Sorry for the long delay, folks. This episode was accidentally overwritten by my DVR (I should have taught it better) but I've finally gotten hold of it.

Briarhurst Manor, built by a Rairoad (and other assorted Businss) Tycoon as his home and headquarters when he was tending to his Colorado businesses, weighs in at over 14,000 square feet. Unlike many of the other large-ish locations TAPS has investigated (e.g. Military Forts, Mental Asylums) this location is actually nice. The reports of activity are interesting only in that they fall mostly into the two common groups: Events that sound impressive, but were experienced by one person a long time ago and could have been embellished somewhere along the way, and events that are more modern with more witnesses, but also more potential for rational explanation.

One such story involved the "Bleeding Wall" where people had noticed there was some sort of red goo (with a bad smell) leaking out from behind the hundred-year-old wallpaper. Why have it analyzed (and proven to be some sort of chemical decay of the old wallpaper glue, or perhaps even mold of some type) when you can just assume it was caused by ghosts? To be fair, there were some less silly tales — such as one of the employees hearing a woman say an entire sentence to him in front of a witness when they were the only two people in the room. Another report was of a vase being thrown from it's shelf in front of 200 witnesses, but it couldn't have been "thrown" that hard because it's still there and apparently a little glue made it good as new — maybe it just fell, perhaps when someone slammed a door or some other strong vibration moved it slightly. Overall nothing remarkable that would make Briarhurst Manor stand out in my mind as being a particularly compelling location to investigate, above and beyond the standard fare.

Yet, they were a finalist in last year's "Great American Ghost Hunt" contest, so apparently TAPS saw potential here. Will the investigation meet or exceed their expectations? Without giving anything away I think we can be pretty sure it will. Will it meet or exceed ours? Well, if your expectations are "nothing impressive happens" then probably. We'll just have to wait and see.

Exhibit A: Jay & Grant are walking around in the Palmer Room when Jay heard a creaking noise. Grant remembered that they'd been told people sometimes heard the sounds of children running around in the attic above them, and suggested maybe the creaking noise was related to this. They both went upstairs and noticed that the floorboards up there creaked. Jay then went downstairs and confirmed that he could hear the creaking as Grant walked around upstairs; THEREFORE: "There's nobody up there, which means that something was upstairs walking on the creaking board" – Jason Hawes, 2009.

Let's ignore for the moment that sometimes old houses make noise and sometimes creaky boards creak without people walking on them; let's focus exclusively on Jay's testimony. He asserts that the sound of Grant walking was "the exact noise" he'd heard earlier and also that "it sounds like it's right above me", but during the initial experience he originally thought the sound was coming from elsewhere in the same room he was in and didn't even consider the possibility it might be coming from above him until Grant reminded him of the stories they'd heard. This should lead any rational person to conclude that the initial sound was not someone walking around in the attic above — because otherwise the sound would have been clearer and he wouldn't have had any difficulty determining the direction it was coming from. Luckily for Jay, he can just say the exact opposite and people will think it's very exciting they've already caught evidence of ghosts this early in the investigation. Yes, it's true — this particular spirit is the ghost of murdered logic.

Elsewhere, at the site Steve & Tango are walking around with an EMF detector commenting on how interesting it is that they're seeing readings of 0.9 millgauss on the stairs (readings below 3 milligauss are common and caused by radio waves and all sorts of normal phenomena but of course they never mention this) when Steve sits down for a moment to take a well-deserved break and notices a cold spot nearby. In order to confirm his observation, he asks Dave to come over and stick his hand into the cold spot and report whether or not he also believed the spot to be cold. Now maybe I'm asking too much, but you'd figure two guys with electro-magnetic field detectors might also have access to more mundane technology, such as a friggin thermometer — but apparently we've gone back to the gold standard of "Yeah, that does feel cold to me".

…and if you think I'm being too harsh, here's what Steve had to say, "At one point I felt sort of a cold spot so I wanted Tango to check it out just to be certain." That's right, instead of using a thermometer to "be certain" Steve uses Tango's arm. Hilariously (and sadly) Tango also thinks this is perfectly normal and apparently good Ghost Hunting technique as he said to Steve, "Oh yeah… put your hand down here, you'll feel it." Good job guys.  These sorts of scientific techniques are also commonly used in other fields such as Astronomy, where scientists have determined the distance from the Earth to the Moon is 384,403 km by eyeballing it.

Of course in the end they trace the origin of the cold air to a draft coming from a door leading outside — but that's hardly the point. If they hadn't found a source for the cold air they'd label it as potentially paranormal, but meanwhile we're given no evidence to confirm the air was actually cold in the first place, or exactly how cold it was in relation to the ambient temperature. Regardless of conclusions — in fact, as as a prerequisite to them — there should be actual data that can be reviewed, especially when collecting that data means carrying around one of the smallest, least expensive, most readily available scientific tools in existence. Beyond that we know from Season One that they own a ton of thermometers. Where did they all disappear to?

Back in the Palmer room Jay & Grant both report seeing an odd light that isn't picked up by any of the cameras, and then repeatedly talk to each other and the audience about all the footsteps they are hearing from the attic above now, also apparently much more audible in person than on the extremely sensitive professional recording equipment their sound guy was running. It's almost as if they knew the audience had just seen Steve & Tango measuring air temperature with their arms and decided to out-ridiculous their employees. Look! All these exciting things are happening that we can see and hear but you cannot despite all of our audio and video equipment which we've expressly placed for the purpose of documenting this exact sort of thing! Super-cool, this place is totally haunted!

As if to answer my concerns they sent Kris & Amy in to take their place and the two women did report hearing the same types of sounds. Kris said it sounded distinctly like footsteps on a hard wood floor and Amy said the sounds were "loud". At this point there are really only two possible conclusions we can reach: Either Kris & Amy are (also) lying or else the audio equipment really does suck in an extremely pathetic way — especially seeing as these guys are well-funded enough to own some really expensive equipment (FLIR, anyone?) and have been doing these investigations for years. Why can't we hear these "loud" sounds?!

Given the reports that employees and guests at Briarhurst Manor have heard these "footsteps", especially when it's raining, I think the most likely explanation is that the sounds are in fact real. That doesn't make them paranormal, in fact the very notion that they happen more often during storms strongly suggests these are noises the house makes when it's windy, but it does strongly suggest the latter conclusion semi-outlined above: TAPS is terrible at collecting evidence. They own thermometers but don't use them when they notice (what they believe to be) changes in temperature. They have tons of audio recorders going but fail to capture "loud" sounds. Seriously, what the frick?!

Kris & Amy stayed up in the attic for a while and nothing happened. Amy said "the attic's gone quiet on us" but yet again this ignores the obvious conclusion: the creaking sounds were not caused by someone walking around up there. It's an old wooden structure, the creaking could be coming from anywhere within the floors, ceilings or walls when the building moves slightly in the wind, and what sounds like it might be coming from the attic above while you're in the Palmer room, might sound like it's coming from the room below if you put your ear to the attic floor. The only things we know for sure is that TAPS determined the source of these  sounds was coming from the attic despite no one actually hearing these sounds spontaneously occur while standing in said attic. It's the scientific method at work, if by "scientific method" you mean "going with your gut".

But just when you thought it couldn't get any worse, it turns out you're right and it can't. J & G decided to investigate the "bloody wall" and their first inclinations were towards some sort of "normal" explanation. They discovered immediately above the wall in question was a bathroom, and in that bathroom they discovered some (in their estimation) shoddily installed plumbing as well as a reddish cleaning agent that's dried remnants on the bottle's label strongly resembled the dried red gunk they'd seen on the wall below. It's more Sherlock Holmes than Stephen Hawking, but I still have to say one of their more defensible, and therefore stronger, debunks.

During the evidence review Tango manages to isolate precisely one instance of the sounds Jay & Grant were hearing in the Palmer room. This was played for the client and we can clearly hear three "thumps" in the recording that could be footsteps, but seriously: how is it that this went on for so  long and was so loud, for both J&G and also Amy & Kris, yet in the end we get three "thumps" and nothing more. Awful.

Another piece of evidence was purported to be a man humming, but it coincided with some of the most horribly creaky — I would even coin the word "squeereeeky" — floors being walked on by Jay & Grant. I mean, the noises coming from the floor were beyond creaky, they were making some very odd and even shrill sounds on the high end, so I have to think there's a strong possibility this three-syllable "humming" heard on the recording could easily be part of the complex squeereeeking sound coming from those floor boards.

Perhaps the best evidence of the night was a sound-bite captured just as our Heroes were about to discover the red cleaning liquid in the upstairs bathroom: a sound they describe as a female voice and their host upon listening to it believed to be the voice of a child. Personally, I do think this sounds very much like the voice of a child, and unless it was somehow Kris or Amy (which is a possibility that must be considered) I have no ready explanation for it. The sound is very brief, which means it still could potentially something completely other than an actual voice (like a door squeaking open), but it certainly does sound like a voice.