Once upon a time, in Tallinn, Estonia, a mysterious man in black came to rent an apartment. He offered to rent a room for three nights, on the condition that no one, not the landlord, nor any snoopy neighbors, look inside. The landlord agreed, and the man in black handed over his cash and moved into the room. That night, however, the sounds of a loud party emanated from the room, and the landlord could not contain his curiosity. He knelt at the door and put his eye to the keyhole. What he saw made him draw back in horror. "The Devil!" he cried to his wife. "It is the Devil, and he is having his wedding!" He died, horribly, the next day.
Mythology is full of tales of someone offered a wonderful deal who came to a bad end because they just couldn't keep from looking where they shouldn't. Nonetheless, GHI comes along to peer into the Devil's keyhole. The apartment in question is an old, but well-kept, place called simply the "Old House" apartments. Tenants have reported the sounds of music and footsteps when none should be there, and a former owner awoke to the figure of a Soviet pilot standing over his bed. In Robb's words, "The mix of the legend and the more modern paranormal activity is definitely gonna present a challenge for us."

"What we need to do," says Paul, "is get a glass of water from the kitchen." This intro leads us into the investigation's crowning moment of surreality. As Paul tells the tale, a guest once came to the apartment and asked for some water and some black bread. When morning came, the staff learned that he hadn't eaten the bread or drunk the water during the evening. When asked about it, the man replied, "Oh, it's not for me. It's for the spirits." There's something missing from this anecdote. What is it? Oh yes… anything supernatural whatsoever. What we have here is the story of someone not eating something. Nevertheless, Paul and Susan acquire water and bread and start an EVP session. Paul is not satisfied, though, so he decides to provoke the spirits. He does this by first threatening to eat the bread, then by actually eating the bread. Any spirits nearby appear unimpressed. Paul then complains that the bread is bad-tasting and dry, which might explain why the original tenant didn't eat his bread in the first place. Oh well. I guess that's a debunk of sorts.

Unfortunately, aggravated bread-eating is about as exciting as this episode gets. Barry and Ashley attempt to contact the Soviet pilot, with Barry reassuring the Soviet spook that "the cold war is now over. There is peace," and then, in the next breath, "I'm not American. I'm from Ireland." Uh, unless I miss my guess, that's not gonna help much, Barry. Then Paul and Barry perform the least enthusiastic attempt to contact the Devil I've ever seen. Paul literally finger-quotes the word: "If 'Satan' is here…"

GHI finds nothing. Various strange noises that they've heard turn out to be investigators hearing each other through the apartment walls. (Uh, guys? Don't you have radios? Can't you do things like say, "I just knocked on the wall," or something? Oh, that's right. TV.) Robb does a decent debunk– he figures out that the stairs have a tendency to bow out of shape when someone walks on them, then pop back up later, giving the sound of footsteps on the stairs. Not bad.

Join the discussion over in the forums.