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.
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I'll admit it: GHI got me twice with this investigation. First, when Barry and Susan ran off into the forest in pursuit of mysterious screams, I started hitting wildlife sites, trying to match the sound to a known animal sound. Then I gritted my teeth and realized that this was just the sort of thing they loved to throw out during analysis. They did.

Next, when Robb was showing off a mysterious face they'd caught on camera, I wasted about twenty minutes trying to get a screen grab of it into an image editing program so that I could try to match it against the back wall. Then Robb did the very debunk I was aiming for once I unpaused the video. So I write this with a mixture of frustration and agreement.

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Hitler, Hitler, Hitler. Even the name is enough to throw any Internet discussion into a tailspin. Is it any wonder that GHI will take any opportunity, no matter how flimsy, to try to summon his ghost? I will confess that I was tempted to create yet another Downfall parody, with Hitler's officers trying to explain to an increasingly enraged Fuhrer that the GHI team is trying to find his disembodied spirit in Poland with cheap audio recorders and gimmicked camera. Free T-shirt to the first person who does that.

Now, I'll admit that, in hunting Hitler, GHI is moving a step up from hunting Robin Hood, Sweeney Todd, or John Jarman. I'm afraid that there's no possibility that Hitler was a fictional character, as much as we might wish he were. So the GHI team heads to Wolfsschanze in Ketrzyn, Poland, on the occasion of Hitler's birthday. Wolfsschanze was a military headquarters in Poland where Adolf Hitler lived from 1941 to 1944. This was the site of the July 20th plot to kill Hitler, which their guide incorrectly identifies as "Operation Valkyrie", but ever-correct Wikipedia tells me was in fact the conspirators' proposed method of taking over Germany after Hitler's death.

I'm a little unclear on my ghost physics. I've generally assumed that ghosts, in popular imagination, have to stay somewhat near where they've died, or at least have to have an extremely strong connection with a place. This was a place where Hitler was nearly assassinated, which seems like a strange place to hang out. To give credit, Robb brings this up himself: "…how much range do you think a spirit would have? If Hitler, theoretically, if his spirit was in Berlin somewhere, could he come here if he wanted? Y'know, I don't think that he'd necessarily need bus fare." So if ghosts can go anywhere or everywhere, why go to haunted locations? Why can't I hunt for the ghost of Abraham Lincoln in my living room?

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"Ladies and gentlemen, I fear that what I am going to say will spoil your appetites; but the truth is beautiful at all times, and I have to state that Mrs. Lovett's pies are made of HUMAN FLESH!" –The String of Pearls by James Malcolm Rymer, source of the story of Sweeney Todd

When I learned that this episode was called "Sweeney Todd", I had some… fears? hopes? …that GHI was searching for the ghost of yet another fictional character like Robin Hood. When I heard that they were instead going to be investigating an inn which was the location of murders which might have inspired the tales of the Demon Barber of Fleet Street, I was relieved/disappointed.

According to the episode, John Jarman was the innkeeper of the Ostrich Inn, and like many innkeepers, he had developed a few minor quirks over the years. His most amusing habit was boiling his guests alive for the following night's supper. I can see how that might be pretty impressive cost savings in the short term, but that's not a good strategy for gathering repeat business. Jarman accomplished this by means of a trapdoor and specially hinged bed located directly over the kitchen, which allowed him to send the guests into a pot of boiling water. Had the GHI team found the ghost of a real person to hunt this time?

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Margam Castle, a Victorian "mock" castle built in 1830, is no stranger to paranormal TV, since Most Haunted visited it in their 2006 series. From the pictures available on the Wikipedia entry, Margam is a subtly gorgeous site, with an astonishing color palette. Appropriately, it was the site of one of the first photographs taken in Wales, although that probably didn't do the colors much justice, much like the black-and-white shots we're going to see.

The guide for the walkthrough is a smiling bald man named Geraint Hopkins, founder of Ghost Watch Wales, who has been visiting Margam for years and is firmly convinced that the place is haunted. All of Hopkins' dialogue is subtitled, even though he is certainly as easy to understand as Barry. A search on Hopkins' name shows that he is an ophidiological, as well as paranormal, enthusiast: he owns an African rock python named Socrates. It's too bad that Hopkins didn't bring Socrates to assist the GHI team in their investigation. I'm sure they would have benefited from its wisdom.

The haunting symptoms are the usual mixed bag, with an unusual addition– red and green flashing lights in the tapestry room, plus bright white lights that leave trails. Yolande Rees-Hopkins, Geraint's wife, saw an apparition that she recognized as that of the original owner, Christopher Rice Mansel Talbot, and another eyewitness heard (and felt) a "white lady" in the Yellow Room. Ghostly monks have been seen outside, and during World War II, US troops under Eisenhower's command were stationed at the house, and complained of seeing phantoms.

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It's been a while since I've watched GHI, and I don't think I've reviewed an episode before for the site. It's a show that evokes mixed feelings for me. The GHI crew goes to interesting, beautiful locations, then turn the lights out and film them in grainy black-and-white. These places often have a fascinating history, which they often ignore in exchange for tourist-trap ghost stories. I've never seen anything that jumps out at me as a definite hoax, and that's good, but also makes watching the shows pretty tedious.

This week, the GHI crowd heads to Nottingham, England, to visit the Galleries of Justice, which is a really cool name and reminds me of the Saturday morning cartoons of my misspent youth. The Galleries of Justice were supposedly the former headquarters of the Sheriff of Nottingham. As Ashley puts it, "This place is actually believed to be the birthplace of the Robin Hood story." The regular GHI crowd is joined by Susan Slaughter and Karl Pfeiffer, two graduates of Ghost Hunters Academy, and investigator Scott Tepperman, who wields the unstoppable power of a New York accent.

Now, the premise of this investigation seems a little wonky from the get-go. Let's face a few facts. Robin Hood was a fictional character. His story has been told and retold, often reworked to put him in opposition to whatever was unpopular at the moment. He was the anti-landowning, anti-clerical, green-tights-wearing Batman of the 1400s. Similarly, while the Sheriff of Nottingham was a real title, modern historians aren't sure which real Sheriff the old tales refer to, if any. Will the GHI realize that they're chasing ghosts of possibly nonexistent people? We'll see.

Read more on GHI: The Spirit of Robin Hood…

The GHI team heads to Montego Bay, Jamaica for some fun in the sun — wait, no… party all night? Closer. If you said, "Walk around a large empty building until the sun comes up," then you guessed correctly!

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