"They're here," Carole Anne says while pressed against a TV in the 1982 film Poltergeist. Her family found that spirits don't leave if they don't want to. October is when ghosts arise in the mainstream consciousness, but in some households, it's a daily thought-provoking event.

Maybe others want proof, too. That might account for Americans' renewed interest in ghostly television shows such as Medium, Ghost Whisperer and Supernatural. More than 12 million viewers tune in to watch Medium, which won Patricia Arquette an Emmy for best actress this year.

Karen Shillings, director of the Hot Springs-based Central Arkansas Society for Paranormal Research, brought her video and digital cameras and trusty flashlight to my house on the last night of September. The next night, Shillings and other group members brought even more equipment to investigate whether ghostly encounters at the Arkansas Air Museum in Fayetteville were imagined or real. Nothing much happened at the museum. But it turns out, Shillings doesn't think I'm imagining what's happening at my house.

THE HUNT BEGINS Arriving in the dark on a Friday night, Shillings brought just a fraction of the group's ghosthunting equipment to my house. Some of the fancier gear, such as the electromagnetic field detector, is owned by other members.

Shillings, who has undertaken about 50 investigations since starting the paranormal group five years ago, doesn't charge for these ghostly hunts. The group has performed paranormal investigations across Arkansas and in Missouri.

Shillings spends her own money on equipment and gas as she drives across the state to perform weekend hunts for the supernatural. But for the people who call for her services, it's anything but a Saturday night adventure.

I wasn't sure I even wanted her to give me confirmation, but I knew I didn't want her to try to get rid of any purported lingering spirits. Who needs that kind of karma ?

Most "strange" anomalies that paranormal investigators find can be explained logically, says Benjamin Radford, investigator with Skeptical Inquirer magazine, which is published by the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal.

"It could be a number of things, dust on the lens, lens flare, a flash photograph of a bug in the air," Radford says. "Why is it that ghosts only appear when the lights are off ? Invariably what you have is ambiguous stimuli, a blob or a shape or a feeling. There are any number of explanations that could account for something strange without it being a ghost."

"Some people claim that ghosts are spirits of dead people. Some claim ghosts are telepathic projections. Other people claim ghosts are spirits that are stuck here because of unresolved issues. There is no agreed-upon explanation of what a ghost is."

Larry Pleimann, associate professor of structural engineering at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville, says it's possible for older homes to make noises such as creaking sounds.

But Pleimann, who also holds a degree in theology from Southern Methodist University in Dallas and became an Episcopalian in the 1980 s, believes those noises and apparitions could be the real thing.

"A lot of times spirits are wanting attention. We invite them to be part of the investigation, that's what a hunter does," Shillings explains. "So if anyone's here, I don't want you to leave. I just want you to hang out and show yourself on camera. The camera uses infrared technology and can record your image."

When I played the tapes a couple of weeks later it spooked me a bit as I realized I may have confirmation of something indeed. A sound like a pan hitting the wall in the kitchen forces me to pause the tape. But nothing's there, the pan is on the counter and the cat's outside.

"Use as much of your energy as possible, and we can pick up your voice on the tape recorder," Shillings says on the audiotape. "Tell us who you are …."

"We can bring it up to the frequency we can hear it, and you'll find a lot of voices that will be there that shouldn't be there," Shillings says.

She's not kidding. One portion of the audiotapes also includes a few women's voices in the background during a pause in the interview, but the words are too faint to make out. Where did that come from ? We were the only women in the house that night. I'm not the most religious person in the world, but maybe now's the time to start praying for protection, I think.

GHOSTLY TOURS The Arkansas Air Museum's haunting might be more of the commercial variety. Ghosts drum up business for museum tours Friday through Monday. Derald Linn, director of the Arkansas Air Museum in Fayetteville, says of the "spook hunt" that he's "skeptical about the whole thing. But there are a lot of strange occurrences." Doors open and close when they're not supposed to, lights flicker on and off, furniture is sometimes moved, and once, a whole box of Teletype paper was dumped across the floor in an area off-limits to visitors.

Linn believes Ray Ellis, a longtime aviator instructor and museum president who died at the age of 94 in October 1999, might still be coming to work. Ellis first worked in the hangar at Drake Field in 1943, and later lived inside the building while he managed the University of Arkansas Civilian Pilot Training program.

"Ghost hunts are not that exciting," Shillings says. "There's a lot of sitting around, and you look in your camera. You never know what you're going to get."

After about eight hours of standing around inside the museum, which felt ghostly with the hulks of World War II planes, the team didn't get much.

There were a "few orbs, but nothing spectacular," Shillings later says. "Not like your bedroom, that's where the activity is. There is definitely something going on in your bedroom, no doubt about it."

Anyone can find out the background of a building by studying courthouse real estate records or publications by historical societies. Or ask your neighbors, since they may know if former tenants had bad experiences.

My house was the first residence built in the area in the 1880 s. Once out in the country, the site is fast becoming the middle of a suburb as more people build on the lakefront property.

Since none of my experiences have been "bad" — slightly unpleasant but nothing that has made me run screaming from the house — Shillings thinks they are good or benign spirits, or maybe even guardian angels.

"About all you can do is ask them to leave," she tells residents who prefer to live by themselves. "Short of an out-and-out exorcism, I haven't found anything that anyone really does works. If the ghosts are persistent and they want to be there, it doesn't matter if you command it to leave in the name of Jesus Christ, if you command it in the name of Buddha, if you smudge it, if you sage it, it doesn't really matter. If they want to be there, they will be there."

I might need help on e of these d ays getting rid of a bad date. On the Web : Central Arkansas Society for Paranormal Research, www. casprquest. com. Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal, www. csicop. org.

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