Lincoln, Nebraska - Amy Chapman was just six when she woke a little spooked one night in her aunt’s house in Maryland.

She opened the door to the hallway. She wanted to sleep with her parents.

Standing at the end of the hallway was a robed figure. It was as tall as the ceiling and surrounded by a strange blue light. She saw no face, just blackness where it should be.

“I remember staring at the figure until it raised its arm up,” she says. “And I immediately started crying and woke everybody up.

“They’re like, ‘There’s no such thing as a ghost.’”

But Chapman believes.

She’s seen too many strange things. When her grandpa died, she says, he came to her in a dream and said everything would be OK.

Chapman is a mother, a wife. She works at a big investment company in town. She’s had psychological tests.

She laughs. “The Myers-Briggs says I’m OK.”

But even now, in her typical ‘70s ranch home in the Tierra Park neighborhood of south Lincoln, she sees and hears things she can’t explain. Like loud knocking on the door between the kitchen and garage.

Three loud knocks.

She called the police the first time she heard them. Then she felt silly when they found nothing.

The second time, she was with her kids in the kitchen.

Did you hear that?

Yes, they said.

Scary guy, her toddler said.

She’s heard feet shuffling down the hall carpet when no one was there. One day, her toddler said he saw a little boy with black hair in his bedroom.

That’s why, when a relative told her about the Nebraska Paranormal Society, she went to a meeting in September.

The society hosts public meetings the third Wednesday of each month at Here and Back Again, a new-age gift stop on South 13th Street.

Chapman had been doing her own investigation - keeping a journal of the strange events, capturing on her digital recorder what seems like a woman’s voice. But she wanted to learn more about how to do it from people who study paranormal activity.

She went to October’s meeting, too.

(From left) Mark Scherer, Angela Howell, Laura Schliesser, Robin Harmon, Jim Shorney and Carl Morones

She sits with about a dozen people around long tables—regular members and people like her, the newer faces.

This month’s topic: Ghost Hunting 101.

The ghost hunters demonstrate the equipment they use on investigations - cameras, digital recorders and electromagnetic-field detectors.

Many hauntings have earthly explanations, Chapman hears them say. For example, a ball rolling across the floor could just be an uneven floor.

If they can find those explanations, they can give people relief. They do this for free.

It’s fun for them, they say. But they take it seriously.

They pass around a few of their strangest photos.

Carl Morones, an amateur photographer and member of the group, has taken thousands of photos during investigations. He’s skeptical of most of the odd things he finds on photos.

The group dismisses orbs. Too many reasons for them.

But he can’t explain a picture he took one night outside a cemetery gate: It shows a swirl of what looks like mist curling up around one of their parked cars. There was no mist that night, he says, no smoke.

Robin Harmon and Laura Schliesser, members who are both nurses, discuss ghost-hunting basics: Never go alone, always get permission from property owners, always have ID in case the police show up, never vandalize, always show respect to the ghosts and to the location.

“Introduce yourself to the ghost and tell them why you’re there,” Harmon says. “This does take a while to get used to - sitting in a room and not talking to the person you’re with is kind of weird. It makes you feel a little like, ‘OK, I’m talking to someone I can’t see.’”

When did you die? What’s your name?

Ask a question and wait 30 seconds.

What year is it?

“I actually asked this question one time and I got ‘’77,’” Harmon says. “Very clearly - ‘’77.’”

Don’t antagonize ghosts as some ghost hunters on TV do. You don’t want a ghost mad at you.

Says Schliesser: “The most important thing to remember is, if you have a gut feeling to leave, just do. If you’re terrified, scared or feeling you shouldn’t be there, you probably shouldn’t be.”

The night the Nebraska Paranormal Society investigated an Iowa home in which a family had been axed to death, Schliesser got an overwhelming feeling she shouldn’t be in the attic.

She spent the rest of the night downstairs.

Chapman likes what she hears.

She likes the scientific approach these ghost hunters seem to take. She might join. But she’s not sure because she’s so busy with her kids and work.

She especially likes the respect the group gives to the ghosts.

She has a sign on her desk at work: Ghosts were people, too. - Colleen Kenney

Source - http://journalstar.com/