Ghost Hunters Recap Episode 4.8: Spirits of the Old West

Posted by Ron Martin on 04.24.2008

TAPS travels to Nevada to investigate old spooky towns. It's an even numbered week, will we get some stomach issues from Kris? Magic Eight Ball say: Probability is High. Two locations -- two dead hookers. Need I say more?

It's time once again to delve into the life that is live action ghost hunting. They do it for you, you unappreciative bastards.



DELETED SCENES FROM LAST WEEK…

I found a page with all the delete scenes on it…in order! Yay me!

#1 – Tango and Steve do an Abbott and Costello routine before deciding to take their jackets off. Tango proceeds to empty his pockets of all items which includes a fork that he can't remember why he had it in there. I would guess that it was to eat something, but I've been wrong before.

#2 – Steve drops his EMF meter…a lot. Tango outdoes him by dropping a $600 camera. They both curse. Often.

Seriously, just those two scenes this week.

TONIGHT ON GHOST HUNTERS…

TAPS goes back to the old west to look for ghosts of prostitutes. Steve is looking to….uh, connect. Later, they check out a place where a suicide was committed. Five ghost hunters vs. one ghost seems a bit unfair, but we're going with it anyways.

Case #1: The Goldfield Hotel, Goldfield, Nevada

This is the last time this place will get investigated before renovation. Kris gets to ride cross country with Jay and Grant because she's not scared of spiders and smells better than Tango. I think she darkened her hair. It's that or the camera angle is making her look really pasty.

They pull up to a four story building and get excited enough to call out to the fecal despite of the Good Lord himself. They talk to the owner who is either a ghost himself, or a person pretending to be a ghost to scare up business ala Scooby Doo. Seriously, I can totally here the Scooby Gang yell out "Old Man Roberts?!!" Roberts wants to renovate so the hauntings are aplenty.

As any ghost hunter knows, renovation is a key factor sometimes in hauntings because ghost don't want the layout of their pad to change. They don't change for you or anybody! So says Jason. Red gives us a history lesson on Goldfield which Jay takes over because we can't understand a damn thing Red is saying and well, because he's Jason and that's kind of what he does. Follow this. One of the dudes who worked there had a mistress, then got pissed when the mistress was screwing around on him and got knocked up so he chained her to a register and threw the baby down a mineshaft. And they still have the exact register? That's kind of morose, man. Someone was thrown down an elevator shaft, someone died in a gunfight and people are randomly pushed around. Sounds like four star accommodations. Red says he doesn't believe in ghosts, though he just spent the last five minutes explaining to us all the ghosts in the hotel.

NEW GHOST HUNTER ALERT!!! NEW GHOST HUNTER ALERT!!!!

Allegedly, TAPS called in some dude from California named Britt. Jason is honored to have him on the team. Honored until he fires him and banishes him back to California! There is only room for one goatee here, Britt! Britt would become my favorite ghost hunter of all time if he would just yell out "GAY!" whenever Steve goes through what all the cameras are seeing.

LIGHTS OUT! Er, or I guess.

Guess who gets the first shot to be on camera? If you guessed Jason and Grant, then you guessed…WRONG!!! It's Britt and Steve. By the way, if you didn't see the show, Britt is a dude not a chick despite the name. Britt finds it desolate in the empty hotel. Man, he's bringing a whole lot to the team. I can tell. I know these kinds of things. Steve is afraid of the elevator shaft.

And now "A moment with Steve…" Steve says there just might be some paranormal activity here. He's going to try and find out. How could I go through the rest of the week without Steve's brilliant analysis?

They hear things so Britt tries to get them to knock on the wall. And they do? Britt's got the power! Steve is saying that there is a person at the end of the hall. A solid person. Not a shadow, a real person. Steve admits that it's very easy for your mind to play tricks on you despite what you might think that you see. Just when you write him off, Steve says something reasonably intelligent that gives you hope for the man. Britt theorizes that if the ghost is an old school cowboy, he'd be hanging around Kris. Not if he was a gay cowboy, Britt, you hate-monger!

Playing the role of "old school cowboy" today will be Tango on the Fourth Floor. I think Britt might have been calling Kris a prostitute. Isn't that what old school cowboys like to hang out with. The two keep seeing things cross the hallway so Tango demands that the ghost come toward them. They don't. Even the ghosts know they don't have to listen to Tango. They immediately default to TAPS Debunking Rule #1 – "It's got to be a car."

Jason and Grant get position #3 this week. They're on the second floor with the thermal. They haven't been using the thermal near enough this season. They are getting two round balls of heat on the camera. Just for the record, every guy I can see has his pants on. Whoa! Thank you very much, I'll be here all week! Please tip your waitress! Back to the show, Grant hears a bunch of footsteps near him. They are also seeing a lot more shadows and hearing a lot more footsteps this season.

Kris is in room #109 where the lady was tied to the register until she died. Ooooh…she has something called a K-2 meter which Jason says picks up magnetic things that spirits can walk in front of and set off. Why is there a little stuffed animal over by the register? The baby died in the mineshaft. Kris wants her "friend" to come in, Britt takes that to mean he can come in, though she never specifically said who her friend was. The K-2 meter starts flickering. They deduce that Elizabeth (the ghost) wants Britt out of there. Kris has some sort of accent, I can't really tell what kind of accent it is, but it's not a New England one. It sounds almost Midwestern. Kris looks much better in with the infrared camera on her, by the way.

Back to Jason and Grant on the Fourth Floor with the thermal. They're in the area of the gunfight. Jason thinks he saw a guy walk into a room on the thermal. While discussing how to debunk it, Grant sees someone walk across the hallway. Jason goes to investigate and hears all sorts of noises. Jason finds where a little bit of reconstruction has already begun and where a door should have been so he immediately collects a $100 bonus by mentioning "residual haunting." Grant tells us what a "residual haunting" is. There are a lot of these cut away explanation things tonight. Don't you think by this point in Season #4 we know this already? Maybe we don't need to be told what an EVP is EVERY EPISODE?!! Surprise, surprise, Jason defaults to TAPS Debunking Rule #1 – It's probably a car bouncing off his hairless dome.

On the first floor, Britt and Steve discuss that the ghost could be that of the woman walking around the hotel looking for her baby because she didn't know what happened to it. Hearing this, Jason gets pissed he didn't think about it so he calls the investigation for the night. He doesn't even care if Britt also has the evil goatee. Evil people will kill other evil people just as much as they will the good guys. That's a fact. Look it up.

The Analysis
Even with Britt hanging around, it's Steve and Tango checking all the evidence. Steve finds some weird light on the Second Floor. Tango bitchslaps him by saying it's just his flashlight. There's a shadow you can't quite see and you won't see until the very annoying interruption to go to…

The Findings
For those of you wondering, TAPS is staying at their hotel of choice, the Best Western. Kris is going for the intellectual look by wearing her glasses. They're going to play an EVP Kris got in room #109.

Kris: Is there somebody else that would like to talk?
Ghost #1: Get Out!
Ghost #2: Get the Bitch Out!

Sounds like somebody's been reading my recaps. Another EVP from Kris the guys think says "Can we go home now?" We're not special enough to get a second listen, so I can't tell for sure. Steve shows them some video, but as aforementioned, we're not special enough to see it. Instead, we get commercials.

The Reveal
Red still has not taken off his cowboy hat. He is a cowboy until the day he dies. The guys go over their personal experiences so they start with the video. It's of Grant and Jay in the basement which is odd since we were never even told this place had a basement. There's a shadow on the wall that Grant says shouldn't be there. I don't know. You can't really tell on TV because we don't really know how many people were actually in the room. They show Red the Great Balls of Fire they caught in the hallway explaining to him they can't explain it. Red declares himself the last person in the world to claim it to be a ghost, and then pretty much claims it to be a ghost. Ever notice that Jason and Grant are incapable of calling Kris, Kris? They always refer to her as Kris Williams. Interesting. They go over the EVPS. Jason and Grant really have no problem breaking an unwritten ghost hunter rule by front loading everyone on their EVPS. Red invites them back and then says he might believe in ghost…a little bit.

Status: Haunted.

Cartalk. Kris has mysteriously vanished from the back of the car! You think they are actually going somewhere or just driving around in circles until the fistbump? It's a town of mystery!

No fistbump even with no Kris. Jason hates us.

Case #2: Old Washoe Club, Virginia City, Nevada

Jason calls Steve, "Stevie." Before Steve can complain, Virginia City pops up in the middle of the mountains, seemingly out of nowhere. No worries, Kris is back in car #1 because she is too important to the show to be in car #2. I mean, she's got boobs! I think, anyways. She always wears those oversized shirts, so you never really know.

The Investigation
Scott the owner really wants to know if this place is haunted. I read between the lines and heard "I really want to start a paranormal tour here and make lots of money." Damn! This must be some ghost because they got Santa Claus as a witness. When Santa Claus is seeing disembodied heads floating around, you know it's time to call in TAPS. There's a 162 year old spiral staircase. I bet Steve is afraid of it. Evil Ron Jeremy tells us the story of the little kid on the spiral staircase. There was a prostitute killed on the third floor.

I fast forward through the ghost hunting for dummies waste of time (Approx. 2 precious minutes)


LIGHTS OUT!

Jason and Grant are in the room where the hooker was killed. If there's dead hookers, Jason and Grant will not be far behind. They have the K-2 meter. Grant tells the ghost that he is going to bring her killer to justice while making "why not?" gestures at Jason. I guess Grant never thought that if the ghost is in the room, it might be able to, you know, see him. Now Grant wants to be frisked by the ghost. Grant needs to get some so he get his mind back on the ghost hunting. Jason demands the ghost set off the K-2 meter. Both of them go off. We go to…

COMMERCIALS. Dear Lord, Judd Nelson has been relegated to doing Sci-fi original movies.

They're haring humming all over the room as they lights are going off on the K-2 meters.

Tango and Steve are in the ballroom where Steve tries to first get Tango to dance with him. When Tango will have none of that, Steve explains the corner where people went to read. Like he knows. He's an admitted book hater. Steve is in the middle of the land of make believe. I think he's on the pot, if you know what I mean. Why does Steve know how easy it is to score with a hooker when you're wife is still in the building? After Steve gets done with his story, something kicks on. It looks to be some sort of air vent. Apparently smelly air. They say its nasty bathroom air. Steve laughs because he is inhaling poo smell. He got bleeped so he may as well have just said shit. Wait a minute, someone just took a nasty, smelly crap in the middle of a ghost investigation? Well, it's got to be Kris. We all know her stomach. I really wish she would stay away from the Mexican food. Tango is about to barf. I love it!

Britt is still around. He's with Kris in the room the hooker was killed. His being present makes me question if it were Kris in the bathroom. The plot thickens. They don't tell us when in the investigation this is because they don't want me to know if this is before or after the poo incident. Kris tells the ghost that neither of them are there to hurt her. Kris, you need to warn her about the horrific smell in the bathroom! I bet the ghost would be appreciative of that.

That's a wrap because Jason is tired of the toilet antics.

The Analysis
Steve gives us his expert opinion of what went down. It boils down to this. 1) People died there. 2) Other people have seen scary stuff there in regards to ghosts. 3) They investigated and may have gotten evidence. Steve is my hero. They have a fake EVP, then get something we can't hear. It was okay to let us hear the fake one, but the real one – no way, man!

The Reveal
Whoa! No Findings? They are getting cuhrazee! They get Scott's hopes up by telling them about the personal experiences they had and then tell Scott that they dismissed all that. They play the EVP which seems inaudible. They don't know what the ghost is saying so they can't frontload Scott. Poor Scott. Grant says the history that Scott thinks his building has is all wrong. No dead hookers there.

Status: Not Haunted.

Scott doesn't believe them. He still thinks his place is haunted. Imagine that.

Cartalk. There is no Kris so…

Fist bump.


Overall: This is what I would call a meat episode. It wasn't fancy, but solid. These are the kinds of episodes that made Ghost Hunters one of the highest rated shows on Sci-fi. I still think the show is waaaaay overproduced, but it wasn't as bad this week as it has been in the past. There's no need to get cute with a show like this. In fact, getting cute with the production actually hurts a show like this's credibility. Why am I not working in TV? Supposedly, next week they have the evidence that will prove ghosts exist once and for all. Well, we are told they pretty much have that evidence every week, aren't we? We'll have to wait and see.

Until next week….don't haunt me.