Grant wore a T-Shirt advertising the Inn he co-owns with Jay and the man with the awesome name is back yet again! That's right, Britt Griffith seems to be getting in on a lot of TAPS investigations these days. I like to see him particularly because I think he's a pretty good investigator and he's brought some pretty interesting gadgets to the table enabling the team to measure things things previously unmeasured, like the vibrations caused by footsteps. He's definitely an asset to the team. Kristyn Gartland is also on the team for this investigation. We haven't seen her for a little while and she always brings a unique perspective.

Of course I can't stop thinking about that South Park spoof as the investigation began with Jay & Grant excitedly turning in all directions chasing down an alleged cacophony of sounds we at home can't hear and seeing a figure up on the balcony that Jay & Grant both "saw" but no one manages to record video of. This wasn't just a fleeting glimpse either, as Grant yelled out, "It's there again Jay! There's something up there." while the camera studiously focused on Grant's own consternation and seemed to deliberately frame all shots of the balcony with the camera completely zoomed out for the absolute minimum clarity possible.

As the dynamic duo head upstairs to further investigate this figure Jay discovers a bathroom and heads in there to investigate for no particular reason. While the camera is on Grant near the sinks we hear a sound that seems to be one of the bathroom stall doors banging open or shut. The camera pans around to Jay, who is standing right in the middle of all the stalls and actually asks Grant if he heard that (how could he have not heard it?). He quickly asserts that he didn't see which stall door moved, but that it was definitely one of the ones down on the end (and therefore certainly not the one he was standing within arms reach of at the time of the sound).

My respect level for Jay has been declining rapidly these past couple of years.  One needs only to look at the vast disparity between the widespread paranormal activity encountered by Jay & Grant and the extreme rarity of significantly interesting events experienced by other members of the team to suspect something is amiss. From last Halloween's Live event (among many other moments caught on video) we have good reason to suspect Grant may not be conducting an honest investigation, and almost as much reason to suspect Jay is at least aware of some of the hi-jinks. When a bathroom stall door makes a noise while Jay is off-camera standing next to a bathroom stall door, I'm sorry but I have to conclude the most likely explanation is Jay probably made the noise.

…at this point I'd almost rather just cut those two out of the investigation proper for scientific purposes, but of course that was cost the show much of its entertainment value, since its really laughable how much they hear and see that goes completely unrecorded despite how many cameras and audio recording devices they have with them at any given time. It's a hoot when something happens that is easily explained by simple trickery and we're expected to take them at their word. I guess we can't cut them out of the show after all.

Of course when we move to Kris & Kristyn it doesn't get much better. The two of them sat next to each other staring into the dark and telling each other about the movements they were seeing in the dark, comparing notes and even agreeing at one point that they were seeing the same thing. The entire time this is going on we're just shown closeups of the two women, some minor cleavage, with just a few seconds of intercut footage purportedly showing the general area they were looking at mixed in, which they almost certainly recorded at a completely different time from when the sightings were occurring. Thanks Pilgrim!

Seriously, they're on the ball. The show is called "Ghost Hunters" not "Ghosts". Obviously viewers are far more interested in camera shots of people hunting ghosts than in actually seeing video of the ghosts themselves. If they actually showed video of ghosts that would be just as silly as if they revealed who got kicked off the island at the end of each episode of Survivor or told you who got the most votes at the end of each American Idol. Pilgrim Films has the wisdom to know that we're interested in the process. No one actually cares about the results!

Interestingly, Kris Williams actually mentions that they have a number of recording devices with them and expresses hope that the shadows they were seeing might have been picked up on the video. Quick tip, Kris: You need to point the camera at the shadows to have any shot at all of that happening. Actually, I don't know where the mini-DV was and it's possible she had it pointing in the right direction and it just didn't end up showing anything. Of course, that's a result too. It doesn't just count when they pick up some dude running around in a sheet. When they have video that shows absolutely nothing where people thought they were seeing something, that counts too — and the most reasonable way to interpret that result is that people's eyes were playing tricks on them; And the day Steve & Tango finally bring that up during the Analysis will be an interesting day indeed.

During the reveal Jay actually points out that one of the figures they saw did not show up on their camera, and his opinion was that made the event "even stranger". Yes, or the opposite of that.

Amy & Britt were up in the projection booth when they heard a sound that, finally, we in the audience could hear loud and clear. Unfortunately it was from somewhere below them in the theater itself and there's no way to rule out non-paranormal explanations (like someone slamming a door). Backstage later on, Kris & Kristyn also heard a rather loud sound from out in the audience, but again there was no way to determine origin or cause.

In the basement Steve & Tango noticed that the barometric pressure seemed to rise when Dave walked around the room. That was interesting. What was more interesting was their next trick: Shave and a Haircut. Steve knocked, "Tap-Tap-taptap-Tap" and in response they (and we) heard what seemed to be the expected (but yet unexpected) "Tap-Tap". They tried to repeat the result though and were not able to get a response on any of the subsequent attempts. It's possible the initial sound was just a normal sound within the building which just happened to coincide with their experiment at that one moment.

Upstairs in the theater itself the two both reported seeing a figure, which of course the camera turned just a little too late to capture for posterity. This figure was apparently visible for some time because Dave actually gave chase and said he followed it to a hallway and then lost it — yet, we have closeup video of Dave running and no video of the target of his pursuit. That's okay though because Dave noted the hallway he chased it into had camera coverage, so he was confident they would uncover the necessary proof during the evidence analysis. Anyone care to guess how that worked out?

Again, looking at what each team experienced: Many of the investigators seemed to believe they saw some sort of figures in the dark and most of them heard sounds they couldn't explain (but had no reason other than a lack of immediate explanation to classify they as paranormal) but the only team to hear a multitude of sounds we in the audience did not hear was Jay & Grant. The only team to experience an identifiable sound that came from an identifiable location in the same room and close-to the investigators was Jay & Grant in the bathroom when one of the stall doors slammed open/shut off-camera somewhere near/immediately adjacent to Jay. A truly classic moment happened in the boiler room when Britt put down a K-II meter and tried to get any nearby spirits to interact with it. Seeing it light up momentarily Britt got excited thinking he was communicating with a spirit but then the K-II remained quiet. Upon mentioning his confusion to Amy she told him "K-II's just do that sometimes". Absolutely. Odd that Jay & Grant have such consistent success with it.

They did come up with one EVP, but everyone seemed to come to the quick conclusion the EVP was probably just normal ambient noise and not a voice at all (first time for everything!). Another recording they played for the client was just as ambiguous and unremarkable. Towards the beginning of the episode Steve remarks that they have a new piece of equipment that combined IR & Thermal video side-by-side (or at least that's what it sounded like he said) but later when Jay shows the client some ambiguous thermal footage of heat signatures in the audience area of the theater there was no accompanying IR-light footage in sight, and so no way to know what the heck we're looking at. I am beginning to suspect the true purpose of this show is to mentally torture people with solid reasoning skills.

Tune in next week when it's revealed that Steve is one of the final five Cylons. I hope I haven't given too much away.