It's all perfectly paranormal

Muskego - The voices of ghosts drifted through the Muskego Library last week - or, at least, so it seemed.

It was already dark outside when nearly 80 people gathered inside the library to see and hear for themselves what the Paranormal Investigators of Milwaukee have uncovered at various purportedly haunted sites in the region.

Murky voices carry

Attendees had to strain to listen to short clips of muffled voices and even faint laughter - recordings from some of the scariest and weirdest places in the area.

One of those places is the barn at Willow Creek farm in Shannon, Ill., a tiny hamlet surrounded by miles and miles of flat farmland.

It was there that the investigators asked a presumed spirit to answer questions rapping once for "no" and twice for "yes." Softly beneath the investigator's voice was the faintest indication of words being spoken. The audience, guessing what the words might have been, ran in the vein of "who's out there?" and "who is it?"

But investigators, who had the advantage of headphones to decipher the words, said they could easily hear a voice saying, "I don't want to play," said Noah Leigh, who founded Paranormal Investigators of Milwaukee in 2007.

On another recording, the scrap of a soft laugh could be heard beneath the investigators speaking. But one of them, Tony Belland, another of PIM's investigators, got a much better earful in the pitch black room where the recording was made. The laughing sounded like somebody right next to him, he told the crowd.

In yet another audio, an audible whisper can be heard underneath other voices.

The investigators think the whisperer said, "I don't want her to crawl up the ladder like that."

Strangely, the whisper was captured by an investigator as she ascended a ladder, Leigh said.

'Intriguing,' but believable?

All that was interesting, but not totally convincing, to supernatural fiction writer Steve Schmidt of West Allis, who had come to the presentation on the paranormal with his sister Barb Schroeder, who lives in Muskego.

"I found that very intriguing," he said after the session of the recorded voices. "Part of me would like to believe, but the rational part says there might be some explanation we're not aware of yet."

Indeed, that's the definition of paranormal - something that can't be explained yet - Belland responded.

Schmidt's sister, though, is a believer - and for good reason. Every so often, she'll find a figurine on a counter that neither she nor anyone else the house bought. She just puts them away in a drawer.

Dale Ellifson of Oconomowoc walked in a skeptic and left a skeptic.

"I don't know, but it's interesting," he said before the presentation. Afterward, he hadn't changed his opinion.

The haunted kinds

But also attending were Bill and Marilyn Dangers, of Muskego, who are both believers because of personal experiences.

They know of someone who seems to be experiencing an impish haunting with everyday articles mysteriously disappearing, the sound of shuffling, voices and smells of food coming out of nowhere.

Marilyn even asked the investigators what might explain the food smells.

Leigh responded that such aromas have been known to be released when the sun hits and warms a bit of bacon grease or other food residue hiding in cracks.

That insight as to how a natural explanation could be at the heart of strange happenings was the best part of the presentation for Jan Kulpa of Muskego. She is open to the paranormal, but her husband is a true believer.

"I can't have any antique furniture," she said laughing, because her husband believes that spirits can follow furniture. The theory is that the older the household article, the better the chance it has a spirit attached to it.

And indeed, Leigh affirmed that spirits can attach to furniture or even to people.

In the presence of spirits

The idea of ghost hunting struck some members of the audience as risky and they asked if the investigators were ever scared and if spirits ever followed them home.

While Leigh said he wished something scary would happen, Belland said the only time he was nervous was when they investigated a building in Chicago where a huge 6-foot 6, 280-pound man told them he had been physically tossed.

Nothing so dramatic happened when he was there, Belland reported.

But after the presentation, he told of something kind of funny that happened at an investigation that took place in a bar after closing. As he and others sat at the bar discussing how they would go about the investigation, Belland felt "someone" squeeze past him, nudging his legs out of the way. And of course, no one was visible.

In answer to the question about bringing a ghost home, investigator Karen Kolasa, the sensitive in the group, said she began having strange experiences in her apartment after one investigation. She saw shadows and her dog seemed to be worried and watching things. That went on about a week.

Thorough scientific sense

Leigh said he founded the group to bring a more scientific method to paranormal research. In real life, Leigh, who has two master's degrees, is a basic science researcher for a Milwaukee area institution.

That background, and thorough aproach, sometimes comes in handy, such as during one investigation at a shop in Stoughton.

The PIM team had photographed all the shelves and aisles in the store where the owner said she sometimes finds merchandise inexplicably piled in aisles, Leigh said.

Every night the owner turns the lights out in the back and walks to the front of the store to lock up. In the morning, she'll sometimes find piles where she surely would have tripped over them in the darkness the night before.

Suddenly, the team heard bumps on the first floor and rushed to investigate. In the middle of the aisle, they found a 3-pound statue of a galloping horse. Their baseline photos showed that the statue had been moved 2.5 feet from the shelf into the aisle and 2.5 feet down, Leigh said.

"That was the coolest thing," he said.

AT A GLANCE

More of what the PIM investigators said:

Don't believe everything you see on television shows claiming to pursue the supernatural. Because of the need to provide entertainment value, their science can be shaky.

Don't be fooled by "orbs," small circles of light in the air. They can be a bug illuminated in just the right way to produce an ethereal effect, as the investigators showed in a slide.

Don't use a cheap tape recorder to capture ghostly sounds. The background noise from the tape going through the recorder can make it seem like there is a ghostly voice when there isn't.

Night is better for detecting paranormal activity because it's quieter.

The Paranormal Investigators of Milwaukee investigate sites when invited and do their work for free. They use audio and video equipment, electromagnetic meters, temperature gauges and barometers in their investigations as well as help from sensitives.

PIM investigates within a radius of 4.5- hours travel and was the first group to investigate the Milwaukee Public Museum and the Riverside Theater. Before investigators could go into the museum, they had to sign a confidentiality agreement to keep secret anything they found.