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.

Paranormal State episode report card.

“Freshman Fear”

Ryan investigates the claim of a student who says she has seen a ghost in her dorm room.

Paranormal State wonders if a student dorm room is haunted by a former student.

Client Credibility

Well it was inevitable. Ryan and the Penn State team were due to investigate a haunting on campus. For a couple of reasons it’s a natural fit. They are a college paranormal group for one thing. Plus there have been so many movies made involving college students on campus being chased by ghoulish creatures that it must be a common theme. We would think every college campus on the planet has their share of ghost stories.

The client is a student by the name of Lauren. Her story is she has seen an apparition of a girl a couple of times in her dorm room. The twist to her story that she has been playing a game that involved telling ghost stories. It was called “A hundred tales of horror.” The idea is to light a candle, tell a ghost story them blow out the candle. It is supposed to attract spirits.

She seemed sincere but it sure looked like to us that it was a high probability that she just spooked herself with this game.

Investigation

The team excels at researching a haunting. We have seen this episode after episode. This episode follows that track.

One thing that puzzles us is that they do not do “dead time” in the dorm room itself. Ryan says it’s because the room is too small and too noisy. We think it’s more likely that the room is too small to film the dead time. At three AM even a college dorm would be on the quiet side. Sure not totally quiet but it seems quiet enough. But having the room to have an investigator or two plus the cameramen wouldn’t work.

So they decide to play the game themselves. It seems to be an odd choice. It makes for an entertaining show but it doesn’t seem like something to do to help this student. So they regroup and decide maybe it’s better to concentrate on Lauren’s case. Ryan calls in a local psychic by the name of Shaurie. She gives them some things to check out but a trip to the police station does not reveal any kind of story to match to the haunting. The chances were not good in the first place as the details were very loose.

So the team returns to the idea that maybe Lauren was just scared by the game and urban legends that are known on campus. They do a “dead time” on one of the more popular ghost stories on campus. Again the possibility that this spirit being the ghost haunting Lauren are slim and none. It’s all just kind of silly.

Evidence

No evidence. No EVP. No video. The only thing even to remotely mention is batteries draining on their electronic equipment.

Conclusion

At least Ryan and the team do conclude that there probably isn’t anything here. But this episode goes into the category of why air it. It wasn’t very entertaining. It didn’t shed light on anything new in the paranormal world. It seems it’s in the category that we paid for 20 episodes, so we are going to air 20 episodes.

Did we really need to be told that young college students can scare themselves with overactive imaginations? Umm…we knew that!