"[It was] the way a door slams when someone's angry," says Bourhila. Since, there have been doorknobs turning, dogs whimpering and handprints appearing on the walls and ceilings.

"I am suspicious," admits Bourhila. "I think it's haunted."

Bourhila has decided not to face her visitors alone. She has enlisted the help of members of the International Society of Phantom Finders, a local group of paranormal researchers—or ghost hunters—of which she is a member.

But don't get the wrong idea. They're not like the Ghostbusters. Their goal is to help clients understand unknown phenomena, not to trap lost souls in a little black containment unit.

The investigation of Bourhila's house began around 10 p.m. Sunday, June 11, and was led by ISPF founder Richard Longo. The 34-year-old, dressed in a black baseball cap, black shirt and blue jeans, has been in the ghost game for about five years.

With a team of eight, the group begins to comb the three-floor house for evidence. They carry walkie-talkies and work in teams of two to verify individual perception. Longo uses an electromagnetic field detector to look for increased activity and tests for significant fluctuations in temperature with a thermal scanner. Another team member, Jerry Armstrong, turns the light out in an upstairs bedroom and scans the area with a night-vision camera, asking in a hushed tone, "Are you in here?"

At one point, Longo tells the group that if you feel like someone's standing behind you and you get the "creepy crawlies," take a picture. "It'll confirm your feelings."

Also on hand is Shelly Prevost, founder and head of Batty About Ghosts, another local paranormal group. Tonight, she is using a set of divining or dowsing rods as part of the investigation. It's an approach Longo is not totally sold on; for the purposes of this study the rods are classified as an "experimental tool."

"You can't use unknown phenomena to investigate unknown phenomena," explains Longo.

Despite the controversy, the rods yield the most startling findings. Prevost holds the 2 1/2-foot long L-shaped copper rods out in front of her and begins to ask questions in a calm voice, as if speaking to a scared child. The theory is that when the ghost communicates with her, the rods cross paths, as if moved by an occult hand. When she asks if someone's present, the rods cross. She slowly calls out each letter of the alphabet, ultimately spelling out: G-E-O-R-G-E. Further questioning reveals that George is 39 years old and not alone.

"He's not happy," says Prevost, looking worried. "There's something else here."

Prevost concludes the haunting is the manifestation of a deceased family's turmoil and two other ghosts are present: Frank Drakois is the grandfather of Byron, whom he accidentally drowned, and Frank won't rest until he knows he has Byron's forgiveness. Their conflict has disrupted George and in turn, disrupted Bourhila's family.

In extreme circumstances where the living and the dead cannot coexist, Longo might recommend an exorcism. However, tonight's preliminary research provides little hard evidence of exceptional paranormal activity. Once they download the video, photographs and audio, they will pore over the data in search of supernatural indicators. The audio files may yield an EVP, or electronic voice phenomena, where sounds that may not have been audible firsthand appear in a recording. Some are played backward, and in the past have revealed garbled, "Paul is dead"-type messages like "Help me" and "Check my pulse."

In the photos they look for "orbs," accepted by a good share of the paranormal community to be spheres of energy, and which take a skilled eye to differentiate from what are easily confused with dust spots. Up for greater debate is the theory (and its logical conclusion) that without the human body as a shell, spirits take a spherical—or orbed—shape.

Most of the group members have had paranormal experiences. Longo distinctly remembers seeing a full apparition dressed in colonial garb walk down the stairs in his family's home and through a wall when he was a child. But Longo, who is a daytime cook at Bertucci's Brick Oven Pizzeria, doesn't come off as a man of blind faith caught up in the romance of ghost hunting. "We have to be open to other possible explanations. We like to call it open-minded skepticism," says Longo.