In the first part of the "Empire State" episode, we begin with the astonishingly abrupt departure of Britt and Kris Williams. Jason calmly informs them that GHI is shorthanded, and that those two will need to immediately uproot their lives in the US and spend the next year chasing the ghosts of fictional characters and filming colorful locations in black and white. Kris displays some acting skills in pretending that this is welcome news, while Britt merely nods. I do wonder, though. Was Britt was ever expected to actually join GHI? (ETA: Apparently, yes. Which means we're not done with him quite yet.) Or was this just a way of writing him out of the show after his dismissal from Syfy, due to his declarations of being homophobic and armed with deadly weapons? Was this the equivalent of saying that they've sent him off to live with a nice farm family?

The artificiality of the opening sequence infected the whole show for me. When watching the walkie-talkie sequences, I kept remembering that these scenes are shot completely separately from the rest of the show, and often afterward. That they'll actually spend multiple days shooting in the same location, and that they do re-shoots of scenes. That the "time-lapse" analysis segments were actually filmed in about the amount of time it takes to watch them. This is not just a TV show about people that I don't particularly trust; it's a fiction about characters I don't trust. Just to complete the artificiality, they are investigating in a replica fort!

After this overly-staged goodbye scene, the team joins GHA winner Adam Berry at Fort William Henry, near Lake George, New York. I didn't watch more than a few episodes of GHA, but Adam seems decent enough at first glance. He seems quite excited at the prospect of being a "real" ghost hunter and continuing to work with TAPS, and Jay and Grant make mention of him at the end as the future of ghost hunting. We've seen various GHA graduates appear and disappear like will o' the wisps on GH and GHI, so I wonder if he'll manage to stay on for the long haul. He has a wonderful quote during setup: "Instead of being critiqued, you know, I'm actually going to be a team player. It's gonna be great to just investigate and to not have to worry about anyone, uh, trying to stab you in the back." Oh my. If some of the behind-the-scenes accounts are true, he's due for some enlightenment soon.

The siege of Fort William Henry, in 1757, was marked by horrific war crimes. After enduring several days of bombardment, Lieutenant Colonel George Monro, in command of the fort, surrendered to French General Louis-Joseph de Montcalm. In the terms of the surrender, Montcalm agreed to allow the British garrison to withdraw unharmed and to protect them from their Native American allies. However, as the British troops withdrew, the Native American forces attacked them, scalping soldiers and taking the women, children, servants, and slaves as captives. Contemporary accounts implied that over two thousand British were killed, but more modern scholarship leads us to believe that the number was much lower– around 200. (Thanks, Wikipedia.) Amy Bruni claims that many of the victims were cannibalized. I can't find any source to back that up, but I'll admit mine is a fairly quick web search.

The GH tour guide is Fred Austin, who is described in articles about the place as the fort's "ghost guru." Apparently, TAPS auditioned the place in advance by hosting a TAPS Paranormal Boot Camp there in April, featuring GHI's Dustin Pari, co-author of The Complete Approach. True to his guru-hood, Austin seems quite versed in paranormal lingo, cheerfully telling Jason and Grant that he gets high EMF readings near a certain wall. Did he not get the memo about EMF not being paranormal? Except when it is, of course. He quotes the over-1000-dead figure, which lets us know that facts will not be the top thing on the agenda this evening.

My guess is that this investigation put TAPS into a bit of a bind. Most of the structures of the fort are open, and the local wildlife has moved in. This provides an explanation for pretty much everything reported. However, since the place has a gift shop (in fact, a HAUNTED gift shop), it must be haunted. They settle for debunking everything reported to them, but claiming that the footsteps that they heard could not have been made by local wildlife, based on nothing. They do get a nice shot of a beehive (or wasp's nest) inside one of the cannons, and Adam's crew gets a great shot of a porcupine.

I will give credit for a good explanation, though. Grant explains the apparent apparition seen inside the glassed-in replica of Lieutenant Colonel Munro's office as a reflection, and even shows a good re-creation. He calls it "a phenomenon that's referred to as Pepper's Ghost." More to the point, Pepper's Ghost is a magic trick used to create ghost effects in theme parks. Still, it's one of those odd bursts of sanity we occasionally see in this show.

So, an oddly artificial and strained episode. This is as close as I've seen them come to declaring a site not haunted as I've seen, but they backed away at the last second and made sure that they included enough random footfalls and misinterpreted background noises to be able to declare it haunted. After all, why would people visit a beautiful replica fort on a lovely lake, if not to confront the terrifying spirits of the undead?

Random snippets:

• "Hello! Your friends are in the hospital!" –Steve Gonsalves

You can discuss this investigation in the forums.