This is a recap/semi-transcript of the second half of the fifth episode of the first season of the quasi-reality show Ghost Hunters. Mme. Blahblatsky and the Talking Mongoose are jointly contributing. Ouija Board review at the end.
Disclaimer: Wherever Mme. Blahblatsky has to insert large chunks of dialogue for her own amusement, the Talking Mongoose vouches that neither of us is taking anything of value away from Pilgrim Films and Television, Inc., which owns it all.
Previously the narrator said: “Tonight on Ghost Hunters, Jason and Grant investigate a 19th century penitentiary, tension between TAPS members boils over, and the investigation runs wild. And Jason and Grant see an entity they can’t explain.”
And previously on the Ouija Board, we covered the first trip to Philadelphia, Brian’s Bane or “Dude, run!” and the revelation that the camera in Cell Block 12 caught an apparition, or something.
TAPS HEADQUARTERS
Wednesday morning
MB: Have you noticed that it’s always Wednesday, lately?
TM: There was an X-file like that.
Jason: “Well, guys, we’re going to be heading back to Eastern State Penitentiary. We’ve dealt with people trying to pull the wool over our eyes in the past, and I want to make sure this isn’t that kind of scenario. We’re going to go back and we’re actually going to probably spend two nights there. We’re bringing a thermal imaging camera.”
Grant: “And we just gotta pull out all the stops, use every single technique, and let’s just nail this place hard.”
MB: I wonder if those nice people at Eastern State Penitentiary appreciated being suspected of fraud.
TM: I shouldn’t think they’d need to care. I’d like to see Jason in a wig.
Jason interviews: “The main goal for heading back down is I really want to try to gather some more evidence. The piece of evidence that I saw, though it was convincing at the time, it’s TAPS’ reputation on the line, and I really want to go back and just, uh – double-check everything at Eastern State Penitentiary.”
MB: I think they just wanted an excuse to go back. There’s no way they can reproduce that bizarreness on film.
Voila. They’re back in Philadelphia.
TM: It’s getting so much easier to drive anywhere from Warwick, Rhode Island. That first trip to Altoona took forever.
Jason: “Get the DVR set up exactly the way it was before…We’re going to need that second camera halfway down that corridor.”
MB: I have to admire his optimism here. Not only are they hoping to get another view of the apparition, they’re planning to film it with two cameras.
TM: They’re going to get nothing.
MB: Hours and hours of nothing.
Brian has new resolve: “I see something I’m not going to freak out like I did the last time.”
TM: He’s peaked. It’s all downhill from here.
Grant: “Hey, Bell, we need you to sit your butt down and just stare at that monitor.”
Brian Bell, sounding kind of ironic, but maybe not, voices his willingness: “I have no problem sitting here looking at the – uh – monitor all night, waiting for some type of activity to happen.”
MB: We’ve talked about this before, but seriously, what kind of pay would you expect for such thankless work and bossing around? And if they aren’t paying them, where do you get to treat volunteer help this way?
TM: The Army. But you know, they do it for the glory.
MB: I’m not sure which is worse – watching the monitors the first time around, or having to watch all the tapes afterward.
TM: And we question the need for re-enactments.
MB: Pft.
RE-INVESTIGATION
Eastern State Penitentiary
Wednesday 6:50 P.M.
Jason and Grant are in the cell block where the supposed apparition was filmed. Grant is trying to find a way up to the third level, through a large opening in the ceiling.
Grant: This is where I wanted to try and to climb up to see if someone could have – uh – fooled us. No, it’s not very sturdy.
CELL BLOCK 12
7:41 P.M.
The task seems to be difficult. He is still trying to climb up, 50 minutes later.
Grant: “I don’t know, man.”
Jason: “It’s not very easy, is it G.?”
Grant: “No, but it can be done. If I can do it, anyone can do it, man.”
Grant interviews in night vision: It’s very frustrating because we’re walking that line. I mean, we can prove it kind of either way.”
MB: He’s leaning over so far backwards he’s going to fall on his head.
Jason: “Right now we got all the equipment set up, we’re already recording, me and Grant are going to take the thermal camera and just do a total walk-through of the premises to see if we can catch anything.”
TM: Thermal camera! Their budget has been kicked up a notch.
MB: See, if Brian hadn’t found that apparition, they would not be waltzing around with a thermal camera.
Jason: “Isn’t this like the beginning of a horror movie?”
Grant: “Chopchopchopchopkillkillkillkill.”
Grant gets technical: “Well, the thermal camera is awesome. It’s kind of difficult to use.”
He’s having some problems with the new camera.
Grant: “Ah – shoot.”
Jason: “You got zoom 1, zoom 2…”
Grant: “All right. Oh! There’s a cat! You saw that?”
The silhouette of a cat crosses the end of the corridor in the camera view screen.
MB: They have cats at ESP.
TM: Why doesn’t TAPS have a ghost-hunting dog? I think this is a serious flaw in the organization.
Jason: “You want to go running out of the hallway and tell Brian you saw something?”
We get to see the film clip of Brian Harnhois in The Great Run again.
TM: That really never gets old.
MB: It kind of doesn’t, does it, damn it?
Grant: “What we’re looking for is just unexplainable temperature drops or increases. Up until now we’ve just had a thermometer, but now we’ve got thermal imaging, we can actually see the shape of this cold spot and trail it to maybe a window or a vent.”
TM: Or the mouth of Hell.
MB: Or that horrible supernatural stew.
Jason: “Pretty much what drives you to – uh – come out here and spend late hours is a – is a passion, a wanting to know.”
Grant: “We want to catch anything that’s going to give us answers. We want to catch anything that’s going to help us understand what happened to us personally, and what’s happened to other people.”
TM: Oh – right. Those things that happened to them that are too personal to share.
MB: If Grant’s granny came back to tell him the new will was in her overcoat pocket, what do you care?
TM: I don’t. Personal ghosts are usually boring. But if you’re going to set yourselves up as ultra-public ghosthunters, keeping the reason why private just seems silly. Also, not helping your cause. But really, I don’t care if Jason’s granny came back and told him he was the anti-christ.
MB: I’d keep that a secret, myself.
Jason: “It’s just, you know, looking for the unexplained trying to explain it. I hate having questions that I don’t have answers for.”
Grant: “Does the mind, does the body continue after death? And if so, what keeps them here?”
Jason: “Why sometimes do objects move on their own?”
Grant: “Yeah!”
Jason: “These are all things I’d – I’d love to have the answers for.”
Grant: “See? Like back in the ancient times, why does thunder happen, you know? For all they knew, the god was pissed off at them. Now, an object moves we think it may be a ghost, but it may be something totally scientific. We just don’t know yet.”
MB: Something totally scientific like…
TM: Dark matter. Kryptonite.
MB: Solar flares. Alien tractor beams.
DEATH ROW
10:52 P.M.
Brian, Steve, and Sheri are wandering around Cell Block 15, aka investigating. Brian has a still camera, Steve a video camera, and Sheri an EMF reader.
Brian: “There we go, baby.” Death Row.” He takes a flash shot of something.
Sheri: “What’d you get?”
Steve: “Oh – right there? Zoom in on it.”
Brian is chortling. “Isn’t that awesome?” We see a big round blob on the camera screen.
Brian: “Took a picture and we caught a little orb-looking thing.”
Steve: “I don’t think it’s an orb, dude. I would say more it’s a vaporous anomaly.”
TM: I love that term – vaporous anomaly. I wish I had a reason to use it.
MB: It’s round.
TM: So?
MB: Steve just likes making Brian feel dumb.
TM: Not going there.
Sheri: “It’s still there?”
Brian: “It’s still there. It’s over there now.
Steve: “It’s moving! … Six consecutive pictures in a row with the same anomaly. It’s gone. Where the heck did it go?”
Brian: “I don’t know. It’s not there anymore, dude.”
Steve: “One last sign of your presence before we…”
Brian shouts from another room, and Sheri and Steve rush over. They’re in the former exercise yard of Death Row.
Brian: “It’s over here. (laughing) It’s over here, dude.”
Steve: “It’s there.”
Brian: “Yeah, it’s there again.”
Steve: It’s back again. It’s over here? Yeah, it is.”
Brian: “Hellooo!”
TM: Why does he always feel it necessary to go around shouting hello in empty rooms? What does he think is going to happen?
MB: He’s engaging the ghosts. It’s kind of cute.
TM: It’s dippy.
Brian Bell is shown doing nothing much at command center.
Jason is back in the cell block of infamy, Brian’s Bane. “This area is supposedly where Brian and the camera guy had that experience.”
CELL BLOCK 12
12:13 A.M.
Jason: We got something – a little of a temperature change right there – on the wall.”
It turns out to be a reflection off glass. You can see Jason reflected fully in it, which is weird – a pale thermal reflection. Jason himself looks like a black-and-white negative in color, which is also interesting. The thermal camera actually is awesome.
Steve bursts into the Rotunda: “There’s something in Death Row. Where’s Brian Bell?”
THE ROTUNDA
12:27 A.M.
Command central is empty. Steve has left again, and Jason comes by.
Jason: “Where is everybody?”
Steve is tattling to Grant, in Death Row: “Brian Bell’s across the street. Probably hittin’ on girls or something.”
Grant, appalled, squeals “Whaaaat?”
Steve: “Yeah.”
MB: You know, someone on the film crew had to have told him that. They’re the only ones who would know.
TM: They’re probably the ones who told him it was okay to leave.
Jason enters room. “Brian Bell isn’t here.”
Grant: “He’s across the street hitting on girls at the gym?”
MB: A gym? What kind of gym is open after midnight in the middle of the week?
TM: Sports bar. Hey, it’s the city. What do we know?
We see Brian striding purposefully down a corridor, out a conveniently open exterior door, and halfway across the street. There is no traffic, fortunately.
Brian H: “What the fuck you doin’? Everyone’s looking for you.”
Brian Bell: “I had to wash my hands, after I put my hands in that slug. There’s no running water in here.”
Brian H: “Just let one of us know, man.”
Brian interviews separately: “I don’t think Brian Bell was washing his hands. I think he was flirting with those girls (he raises his eyebrows at this) and on an investigation you shouldn’t be doing that.”
TM: Haaaa. He’s so happy.
MB: Brian Bell says he had to wash his hands because of a slug. How can you possibly think Brian Bell is smarter than Brian Harnhois?
TM: So I was wrong. I’d say they’re about even.
Grant: “We’re here to friggin’ investigate. I told him - didn’t you hear me tell him? Sit down at that friggin’ table and stare at the screen.”
Jason: “Why don’t you say something to him, you know? You’re the one that told him to sit there.”
Jason interviews: “I passed the buck to Grant a little.”
Grant interviews: “He told us a story about how he put his hand on a slug and all that stuff. By now you know it’s just – it’s difficult to trust the kid. It’s too bad.”
Thursday
After first night at Eastern State Penitentiary
9:28 A.M.
Brian, stirring coffee lethargically: “We came down here at 9 o’clock to have some breakfast and noticed that Brian Bell wasn’t here. We gave him a half hour. I think he’s going to be in a lit-tle bit of trouble.”
TM: He is so so happy.
Jason is pounding on a hotel door, with Grant behind him. “Brian!”
Grant reads the sign on the door disgustedly: “Do Not Disturb.” The door opens to a dark room.
Grant: “Good morning, sunshine.”
Brian Bell: “Hey, what’s going on?”
MB: It’s 9:30 in the morning. Why are these people having a fit?
Downstairs, Jason, Grant and Brian Bell are walking fast through a hallway trailed by our camera.
Grant: “Dude, you’re a good guy. It’s just – you keep dropping the ball, constantly. I mean, we can’t count on you, dude. We cannot count on you. I don’t care if it’s the power loss, or if it’s – you know – I – slept deep. It doesn’t matter. It’s a problem.”
Jason: “You weren’t on time to head out here.”
Brian Bell: “I lost power that night, okay?”
Jason is unmoved.
TM: Look – they’re at the Best Western, where you can get an ESP “mug shot mug” with your free breakfast.
In the hotel coffee shop, Brian, Steve and Sheri sit opposite Jason, Grant, and Brian Bell.
Grant: “So what’d you guys think last night? I had a good time.”
Steve: “You guys went, you know, above and beyond any paranormal group would ever go to debunk something.”
Grant: “We did? We all did.”
Jason: “That’s a team effort. That’s not me and Grant. That’s everybody combined.”
Grant: “The thing is, we did a lot to try and debunk that footage and I don’t think it gave us any real answers. So I don’t know. Maybe tonight we’ll have to get – maybe you can dress up or something. We’ll figure it out – try and see what you can do up there.”
Jason: “Well, guys, it’s going to be another long night so, uh, let’s just eat up. Be sure to drink as much coffee as we can and get ready.”
Grant: “Right now it doesn’t look like any of us are ready to go back for another night.” They all do look very sad.
Jason: “Well, let’s get some breakfast.”
MB: Really, what is so important that they all had to get up for this?
TM: Jason wants a full set of mug shot mugs.
RE-INVESTIGATION
Eastern State Penitentiary
Thursday 9:08 P.M.
Jason, Grant and Brian Bell are at the computers in the command center in the Rotunda. Brian H. comes running in and skids to a stop behind Grant, crying “Guys! Guys! Hey!”
Grant: “Jeez.” Because Brian has stopped just short of running into him.
Brian: “Check it out, dude. This just came in.”
MB: It did NOT. They’re in the middle of an abandoned prison in Philadelphia.
TM: They didn’t rehearse that enough. Brian could have taken out a couple of computers right there.
Grant: “Niiiiice.”
Brian: “The enhanced ghost footage…”
Jason interviews: “I had Brian send that footage out to a post house – uh – to be enhanced, try to get a little more lit so we can see what’s going on.”
TM: And we asked for the special late night delivery to haunted prisons.
Jason: “Are we ready?”
Grant: “Okay, go ahead. Now we’re cooking with gas. Oh. That’s much better. Oh. Whoa – (sputtering) that doesn’t even (sputtering) – what the heck?”
TM: Okay, so they don’t have cue cards.
Everyone has gathered around to look.
Grant: “It looks very solid.”
Jason: “Well, you know what – it actually – it comes up and then it goes back, but it doesn’t look like it turns and goes back. It just comes up and goes back.”
MB: Nope. Definitely no cue cards.
TM: They’re winging it.
MB: So it’s sort of real.
Grant: “What’s nice about it right here is you actually see how tall it is cleared. You can actually see the top of the shape.”
Jason: “Yeah, but that’s still short because that bar comes up to my…”
Grant: “Right! It’s going to be whatever it is…”
Jason: “It’s going to be like four feet tall.”
Brian Bell: “That’s awesome. That is some really, really good footage.”
Grant: “You know, but it doesn’t help us out. Even cleaned up, we don’t get any more answers out of it.”
Jason: “No. We’ve done what we can do to try to disprove it.”
Grant: “Multiple people reported seeing a black figure hurry down that hallway to the end, and that’s exactly what we captured. But then again if someone’s fooling with us they would have known that story, but they would have had to know that camera was there. It’s a circle, dude. You can run around in circles all day long with it.”
TM: Isn’t that a sign of a brain tumor?
CELL BLOCK 10
11:57 P.M.
Brian Bell: “All right, show us something interesting. I just found something interesting.” It’s a stupid door with a stupid “666” on it.
Sheri: “Oh god!”
Brian Bell puts recorder on floor in cell. “The time is 23:57. Here we go. Rock on.”
MB: That stupid number.
TM: Sheri believes.
CELL BLOCK 12
“Where the video anomaly was found.”
MB: Steve told them to call it that.
Jason is telling Brian and Steve to try to re-enact what the film seemed to show, and to throw something over their head if necessary.
Brian: “Let’s go hunt the ghost.”
Jason: “Just as you start doing it I’ll key up and talk to ya and tell you – you know – how close to come and everything else.
Steve: “Affirmative.”
MB: “Affirmative.”
TM: Hey! Steve got touched by a ghost and did you see him running and screaming like a sissy?
MB: He was too scared to move.
TM: Bah.
CELL BLOCK 12
1:30 A.M.
Brian is being made to run, shuffling, along the catwalk of the second level, with his head covered with a coat or something. Jason is watching via the monitor and directing via the radio.
Steve: “Start running.”
Jason: “Run! That’s not running.”
Steve: You gotta run.”
Brian: “I can’t run.”
Steve: “You’re not even…you’re barely walking.”
Brian: “Dude, I can’t run. I can’t see anything.”
Steve: “Brian, just haul it.”
Brian: “You want to do it?”
Steve: “Just haul ass.”
Brian: “You want to do it?”
Steve: “Haul ass!
Brian: “I can’t see!”
Steve: “So you go in a straight line. It’s not so – you don’t have a labyrinth.”
Brian: “You fucking ass, dude. I – I can’t see, dude. Whenever I start running the cloak goes over me and I can’t even see where the railings are.”
Jason and Grant are watching this all on the monitor. Jason is smirking.
Grant: “He cannot run away fast enough.” Jason shakes his head.
Brian: “Dude, there’s no way someone’s running down that hallway.”
Jason on radio: “Yeah, it’s similar but it’s really not. It doesn’t match.”
TM: No one could make this stuff up!
MB: Let me throw this glass of water in your face before you have a seizure.
The Rotunda
2:02 A.M.
Brian Bell gets up from desk and leaves.
Brian H: “Grant, he’s walking around by himself right now somewhere.”
TM: The TAPS underlings are such tattletales.
Jason to Grant: “Why don’t you go lay down the law?
Grant: “He doesn’t follow the rules. It’s basic. I mean you don’t go off by yourself.”
Jason: “I don’t feel as if he’s (something) – playing – family. Every time I’ve called him to discipline him, he doesn’t answer his phone.”
Grant: “No, you’re right.”
Jason: “Who does he call?”
Grant: “He calls me.”
Jason: “If he calls you, thinking it’s the easy way out, dude, you’re like ‘You know what? I got nothing to say to you. Call J.’ You know what I mean?”
Grant: “But if he calls you then you’re going to tell him to call me…” (laughing)
Jason: “Whoa, no. I never told him to call you because he’s never called me.
Grant: “I know.”
Jason: “He’s never had the gonads to call me.”
MB: I know who Jason thinks he looks like.
TM: Harsh. And hee. So is Brian Shane? Or is Grant?
MB: Ack. No. But he does have a team.
Grant: “But for the full spectrum, you know, just like I’ve got a weakness where I can’t drop the hammer, there are times when you don’t need to be such a hard ass.”
Jason: “All right, and I agree, you don’t always have to. Just – don’t let the kid step on you. You know, I mean seriously, because it’s getting to the end of the rope, where if you’re not going to say something, I will, and the way I’m going to represent it is going to be a hundred percent different from you, and it’s not going to be a pleasant situation.”
MB: He hates being shorter than Brian Bell.
TM: Totally.
Sheri is asked by Jason to babysit Brian Bell at the command center.
Jason and Grant go back to Cell Block 12, and apparently have a major encounter that their cameras don’t catch, because they have to tell us about it through interviews.
Grant: “I was walking down to the end of the cell block just to see what the – uh – thermal imaging would look like – how I’d show up on it, and I was down there. So I kind of stopped and I started walking back, and I felt it in two different places. One was down near the end I felt this heaviness.”
Jason: “It suddenly felt like I had gone underwater. Um – just – it felt like you were in a cloud.”
Grant: “I’d felt the sensation a little closer than halfway down, and he was walking down – he stopped the exact same spot as I did and he said ‘Oh, it’s right here!’”
MB: I know what they’re talking about! It’s that walking into and out of a haunted spot, and you get all woozy.
CELL BLOCK 12
3:47 A.M.
Grant: “Tell me that next cell doesn’t bother you, man. You can feel the difference in the air as you walk by the cell.”
Jason: “G.W.”
Grant: “Yo.”
Jason: “Come here for a minute. You know, it might be nothin’. I honestly have to say I thought I saw a shadow. I can’t tell you in the dark exactly where it was but I can tell you it’s right around this area.”
Grant: “There’s that heaviness, like I can’t lift my feet.
Jason: “What the fuck was that?”
Grant is seeing things above them through an opening in the ceiling.
Grant: “Something just went right by that.”
TM: This is great. We’re supposed to believe they’re having experiences they can’t prove.
MB: You don’t believe them?
TM: I didn’t say that.
CELL BLOCK 12
3:51 A.M.
Jason: “G.W., the one thing, I never tell you I saw anything, so I am telling you right now that I thought I saw something and I know I felt something.”
Grant: “And I’m not bull – b.s.ing you with that (pointing up), dude. I’ve never b.s.ed you. I’ve never lied to you.”
TM: Awww.
Jason: “Yeah, but listen to me. I saw something and it was out of one of these three cells, and that’s why I came darting down, and now then you saw something up there pretty much similar.”
MB: At least this doesn’t seem to be like a re-enactment. They’re positively blithering.
TM: Why aren’t they carrying any thermometers or EMF readers with them?
MB: Not their job. Although you’d think they might want to, in case of – say – this happening.
Grant: “There are times when we’ve experienced stuff together and we’ve both seen it, but they’re few and far between.”
Jason: “Holy Christ.”
Grant: “I – there was something up there.”
Jason: “I honestly believe that there’s something going on here far beyond what we’ll ever understand. I don’t know if it’s just Cell Block 12, Grant, or just the whole Eastern State Penitentiary, but I think this place is ranked up there on my list of just active places.”
MB: “Just active places” – look at him. He can’t say the “h” word even here.
Grant: “I’m glad we came back.”
It’s time to go, although now Grant wants to stay.
Grant: “Mmmm. It’s messing with us.”
Jason: “Grant – you never know. It might not even know we’re here.”
TM: See, he does have some sense of proportion.
As they leave, Steve and Brian estimate they’ve got two days of reviewing all the evidence ahead of them.
Steve: “It’s going to blow our minds. We’re going to walk out like a vegetable.”
MB: I think they will have to roll, like brussel sprouts.
TM: Wait, they didn’t have cheese steaks yet. What happened to the stop at Geno’s that they promised last week?
MB: Ew – velveeta cheese steaks. And “freedom fries.” Still! And you have to speak English to order.
TM: Geno is a patriot.
MB: Geno is a big ol’ bigot.
TM: He doesn’t use peppers, either.
TAPS HEADQUARTERS
Brian and Steve are watching the hours and hours and hours of tapes. From out of the blue –
Steve: I love Conan O’Brien.
Brian: “Hmm?”
Steve: “I’m glad he’s taking over for Leno.”
Brian: “Yeah, me too.”
MB: Steve loves Conan O’Brien.
TM: So?
MB: Nothing. It’s just something they want us to know.
Brian: “Mm – there a whistling noise?”
Steve: “That’s me.”
They’re holding the recorder to their ears to listen.
MB: Shouldn’t they have transferred this to some sort of super computer-tastic audio program which they can listen to on headphones as they watch squiggly lines on a monitor?
TM: They’re still paying for the thermal camera.
Brian: “That’s you?”
Steve: “That’s me.”
Brian: “Okay. Phew.”
TM: Plus there’s nothing to hear.
Brian: “Hey, what do you think of this dude? See it?”
Steve: “Nothin’.”
Brian: “Nothin’?”
Steve: “Bug, at best.”
Brian: “Oh – check this one out, dude.”
Steve: “I would suspect dust.”
Brian: “Whoa – how about this? What was that? Look at this.”
Steve: “I would say bug.” (jump cut) “I think it’s a bug.”
Brian: “That’s another bug.”
Steve: “It’s dust.” (jump cut) “I would suspect a bug.”
Brian casts his eyes upward.
Steve: “Wouldn’t you?”
Brian, grimacing: “I guess, you know? I’m just asking your opinion, dude.”
Steve: “I’d say bug.”
Brian: “Okay. Ignore that. It’s fine.”
TM: You know what this means?
MB: I think I do. They’ve got hours and hours of nothing.
TM: Two nights of hours and hours of nothing.
THE FINDINGS
Eastern State Penitentiary
Thursday 2:00 P.M.
There’s a total eclipse of the sun going on at TAPS headquarters. Or it’s the end of the world. Or we’re supposed to assume that Brian and Steve have been presenting evidence for hours and hours and now it’s nightfall and they are still showing dust and bugs to Jason and Grant.
Brian: “All right, here we go. And you’re going to see this…”
Steve is shaking his head and half-smirking.
Brian: “Um, you’re going to see this – oh, I’ll just play it. All right, there it is.”
A round ball of light is seen at the bottom of the screen, in a cell block corridor.
Steve: “Yeah, it kind of stops for a second – looks like it could be an orb and then it takes off.”
Jason: “There it is still.”
Grant: “Yeah, I call that dust.”
Brian: “We are down in Death Row. Then we caught this…”
Steve: “Mind you, this is the fence.”
Brian: “Got it here. Got it there. Caught another one here. But then we didn’t get it here – that’s not there – that’s almost exactly the same picture as that one.”
Grant: “God! I just don’t think that’s anything special. You got an orange bar in front of you, you got an orange glow. It’s a gamma signature.”
Brian: “If it – if it was the bars there should still be something there because they’re all in the picture. Where is it there?”
Grant: “Bri, if you are close to something in a picture like that where it’s orange, and a piece of dust comes by, or moisture, when you take that picture the orange is going to effect the refraction of whatever’s in that picture. It looks typical light refraction.”
MB: I love that Steve was all “There’s something in Death Row!” about typical light refraction.
TM: But it was Brain who thought it was a ghost hanging around to have its picture taken.
MB: And it was Steve who got all excited about it.
TM: Nuh-uh! He called it a “vaporous anomaly.”
MB: And ran off to tell somebody.
TM: Yeah, well – he didn’t run screaming – wait. Why am I defending tattoo boy again?
On the thermal camera, Steve and Brian have found a flash of light from Cell Block 12 footage.
Grant: “I don’t know what to call that.”
Steve: “I don’t know. Thermal disturbance?”
MB: It’s a thermal anomaly, you git.
Brian: “That’s the only time it does it.”
Jason: “The only time through the hours and hours of footage?”
Brian: “Yep.” Steve nods.
Jason: “So the thermal is picking up a temperature change. The IR of course we’re not going to get anything unless it’s a solid mass or – you know, it shows up there.
MB: The infrared camera is not going to show a ghost unless a ghost shows up on it. I get that.
Jason: “You know what, bottom line – I know what all of us felt. I know what all of us had seen. There was a lot of strange occurrences that happened there.
Grant: “We have four different accounts of people on our own crew and team experiencing the same thing there and we got it on tape.”
TM: They’ve run smack into the TAPS paradox. This is perfect. They just spent two extra nights here trying to prove their filmed apparition wasn’t a fluke, and all they got was a personal experience by Jason and Grant that they can’t prove.
MB: It does seem kind of astounding that they got nothing this visit – no EVP’s, no cold spots, no EMF spikes.
TM: And these are the guys who have the nerve to declare that a place is or isn’t haunted based on their “investigation” of one night.
MB: You’re still mad about the Mishler, aren’t you?
TM: I’m just saying.
Jason: “That footage was – it’s strange – when we sent it out to the post house and everything and they lit it up, you know – we said, ‘well, it looks like a person.’ But, what’s an apparition supposed to look like?”
Grant: “If you look at all the facts, lay them all out, it just doesn’t add up that it could be possible.”
Jason: “No matter what facts you lay out, your believers are going to believe, your skeptics are going to try to tear it apart, and the people in between are going to be torn apart.”
Steve: “Can we put it on our site?”
Jason: “Yeah. Yeah, we can.”
Brian: “That’s a great idea.”
Grant: “And comparative footage.”
Jason: “And my belief’s, just because I know who was outside is that we caught some sort of apparition on camera.”
Brian: “Exactly.” Steve nods.
Jason: “I honestly believe the best thing we can do is put it out there and let the world decide.”
THE OUIJA BOARD REVIEW
Mme. Blahblatsky and the Talking Mongoose express some opinions about the episode as a whole, and its place in the television pantheon.
TM: Let’s let the world decide.
MB: No. That was a good ghost hunt.
TM: Actually, I will spare you any arguing. OUIJA. I liked the whole thing. I even believe they caught an apparition on film.
MB: I thought the movement of the apparition was too complicated for them to have thought up. If they were going to fake an apparition, I think it would be less subtle.
TM: And slower. If it was a fake, it was brilliant, and I don’t think they’re capable of that.
MB: So we’re complimenting them and insulting them at the same time.
TM: I love being able to do that.
MB: Well, I think they owe Eastern State Penitentiary big time.
TM: Very cool place. So what does it mean that this episode gets our seal of approval?
MB: Not a darn thing. Except that we sort of guarantee that watching it will not induce coma.
TM: But no one can hold us to that.
MB: Not legally.
[This episode can be seen at the Eastern State Penitentiary website, along with ghost hunters' investigations of the prison.]
FAVORITE BITS
Mme. Blahblatsky
Line: “Dude, run!” (Brian Harnhois, tch)
Moment: The apparition rising out of the floor and whisking away.
The Talking Mongoose
Line: “Dude, run!” (Brian Harnhois, heh)
Moment: The dudes running. (Brian Harnhois and Dave Hobbs)
Tags: apparition, cheese steaks, Eastern State Penitentiary, ghost hunting, ghosts, Philadelphia, TAPS, thermal camera
