DS is most certainly guilty at times of wanting its audience to swallow some huge pronouncements, but I can honestly say that I've never felt that what Julia says about the skeleton has ever come across to me as some sort of expert proclamation. To me it's always been a fairly logical conclusion that might have occurred to almost anyone who was as deeply involved in the situation (the seance, Trask's skeleton's disappearance, followed directly by the appearance of Trask ghost) as Julia was. It makes a lot of sense that if Trask's ghost had accomplished his goal, his skeleton could have reappeared in the alcove. It's an idea that occurs to Julia after she pauses to give some thought as to what sort of sign there might be that Trask succeeded. The skeleton reappearing is the theory she comes up with, and given the way the scene plays out, the process of reaching that theory has always felt pretty organic to me.
And as an aside, one thing that's interesting about the scene where Barn and Julia go down into the basement to check for the skeleton is that back in the '80s when DS was syndicated in my area, the TV station running it used a clip from the scene up to the point where Barnabas proclaims "It is true. He has done what he came to do, and Angelique is no more," as one of their promotional ads for this section of the 1968 storyline.
I see where, not surprisingly, TVD won some Teen Choice Awards:
Choice TV Show: Fantasy/Sci-Fi: “The Vampire Diaries” Choice TV Actor: Fantasy/Sci-fi: WINNER: Ian Somerhalder, The Vampire Diaries Choice TV Actress: Fantasy/Sci-fi: WINNER: Nina Dobrev, The Vampire Diaries
Fill in the blank: "Stokes quickly checked behind him to make sure no one was watching and, therefore, might catch him taking ________ from the Evans cottage!!"
Fill in the blank: Maggie - "The sign that the doctors are waiting for hasn't displayed yet. Joe even tried ________, but it didn't work! But maybe if you tried, Professor?!"