Ghost Hunters 2.23: "31 May 2006"

Case #1: Stanley Hotel, CO


Well, here we are, the final episode of the second season. In technical terms, this series has aired more material in its second season than “Battlestar: Galactica” or any other original SFC series. Sure, it’s a lot less expensive, but it’s nice to know that the show has gained that much support and public awareness. (Though, honestly, can’t we hear about a third season already?)

This time around, it’s even a super-sized finale. I had no idea going in that it was 90 minutes, so it was like getting bonus footage! So I was a little surprised when the episode turned out to be relatively slim on the strong evidence. Even Jason had been talking it up just before the episode! (Then again, from his perspective, he was right there for the best stuff, so why wouldn’t he say it was great?)

That said, I could watch unfiltered evidence for hours and still be happy, so I’m not going to complain very much! I found it cute that the season actually managed to have a dramatic arc! Brian’s life issues over the second season made for a somewhat tortured and poorly conceived story. I’ll give it to the editors for trying to put together a pseudo-storyline, but it’s really not necessary. (Like the weird music, or the weird overdubbed noises, and everything else they add in post.)

So, onto the evidence:

I love the fact that the majority of the evidence was debunked: the banging, the reflections in the thermal footage, the shaking bed. That’s the sort of thing they do very well, and it does make it a lot easier to accept items like the jumping table at face value. For me, that’s still a hard sell, but only because of the camera angle. I’m not claiming fakery here (everyone knows me better than that by now), but what was shown will play right into the hands of those who believe Grant does fake things. (I also wonder if the editing wasn’t done to make it seem questionable.)

The best evidence, of course, was the first night in Jason’s room: the closet door and the broken glass. I’m sure the skeptics will find ways to explain the closet door, even though you can clearly see Jason is alone in the room and still on the bed when the door closes. But the glass is a more interesting situation. I really don’t see how that could have broken as it did, and it actually sounds like the piece of glass fell off before the sound of the glass breaking was heard. Very strange!

This is the part where I would usually launch into a discussion about the season as a whole, but I’m doing things a little differently moving forward. The “Ghost Hunters” post-mortem (so to speak) will be the main focus of an upcoming episode of “Dispatches from Tuzenor”, a new podcast started as an expansion to the written reviews conducted every season. That episode should be up relatively soon, and it will include some comments from the weekend I’m spending in Warwick with some TAPS members and fellow fans! So I invite anyone interested to drop by the archive site (www.entil2001.com) and click on the link. (It’s also available on iTunes.)

Chill Factor: 8/10

(Season 2 Final Chill Factor: 6.4)