We here at Spectral Review are not paranormal investigators, demonologists, or drama critics. We don’t even play any of those on TV! But we do watch most paranormal shows and can tell the good ones from the bad.

Ghost Hunters International episode report card.

“Fortress of Fear”

Paranormal activity is frequently reported at Rasnov Citadel in Romania. The team visits the location in search of answers.

Ghost Hunters International battles the elements to do their investigation and personalities begin to clash between team members.

Case: Rasnov Citadel

A tough investigation for the team. The weather is nasty with a pretty good snow storm. It causes them to leave the cars farther from their destination than they wanted. So they had to carry the equipment quite a distance. Andy is not on this investigation as he is home for the birth of his child.

Client Credibility

The client was a man named Ciprian Moruzan who was the citadel manager. He seemed very credible as he stated he was a skeptic and didn’t believe in the paranormal because he hadn’t experienced anything. He told the team of a story of a monk apparition that has been seen praying in front of a crucifix. He tell us of shadows being seen and interesting noises during the night.

He shows the team the well. The story of the well is that two Turkish prisoners were told to dig it and would be freed if they found water. They eventually did find water after 17 years but were killed anyway.

The next spot was the “museum” where a dog “max” will not enter. Mr Moruzan did a really nice job showing the team. Very credible client.

Investigation

Robb, Barry and Brian go to the front gate. They use the EMF detector and they try to get some EVP. Barry knows some German and Romanian so he uses both languages in addition to English to appeal to them.

Next Donna LaCroix and Shannon Sylvia go to the crucifix to try to work with the praying monk apparition. They try to get EVPs and Donna complains of battery draining on her camera quickly. Maybe the monk sucked up her juice.

Barry, Brian and Robb continue to the museum. Barry thinks he sees a shadow. Again they try to get some EVPs with Barry’s multiple language strategy. Robb debunks Barry’s shadow by noticing a light source from a window reflects off of something in the room that does give a shadow moving effect. Nice job.

Donna and Shannon get Max the dog to try to get him into the museum area but fail to get the dog into the building. Maybe Max doesn’t know English with a New England accent?

Next Brian does a real nice job going down the well. His Air Force training gets some practical use in ghost hunting. He brings a camera and recording equipment with him as he feels some cold breezes. It will be interesting to see if he gets EVPs.

Next Donna and Shannon go to the museum and Donna tries to do some EVP work. The stress of travel and working together 24/7 is taking it’s toll. Patience is running thin. Shannon doesn’t want to conform to Donna’s style of EVP collecting, at least at this moment of time. So Robb needs to separate the two so the raw nerves have a chance to chill out for a while.

So Shannon gets to work with Barry in the chapel. There have been a couple of times when Barry seems to just take off and run. Once in the “Irish Elemental” episode in the summer of 2007 on the regular series and once earlier in this series. Here he thinks he hears a growl. He goes down some stairs and looks through a crack opening made by a door to some other place. Then Barry kind of freaks out and tells Shannon “go now now”. Very similar to Brian’s “Dude Run!” from a previous season but a lot less quotable. When Brian’s incident happened he got lambasted by Jason and Grant. No such thing happens here to Barry.

The team tries to rally behind Barry to try to find what he saw. Which was two legs that moved past his view. They spend time trying to investigate the room in the chapel. Apparently this door where the incident took place does not open so they go outside to see if there is access another way. They eventually realize that it was too dangerous to get to this room.

Evidence

Unfortunately nothing collected by Brian’s terrific investigation of the well. Nothing on video either anyway.

They did capture some EVPs where having Barry was an asset as he was able to recognize something as being in a different language.

One of the EVPs is Romanian “Poftim” which means “What, can you say that again?”. A second EVP was also Romanian “Bine” which means “I’m alright”. What was great about these EVPs is that they were verified by Ciprian Moruzan the manager of the citadel.

Conclusion

Overall another good episode. We here could do without the “drama” of personalities. The producers of this show which also produce the original series seem to like and to even promote people not getting along. We didn’t like the “drama” then either. Maybe it’s why they hired the new people that they did. They probably made them take personality tests to ensure they would be fighting with others by the time they were on the road for three weeks. We can probably look forward to more Andy “migraines” too.

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