DESTINATION TRUTH - Poltergeists of Pompeii & Nandi Beast

SyFy - Original Air Date: 9/9/10

Josh and company go to Pompeii to look for ghosts and Africa to look for a legendary lion-like beast.  They start out in old Italy, prowling around the ancient Roman city destroyed by a volcano 2000 (or so) years ago.  Pompeii is cool, and looks really spooky at night.  They take a crystal geode to the Temple of Ishtar to try to invoke the spirits living in the ruins.  And they actually catch a strange, humanlike shadow on their FLIR (infrared) camera, but find no one where they saw the image. (Note -- After viewing a recent Fact or Faked, I'm beginning to wonder if someone needs to seriously look into in-lens reflections for some of this equipment.)  Naturally, since ghosts are involved, they do EVP work, too.  After being creeped out for a while, they head back to check their video/audio with the Ghost Hunters, Jason & Grant.  As usual, the EVP work turns up strange noises/voices. (But is there any science?)  The GH guys like the shadow on the video, too -- very mysterious -- and the group concludes that Pompeii is a pretty spooky place, probably haunted.

Next, Josh & co. go searching for the Nandi Bear (beast) in Africa.  They hit the area in Kenya where the bear is reported to be, talk to locals, and set up the usual surveillance & camera traps, etc.  The African wilds can be a dangerous place, especially when you go poking around at night, and the team barely avoids lions and other local beasts.  Some kind of creature even prowls near their camp, barely within range of their cameras.  Back in LA, they analyze their footage, and discover that their camera traps have caught the beast in question: hyenas.  They conclude that hyenas (which even look like their CGI recreation of the Nandi Bear) are the likely origin of this myth.

Overall, this is a pretty good DT episode, if not the "season opening blockbuster" I hoped for. If you like Josh & his crew, you'll probably want to tune in for more of their shenanigans this season.