Ghost Whisperer – ReCap – Season 4, Episode 17 – Delusion of Grandview – airdate 8/14/09. In this episode Sam and Eli help Melinda discover who the ghost is that is haunting a class of kindergarten children. Melinda first sees the ghost of a woman in the playground with the children. She and Sam visited the school, on the pretext of looking at possibilities for schooling for a future child. While in the classroom, Melinda sees the ghost in the middle of a circle of children, leading them in a French song. The teacher says that she did not teach them the song.
One of the kindergarteners – a young boy – then proceeds to leave a message on the blackboard that is far above his ability to have written. The message is scary, and the teacher runs to get the principle to come and see it. When they get back to the classroom, the message is still there, but the children are gone!
The children are found in a local park, singing the same French song, with the ghost in the middle of them. The ghost tells Melinda that she is protecting them (the children). She still will not cross into the light, and will not discuss how she died.
Eli finds out that the building was not always a school – that, amongst other things, it was at one time an asylum. Going into the asylums records (which were conveniently donated to the school that Eli works for), they find out who the woman ghost was. She was a patient at the asylum – someone who had killed her newborn child. She died after several years in the asylum, with no record of how.
Sam and Melinda sneak into the school at night, to try and find how the children might have left the room. They find a doorway that leads into a tunnel system underneath the city. While there, Melinda tells Sam the truth – that Jim entered his body after the accident. Sam refuses to believe this, and storms out.
Melinda goes back into the tunnel with Eli. She comes to a place where she sees the room that the ghost woman received shock therapy in. This is how she died – singing the French song to quiet her mind during a therapy session, while a Dr. Bird talks to her in a not so nice manner.
Eli finds the ghost woman’s son – who has not died, after all! He is a father, and has children of his own. He relates how his mother was afraid that she would hurt him, and turned him over to his father, also asking that she be hospitalized so that she could get better. What she had was post partum depression – something that was not diagnosed at the time she had her child.
In searching for Dr. Bird, they do find traces of him, but not as a staff doctor at the time the ghost woman was a patient. He had died by that time – he was a ghost that took over her mind!
The ghost woman tells Melinda that there are many of her (ghost) friends in the tunnel – all afraid to cross over because of Dr. Bird. Eli and Melinda return to the tunnel, and begin to see the ghosts. They are talking to them, encouraging them to cross into the light, and telling them that Dr. Bird lied to them. Dr. Bird shows up, trying to take the ghosts back under his control. Melinda gets the ghost woman to look into the light, and tell the others what she sees. Love and goodness is what she sees, which encourages the others to cross over. Melinda encourages Dr. Bird to cross over, which he refuses to do, saying that he will stay in the world with Melinda.
Melinda relays to the ghost woman’s son how she feels, and that she loves him. At this point the ghost woman crosses over.
When Melinda arrives at home, Sam is there waiting for her. He insists that she whispered in his ear at the hospital, trying to make him believe that he is Jim. He yells at her that she is sick, and needs to be hospitalized. She tells him to leave – immediately – that he is the one that is sick. The end scene shows Dr, Bird across the road from Melinda’s house, watching her and Sam. It is clear that he got through to Sam, and took over his mind.
I have to agree with other people that think that the whole Melinda/Sam storyline is old and over-done. I do hope they let it go, and get back to the meat of the show!