Right off I had to laugh at the irony of them showing a daylight shot of a spider in the middle of a web as part of the intro sequence.

As usual we start out in the situation room, otherwise known as the basement of Ben’s parent’s house, and swap videos. The grins of sheer delight and actual hand clapping at some of these videos is absolutely nauseating.

First up is the McPike house, introduced by Ben. He informs them that some ghost hunters, led by a Rene Kruse, videotaped a mist in a cellar. They are all impressed how this “mass of mist” seems to ricochet off walls and change directions and move. I immediately wonder how much of this is a trick of the lights that they are continually shining through the mist and turning this way and that.

The guy in the light blue shirt brings up the possibility of gnats and the camera pans to another face and you can see the guy in the green shirt (Austin?) nodding, though he is probably clueless and simply wondering how he can get out of his contract.

Austin snaps to reality and talks about replicating the movement. Still not seeing any movement of the mist itself, but okay.

Ben now springs the paranormal evidence on us of Rene walking into the midst of the mist with a thermometer which dropped from 70 degrees to between 8 and 15 degrees. Interesting, but do we have documentation of that?

An excited Chi–Lan talks about ghosts manifesting as energy which would account for a temperature change, thus proving that she at least watches the typical list of shows such as GH, GA, GL, GHI, etc.

Since it’s a closed basement, our UFO expert Bill (wearing a dark shirt with vertical white stripes) chimes in about there being no air currents. He neglects to remember that there are people walking around which stir up a LOT of air.

Ben adds that people believe the place to be haunted. Figures showing up in windows. Orbs even! Lights. People having clothes tugged on…course, what he doesn’t say is that Grant, KJ, and Kris got together for that investigation of the place. All in all it’s good that we introduce the paranormal aspect so early, we’re going to need it later on in the episode.

Ben is impressed by Rene being a professor at a university (that in itself does not necessarily impress or depress me) but at least he seems to have gotten that one right. She is a technology education professor at the California University of Pennsylvania. I’m not exactly sure what a technology education professor teaches nor am I sure why California can’t keep it’s universities inside the state of California, but I suppose that’s neither here nor there (it’s right over there in the corner next to the ficus tree)

Now the next video they show has nothing to do with anything they investigate but I have to bring it up. It’s the sand circle one. At the end of the discussion, Ben pipes up that he did some research and came across this one where a local artist named Michael Alford said this was an art project.

I bring this up simply to wonder in amazement how Ben could have researched that but not come across some of the other cases that they packed up and headed on site to investigate.

Anywho, amid great glee and hand-clapping (especially by Chi-Lan) Ben, Chi-Lan, and Austin are tasked to go to Alton, Illinois to investigate the McPike Mansion, interrupting their journey only briefly for some McRibs and McNuggets.

On the way in Chi-Lan informs us how haunted the area is, but interestingly it’s all anecdotal. And at this point I was looking for the anecdote…er…antidote.

Since I was along documenting this case, it was about at this time that I was able to take an exclusive pre-investigation photo.

Ben gives a bit of history about Henry McPike and his family and reiterates about a lot of strange things going on at the place now. I see objectivity seems to be going out the window at a more rapid rate.

They pull up to the place and give the requisite “Wows” and Ben confirms that this is exactly what he thinks of when he thinks of a haunted mansion. Chi-Lan does nothing to ground them and starts spouting about the phenomenal architecture, the fact that it has three floors, all these great windows…you know, all things characteristic of a haunted mansion.

The group meets with Sharon Ludkey who gives them a tour. Apparently building codes there require that structures abandoned 60 years ago must not be kept up and must be allowed to fall into ruin.

They are first taken upstairs to the room known as the Sad Room, and it really is Sad to see the state of disrepair the room is in. We get a shot of Austin looking like he had four too many McRibs and he claims he got light-headed and all. Now, I can’t help but wonder if going up the steps had anything to do with it. But this is immediately ruled out when Chi-Lan asks if this happens other times and Sharon says it happens quite frequently to a friend.

Winding their way through downed lumber and other junk strewn about, they head into a room in the back where she gives some example of a Déjà vu experience that I didn’t really follow. But that’s all in keeping with most of the episode so far.

Sharon asks if they are all ready to go to the cellar. The camera pans back and forth showing their faces as if they are contemplating their state of readiness. I hope they are ready, afterall, that’s what they came out here for. Fortunately they seem to be ready and the group goes down the stairs and the cellar doors are pushed open and….commercial. (Yes, that’s the most exciting thing they could come up with for a commercial break)

Sharon talks about how it was a hot and humid July day of over 100 degrees outside. I have to wonder about humid air in this situation.

With the tour over, the trio starts setting out to recreate this mist.

To his credit, Ben brought an anemometer to test for air currents. That’s about all the credit I’m giving him for he then proceeds to stand a foot away from the wall, block the meter with his body and hold the anemometer nearly against the wall. Amazingly he detects no air flow. I also noticed in Rene’s video that the configuration of the room was different…crates possibly in various places whereas now it appears to be a large open cellar. Fortunately, things like that are of no concern to our intrepid investigators.

First up is the Dust Cloud Experiment. They decide to try to recreate the mist using elements already present such as the dust that Austin notices as a result of crumbling masonry. But, then they bring in a shop vac which I don’t recall seeing in the original video. So are they going for natural explanation or hoaxed event?

The plan is to sprinkle Fuller’s Earth on the floor, reverse the flow of the shop vac and “naturally” recreate the mist. Well, at least they don’t bring in an ATV.

They “go dark” and start reverse vacuuming. And kick up a nice dust cloud that Ben says looks really close or something like that. Then they shut off the vacuum and proceed to analyze their handiwork. But Ben rains on the event by saying that it’s been a while since they shut it off (how long, we don’t know) and that the dust is still hanging in there. I fail to see how this was a problem. And they keep talking about how the mist was moving, but I still think that has to do with flashlights bobbing all over the place whereas the lights of FoF were kept mostly shining a steady beam.

Dust being quickly dismissed, the team moves into ludicrous mode. Chi-Lan talks about a swarm of insects being discussed as a possible culprit. Yes, that is indeed a possibility. But not Musca domestica!!!! Maybe gnats but not the flies they used.

Chi-Lan schedules a studio offsite where they can recreate the environment and “Release the Flies” during the Insect Test…10,000 of them supposedly. If they are going for implausible insects by using houseflies instead of gnats, I think they should have upped it a bit and used mosquitoes or wasps.

The flies are released into the mock-cellar and, much like the Lions during the filming of the Arena scene in Quo Vadis, they do nothing. But Chi-Lan says it is amazing and they are really swarming. Though, to me they just look like they are milling about on the plexi-glass. Well, one person’s swarm is another’s milling.

The comparison shots look nothing the same so Austin is volunteered to go in and stir things up. Here is where wasps would have been much more exciting. He enters the Fly Cage and attempts to stir things up with a broom (did anyone see a person with a broom on the original footage?). The flies mostly laugh at him and he gives up.

Now it’s time for the Mist Test (I thought these were all mist tests) where they get a humidifier and an air conditioner and, as Steven Wright says, let them fight it out. The theory is to use the air conditioner to get the temperature down low, kick in the humidifier and get a mist started. Not a bad idea really, so I’m not sure how they came up with it.

They cool the room and the humidifier starts doing its thing and Austin does a fan-dance to get the mist circulating. However it doesn’t look exactly like the original video for probably any number of reasons. Austin says the movement is good but the lingering afterward confuses him. The fog continues to stick around. Well, I wonder if they shut off their fog machine or not?

Having exhausted their brain cells on coming up with natural methods, they fall back on looking for the paranormal explanation (come on readers, don’t act so surprised, you KNEW this was coming!)

A giddy Chi-Lan asks if they’d be interested in staying overnight and doing some investigating and they are all for it.

Rene says there is activity on every level of the house so Chi-Lan indicates the importance of setting cameras up everywhere. On to the Night Investigation…of course, we all knew they'd do this at night. While showing the setup of the cameras, there is a nice shot of an “orb” drifting downward to the right on the third floor…I’m surprised they didn’t jump all over that.

Chi-Lan stays to monitor the cameras and Ben borrows Zak's handy-dandy thermoma-emf-o-meter (although I bet he forgot to grab the manual) Ben starts on first floor, sends Austin to the fourth floor and the two will meet in the middle, presumably on the two-and-a-halfth floor.

Austin explains how he’ll take a picture in every room, do temperature sweeps, EMF sweeps, and while he’s at it, he should sweep the floor, too, because the place is practically coming down as we watch. We watch Austin take a picture and then see an outside shot of the mansion with a light moving in one of the upper corners, thus proving that he’s investigating in that building.

Ben does the ol’ replicate my knocks trick but the music is so darned loud we can barely hear his knocks, let alone any that may answer him. A short while later his thermometer goes nutso. Originally reading a constant 76 degrees, it now shows “a thousand hundred degrees” Does he mean it was a thousand then a hundred degrees, or does he mean eleven hundred degrees?

If there is any external probe jack on the thermometer and he’s shorting it I could see that happening. But what is odd is that, just like Zak getting his 66.6F reading, there is NO EMF reading at the time of this supposed temperature spike. Additionally, the meter can only be reading what the environment is experiencing (unless they are going to claim device manipulation) so why isn’t Ben’s hand charred?

And why the temperature increase when Rene experienced a DROP from 70 to “8-15” degrees?

Austin continues to wander about, looking about as queasy as he did earlier. He radios to Chi-Lan asking about hearing something but, again, the music is so annoyingly loud that I wouldn’t have heard the US Marine Corps Marching Band go through.

Ben, listening in, asks if she sees anything on the camera (I saw a lot of dust floating down) and she sees something and says something (practically inaudible thanks to the music) and we get a commercial break. Back from the commercial break they repeat the scene and go back to Ben’s basement.

They recap their findings and show some really interesting activity from the IR camera in the basement. Unfortunately and coincidentally, we don’t get to see the full activity, just something that looks like Easter grass or antennae wafting back and forth in front of the camera. Ben does the three knocks scene and the recording plays an additional muffled three knocks. Unfortunately, the original knocks are not shown on their audio chart and we only get a close up of the three muffled knocks so nothing can really be said. Sure would have been nice not to have all that music and sound effects going on.

The guy in the pink shirt says that he thinks they got “great EVPs” (huh!?) and they couldn’t replicate it exactly. Chi-Lan and Austin seem to think it was dust, but the great skeptic Ben brings up their great paranormal evidence, at which point Austin switches and says how he felt sick right when he got in and Ben declares for the possibly paranormal angle. Yup, they're back and nice to see nothing’s changed.

Discussion Here