by Stephen

(For various reasons this episode took me hours to sit through. Apologies that it took so long!)

Apparently, ever since Zak and Co. visited the Washoe Club in Virginia City, Nevada, the ghosts there have been calling for them to return. Virginia City is a small town off Nevada's beaten track. It's primarily a tourist town and looks vaguely like the set of Bonanza– or vice versa. This would be some pretty impressive evidence if the EVPs were collected by people who had no connection with the GAs, so a skeptic like me is convinced now, right?

Um. Actually, these EVPs were collected and interpreted by EVP experts Mark and Debby Constantino, frequent show participants. So this show again presents me with a puzzle. The EVPs that they produce are basically voice-like static– the sort of thing you'd get by waving a voice recorder around in an uncontrolled environment. Fortunately, two of our three Ghost Adventurers have one-syllable first names with hard "K" sounds– the kind of thing that you'd get if you recorded a clicking sound on a voice recorder. So all of this could be pure misinterpretation– the Constantinos hearing names when none are there. Of course, it could also be hoaxing or post-production sweetening, or even (I guess) real ghost voices, though how or why I have no idea. Since it's not enough to regard as evidence for the paranormal, is this all a hoax, or is it sincere and possibly mistaken?

The Constantinos start by playing some terrifying EVPs: "Nick Groff" (or, as it sounded to me, "click scuffle") and "Hate Nick" ("scuffle scuffle-click"). Nick chimes in with "It freaks me out how clear they say my name." Yes, when they play it after the cast repeats what it's supposed to say, plus subtitles, I can hear it too. But if I close my eyes and try to listen to what's really there, it sounds like scuffling and scratching– the sort of sounds you'd get if you waved a voice recorder around randomly while scuffling your feet.

We move to the usual history download. Zak interviews a number of witnesses. Ghost Diva Janice Oberding provides historical information about the Virginia City Silver Rush and some moments of humor.

Then the eyewitnesses test my ability to avoid mocking people's names. We have Alex Atreides, an intelligent-looking woman who was present at a seance where the medium claimed that the place was haunted by the ghost of a "murderer" who "enjoys killing!" Always good to appreciate your hobbies, I guess. Then we have the testimony of Debbie Bender and Tomas Cruz. (Must… resist…) Apparently their encounter consisted of Mr. Cruz falling down the stairs, which they interpreted as paranormal somehow.

I'd like to take a moment to recognize the virtuosity of the second unit crew. Not only did they enliven their no doubt dull day of shooting interiors of old buildings by practicing their technique on push-pull zooms (those shots where the background seems to distort and widen), but they illustrated Tomas' fall down the stairs with a truly astonishing re-enactment. The camera operator makes his camera tumble down the stairs, making the viewer feel every bump and jostle. Whoever that is shooting B-roll will be the next Stanley Kubrick. I'm almost certain that I'm serious about this.

Next, manager, ex-corrections officer, and apparent bartender Wilson Donaldson talks about a falling barstool and a mysteriously flipping matchbook. Donaldson tells Zak of an undoubtably paranormal experience he had when a delivery boy came in one day, then ran out into the street and vomited. Now, a layman like me would see this just as the result of a bit too much Virginia City moonshine the previous night, but that just shows what an expert Zak is. Combining this information with the knowledge that the storeroom in the saloon was once used as a morgue, he instantly knows that the delivery guy saw an apparition "up there looking back at him!" while putting stuff away, and ran outside and vomited in fear. This has the effect, for the rest of the episode, of making vomit paranormal.

Then a metaphor attacks! Did I forget to mention that Ms. Bender and Mr. Cruz run a ghost hunting operation of their own? It's called "Bats In The Belfry Ghost Hunting Tours." (I swear to you I'm not making this up.) On their website, they explicitly disallow provoking spirits, and they and Zak come to the conclusion that the ghosts are more aggressive these days because ever since the Ghost Adventurers investigated Virginia City the first time, the place has been beset by wannabees provoking the spirits, like a new SILVER RUSH, get it? I wonder where these guys got the idea to go into supposedly haunted places and try to provoke the spirits? …Hmm. Can't figure it out.

In an apparent attempt to solidify the metaphor even further, Zak and crew head to an actual silver mine, the Chollar Mine, to start out their investigation. Now, this mine has several paranormal qualities. For one thing, the owner once thought he saw someone down there. For another, according to its web site, it's currently for sale for $575,000. Seems like a bargain! Who's in?

After a witness interview recounting more paranormal nausea, Zak reveals that it's a childhood dream of his to become a miner. He speculates that perhaps his love for mines means that he was a miner in a previous life, and that maybe he had worked in this very mine! This idea brings us this (probably) unintentionally creepy dialogue with the mine's owner:

Zak: Maybe I'm back home!
Keichler: Maybe you are!
Zak: Maybe a mine took my previous life…
Keichler: Maybe you'll stay here!

Finally we're locked down and the lunacy that we know and love can commence, and it commences in earnest. First, they put down a device they call "Ed's Box" and describe it as a motion sensor with an alarm on it, "only it's not triggered by motion" but by EMF. Riight. They couldn't just call it an EMF sensor and be done with it? It's like Ocean Breeze Soap from The Muppets Take Manhattan: it's just like an ocean cruise, except there's no boat, and you don't actually go anywhere.

Zak threatens to take their silver, and for a moment I expect him to slap on an eyepatch and start calling people "matey". Aaron starts feeling ill, which wouldn't be too surprising for someone in an unventilated space surrounded by poisonous spiders, but is instead exciting and interesting, because vomit is paranormal today. Nick says that he keeps hearing "one of those things that pick into the ground." The word he's looking for is "pick." Then suddenly we get the freakout moment of the evening. We hear some jangling, and Zak claims to have been hit by something metallic. Whatever.

There's only one open pit in the mine, so naturally Nick needs to climb on the ladder at its top, and here's where GA really gets back into its utterly insane groove. After capturing a "disembodied voice" supposedly saying "help" (sounded a lot more like "ow!" to me) Zak pulls out a device that he describes with great fanfare as a new piece of equipment. According to Zak:

This device has a word database in it, and, uh, you can only hear the words when the energy in the environment is shifted or changed. Spirits can figure out very easily how to manipulate this word database and exert different  levels of energy to choose their exact words to communicate with us.

It's the Ovilus.

Now, for those of you fortunate enough not to be obsessed with these things, the Ovilus was a device that got its big moment on Paranormal State, when Ryan and crew supposedly used it to talk to a demon. It's a speech synthesizer with a 512-word vocabulary connected to an EMF detector and a temperature gauge. The instruction manual explains that it is a toy with no real ability to track down ghosts, but let's ignore that.

They turn it on, and after a while, it says its first word, "Frank." The GAs assume that they're talking to a ghost named Frank, and try to engage him further in conversation. "Frank" then says "stair." They're quite impressed by this, because Nick is standing on a stair, after all! Well, actually, a ladder, but the Ovilus can't say "ladder." Then the kicker: the Ovilus says "fell through." That's amazing on two levels. First, it's clearly in context. The fact that we go from talking about someone standing in a hole to saying "fell through" is, of course, amazingly unlikely. Second, the Ovilus only says one word at a time, with a regular pause between words. Clearly, saying "fell through" like this is evidence of paranormal activity!

Except that the Ovilus didn't say "fell through." It said "helpful," which sounds like "fell through" when poorly recorded from a terrible speech synthesizer. "Frank stair helpful" is not a particularly exciting message.

The static cameras pick up some supposedly mysterious sounds, but nothing to write home about, and the mine owner unlocks the team to head back to the Washoe Club to confront some name-calling ghosts.

Of course, the action starts as soon as the GAC show up. There's a mysterious disembodied voice, and Zak tells us that the only source of voices was a closed-down bar downstairs! (Um, they're in front of a street.) Zak gives the International Ghost Hunters Hand Sign for "quiet, a disembodied voice is talking!" and delivers an impassioned speech about how "…I already know they're here so it's not a surprise to me." Nor to me, Zak. Nor to me.

They move on to setting up the X cameras. "There's no wrong place to set up an X-cam!" proclaims Zak. "This entire place is HAUNTED AS HELL." The team starts smelling cigar smoke and shouting insults at the air. There's a loud noise, and it's time for those playing the drinking game to chug, because it's the nightly freak-out! Claiming that the noise was something thrown at them, the GAs gather together. "WHO IS HERE?" Zak screams. "The BLEEP are surrounding us right now," Nick explains helpfully. Of course, we don't see anything thrown, just a bang. Zak's off camera right then, by the way.

Naturally, faced with a loud banging sound, Zak does the only logical thing: he pulls out a radio and starts playing it into a voice recorder. Yes, really. It's tuned to "the radio frequencies where these spirits are said to communicate." Then, when actual VOICES start coming out of the radio, Zak even manages to look surprised. "It said, 'help!'" he says excitedly. They proceed up the stairs, getting more snippets of radio broadcasts… I mean, spirit voices.  They get "help", "listen", and "trouble." (But then again, they also heard the Ovilus say "fell through.") It's the perfect time to call in the Constantinos.

By an amazing coincidence, it's 3AM, when the Constantinos are showing up anyway. They are going to do "immediate live playback after certain questions," Zak announces in voice-over. "And if we get relevant responses that don't come from any of our own mouths, well then you are about to witness an extremely powerful moment– an actual conversation between the living and the dead." Most of the EVPs are typical scuffle sounds interpreted as voices. For some reason Zak asks if one of the ghosts had followed Nick home the previous day and gets a gasp he interprets as "yes". Debby leads them to the place where they had gotten the EVPs about Nick and Zak previously, and Zak and Nick demonstrate their impressive ability to get goosebumps on cue. "This is very indicative of sensing spiritual energy!" Zak expounds.

One EVP is a standout: a strange, squeaky voice proclaiming, "No, we're not scared of them!" I don't know quite what to make of it. We don't get a good reference audio of the room at the time, but it does sound suspiciously like one of the guys in the room doing a funny voice. Since the recorder is voice activated, we don't even know exactly when it happened. Yet another reason to love EVPs, I guess.

We're into the home stretch! Zak begins feeling touched. Nick: "Is someone touching Zak right now? Yell his name if you want him out of here." Zak: "Don't put it all on me, dude!" Then Zak screams that something just tugged on the back of his shirt, and Mark Constantino feels something tug on his back pocket. Pandemonium ensues, and in the middle of it the Constantinos play back an EVP that they later proclaim sounds like a deep voice saying "Groff". (Doesn't sound like much of anything to me.) They theorize that the ghosts dislike Nick so much because, back in the previous investigation, he was in the room immediately before they materialized. Why this would enrage them is beyond me.

Somehow this episode lacked much of the campy fun of the previous week's episode. Despite the wacky hijinks with EVPs and the Ovilus, there seemed an odd feeling of solemnity that undermined my ability to take it as pure goofy fun, and of course there was no convincing evidence. In short, it felt like an episode of Ghost Hunters.