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Ghost Adventures – The Zozo Demon – S10E03

image We’re off to Oklahoma City to investigate a house where a man used a Talking Board also known as the Ouija to contact the spirit world and it’s believed he let through a spirit named Zozo. This is supposed to be a dark energy and one that cause harm and even inflict sexual assault on it’s victims. The door was originally opened by Darren who believes he was possessed by the spirit. He also states that odd things have been going on inside the house and now he and his wife are afraid of their home.

Zak states that Zozo is an evil entity and there have numerous reports of Zozo being conjured by these boards. He then meets with Robert Murch, Chairman of the Talking Board Historical Society. Interestingly, Robert says the more people believe in something the more real it is to them. He also states a lot of people say they contact Zozo. However, from listening to him, he doesn’t really state that using the Spirit Board actually opens a door. It’s more that if you think something has happened, then in your mind it did. Basically, if you wander around in the dark with the idea you’re chasing the devil, then in your mind that’s the reality. That’s the crux of it, you’ve convinced yourself something has happened regardless of whether or not it really did. So when Zak convinces himself that a place is haunted then in his mind everything is slanted to that end. Regardless of how things really play out, that place is haunted. And obviously, Zak believes this place has the devil inside.

To start things off and to show just how dangerous this house is, they bring in the handyman and have him sit on the stairs. Within seconds he’s saying something is brushing up against him and he bolts for the exit. Zak decides he needs to sit there with his Mel Meter that shows 1.0 and 1.1 repeatedly as a reading. To Zak, this is Zozo being spelled out. Ok, sure, whatever Zak.

There is a lot of talk about all the noises that go in the house. Not to be rude or judgmental, but the house is a shit box. Look at the walls. Look at the stairs. Look at the basement. The whole damn thing is falling apart. The stairs are insanely narrow and sagging. The wood is split, the walls are dirty as hell and everything about this place makes me feel like it’s going to topple over or someone is going to fall through the floor. Really? You’re surprised this place has creaks and makes noise? God only knows what’s living in those walls.

The investigation consists of Nick and Darren sitting around the Talking Board with the intent of contacting Zozo. They have to throw out their cautionary words of using the Board and opening a portal to hell. Again, I’m simply stunned with how easy it is to conjure demons from the depths of hell using cardboard covered in letters.

It should come as no surprise that the planchette starts to move back and forth and spell out Zozo. Wouldn’t we all be embarrassed if it spelled out something else? Of course, Nick repeatedly states he’s not moving it and it’s all outside of his control. Just who is he trying to convince?

But it’s during this time that the house starts to make all sorts of noises such as bangs and footsteps. Nick speaks of electricity charging through his body and down to his fingertips. The same fingertips that he assures everyone are barely touching the board.

Kathleen, Darren’s wife, decides this is a good time to make an exit because it’s all just to scary and dangerous for her. Nick and Darren keep at it and Zak is mystified how the word Zozo keeps getting spelled out.

Kathleen then makes a reappearance in a confused state and her belt undone. Zak jumps to the conclusion that Kathleen has been assaulted by the spirit energy. Kathleen even states the demon wanted to see her tits. Pervy little devil isn’t he? Dramatic effect for the sake of ratings? Clearly not.

As usual when there is supposed demonic energy around, Zak sits off on his own in a trance like state. He’s caught in a web of emotion and can’t move. He gets stuck like that a lot. Kathleen seemed to slip out of the demonic grasp and has wandered outside and disappeared. Oh no, she’s been lured outside by a demonic force. Zak jumps into his rent-an-suv and gives chase. He doesn’t have idea which way she went or how the neighborhood is laid out, but that won’t stop him. Good thing the pursuit comes to an end mere moments later when Darren catches up with him and says he took Kathleen back to the hotel. Hmm, she has her belt undone and a lusty look in her eye and there is a hotel near by. Say no more my good man!!

Nothing is said of where she went or what happened. It’s better to remain vague and mysterious about these things. Zak links the howling of the dogs he hears in the neighborhood to this visit by Zozo.

They decide switch things up a bit and have Darren work the Spirit Board with Jay, the other sound technician for the show. He had a bad experience using the Ouija years ago where a friend tried to stab him in the throat with a dagger after they conjured their own Zozo. Boy, that Zozo gets around doesn’t he?

With Darren and Jay at the helm the dark force spells out kill and that he will manifest within Nick. More trouble breaks out as Zak tells Nick what to do while he’s safely tucked away somewhere else. Even the demon thinks it’s funny as he spells out HA-HA, because that’s what spirits do. They don’t actually laugh into the digital records and say, Zak you’re a jackass, they spell it out like it’s instant messaging.

There are more bumps and bangs and even a couple more unexplained voices. It’s all manner of chaos when the devil is in town. And as they decide to wrap things up, they’re on edge that the devil is going to come through Nick.

Yes indeed, we had plenty of bangs and bumps and knocks in this POS house. This place is a wreck so who knows where all these noises are coming from. I’m not going to believe that the devil or some minion of the devil known as Zozo is going to choose this place to make his grand entrance. And I’m still not going to believe that the Ouija is a tool for contact spirits. I don’t care that Nick felt the planchette move. This all seems like the plot of a bad B-rate horror movie. Could it be any more cliché? Could it be any more predictable? The only thing missing was pea soup.

Again, if you think something is real, your mind makes it real. After all, isn’t that what the Matrix taught us?

GA1 GA3

Oh my goodness, oh my damn!  Have a look at these screen grabs. The top picture is taken of Kathleen at the top of the stairs. In my recording this is at 20:27. The second image is Kathleen on the stairs supposedly taken less than 5 seconds later. In my recording this is 20:32. Notice her belt is indeed undone and hanging open.

Just as Ash commented, something isn’t right about this. You can call it what you want, but to me this looks like a whole lot of faked evidence. Anyone with an HD capture of this same time frame want to comment?

It took several years for Jason and Grant to get caught with this same sort of silliness, but it eventually came back around on them. Looks like we have the same thing going on here. I think it’s time to call bullshit on the Ghost Adventures team.

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Ghost Asylum – Old Cannon Hospital – S01E06

image So here we are at the Season Finale of Ghost Asylum and for their send off, they head to Old Cannon Hospital in North Carolina. We have another hospital with some sketchy deeds in it’s past. While most of this will be chalked up to rumor and maybe a little legend there is an incident of a patient holding a doctor and some nurses hostage, the hospital supposedly had a history of housing violent patients and the Chief of Police thinks the place is demonic. People claim to hear screams and whispers and one investigator they spoke with said she felt something on her chest while she was investigating. Like their other locations, there is a lot of rumor and a lot talk from the locals. A hospital like this is certainly where violent patients would end up and it wouldn’t be too hard to image a patient lashing out at the staff. But I have to say, rather unusual for the police to say it’s downright demonic.

The team starts off with the daylight sweep and gets hits on their Mel Meter when asking if the patient was violent. They also discover a lot of medical records and x-rays with patient names. When the place shut down they didn’t take much care about cleaning it up. They also get some responses outside of room 426 and they feel the basement where a door from a refrigerator was stolen is also a hot spot.

For the first night they think they hear a female voice calling to them and they get Mel Meter hits down near the OR. They also believe they see a shadow figure at the end of the hallway blocking out their lasers.

Back up near room 426 they hear bangs and bumps and feel something is thrown at them. The Gauss meter starts to go off when they ask if this energy wants to hurt them. Not sure if that blip means yes or no in this instance. But back down in the basement they get some K2 hits at the stolen refrigerator door.

It certainly seems odd that someone would steal such a large door, but I seriously doubt it was demonic forces. Yes Your Honor, the devil made me take that door! And to say he was a law biding citizen so evil forces are at work is a bit much. There are plenty of examples of evil people blending into society until the mask finally cracks.

After going over the evidence of the night before, the team feels they’re up against a Siren Spirit, one that acts one way to lure men in and then attacks. Bit of a leap based on what we have, but ok, we’ll see where this goes.

Based on the evidence the trap of the night is the Infrasound Infinity Mirror Trap. Basically they will use aluminum plates to direct the signal a cell phone puts out so they can drive the spirits into an infinity mirror where it will get confused and get trapped. Sounds like a neat idea at a funhouse, but is this sort of thing really supposed to capture spirit energy? It has a tinge of legitimacy, but on the whole is dubious at best. But have no fear, the best is yet to come.

As they start using the infrasound and directing it, they hear the sound of a female voice. To them it’s the siren call. The K2 meter and the Gauss meter begin to blip and light up. Soon, it’s a frenzy of noise and lights with lots of yelling for good measure.

And then Brannon snaps. Things have been building up as Brannon kicks in doors and stomps all over the place. In a fit of rage and hysteria he yells at the spirit energy to come out and show themselves and works himself to the point of screaming at the top of his lungs. What some would call acting and an attempt to boost ratings in the hopes of  a second season others would call near demonic possession and being controlled by outside forces.

"He’s never done that!" and "I’ve never seem him like this" they all say as Brannon stares blankly into the darkness. They need to get him out because the dark energy is starting to take over. But there is more to come as Brannon rushes out of the hospital and into the darkness with the rest of the team trying to keep up.

After having his moment alone he then attacks the camera crew saying he doesn’t want the footage of him getting out. The rest of the team dive in, separate him and drag him away.

My goodness, what do we have going on here? Is this really unforeseen evil spirits making their way into one of the investigators? Is this some sort of condition rearing it’s ugly head? Is this a grasp at ratings?

It’s really hard to believe in this one especially since we’ve seen Zak from Ghost Adventures do the same damn thing many times. He gets all belligerent and starts to pick on his own crewmates. Who knows what this is, but I’m not willing to jump on the coattails of demonic possession.

Back at Ghost Asylum HQ, they review the evidence and hear more of the mysterious female voice. They also capture what they feel is a face peeking out from behind a door. And finally there is a voice they interpret as saying, "cut the noise out", in regards to their infrasound experiment.

So there it is, the final and dramatic season finale to Ghost Asylum. What did you think? Are we going to see this come back for a second run?

I will say that even though some of the stories and claims are more the stuff of legend than anything else, they still took us to some very interesting locations, most of which were completely new. They have some good techniques such as the daytime sweep and investigating over multiple days.

Their traps, while confusing, are at least an interesting idea. At least it’s not the parabot of Ghost Adventures fame from a few years ago. I give them A for effort in that regard. Like so many other shows their findings are a bit shaky and their conclusions are a bit of a leap. Not a bad series, but I don’t know if this last episode helped or hurt them.

Next week is a new show called Ghost Stalkers, so we’ll have to tune in and see what that’s all about.

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Ghost Asylum – Ironton Psychiatric Hospital – S01E05

image For this outing we head out to Missouri, to visit the Ironton Asylum. It should come as no surprise that this medical facility suffered from the problems of overcrowding, violent patients, lack of funding and the talk of unorthodox medical experiments. However, we don’t have documentation that proves it. What we do have is the word of local residence who throw out the blanket statement that bad things happened there. It’s really hard to dispute those claims, but it should come with some solid evidence.

I will also say that Ghost Asylum needs to ditch the stupid theatrics while telling their story. Come on, this is an old asylum, it really doesn’t need those sorts of gimmicks. It’s a run down, scary building, you don’t need those cut scenes. Let the story and the evidence speak for itself. And you wonder why people mock and laugh at this sort of thing?

The investigation kicks off the daylight sweep with blips on the K2 meter. They also go to talk with some of the local paranormal investigators who claim to have spoken with someone named "Bonnie". One says she was hit in the head by some unseen force. It couldn’t have been something falling from this obvious wreck of a building. Bonnie is supposedly tied to a murder that took place inside the asylum. There is talk patients lashed out at a nurse and killed up to 3 people before being subdued. That sort of thing should be in the records somewhere, but again, no documentation. Not disputing the claims because that sort of thing has happened in places like this, but it would be nice to see it confirmed rather than just being the stuff of legend.

As they move around the building they feel they stumble on the presence of a little girl. This is based on the readings being low to the ground. Ok, I guess we can go with that. This energy follows them around and leads them into a dead end where Doogie feels something grabs him in the face.

In another part of the building, Chris and Chasey use the old flashlight trick to try and communicate. I thought we’d seen the last of this with all the shenanigans of the Ghost Hunters, but I guess this trick is making a comeback. Unscrewing the light and asking spirit energy to touch it doesn’t seem all that valid. You can say it responds on command, I say loose connection.

Another piece of evidence is Porter and Doogie reacting to what they say is a large shadow crossing the room. As they stare into a room, they both lean back as though something is coming at them. Yet again, not caught on camera. When are people going to put a camera mounted in front of them so it follows everything they see. I’m getting tired of all these reactions but nothing that shows what it was. It’s a simple fix and cameras are cheap. Put a damn GoPro on your hat or helmet and let’s see what’s going on!

The trap for the night is the EMF Tetrahedron Trap. As they all keep saying, it’s a pyramid with a Tesla coil that provides energy to all the plates that cover it. The idea is to charge the area and funnel the energy to the containment crystal on the top. It seems like a neat idea and is certainly putting out energy to charge the spirits, if such a thing is possible, but is a crystal really going to contain a spirit? Yes, we know they hold energy and get used in lots of different things from watches to computers, but is this really feasible? In a totally abstract sense it sounds like it could work, but I’m not on board with this idea actually working. Anyway, it was a Tesla coil and that alone makes it pretty cool. Plus it was built in mere minutes.

With trigger objects in hand they head out for the second part and use the flashlights again to try and play with some child spirit they found. They have flashlights and meters on the stairs and the game is to turn the lights on and off while running up and down. It looks amusing, but it’s those flashlights again. I’m always going to find that to be a suspect measure of any sort of activity.

The Pyramid trap is pushing out some energy and they get some bangs and noises, but nothing really seems to materialize. Of course, this building looks like it’s going to fall down so there will be plenty of bumps, bangs, pops and things falling from the ceiling. However, in the end, nothing seems to finds it’s way into the trap. The crystal doesn’t show any signs of energy so alas, no ghost captured this time.

They do get words being spoken on the Ovilus, but none of it seems to make sense. We get one hit related to blade so we jump right to the conclusion this has something to do with the mysterious Bonnie and her being cut with a scalpel. There we go making those leaps again.

So, another interesting location, even if we don’t have the supporting evidence of all the procedures, murders and poor treatment they claim went on. There is no history on what really happened there, nor is there anything solid on why it was closed down. The claims are coming from local residents, but nothing is coming from records or former employees. You have to take these stories with a grain of salt. Hospital care was terrible during this time period, but if you’re going to throw out stories, back them up with something. Overall, I think this place is the stuff of legend. It was a hospital, the building is creepy and people like to tell stories. I don’t think we have a lot more than that.

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Ghost Adventures – Lemp Mansion and Brewery – S10E02

image For this episode the guys head out to St. Louis to investigate the Lemp Mansion and Brewery. The Lemp family came to St. Louis from Germany and established the first Lager Brewery. This was a new style of ale for the region and it took off with great success. Unfortunately, the family was plagued with tragedy as 3 members of the family committed suicide in the home.  William Lemp Sr and Jr both killed themselves in the house via a gunshot wound to the head. Charles Lemp later died the same way and was the last Lemp to live in the house. Not to be outdone, Elsa Lemp, daughter to William Sr also took her own life by way of the gun, but she died at a different residence. Clearly, there are cases of instability and most like mental illness in this poor family.

But mental illness isn’t good enough for Zak and the gang. Oh no, this has to be the work of a curse and it has to be tied to the Native Americans. The problems with this family have are because of dark energy and must be linked to the tunnels under the mansion and brewery. It’s rumored the Indians used these tunnels and they of course suspect restless spirits are at work down there. This is confirmed when they aren’t able to open one of the doors that leads into the tunnels. Let’s just ignore the fact that the workman says he doesn’t have the keys.

This certainly ranks as one of the worst episodes and really proves that Zak is an arrogant ass, a bully and quite frankly a pansy. I first have to say I’m sick and tired of their cut scene reenactments that are so over the top as to look stupid. The whole intro to this show talks about their credibility and their reputation and then within seconds they’re showboating and using theatrics to try and make the place dark and sinister. It’s pretty damn pathetic.

But on to the investigation. It should come as no surprise that even before they walk in the door, Zak is talking about all the dark energy and the family being cursed. This coupled with the horror movie style dramatizations seals the deal that this place is demonic right off the bat. No need to be objective, their minds are made up and they are shaping the show to fit their mindset. Is it me or does it look like they’re modeling their characters after those in Grave Encounters?

The claims are also pretty damn outrageous. Pictures are supposedly turned upside down and chairs move around the place. There is also the feeling of sadness and loss as you go from room to room. There is even talk that the spirits yell at you.

As they investigate they of course see orbs of energy flying around and every voice hey hear is dark and sinister. There’s even the standard slamming of the metal door.

The big moment to me was Zak down in the cellar of this building where he about soils himself, yet again. He claims he’s uncontrollably staring into the room and then when he hears a noise he jumps out of his skin and damn near knocks everyone out of the way to make an escape. He then bullies Aaron to go into the same room because he’s too damn scared to do it himself. Seems like Aaron and Nick are a bit tired of the crap and opt to leave him down there alone while they check out the upper floors. Zak damn near has a fit and starts spewing obscenities at them. They keep going and ditch him.

Shortly thereafter Zak’s flashlight goes out and he instantly starts to panic. He’s shaking, his voice is cracking and he demands Nick and Aaron come back to save him. You can even see when he hears a noise he almost soils himself a second time he’s so damn scared. I was laughing at his plight and how much of a pansy he is when left on his own. He did this same damn thing last episode where some blob shows up on his Xbox Kinect and his voice goes into a shrill panic that something is coming right at him. My god, he’s been doing this for 10 years and this is what happens when he’s alone? Grow a set!!

Since nothing is happening with this investigation they turn to the standby of orbs and "I feel heavy sadness in this room". Junk is flying around the room which Zak states is spirit energy and while laying on the bed in the Master Bedroom he says how sad he feels. Give  it a rest.

They didn’t capture anything of note in this investigation, but since they made such a big deal about the dark energy, curses and Indian burial grounds, they have to milk everything little thing as much as they can. Plus, what sort of haunted restaurant can the owners run if these guys don’t find anything? Sales would plummet!

Yes, the Lemp family suffered a great deal of loss in this house, but they don’t have anything that supports their baseless claims. They scared the crap out of themselves while standing in the dark like Shaggy and Scooby. Seems more likely this family had illness and they sadly crumbled to the pressures they put themselves under.

This episode was a joke and I can do nothing but laugh at just how childish Zak can be.

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