It's been a while since I've watched GHI, and I don't think I've reviewed an episode before for the site. It's a show that evokes mixed feelings for me. The GHI crew goes to interesting, beautiful locations, then turn the lights out and film them in grainy black-and-white. These places often have a fascinating history, which they often ignore in exchange for tourist-trap ghost stories. I've never seen anything that jumps out at me as a definite hoax, and that's good, but also makes watching the shows pretty tedious.

This week, the GHI crowd heads to Nottingham, England, to visit the Galleries of Justice, which is a really cool name and reminds me of the Saturday morning cartoons of my misspent youth. The Galleries of Justice were supposedly the former headquarters of the Sheriff of Nottingham. As Ashley puts it, "This place is actually believed to be the birthplace of the Robin Hood story." The regular GHI crowd is joined by Susan Slaughter and Karl Pfeiffer, two graduates of Ghost Hunters Academy, and investigator Scott Tepperman, who wields the unstoppable power of a New York accent.

Now, the premise of this investigation seems a little wonky from the get-go. Let's face a few facts. Robin Hood was a fictional character. His story has been told and retold, often reworked to put him in opposition to whatever was unpopular at the moment. He was the anti-landowning, anti-clerical, green-tights-wearing Batman of the 1400s. Similarly, while the Sheriff of Nottingham was a real title, modern historians aren't sure which real Sheriff the old tales refer to, if any. Will the GHI realize that they're chasing ghosts of possibly nonexistent people? We'll see.

During the walkthrough, Martin Jeffrey, their guide, works pretty hard to sell this place as a hotbed of paranormal activity. Although he is identified simply as a "Tour Guide", a little bit of web search work tells me that Jeffrey is himself the event director of a group of ghost hunters called Fright Nights, who according to a press release has determined "that the Galleries of Justice Museum holds Britain's most active poltergeist." Jeffrey takes the crew on a tour practically guaranteed to be more exciting than the evening's actual ghost hunt. In the judicial chambers, there is a chair which supposedly transfigures anyone sitting into it into the likeness of Justice Black, even lovely young women, as Jeffrey helpfully explains. Downstairs, there is a room where objects get hurled out the door, and a cave which may have been the prison of Robin Hood, if he existed. Do they do Batman tours of New York?

In the basement, Jeffrey tells an extraordinary ghost story of a young woman who sees a movement in a dark room and is then attacked and pushed against the wall by a shadowy figure. This was apparently witnessed by eight of her friends. Robb chimes in with, "For that many people to witness an attack, this is definitely something we're gonna want to check out." Of course, by "check out" he doesn't mean to interview the woman and her friends, or even to verify their existence, but to set up cameras in the dark and talk to the air. OK.

Under the castle are the caves, and here Jeffrey is shown uttering a phrase that leaves me scratching my head: "This cave, nobody knows quite sure why it was built, and whether it was just used as some form of dungeon. The interesting thing is people knew of Robin Hood's tunnel. The likelihood is if he did exist, if he was a Nottinghamshire outlaw, he would have been here." Well, I can't fault that logic. An employee felt as though she were being watched down there, and people have seen a ghostly candle flame that casts no shadows. Also beneath the castle is an oubliette, which reminds me that we used to have one of those around here. Hope she comes back.

Our team sets up their standard four cameras and gets to work. Robb and Scott head down to the modern cell block to investigate. They get the usual EMF wobbles, which Robb rather carefully describes as "a flux in the EMF field, indicating that something was potentially moving by." Hey, I guess in England everyone really does talk like The Doctor. (The BBC one, not the poster in the forums. Just to be clear.) Robb starts feeling chills, and they claim that the area they're in is suddenly freezing. The FLIR clips show no evidence of this, and their breath does not mist. Whatever. Robb comes up with a complicated analogy about ghosts working out in the gym, or something. Apparently this indicates that the ghost has probably just expended a lot of energy, and they should really check the tape for EVPs later. Anybody want to make a bet on whether they find anything?

After a brief, unmemorable interlude with Barry and Brandy doing full-spectrum shots and chatting with the ghosts for EVPs, we return to Paul and Scott in the judges' chambers. Paul, sitting on the bench, intones "your sentence has been passed", and generally tries to convince the ghosts that they're free to go. Scott wields the awesome power of a Queens accent and tries to provoke the ghosts into doing something rash. There's a loud noise in the back of the room, and we're in the bang-and-chase part of the evening. They find nothing, and conclude that their aggressive tactics might have scared the ghost away. Really.

Then Barry and Susan, predictably enough, try to turn Susan into an old man via what Barry keeps calling "transconfiguration". In the main courtroom, Susan sits in the judge's chair and invites the entity to make full contact with her if it wants. She reports odd sensations and tingling, but nothing appears on the IR camera. Barry sees something "unusual" in one of his full-spectrum shots. A background noise sends Barry racing to find the source, only to be scared by a mannequin in a costume. I believe that Barry's "feckin' hell" may replace Grant's "Oh fej!"

Next we rejoin Carl and Robb in the cave beneath the gallery, which they are starting to call "Robin Hood's cave" for no apparent reason. Robb asks if Robin Hood is there with them, but unaccountably fails to ask if Sherlock Holmes or James Bond are there either. People have been reporting thrown rocks in the area, and in a moment of clarity Carl discovers that condensation dripping on some wood planks makes a sound like a thrown rock. Good one Carl!

After an interlude with Paul and Ashley knocking on a wall and chasing a phantom voice, we get Robb and Brandy going through a squeaky door into the Night Cell. Robb pulls out a light meter. I had trouble figuring out exactly what this thing was supposed to do, other than to be the latest blinky light. In active mode, it beams UV light out and measures the light intensity. In passive mode, it just… measures the light in a dark room. (At one point Robb describes these as "active passive lights.") What does this have to do with ghosts? In any case, the device immediately starts blinking. Robb invites the ghost to come over, because the device can't hurt them. Then, for no reason I can figure out, he comments, "or maybe it can." I guess the light was supposed to have sped up, but I couldn't see a difference. Robb then turns off the UV out of kindness to the ghost, and the ghost goes away. "That is an AMAZING device right there," says Ashley. "Tough to beat that," agrees Robb. Yep. Blinked for a while, then didn't.

Finally, Paul and Scott are in the oubliette, where they hear the voice of a woman, which Paul initially thinks is Scott's stomach. Scott proclaims that it can't be him because he ate right that day. They talk about this for a while.

At the reveal, they break out several EVPs for Martin Jeffrey. As per my usual practice, I turned away from the screen as soon as I heard the term "EVP" to avoid being influenced by any subtitles, but that proved to be unnecessary. There's a rather obvious scuffling noise that they claim is "get out" in an English accent. A breath turns into "You're right". They also recorded some tapping noises. The exciting anomaly that happened when Susan was sitting in the chair turned out to be a random, out-of-focus blob, which could have been anything close to the lens– kind of a mega-orb. On this evidence, they proclaim that this place is definitely haunted.

GHI has its own odd, somewhat dull kind of charm. I'm still having trouble telling some of the cast apart in the night-vision shots, since they don't seem to do much to show the personalities of the female investigators, and the male investigators can be differentiated largely by facial hair and accent. They failed to find the ghosts of any fictional or poorly-sourced characters, but they did manage some debunking. I'll take what I can get.