Margam Castle, a Victorian "mock" castle built in 1830, is no stranger to paranormal TV, since Most Haunted visited it in their 2006 series. From the pictures available on the Wikipedia entry, Margam is a subtly gorgeous site, with an astonishing color palette. Appropriately, it was the site of one of the first photographs taken in Wales, although that probably didn't do the colors much justice, much like the black-and-white shots we're going to see.

The guide for the walkthrough is a smiling bald man named Geraint Hopkins, founder of Ghost Watch Wales, who has been visiting Margam for years and is firmly convinced that the place is haunted. All of Hopkins' dialogue is subtitled, even though he is certainly as easy to understand as Barry. A search on Hopkins' name shows that he is an ophidiological, as well as paranormal, enthusiast: he owns an African rock python named Socrates. It's too bad that Hopkins didn't bring Socrates to assist the GHI team in their investigation. I'm sure they would have benefited from its wisdom.

The haunting symptoms are the usual mixed bag, with an unusual addition– red and green flashing lights in the tapestry room, plus bright white lights that leave trails. Yolande Rees-Hopkins, Geraint's wife, saw an apparition that she recognized as that of the original owner, Christopher Rice Mansel Talbot, and another eyewitness heard (and felt) a "white lady" in the Yellow Room. Ghostly monks have been seen outside, and during World War II, US troops under Eisenhower's command were stationed at the house, and complained of seeing phantoms.

The investigation proceeds as usual, with team members hearing the standard assortment of inaudible or barely-audible footsteps and voices saying "help me". An amusing moment happens when Robb and Ashley attempt to investigate the Tapestry Room. First, Robb sits at a table and surrounds himself with assorted unidentifiable gear, which apparently includes an EMF meter, two audio recorders, an accelerometer, and a proximity sensor. None of them do anything of note, but Ashley manages to tie my brain in a knot by claiming to see a "shadow… lit up" walking through the room. The music gets spookier. "You have five boxes here. Now which one would you like to use to communicate?" The sound level cranks up, and we hear an ambiguous sound a little like a hooting owl, which Robb hears as a deep man's voice saying "Mm-mm". He refuses to call it paranormal, preferring to wait to hear what's on the other equipment.

Next, Robb and Ashley investigate the church on the grounds. Robb asks an interesting, if confusing, question: "To the monks that worship here, if you believe in God, what's keeping you from moving on?" Maybe their contemplation keeps getting interrupted by Americans waving bizarre equipment at them. Or maybe it's hard to move on when you don't exist.

Meanwhile, Ashley keeps trying to reach an entity named "Tom", to the point where I thought she was going to bust out Bowie's "Space Oddity." Hmm… I may have another song parody idea, there. Ashley has heard that there was a monk there named Tom, and she's determined to hear his name. The thing about EVPs is that the determined usually get their wishes.

Robb sits down on some steps and companionably asks Brother Thomas to join him. "Can you tell me what's going to happen to me?" he asks. Hmm… my guess would be continuing as team leader for a while, then disappearing from the show with little explanation and doing the convention circuit for a few years. Robb then listens to the playback. He plays it to Ashley, who looks delighted. "'Get out'?" she asks. Friends, I avoid loud music and have a good pair of headphones. I heard nothing but some wind noise.

Meanwhile, in the Yellow Room (which, by the laws of literature, really should have a Secret), Scott and Barry chase an (inaudible to us) moaning noise back into the servants' quarters, where they stand on a chair and peek in over the top of the door with a hand camera and hear a soft moan. Then, when attempting to do a monologue to the camera, Scott suddenly  claims that he felt someone grab his leg. Barry has an alibi– he was, for no apparent reason, standing in the far corner of the next room.

Finally, Ashley and Paul decide to visit the ruins of the chapter house. Ashley sees another shadow in the darkness. Then both hear footsteps. They are unable to chase anything down. "I've been doing this for quite some time now," says Ashley to the camera, "and all the places we went internationally I've never had crazy experiences such as the ones I've had tonight." Robb sends Ashley and Barry back out to try to document what she saw. Barry sees a mysterious black mass.

Analysis yields the expected. Brandy picks out "Tom" from the tape hiss. Barry finds a strange glow in the tapestry room that appears only when Robb and Ashley are investigating. They make no attempt (at least onscreen) to match it to anything in the room, and only call it a strange glow. On the plus side, it does match one of the stories told on the tour. On the minus side, we see nothing of any attempt to actually understand what it might be. They jump right to "ghost." Barry slurs Geraint's name, making me jump for a second when he seems to say, "Well, we'll show it to Grant." Finally, Brandy shows off a misty form she caught on film at the Chapter House when everyone else was doing the tour.

So let's see what evidence they presented at the reveal.

1. The "Lily Charlotte" knocking: During an EVP session, Barry asks: "Lily Charlotte, would you please come forward? I want to ask you a few questions." There is a rhythmic knocking sound. Hopkins smiles, nods, and says, "It is footsteps, yeah." My verdict: I have no idea what it is, but nothing seems particularly paranormal about it. It could be anything from a camera cable to a crew member trying to keep up. We have no video footage, so we have no idea what's going on then.
2. Paul and Brandy's "Tom" EVP: Brandy asks, "What is your name." Afterward, there is a strange, vaguely hooting sound. Hopkins: "That was Tom, definitely, yeah. That was very clear." To me, it sounded more like digital distortion of some background noise, or maybe a dog barking in the distance. Whatever it was, it didn't start with a 'T' sound, didn't have a short "O" sound in the middle, and didn't seem to end with an 'M'.
3. St. Mary's Church EVP: Robb asks, "Can you tell me what's going to happen to me?" Hopkins: "If you look really close, you can hear, 'Get out'." Synesthesia? Anyway, still sounds like a wind noise distorted by voice compression to me.
4. Mysterious light in the Tapestry Room. Robb says, "Where it's coming from, what it is… we're working on it." Fair enough, but how does he propose to do that? If they actually tried catching it again from a different angle, or even showed us what that patch of ceiling looked like in daylight, we might get an idea or two.
5. Brandy's Chapter House misty form. Getting a better look at it, you can see that the whitish form under the tree isn't a distinct feature, but is part of a line that extends off to the upper left corner, which makes me think that it's probably lens flare, or perhaps a spider web near the lens. Hopkins: "It looks like a habit– like a monk would wear." He claims that they've seen similar things there in the daytime. Do monks actually wear white robes?

So that concludes another investigation. Again, no convincing evidence, although at least Brandy's photograph was an interesting puzzle for a second or two. The annoying thing, to me, is that attempting to solve the tapestry room light would actually be more interesting than what they show us. And I still want to see the snake.