Ghost Hunters 3.5: "Best of the Stanley Hotel"

I will be honest; this was not my favorite episode. I didn’t feel like a recap of the first Stanley Hotel investigation was necessary. They could have rerun the second season finale in the previous timeslot and it would have worked a lot better. I know that it helped to eliminate redundancy, since they could run through the “walkthrough” that was already filmed, but it was annoying, nonetheless.

I also don’t like the staged transitional moments. They tend to capture Jason and Grant at their most uncomfortable. Grant, in particular, looked like he was staring at a cue card during his close-ups. In the real world, they are a lot more personable. I suppose they do serve a purpose, though; if they were the nuanced actors that skeptics claim they are, they wouldn’t be so horrible during the scripted moments!

The Live Investigation

After sitting through the five hours of the live investigation that DirecTV actually managed to air, I must admit to a great deal of frustration. I was hoping that the live investigation would bear out a few things, most of which are ignored by skeptics and naysayers. I think that the general boredom of a paranormal investigation was well communicated; there’s a lot of dead time and a lot of waiting for something to happen to validate a client’s claims. Also, they discussed the equipment and used it in a generally scientific manner, even if they still skipped over the preliminary baseline checks.

On the other hand, I saw a lot of something I’ve been unhappy with all season long. It’s what I’ve described as “playing dumb”. Instead of looking at the most obvious explanations, the team members tend to jump at possible paranormal explanations or, just as often, leave it an open question and then debunk everything at the end of the episode. I’m glad that most evidence is ultimately debunked, because that’s what should happen, but why would they play into the drama so much?

During a typical episode, I can attribute a lot of that to editing. And I recognize that during an investigation, the only way to collect the most contextually meaningful information is to act like a believer and chase down anything that validates the reported activity. But for all that, during the live investigation, they seemed to jump to conclusions. For example, at one point, a phone rings while Donna and Lisa are investigating a particular room. They immediately assume that it was paranormal in origin, even though it’s far more likely that it was someone messing with them.

I have the feeling that Pilgrim Films and SFC asked them to play up the drama during the third season, and that they agreed, provided that they were free to dismiss or debunk the evidence in the end. As I said, they generally arrive at the same conclusions I would expect them to make, but the path to that point seems different and less robust.


The Evidence

The audio evidence, to me, is really questionable. Just the fact that it was audible at the time of the investigation makes it seem more like an echo from a point above that part of the basement than anything else. I’m surprised that they didn’t dismiss that evidence, considering how much else was clearly the result of pranks and outside interference.

What really puzzles me, after so little evidence substantiated by the evidence review, was the conclusion that the investigation was the second to validate that the hotel is haunted. I’m just not sure how they arrived at that conclusion. Taking everything leading up to the conclusion into account, I’m left wondering at the logic.