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!

More on GH: Empire State (Ft. William Henry)

The story of Jonathan Reed and the Alien Attacker is the premise for the second investigation.  This story also takes place in Washington where Reed was supposedly walking with his dog, Suzy.  The dog ended up having its jaws ripped apart and turned to ash by an alien.  Reed beat the creature with a stick, took footage, took the creature home, examined it on camera, and then had it stolen from him by agents in vans.

While Bill, Austin, and Chi-Lan are lost in Northern Washington, Ben, Larry, and Jael head to Snoqualmie Pass, WA, to tackle the case of the Alien Attacker. More on FoF: Alien Attacker

I’ll say this much for FoF, their preciseness is impeccable.  Their sticking with tradition is admirable.  No, I’m not referring to the investigations themselves, I’m referring to the fact that this is the third meeting in a row that they’ve started at 11:34am.  I’m referring to the fact that they steadfastly refuse to succumb to pressure and change their clothes.

The first episode of this night’s pair centered on the Memorial Day Bigfoot that was videoed in 1996 at Lake Chopaka in Washington.  This case is setup by Bill, still neatly adorned in his black shirt and white pinstripes. More on FoF: Sasquatch Sprint

At 3:00 PM Pacific Standard Time (in about a half hour at time of writing), I'm going to take the site down and do a long-awaited, long-needed site upgrade. I'll be updating both the blog and the forum software to far more recent versions.

The upgrade should take about an hour, so the site should be back up around 4. If you want to follow along while I do the upgrade, you can read me spouting technical gibberish on my twitter account, stephenskepv.

Update: All done. Come on in, the water's fine.

The second video is one that was shot on 17 May 2006 near Monterrey, Mexico, and shows an object gliding across the horizon and in front of a cliff face. To some the object is humanoid in appearance so the UFO tie is quite clear.

The footage comes from a UFO group in Mexico, having a scheduled meeting, who spotted the object and began filming. The object looked to me to be something being transported via cable or a zipline setup. But other people see a pointed hat and broom. I can give them a pointed-hat appearance but I see no broom. More on FoF: Hovering Humanoid

Valentown Museum, a ghost hunt. This video is set up by our regular cast of characters all wearing the same clothes as last week. It seems they started this meeting at 11:34 am also. At least they are consistent!

The video features a woman standing in profile oblivious to a figure that is walking in front of her further away from the camera. The reason for her apparent oblivousness could be that it is invisible to her OR that she simply knows it's there.  The figure is a stereotypical ghost according to them. An interesting bit of dialog ensues about the source of the video when Jael says “And this was taken with a security camera?” to which Bill replies “A security camera set up by Dwayne Claude” Austin pipes up and says that he “Loves that it’s a security camera, so many times we see a video, first thing you think is, why is this person there, what are they doing filming?” Please remember this dialog for later on. More on FoF: Symphonic Spirits

The hosting provider (GoDaddy, in case you were interested) has finished moving the site to a new server, and I've cleaned up the damage caused by our break-in. I'm going to be doing some more site maintenance this weekend, but until then, we're good to go.

We lost some posts which were made during the last 24 hours, due to the move. Sorry about that!