Episode Recap: Club Dead

For this investigation, TAPS heads south to Florida to examine the mysterious occurrences at the historic Cuban Club in Ybor City. The club was originally built in 1917 following Cuban immigration into the United States. The space was intended to be a "Circulo Cubano", which means "Circle of Cubans" and since its inception, it has served as the hub of Cuban social life. Back in the 1920s an actor committed suicide on the stage of the theater. And during that same time period, one of the board of directors shot another board member in the face, after a heated argument. Since then, the spirits of both the restless actor and betrayed board member are still rumored to haunt the club. To date, spectators have also reported seeing a woman in a white dress and red high heel shoes walking up the staircase in the main hallway. And on the ground level, people say they saw a little boy, playing with a ball in the area where a pool used to be.

Amy and Kris begin the investigation by surveying the ballroom. Kris is quick to provoke the spirit in order to get a reaction, but Amy is a bit apprehensive about doing this, because she doesn't like to make paranormals feel uncomfortable. Yet despite Kris's provoking, neither of the hunters is able to get a response from the paranormal. Later on, Jason and Grant investigate the same area. Using the EMF detector Grant noticed extremely high readings on one side of the ballroom. And upon further investigation he noticed that there are large power lines outside of the ballroom, which are causing the high EMF readings. Both he and Jason deduced that the high electromagnetic fields are making people hypersensitive, which subsequently lead to hallucinations that may convincing them that they they've seen an apparition.

On the ground level of the club, Steve and Dave don't have much luck during their EVP session, although they even try speaking to the paranormal in Spanish. Yet when Britt and Grant investigate the area later on, they had amazing results. Since the paranormal is allegedly a child, Grant assumed that it would want to play. He took his flashlight and unscrewed it so that if it were touched, the light would come on easily. Sitting the flashlight in the middle of the floor near them, Britt and Grant ask the ghost a series of questions and with each question; they are answered by the paranormal who turns the flashlight on and off. They found that the spirit is in fact a small boy who often plays in the basement area.
While they were able to rule out supernatural activity in the ballroom, they did find that there might be truth to the legend of the woman in high heels. During their investigation, an unmonitored digital recorder picked up loud footsteps coming from the left staircase yet the cameras didn't pick up any figures walking in that area. Paring that finding with the shocking encounter Britt and Grant had with the boy in the basement, TAPS concluded that the Cuban Club is in fact haunted.

Trelles Clinic

After a successful investigation at the Cuban Club, the team heads to the Trelles Clinic, that was built in 1904 and used for several purposes before becoming a clinic. One worker recalls walking down the hall and feeling a child tug on the back of her shirt, yet when she looked behind her, there was no one there. Then, a group of workers reported seeing the apparition of woman, who was later identified as Conchita, the dead wife of one of the former doctors. While a man was doing construction on the second floor, three windows in the room slammed shut on their own. And in the morgue, there is a legend around an odd device that sits in the back of the room. Allegedly a man lost his arm in this machine and then bled to death. It's now known as "the meat grinder."

Amy and brandy begin their investigation by doing a walk-through of the first floor and go looking for the doctor's wife, Conchita. And while they do find creepy statues in the storage room, they don't find any traces of the paranormal. Then when Jason and Grant go into the morgue to survey "the meat grinder" they find that it is actually a sterilizer, which means that the rumor of the man losing his arm is false.

While investigating the second floor, Dave and Steve survey the windows that allegedly slammed shut by themselves. They find that the windows are set on an old spring system and could easily close on their own. They do a test of this and realize that the vibration from one window closing so hard would be able to trigger the other windows to close also.

While the ghost hunters didn't find much conclusive evidence during their hunt, they did hear a voice on one of the digital recorders. Although Amy and Kris didn't hear anything while they were conducing their EVP session in the pharmacy, the digital recorder picked up a voice saying "Juan." According to the clinic's caretaker, Juan was a boy who died in the clinic. TAPS also found that a camera that was set up in the hallway, mysteriously turned 240 degrees to the left, yet there was no explanation of why this occurred. In sum, the ghost hunters decided that they would have to conduct numerous more investigations before they will be able to conclusively decide whether or not the clinic is haunted.