Ghost Hunters “Fort Delaware” Report Card
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 episode report card.
“Fort Delaware”
The team travels to Fort Delaware, which is down the river from Fort Mifflin.
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The Ghost Hunters go to Fort Delaware. Will they see some old soldiers? Will Grant crap his pants? |
Tango quote of the episode:
“I like hallways…I like to stare.”
– Tango
Case : Fort Delaware
Client Credibility
We were shown the property by Lee Jennings who is an historian for Fort Delaware.
An amazing set of claims of paranormal activity. Several stories of full-bodied apparitions. One where a specter lifts a pot lid, stirs what is in the pot, replaces the lid then leaves the room through a door without bothering to open it first. As a personal experience you can’t get much better.
Investigation
We are glad when they only do one location for an episode. But then again we don’t mind watching EVP sessions and other ghost hunting tasks.
The Halloween special guy who won to do an episode appeared on this show. His name is Mark Fusetti. He didn’t do too much but ask if there were any spirits around during EVP sessions. But then again when we went on our first investigation we did something similar. 
As usual the team did a good job investigating.
Evidence
The EVPs captured were easily heard on TV. It was interesting that Jason and Grant actually threw out one of the possible EVPs. They haven’t done that in a while. The others were pretty clear. One was “kitchen” and another “show some respect”.
They used the thermal again on this episode and captured someone walking down the tunnel. Later on someone poked their head out. We just don’t buy the thermal, the way Jason and Grant use it. What they catch is always white hot and a real human is most likely to be that way under the thermal. Now if it was cold that would be a different story. But we guess it makes good TV to use the thermal.
Conclusion
The season ended strong. Some very solid EVPs captured. The thermal was cheesy again but still have to say a very entertaining show.
June 19th, 2008 at 1:59 am
These TAPS guys need to be more true to their own stated objectives: to debunk hauntings that aren’t real, and to document those that are. By accepting the ‘thermal’ evidence of the figure in the hallway at Fort Delaware, they have broken a cardinal rule: never accept an unlikely reason for a ‘haunting’ when a more likely reason is already present. In this case, the image was clearly a warm-blooded human being and not a lifeless spectre. This kind of thing throws the whole premise of the show into doubt.
But, it’s still entertaining, huh?
June 19th, 2008 at 7:37 am
I still flagged it as entertaining despite the thermal foolishness. After all it is a TV show and they want to entertain and I’ve come to realize that. I’m sure the shows that had these kind of things are their highest rated ones, especially in repeats.
Maybe at some point people will come along, have a TV show and be true to how the Ghost Hunters started. Jason and Grant will not need to be plumbers ever again even if the show ended tomorrow. Just the speaking engagements will make them more money than faucets.
June 19th, 2008 at 7:55 am
Not to mention the amount of tail they pull from this nonsense. Way back when I was 16 or 17, we’d take the girls to the “haunted” house or some other “spooky” place . . .
Putty in our hands.
June 19th, 2008 at 10:15 am
I’m not sure what to think about the thermal stuff either…how does a spirit show up in those hot colors? But then again Grant said there were no heat signatures on the floor and if a living person had walked there, he thought there would be (do shoes leave a heat signature?). We don’t know how it all works, though…if a spirit sucks energy out of something maybe that energy gives off a heat signature.
And as far as the thermal goes, remember the episode where they caught the image of what looked like a Civil War soldier against a locker and for some reason the number 2 on the locker appeared red hot but the image of the “soldier” was blue as if it were cold? You can’t tell me that wasn’t a freaky image and agrees with the “it should show up cold if it’s spectral” theory.
To Resume, what do you mean, tail? Maybe the single guys but I doubt Jay and Grant are cheating on their wives and children just because they’re on TV. And I believe their claims more than any other ghost hunters because they debunk everything they can and they do things as scientifically as possible. Maybe that’s naive, but I have to trust these guys; they’re the only ghost hunters on TV who don’t rely on psychics (like the God Awful Paranormal State)!
June 19th, 2008 at 10:34 am
Evil:
Have you ever seen what the sychophants have to say on the TAPS website? Just imagine what goes on at sanctioned events such as meet and greets and the like. So okay, yeah, just the single guys.
And what TAPS does is not science, but psuedo-
science.
Curious as to why you’d believe these guys more than any other TV show with similar subject matter. The channel on which it appears calls it a “docu-soap” which hardly adds any credibility.
June 19th, 2008 at 1:57 pm
I just wish they would attempt to debunk things. They have stopped doing that. Why not put a person down there and film it with the same camera and let’s see what it looks like. Freakin’ compare the two videos, as it could actually answer questions.
The reason they don’t is they don’t want to debunk it. It makes better TV with it as it is.
I’m sure the forums are debating it right now. To them it’s all good as it’s just more buzz for the show.
June 19th, 2008 at 3:42 pm
A few years back a programming exec at their channel said something to the effect he sure hoped they weren’t faking things, that they were all on the up and up.
Given the vagaries of that industry, he might not be there anymore, but if he is, do you think he still cares about the credibility issue?
I think no.
June 20th, 2008 at 8:25 am
Just as an aside to all the Roto-Rooter jabber I hear from fans of this show. I believe it’s called “product-placement” for which a nice fee is collected.
June 20th, 2008 at 12:47 pm
I know the Fort fairly well and if any place had ghosts that should be it! A lot of people died out there for no good reason. However, all that being said and done… the barracks where the prisoners were kept were outside the Fort on the island. That is where I would go ghost hunting. Heaven knows there are some pretty strange hauntings in town also, still has a lot of the original buildings.
June 20th, 2008 at 2:39 pm
Thanks for the info Dee. The place is “huge” so maybe thats why they didn’t go to the barracks.
I wouldn’t be surprised to see them re-visiting the fort again at some point. Jason said on the show that they were the first group to investigate the Fort which isn’t true. The Delaware Ghost Hunters were there in 2006.
http://www.spectralreview.com/2008/04/19/ghost-hunters-at-fort-delaware/
June 21st, 2008 at 12:11 am
Yeah, I like Jason and Grant as well, and I admire how their love of ghost-hunting has led them to pastures greener than those in the plumbing business. The whole concept of spirits and hauntings is pretty sketchy from a scientific point of view, but these things are subjects of interest and fascination for so many people over thousands of years, so let ‘em have their fun. I just wonder why my house, which hosted a suicide about 15 years when my family and I were away, has no ghost. I live here by myself now, and….nothing. I feel cheated. Should I call TAPS to find out WHY I HAVE NO GHOST?
July 7th, 2008 at 12:04 am
As far as the thermal imaging camera goes, I don’t buy any of the evidence from that camera. The thermal camera shoots an infra red laser out to detect the heat signatures. In the episode at the hotel from “The Shining,” The reason the number was red hot was because the beam was pointing right at it and the reflection sent the beam directly back on itself and caused the number to look red hot. The apparent full body aporition was just a reflection of the person holding the camera. This episode was just a case of either the new guy “Mark” wandering around or a homeless guy with a boat. I will offer one question that is bugging me… Why would someone peek around a corner if they didn’t intend to keep walking in that direction when seeing no one is there? If it is faked it would have to be an intentional fake as opposed to an accidental capture. BTW cannons don’t have soul’s and haunt fort’s. I don’t know what that sound was but come on TAPS.
July 14th, 2008 at 8:32 pm
djb asked:
“Why not put a person down there and film it with the same camera and let’s see what it looks like. Freakin’ compare the two videos, as it could actually answer questions.”
I was involved with the TAPS visit to Fort Delaware as part of my job, and they actually DID do this. It just didn’t show up in the show that was aired. I was on location when they did the “reveal,” and although I wasn’t supposed to see anything that they caught, I happened to be there on the scene after they’d finished, and Grant was so blown away by the thermal that he showed it to me. Lee Jennings, the historian, told me much later (once we could be sure of not breaching confidentiality agreements) that Jason and Grant had shown him footage of where they’d sent someone down to imitate what they had caught in the thermal, and the two images were completely different – totally different colors, different heat signatures. I’ve known Lee for 15 years — he’s an extremely intelligent, down-to-earth guy who’s pretty good at figuring out when someone is dishing him a load of hooey, but he said the comparison of those two thermals really threw him for a loop, and he can’t explain it. Grant said the same thing, and that he’d be thinking about that for a long time to come.
As far as all the speculation about the thermal being someone who snuck in or whatever, another thing most people don’t know is that while it looks like the whole TAPS team is out there searching all at once, that’s not the case. A team and film crew goes out, and everyone else is back at the “base station” and accounted for. Very few people knew when the taping was taking place, and NOBODY was on that island who wasn’t accounted for at all times.
I was very impressed by Jason, Grant, the TAPS team, and the film crew. They were all personable, outgoing, extremely polite, and very serious about their work. I suspect that the kind of controversy this taping has generated is more the result of decisions made by the production company, Pilgrim, about what to show or not show — after all, controversy keeps people talking and watching the reruns. Remember that old adage: there’s no such thing as bad publicity. It’s in Pilgrim’s best interests not to make everything as cut and dried as it could be, but those decisions aren’t made by Jason, Grant or TAPS.
July 14th, 2008 at 8:40 pm
Thanks for the extra inside info DEGal. And I have to agree that a lot of what goes on is based upon publicity first rather than anything else.
This is why we all have to keep in mind that the show is entertainment and the best paranormal evidence gathering is being done by groups. For example Everyday Paranormal:
http://www.everydayparanormal.com
October 12th, 2008 at 10:29 pm
Disregard that, I now realize that I was, and am, an idiot for not understanding that just because a group of people’s work is aired on television and what is shown is regulated by producers, it doesn’t mean that their evidence can’t be realistic and substantial. I apologize for being such a moron, please don’t be put off of reading this site, and watching TAPS do their work by my retardation.
February 11th, 2009 at 12:32 pm
To James:
Thermal cams shoot no laser out. They are simply an array of thermal sensitive photocells.
Not that I believe any of the evidence coming out of it, just saying.
January 17th, 2010 at 9:07 am
About the thermal… sorry, I enjoy the show immensely, but that thermal looked like some guy who wandered into the hall, saw the crew, and tried to exit casually to the right. Then later he tried to get out, peeked and saw the camera still set up, and pulled back out of view. I can’t imagine why a ghost would behave that way.