The introduction to the episode may have been a bit different this episode but the rest of the show remained pretty much the same.
The Ghost Hunters visit King's Island amusement park in Ohio although it appeared that some of the team was not amused.The Ghost Hunters 8th season premiere featured another first for the TAPS team, an investigation at an amusement park. The team has done museums (to death – almost literally – I might add), public buildings and even a zoo in the past but never an amusement park.
Arriving at the park, King’s Island, located in Mason, Ohio we are given a new, and yes, improved intro to the show by Grant Wilson and Jason Hawes. The thing I realized while watching this new intro was how odd it seemed. In fact, my notes actually say “weird intro by Jason and Grant explaining TAPS.” As we begin this 8th season of the show it just seems odd to be explaining the team and what they do, but I guess Syfy has raised its hopes a bit that they would be bringing in some new audience this season. As a veteran of the weekly churn it did come off as odd but when I put myself in the frame of mind of a perhaps new viewer, it was rather nicely done.
Syfy does seem to have re-invested in the show. Beginning around half way through last season, suddenly we were seeing some extra visual effects, some freeze frames, a little more fancy editing and even some new music above the usual ‘dying oboe’ noises. Some will say it’s an attempt to give CPR to a show that is about to be able to hunt itself and I’m not entirely sure they are wrong. A reinvention of the show is definitely much needed and I applaud them for making the attempt. Only time will tell if it will be enough.
The introduction to the episode may have been a bit different this episode but the rest of the show remained pretty much the same. All the usual suspects were present and accounted for: Jason Hawes, Grant Wilson, Steven Gonsalves, David Tango, Britt Griffith, Amy Bruni and Adam Berry all return with the new season.
A few of the highlights of the investigation of the amusement park were:
- Jason, who apparently wore his ‘crunchy shoes’ for the episode heard a repetitive male voice in the restaurant although how he could hear anything over those horrid shoe noises is beyond me.- Various team members go in search of the reported apparition, a little girl named Missouri Jane. Jason tries the old ‘I’ve got a ton of kids too’ approach, Amy invites the kid to play, Steve threatens the kid by telling her she doesn’t belong there and Adam uses his little girl voice to try to tempt her out. Nothing doing.
- Britt and Amy report seeing some flying light balls in a closet but nothing shows up on video.
At the reveal Jason and Grant tell the Public Relations guy of the amusement park that they debunked the pots and pans sounds from the kitchen as some condensers and the voices and giggling heard in the water tower were from a metal fan. Moving on to the EVPs captured they play several clips that were very interesting, although it was impossible to tell what was being said the noise had a distinctive sound of a girl’s voice to it. Normally I hate those kinds of ambiguous sounds but in this case, I’ll give them a pass, it was a really close match. Finally they play another EVP that is a girl’s voice saying “Finding my mom.” Which is really heart-breaking. The audio was crisp and it was a wonderful piece of evidence.
Moving on to the next investigation the team is once again working on a residential home case. It is nice to see that the team is sticking to the plan that they revealed last season of doing more of the old-school home investigations again this season rather than the ‘Can you increase the number of visitors to my museum in this horrible economy please?’ investigation.
The Ghost Hunters are called to the Antrim family home in Antrim, New Hampshire by a family friend and reporter. It seems that the home has had activity since the owner was a child growing up in the house and now her own children are having experiences -- Siting dark shadows, a woman’s voice calling her kids by their names, loud snoring noises and jumping action figures.
Some of the highlights from this investigation include:
- Jason heard what sounded like a dog shaking his collar and a growl that Grant describes as the snoring noise heard by the owner. The sound is captured on a recorder.- David Tango and Steve Gonsalves set up an EM pod in the kid’s room and then when the alarm goes off they don’t bother to go check it out but instead they call out to the van and make Britt check the room on the camera. Nothing is spotted on camera so they are forced to finally make that long climb up the stairs to go check on it themselves.
- Amy sets up ‘yes and no’ flashlights in the basement and uses them to ask questions. Through repeated back and forth the flashlights tell her that they are a female member of the Colby family that doesn’t know that it’s dead but that it wants to leave.
The reveal with client and her friend consisted of playing the recording of the growl/snore which the owner of the home appeared to recognize and the dueling flashlight footage which caused the owner to begin to cry upon learning that they don’t want to be there.
In wrapping up the investigation Grant says that there are ‘entities that need addressing’ and Jason says that they’ve calmed the friend’s fears and got evidence to support the owner’s experiences. In an odd statement Grant leaves us with “They left with the person needing the most comforting was the entities.”
I am left feeling a bit mixed on this last investigation. It is difficult because not all the information ends up being included in the finished episodes but I would hope that the Ghost Hunters did not leave this family, or the supposed entities that are stuck there, hanging. I would have liked to have seen them giving the family some more information on releasing any trapped entities or at least the contact info of someone who could help them with this. As it looked in the finished episode, the TAPS team came, filmed and left. Not very encouraging.
As a whole this ‘Roller Ghoster’ episode was a pretty decent season premiere. It was fast moving but not so fast that the investigation felt rushed, well, except for the instant reveal at end of the second investigation, I was expecting at least another 10 minutes of commercials, this section of the show was really quite choppy in a ‘almost quitting time’ kind of rushed way. Again, I liked the new intro, however, I’m hoping that they don’t overplay this new ‘We’re a TAPS family …’ bit, you know like they do with everything else they seem to try.
I’m looking forward to the upcoming season. Hopefully we’ll be seeing some more of Jason’s daughter, Haily Hawes who did a great job last season and added a fresh face to the mix. Another item, as we saw in this episode, Amy and Britt make a great team. They actually engaged in conversation and attempted to work out what was happening around them when they were looking for that elusive ball of light. Instead we have inane conversations like the one between Amy and Adam on the amusement park carousel where we hear Amy say “I even wore my riding boots today!” and Adam answers her with that bored sigh of “Oh … you did actually.” Ummm. Yeah. Thanks for that. It was freakin’ riveting. Sheesh.
Anyway, the ‘fixing of the show’ will have to wait for another day, I can’t give Syfy all the answers in one column! So I’ll be back on Monday with the sneak peek video of next week’s episode, in the meantime, follow me on Twitter and I’ll keep you in the loop and let you know when the next installment of ‘As the Ghost Hunters turn’ is up on the blog.