I had an unusual experience watching Ghost Hunters, since I had been one the same day. A friend of mine, knowing of my love/hatred of paranormal TV and my unstoppable hamminess, asked me to take part in a haunted house held in the bookstore where she worked. I put on some blue coveralls on which my wife had emblazoned the letters "TAPS" in yellow (Totally Awesome Paranormal Society, OK? No copyright infringement!), and showed up to lead children around to various "haunted" parts of the bookstore. My ghost hunting team consisted of small children brandishing whatever small props I could find around the house that I could pass of as paranormal detection equipment. Did America's most popular ghost hunting group do any better while investigating the Bissman Building?

The preview looked pretty exciting for this episode, with the returning Steve and Tango catching an apparent full-body shadow from the basement. Still, knowing this show, I was fairly sure that this would be a false alarm. My faith was repaid; the full body shadow turned out to be none other than K. J. McCormick, conveniently standing outside and ready to be filmed. Apparently the house has strange, non-Newtonian optical properties that make people cast multiple shadows in strange places. I was unable to narrow down exactly where the mysterious window was with Google Earth, and the TAPS team is less than enlightening. Steve apparently had never seen shadows before, and kept going on about their distance from the caster and apparent solidity. Perhaps, now that he understands the concept, he can explain it to K. J. and Britt. (OK, that was perhaps a bit harsh.)

This episode was also notable for being the most unenthusiastic investigation I've ever seen from Jay and Grant. For a while, it's been apparent that Jay has been completely tuned out during the initial house tours, only waking up after the host stops talking to say, "Oh, and where to next?" (Blah… blah… blah…) "Lead the way." In this case, Jay can't even be bothered to walk into the same room as Grant, sounding positively grumpy when asked to verify the footsteps Grant is claiming to hear. "I can't hear them," he says, "from here." I haven't heard him sound this grumpy since Grant was playing pull-my-collar in 2008. It makes me wonder what we'll see on Halloween.

Of course, the aether has been abuzz with news of Britt being fired for making bizarre comments on a paranormal podcast. In these comments he claimed that he no longer investigates unarmed, so I kept wondering where his gun might be. No sign of one, although I'll admit I didn't check him out terribly closely. I'm not sure whether him being fired for his comments is fair or not, but the thought of an armed man in the dark, chasing after shadows no one else can see… I kind of wish they'd kept him on the show so that he'd be easier to keep track of.

Anyway, my pint-sized paranormal team did at least as well as TAPS did in this case. They found a disembodied voice (the overhead intercom), a number of ghosts (all of them decorative and made of cardboard), and one of them actually found an EMF spike in the paranormal romance section! I hereby proclaim all of them official ghost hunters.

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