As soon as the lights go off, a shiver goes down my spine. It’s dead quiet in this room except for our breathing and the creak of the floor as we walk. “I’m not afraid of ghosts,” I remind myself, as I fear, but somewhat hope, to see the apparition who reportedly walks through the halls with an axe.

Susan Parker, our guide with the St. Joseph Paranormal Society, holds out a small device called a KII EMF detector. It looks like something out of a “Star Trek” movie, with little lights across the top ranging from green to yellow to red. It will light up if we encounter a change in the electromagnetic field, which could mean we’ve found a ghost.

“No whispering,” she tells us, as we slowly shuffle through the kitchen, our cameras ready for anything.

Everything we see and hear is being noted by digital video and audio recorders. Whispering, we learn, can be mistaken for paranormal sounds during the recording playback, so it’s better to talk in a normal, identifiable voice. And everything is being watched. A night-time surveillance camera set up in each room is being watched on four monitors by a group outside. So logically, there isn’t any reason to be scared. At least there will be witnesses.

“Ninety-nine percent of what we find, we disprove almost immediately,” says Chad Roberts, co-director of the St. Joseph Paranormal Society.

The group was founded in 2007 and now has 116 members. Their goal: To find undeniable proof that the paranormal realm exists. On this night, the group is holding a training session for new members at Chad and his wife, Tisha’s, home, which they say is “haunted.”

“Haunted” is as good of a word as any,” Chad says, “as long as we are not stating it as a professional opinion. We try to say it has activity or it had activity.”

Activity in the house is actually how the Robertses came to be involved in SJPS. Up until a few years ago, they were as skeptical as the next person about the paranormal. But when the couple’s son, Tanner, was born four years ago and they began some remodeling, strange things began to happen, raising many questions. Doors moved by themselves. Untouched toys would all turn on at once. And on one occasion, when Tanner was a baby and Tisha was holding him in the kitchen, a baby bottle flew out of the dish strainer by itself and hit her.

“(Chad) said, ‘Oh, you’re crazy,’” Tisha remembers. “‘You’re just seeing things. There’s nothing going on.’”

But as Tanner grew older, more strange things occurred. Tanner’s grandfather rolled a ball back and forth with him over and over, and then it suddenly changed direction and went another way. Smells of cinnamon rolls and brownies would fill the air when nothing was in the oven. One day, Chad’s back became inexplicably covered with dozens of small scratches, some looking like initials or words.

“But when I really started to take notice is when Tanner started to talk about the scary man and the old lady,” Chad says.

Tanner talked about them every day, the couple remembers. Then at the same time every night, around 1 a.m., he would wake up crying.

“He would look over your shoulder, point and scream, then bury his head in your shoulder,” Chad says. “And if you would ask him if the scary man is here, he would look around before he would answer. He was checking to see if he was.”

When other children were in the house, they would be scared to go upstairs, Tisha says, and they knew nothing about Tanner’s experiences. Tisha’s nephew also mentioned the old lady. And then Chad saw the old lady — three different times.

“It was always in the same circumstances. I’d be laying in bed, just about asleep, and then hear her coming up the steps. I’d look out in the hallway, and what looked like a woman in a long housecoat starts coming in the bedroom. As soon as it clears the doorway, it disappears.”

Since the Robertses have joined the SJPS, they learned the old woman is most likely what they call a residual entity. It doesn’t interact, won’t communicate and usually just repeats the same action over and over. The old man, whom they were told carries an ax for chopping wood, may be a former resident of the home who died 73 years to the day that Tanner was born. By listening to voice recordings, they have heard a man’s voice answer Tisha when she asked the question, “Is anyone here.” The voice clearly says, “No.”

“There’s no rational explanation for it,” says Susan Parker, the group’s treasurer. “It freaks you out when you hear it.”

Thanks to popular television shows like “T.A.P.P.S” and “Ghost Hunters,” searching for paranormal activity is much more mainstream than it was even 15 years ago, the Robertses say. For them, it’s become an interesting hobby to share with others as they investigate homes and businesses. (They do this for no charge). But there are a few people who don’t understand what they are trying to do. Chad says he has been told he’s going to hell. Tisha received an 8-page letter telling her the same thing, with the mistaken belief that the group is trying to contact the dead in some kind of sacrilegious manner. That’s not the case, they say.

“I was raised a Baptist and still am a Baptist,” Chad says. “We’re not trying to conjure up Jimmy Hoffa and find out where his body is or contact any specific person. We’re just trying to explain what’s happening. And if they want to talk about it, we’re listening.”

For more information on the St. Joseph Paranormal Society, visit www.meetup.com/paranormal-UFO.

Lifestyles reporter Sylvia Anderson may be reached at sylviaanderson@npgco.com.