The Haunted Hunts: Project Invocation - 'Silver Mountain' - Season 4, Episode 1 Review

Lead by Danny Moss, The Haunted Hunts team are back for their fourth season entitled 'Project Invocation'. In the first episode the team visit an unusual and sprawling location in Wales, but unlike in their first three seasons they have no idea where they're going in advance.

At the start of the episode, Danny tells us "everything that we have done so far has been fascinating, we've been lucky enough to visit some incredible locations, but right now we are being sent into the unknown."

The team have absolutely no idea where they are going and are not armed with the history of the location. The tactics and methods used during their investigation will be explained to them upon arrival, which means the team really are in the dark and will be pushed outside of their comfort zone and to the limits of fear. The experiment is designed to test if fear itself can invoke paranormal activity.

After being given nothing more than a postcode on the first day of shooting the series, Danny found himself at Silver Mountain, a former silver-lead mining facility near Aberystwyth. He's joined as always by his fellow investigators, Rebecca Salisbury-Moss, Emma Dawe, Charlie Rutter and Roxanne Rutter.

The site was established in 1742 and mining continued until 1908, when the site was abandoned. It has since been redeveloped as a tourist attraction allowing visitors to experience what the conditions would have been like for miners working in the original 18th century mine as well as other parts of the vast site's buildings.

Upon arrival, the team are given instructions by crew members Alice and Nick. It's Danny's job to read out these instructions to the rest of the team. They dictate who will be going where during the night and what techniques they will use.

For the first half of the investigation, the team were instructed to split up and head to different areas of the site alone. Most of the team experienced unexplained occurrences in their locations, including Emma who experienced an eerie sound behind her in Mine B, an underground area that was part of the original underground workings.

Danny was left shaken after his time in Mine A where he heard a loud and unexpected bang, but it was perhaps Becki who had the worst deal. She was sent to the old mining offices, a location that's not too scary, but her instructions stated that she must be blindfolded during her time there. With her sense of sight cut, Becki experienced several odd sounds around her.

Later Charlie and Emma return to Mine A, the place where Danny had previously witnessed the terrifying bang. Here they conducted an experiment called the Estes Method. This involved Emma being blindfolded and wearing noise cancelling headphones, eliminating all external influences. Then the output from a Spirit Box was pumped in. A Spirit Box rapidly scans through radio frequencies, it's believed that spirits can manipulate the static and white noise in these frequency ranges to form words and sentences.

Only Emma could hear the responses through the Spirit Box, but because of the noise cancelling headphones she won't be able to hear the questions her teammates are asking the spirits, this technique eliminates any subjectivity.

Meanwhile, a very "on edge" Danny was with Becki and Rox in an area of the old mining building that was dressed with creepy theatrical props for a Halloween scare exhibit. Trying to ignore the eerie paraphernalia around them, the team concentrated on the sounds coming out of their custom-made ghost hunting device called an IntraVox. At one point they heard what Danny described as "mind blowing communication" that seemed to suggest a tragic event took place there.

Before the night came to an end, the team had one more challenge to embark on. The fearless Charlie went with Danny to the show room, a secluded location at the top of the hill where they were initially shaken by a door blowing in the wind, but soon things got much stranger.

The girls held their final vigil in the depths of Mine A where they heard a clear example of Direct Voice Phenomenon (DVP), this is a disembodied voice that is spoken directly to the investigator and heard without the use of any audio or electrical equipment. Before there time was up, they also heard a lot of unexplained noises that didn't sound out of place in an old mine. During the vigil, Emma said "this is probably one of the worst locations I've ever been on for feeling vulnerable."

Summing up the season's first investigation, Becki said "we have had some incredible activity, but I've been petrified." Danny added, "you're going to ask me if I think this location is haunted, 100%. On to the next one..."

The team's challenge continues at nine more terrifying locations where they'll be given another set of taxing challenges to test their nerve and push them to the limits of their fear. We'll be bringing you an episode guide for the second instalment of 'Project Invocation' tomorrow.