He'll climb into the creakiest attic and snap a picture of a dancing red light. He'll drop into the dankest basement in search of a mysterious moan.

All he asks is a few bucks for gas.

In January, Southern and his wife, Holly, started Johnston County Supernatural Investigations, an amateur ghost-hunting group that tackles the unexplained with a pair of digital cameras.

It's a growing curiosity, a spiritual itch that has ghost detectives popping up almost weekly. At least a half-dozen groups now take calls from haunted spots in the Triangle alone. Cary. Durham. Clayton. Smithfield.

The Southerns spent a recent Tuesday night kneeling over graves in a Clayton cemetery, reading names by the light of fireflies and cellular phones, wondering whether anyone would answer when they called them out in the darkness.

"Pauline Cobb Griffin, if you're here let us know!" cried Nathan Southern, standing over the woman's headstone. "If you're angry at us for disturbing your grave, let us know!"

Pick any city of size in North Carolina and chances are excellent someone is offering services there as a spook detector. Wilmington. Hickory. Asheville. Boone.

"I think people are looking for answers," said Noel McCreath, case manager for Haunted North Carolina in Cary. "I think people are looking for proof of an afterlife with the turmoil the world is in."

The stigma of the paranormal has vanished, Holly Southern said. Thirty years ago, she said, mention that you're interested in ghosts and people assumed you were on drugs.

Now, a dozen television shows feature ghost-hunting themes, most notably "Ghost Hunters," which airs on the Sci-Fi Channel. The Internet crawls with spectral stories. People listen when both Holly and Nathan Southern talk about having seen their dead grandparents float past, not to mention the little boy they sometimes see peeking around corners in their Smithfield home -- only to vanish when they follow him.

"There isn't the taboo there used to be," she said.

The growth in paranormal teams isn't a surge for Ouija boards, seances, goose bumps or cheap thrills. It's a movement led by skeptics who say their first goal is to find a rational explanation for rattling chains and things that bump in the night.

Nearly all of the groups require people to fill out applications to join. No one interested in exorcising, or even taunting, the spirits need apply.

Former police officer Curt House said he will interview about a dozen of the 30 people who applied for his Clayton-area group, Triangle Paranormal Investigations. About five will be chosen.

Sample questions:

Can you use an electromag-netic field detector or a digital voice recorder -- common equipment on hunts? Do you believe in ghosts?

"You'd be surprised how many people say 'No,' " he said. "Just because you're a fan doesn't make you an investigator."

The point behind an investigation is to rule out what's normal, said McCreath of Haunted NC, a veteran of nearly 50 investigations, including one aboard the USS North Carolina in Wilmington.

It's rare that a noise or a blurry photograph can't be explained. A good investigator finds just enough mystery in life to stay interested.

"Several members have been touched," McCreath said. "We've had equipment turned off. We've had batteries drained. It's really something when you visibly see the switch go from on to off before your eyes. But you know, you get used to it."

$1 million challenge

The Florida-based magician and paranormal skeptic James Randi has a longstanding challenge:

Anyone who can demonstrate any paranormal ability under laboratory conditions, be it ESP or levitation, wins $1 million.

It's a contest that interests Nahum Arav, a physics professor at Virginia Tech University who studies the paranormal on the side. No one has ever claimed the prize, yet millions of people worldwide are still quick to believe in the supernatural -- at least in theory.

"We have a tremendous desire to believe," he said. "People have a very strong need for that. That need surpasses critical thinking. When they are confronted with facts, they will push the facts aside."

In the 1970s, people buzzed about UFOs. Not so much now. In the 1980s and '90s, crop circles were the supernatural fad. No more. Now it's the ghosts' turn in the murky spotlight.

No replies

Back in Clayton, the Southerns push deep into Maplewood Cemetery off U.S. 70.

The graves sit within sight of an AutoZone shop, and the whizzing of cars would disturb anyone -- living or dead.

Fireflies blink. A train horn blows. A star appears. But the dead are silent.

Holly Southern reads the name on an above-ground vault and her husband calls it out.

"Ola Pleasant, if you're here, please let us know," he says. "Come up and touch Holly or I on the back or the shoulder. Let us know you're here."

Ola Pleasant sleeps on, and the Southerns retire to their car.

The real work comes later when they pore over 100 photographs and several minutes of video, looking for lights that can't be explained as bugs or dust on the lens.

What they really want is access. So many sites that look haunted stand on private land, and the code of the new ghost hunter prohibits trespassing.

You can't knock on somebody's door and ask to walk the family cemetery, the Southerns explain. Not in the country, anyway, where so many own shotguns.

So they wait, hoping a spirit somewhere will make a stir that the living can hear, or linger long enough in the light for a hungry soul to see.

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