We start the season finale (er, the summer season finale, that is) with something a bit different. Different clothes, that is. Other than that, we have the same problems. I screwed up my DVR recording of this one right from the get go but fortunately it was aired again an hour later so I caught it and got the whole thing. Why did I have a problem with the recording, you might ask? I’m glad you asked that. I tried to do a playback during the initial sit-around discussing videos scene. I shall go into more detail later….

As I mentioned, a change of clothes was ordered for the last episode. They discuss a few videos like the Skunk Ape and the Linda Vista place and decide on a cattle mutilation and a ghost in a graveyard that some paranormal researchers captured. They didn’t notice it at the time but when reviewing the “evidence” later, there was a ghostly figure with a light that seemed to go right by the cameraman.

This is the story of the Cemetery Phantom, known as the Caretaker for some reason.

Jael, Austin, and Ben head to Indiana to investigate this “mysterious” video. Why? Why waste money going to Indiana? There was a much, much simpler way of investigating this video. Hit the [obscenity deleted] pause button on the player! That’s where I goofed my DVRing the first time was trying to review while recording.

When I was growing up, I had a number of “pets” in my backyard that I was fascinated with and would occasionally feed just to watch their activities. So, I am very familiar with the characteristics of the Araneidae family of spiders, commonly known as the orb weavers. They like to sit in the middle of their webs at night (usually after rebuilding any tears or damage done from insects the previous day). As they showed the clip during the sit-around scene, I noticed the characteristic abdomen with some protrusions around it. Upon pausing it, the legs stood out as plain as day…er…night, aided with night-vision cameras.

Even though I knew from the description of a cemetery that this was one of the cases to be aired, you can just imagine my disgust as they continued oohing and ahhing about this footage.

Alright, since they muddled through the investigation, I suppose I’ll make an effort to muddle through this review. If for no other reason than to show once again how bad the investigative skills of this team are.

The aforementioned members head off to Fishers, Indiana, to meet with Caroline Milligan who was there that night. In the car they recap how Caroline was on her own investigation and Jael pipes up with how the Cemetery is going to be the perfect place for a ghost hunt. You know, I bet if Steve had come along they would have solved this thing in a heartbeat.

Caroline explains about the activity in her house, everything from footsteps to knobs turning and she had come to the conclusion that they had “ticked something off” She reiterates that nothing was seen or heard and it wasn’t until playback that they saw the spider, er, “thing” Then she adds that, to her, “it almost looked like the Caretaker.”

Off into the woods they go. Caroline continues to explain that they wanted to capture what was in their house, but wanted to come out here on so that they were on the "thing's" home turf. Austin brings up the large number of Civil War soldiers from Indiana and Caroline agrees but says that there is only one that is buried here…a James Payne…and he was buried near where Caroline lived. I suppose that means it has to be he who is haunting her house. Proximity, you know. Even though Hitler can be suspected to haunt his bunker all the way from Berlin. Oh, am I digressing again? Where was I?

Further proof comes from the fact that if you were to follow the headstone it would go right to the back of her house. Huh? You need TWO points to define a line. Heck, you could make a line between his headstone and MY house, too, why haven’t I seen him? Oh, wait, I do have a few orb weavers around here, too, so I have.

They go to the headstone of Jas. Payne and Caroline tells us that he was a deserter. Austin asks how she knows and she replies “Because, unlike you folks, I know how to do research!” Well, not quite, she went down to Indianapolis and looked up his draft card which indicated that he was a deserter.

Caroline leaves and the hilarity ensues.

First up is an ATV experiment. Oh you should have heard the oaths being uttered here! Austin gets his helmet (he’s the stunt guy, right?) and starts to get ready while he explains just exactly what the ATV Experiment is for and why. One of the theories out there is that this was just someone driving by on a vehicle. Seriously! So they are going to have Austin floor it through the cemetery area on the ATV and film him. Seriously!

They set up and Austin revs up and starts hauling toward the camera and dramatic percussion music accompanies him as he roars across the grass past the camera. Well, results were pretty conclusive to me. Austin is NOT a spider.

To their credit they do bring up the slight sound that the ATV made. Ben rules out the ATV on the grounds that if it were a legitimate video, people probably would have noticed the ATV roaring by them 4 feet away. I found no flaw with that conclusion.

Dust Devil Experiment. But, there’s another theory that this image was actually a naturally occurring phenomenon in the form of a dust devil that reflected the IR light of the camera. So, rather than consult their Golden Guide to Spiders and their Kin, (have I mentioned yet that the footage is just a freakin’ spider?) the team builds a railroad so they can roll a big dolly down the track, having on it a high-powered fan. Jael sprinkled Fuller’s Earth along the track and then she would pull the fan over the dirt and have it kicked up by the fan, causing a dust cloud, which they could bounce their IR off.

Jael starts pulling, more dramatic music, and commercial. Okay, we’re back. There was a cloud of dust and an EVP that said “Hi Ho Silver” and there were many differences. The plume hung around for quite a while, not to mention the fact that the guy with the camera should have been wincing and averting his eyes once he got smacked by the dust cloud. Ben brings that up and dismisses the dust devil.

Jael concludes that it is safe to say that the footage was not of a dust devil, natural or man-made. Of course not, did I mention it’s a spider?!?

It gets better. The Mist Wall Experiment. Seriously! It’s getting difficult for me to go on, here. Ben tells us that they can’t completely dismiss that this might be a hoax. Yup, the woods are full of tricky spiders who have nothing better to do than punk humans in a cemetery. What does the team do now? Well, they set up this elaborate apparatus to throw out a curtain of water vapor.

They plan to run water through the apparatus to some misting nozzles where they have leaf-blowers attached which will create a mist. Jael remembers something that Caroline had said where she believes that the person in the video was a person (obviously not well versed with the various arachnids in the area, either). So, they would get someone to run through the mist (Austin again, putting that stunt expert talent to work) and they would film him carrying a light.

Austin starts booking toward the camera and Ben films, exclaiming “Wow” Then explains that when it came out of focus and says it looked like an orb. Jael has doubts and suggests they break out the IR cameras and look for other explanations that are paranormal. Pity they didn’t come across any spiders.

So now it’s the Night Investigation. These guys are killing me. Ben explains that their efforts to recreate this as a hoax or a natural occurrence weren’t convincing. Yeah, you got that right! So now it’s time to try looking at the Paranormal. They set up four IR cameras as stationary recorders and then go traipsing around the cemetery looking at gravestones, reading a few of them.

Then we have the obligatory “Camera 3 just went dead” And Ben starts hearing things and can’t help but feel that someone has been walking beside them ever since they started their sweep. He hears leaves rustling which are, of course, footsteps, he says. So then they decide to film leaves and see if any of them move. They think they see something which means it’s time for a commercial.

After the break they can’t see the movement and Ben thinks it might have been an insect moving under the leaves. Off to Payne’s grave to do a, yep, an EVP session. They raise the bar of lunacy even further by asking if James was the spider in the video that they were investigating. A few other questions, trying to pin the figure on James and it’s back to the Situation Room.

Ben recaps the Indiana episode detailing the experiments and how they couldn’t replicate the video. Then they go to the EVP session where we hear Jael say the word Coughhhh

The rest of the team is impressed. The guy in the brown shirt says that they captured good evidence of the paranormal and Jael repeats what she said earlier about a perfect setting for a ghost story and the leave it as something being still unexplained in the cemetery in Indiana.

Okay, I’ll explain it to them in words and in pictures:

IT’S A BLEEPING SPIDER!!!!

Exhibit A

Exhibit B

And one of my local friends:

Here was another investigation where they show their horrible skills.  I had this one in the opening scene even before they decided upon it as the case.  If I hadn't known that they were going to investigate something in a Cemetery, I would have let it go and figured they would ID it, but since I knew this was to be the case, I had to stop right then to verify what I thought it was.  Pathetic.

Discussion and comments for this debacle may be found here:

http://www.skepticalviewer.com/forums/fact-or-faked/s01e06-the-caretakercutter/page-1