During the tour, I was 'somewhat' impressed by all the questions they asked the client and thought maybe, perhaps MAYBE they were going to do things a little differently.  But like Learjet and Revenant, I was so let down by them saying the orbs were paranormal, I just couldnt go with much of anything they said after that.  Though I did like the idea of them really looking up past history on a place and the interviews they did, especially with the guy that used to frequent there years ago and knew the owner.  I thought the tapes on the doors was great, but yes why not have cameras on them.  And that psychic, she left one room because she coudn't handle it anymore…WHERE'S CHIP WHEN YOU NEED HIM!    I will watch the show again to see what happens.  It's kinda nice though watching a group from Chicago…I live in NW Ind.

I'm with you phillyk48! I live in the Chicagoland area so it's nice to have a local group.  I was hoping people on this site would like this show, but I knew what would come out when the "orbs" were "studied." At least they didn't go into a long drawn out explanation about the difference between dust and orbs like GA. Learjet, I agree about the tape on the doors and was thinking the same thing about having the cameras on them.   Maybe they will progress into better camera angles.  I was curious to read what everyone thought about the Cell Sensor that they were using.  It would go off when and how many times they wanted it too, so it would be interesting to read if anyone knew how that could happen.  I liked how the Southside cigar man would ask it do what he requested more than once instead of "allowing it" to "behave" the way it wanted. I also liked how we didn't hear a bunch of squealing when the whole incident was taking place. 

Did anyone think it odd that all of a sudden they went into "cop mode" and scoped the place out for intruders when they discovered the door?  At one point, there was a camera shot of a gun on the hip of one of the officers when they were investigating for the possible intruders.  I thought the whole vibe of "we are cops and you must believe what we are presenting you as evidence of the paranormal because of that" was a little overdone. All in all, too soon to tell what will become of it.  Like I said, I hope that it succeeds because it's great to have something local. Chicago is supposed to be a very haunted city! 

"Crassus said:

My issues were these:

1. Historical background.  I'm a historian.  For the federal government.  I make a lot of money doing research.  I'm pretty darn good at it – I couldn't have come up with that much background info on a building sitting in a van in the middle of the night on a Chicago street while a TV show was being filmed.  That takes time and some speciality databases/indexes that would only be available at a good library or to someone with enough cash to subscribe to them.  So I'm assuming the historical finds were staged – it looked like that background research was done before the show was filmed.  Which, of course, opens up the possibility that the medium had done her own research or had research fed to her viz. Paranormal State. "

2.  The lead investigator said they liked to go in cold – except they didn't.  They spent a long time getting info from the client and then had the aforementioned historical research business going on in the van.  Going in cold means just that.  You investigate without knowing ANYTHING!  Then if what you find matches the claims, maybe you've got something.  The closest thing to a double-blind study you could get in ghost hunting.  (I can't believe I just said that.)"

Welcome Crassus!

My apologies, but the librarian in me could not resist responding to this portion of your response and I by no means wish to convey any disrespect to a fellow researcher. :)  I do believe that they could have obtain the historical research by simply sitting in their van, albeit with some minor film editing for time.  The database that they were using was the Chicago Tribune Historical Archives so they were not searching multiple databases or indexes. This happens to be a very popular database in the Chicagoland area as you can imagine.  It can be accessed remotely so long as you have a password to a subscription, which the researcher could have used their Chicago Public Library card so no need to pay for their own subscription, but you would think the show gets a discount if they subscribe because it would feature the Newsbank product.   Anyways, to test my theory, I logged into my library's subscription from my home, which is not a CPL one btw.  I did a Boolean search for De Grazia, Rocco and Melrose Park (which they would have this location information already). I found 78 articles in which I found that some of these were "featured" in the show, mainly the one with the handy dandy floor plan.  Some of the articles were listed twice so no need to review them a 2nd time. Depending on how fast their Internet connection was, in regards to the length of time that it would take to go to the next article when they clicked "Next", combined with how fast they skim the article, would account for the time editing because a lot of these articles were short one pagers.  It took me about 1/2 hr to retrieve about the same amount of information as they gave us on the show and most of which was making sure I was spelling De Grazia properly and also finding out what Chicago suburb they were in. Thank you Internet! I even switched it to Casa Madrid and De Grazia, Rocco and narrowed it to 40 articles, so I guess it just depends on what key terms they used to search. This database could also be narrowed down by decade or specific date. They could have searched on the address alone in this database and probably could have found some of the same articles because many of the headline grabbing ones listed the address.

I agree with you about the going in cold though.  When he said "cold" I really did think they knew nothing of the site short of how to get there and what it's currently called and thought finally, a paranormal group willing to just investigate and use their psychic or findings to give them the information to research.

Total side note though, in my quick research I found that Rocco De Grazia's brother, Andrew De Grazia, died from choking on a sausage. The headline read "De Grazia's Kin dies; choked by a sausage." I originally envisioned links of sausages wrapped around the guy's neck and thought it was a weird whacking, but then I actually read the article.