Local Ghost Hunters Investigate Life After Death

To help explain the unexplained, some people are turning to a group of local paranormal investigators for clues.

Using voice-recording devices, these "ghost hunters" can capture a sound called an electronic voice phenomenon, or EVP. These voices or noises are often only heard with electronic devices. According to some, these voices are from beyond the grave.

Cher Anderson founded Paragon Paranormal Investigators last year after doing an investigation of a hotel that piqued her interest in the paranormal. Anderson said that since she began ghost hunting, she has not been the same.

"I have changed my mind and my outlook on everything, -- religion, how I deal with people and how I deal with myself," Anderson said.

Paragon Paranormal co-founder Diane Plotts and her husband, Chris, are part of the team. Not all six members of the group are convinced of the EVP evidence.

"I'm the group's resident skeptic. I'm the one who's got to debunk everything," Chris Plotts told NBC5 Next. "I like to get the scientific side of it." So far, the evidence gathered by the group has not swayed this skeptic.

"I haven't seen anything yet that's going to make me change my mind," Chris Plotts said. "I want to, like to, but I don't see how it's going to happen." The group's founders both say it is a quest for knowledge that drives the investigations.

"First off no one has all the answers. There are no experts in this field," Diane Plotts said. "We just want to know what happens when you pass away. Do you move on? Is there something else there?"

During a recent investigation, the team checked out the former County Civic Building in Woodstock, IL. Part of the more than 150-year-old building is now a restaurant called The Courthouse Grill. The kitchen was once the county morgue and crematorium, and a cell once used for solitary confinement is behind the bar.

Paragon contacted restaurant owner Linda Tejeda after the group saw a picture posted on the Internet of what they believed to show a ghost behind the bar.

Tejeda said she took the picture with her own camera, and was happy to allow the team to try to gather additional evidence. She said she just wants to know more about the spirits present in the building.

"They're not scary, they're not harmful, they're just mischievous. They'll push dishes around or knock glasses off the counter or stuff like that. It's not that it's really scary, we don't want them to go away, we just wanted to know more about them," Tejeda said.

Waitress Linda Brown has worked in the old civic building since 1999 and she said she has witnessed paranormal activity in the restaurant.

"I think the creepiest for me is the kitchen, the morgue factor there, and the crematorium is that big blue area… that nobody knows that was the crematorium," Brown said.

With more than a dozen ghost-hunting groups in Illinois, and many more across the country, it's not difficult to find an investigator in your area. Most paranormal investigators do not charge a fee. To contact Paragon Paranormal on the Web, visit www.paragonparanormal.com.