, so I applaud him for that. If not for him I'd be left here to grudgingly admit I had no rational explanation for (what appeared to be) the floating sphere, no matter what my gut said.

There was also one EVP caught, perhaps not surprisingly while Jay & Grant were in the room. I say not surprisingly because a lot of things seem to happen around Jay & Grant and no one else. A while back there were a rash of audible voices (non EVPs) which many believed to be played from a handheld recorder most likely in the possession of Grant. The voices were never heard around anyone else until just this past episode when we heard something similar in the basement with Kris & Amy (if it is hoaxing, they didn't necessarily know about it). My best guess is that this "EVP" could have been a pre-recorded audio clip played back during Jay & Grant's EVP session and they (and their camera operator) simply could pretend not to hear it when it happened. Conspiracy? Yes, well at this point in a post collar-gate world I don't think the possibility of a Jay/Grant/Cameraman conspiracy is all that far-fetched.

What really got me was that Grant asserted fairly strongly that the voice had said "I am not guilty". This entire investigation, based in the house of Dr. Samuel Mudd who was (some would say unfairly) convicted of being part of the conspiracy to assassinate Abraham Lincoln, has touched upon the Doctor's potential non-guilt, so it seemed almost too perfect to have that as an EVP. In particular, the pacing of the syllables seemed to me that of a computer-generated voice. What was more bizarre though was that Grant immediately played down the possibility that the voice was Mudd's and repeatedly said they can't be sure who might be saying they aren't guilty, or what it might be in reference to. I mean, REALLY? The entire night everyone has been talking about this one guy not being guilty, you get an EVP saying "I am not guilty" and suddenly you're hesitant to even suggest it might be the same man?

Does Grant think that playing coy like that will downplay how blatantly obvious this evidence plant was? Apparently, because right after playing coy and saying they have no idea who might be saying they aren't guilty or what they're referring to, on the car ride out Grant says it's "fun to let our minds wander" on who said it and why, and Jay quickly agreed. Yes — we absolutely don't want to suggest this might be an EVP from Dr. Mudd, don't even think that because we have no idea who it is, but it's fun to let our minds wander to the idea that this was an EVP from Dr. Mudd.  No, not too obvious at all, boys.