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While your grimacing jack-o-lanterns and disarticulated plastic skeletons have most likely given way to fall mums and horns of plenty, some people must live with the real spirits that haunt the night. Shadows that sweep around corners, teasing our eyes. Disembodied voices coming from empty rooms. Footsteps in the night.

For the Winston-Salem Paranormal Society (WSPS), the frights of Halloween last all year long. This year-old group of 240 people fascinated by the unexplained has given birth to a team of nine paranormal investigators, and they've spent the past seven months investigating 20 local hauntings in homes and businesses throughout the Triad; a few are here in High Point.

Co-founders and investigators Tonya Denny and Sarah Sherman and case manager and investigator Michelle Kindley spend many of their weekends burning the midnight oil as they take their digital cameras, cassette audio voice recorders, digital audio recorders, K-2 electromagnetic field (EMF) meters and thermometers and try to scientifically explain spooky occurrences.

If you've ever watched the Sci-Fi Network's program "Ghost Hunters," about two plumbers by day who hunt ghosts by night, you'll recognize the approach Denny, Kindley and Sherman take. They are asked by residents or workers in reportedly haunted buildings to investigate the activity. Armed with devices that record images and sounds and detect abnormally high electromagnetic readings and drastic temperature fluctuations often associated with paranormal activity, they go into a setting that's thought to be haunted and get to work.

"We try to find out what's going on and we try to debunk the claims of hauntings," Sherman explains. "When we are left with no reasonable or scientific explanation for the events, then we know the activity is paranormal."

Members of this ghost hunting team have spent many weekends in the still, quiet, dark of the night (they usually conduct their investigations between 9 p.m. and 4 a.m.) patiently scouring these private homes, restaurants, businesses, a law office, a plantation house and even the USS North Carolina for activity.

Several places have definitely registered positive on their ghoul meters, including M'Couls Public House in Greensboro, Christopher's New Global Cuisine in Winston-Salem and the Spookywoods fright-fest attraction in High Point.

Yes, in addition to being named one of the top 13 haunted attractions in the world by Haunt World Magazine, 2007 and 2008, Spookywoods does actually appear to be haunted. When all the attractions' raging ax-murderers, rotting corpses and screeching vampires have been unplugged and the hordes of squealing teenagers have left the property, Spookywoods at 1615 Kersey Valley Road is left with its own psychic phenomena. In fact, Denny, Kindley and Sherman believe that Spookywoods is so strongly haunted that they've investigated it six or seven times.

Visit after visit, they each encounter more activity. They've had items thrown at them, recorded EVPs (electronic voice phenomena or voices that are audible only on special recorders), heard footsteps, music and creepy laughter, and have seen apparitions in the woods.

Kindley, who works at the Asthma and Allergy Center of North Carolina in High Point by day, was scratched by an entity out there and saw objects fly across a room. Sherman, also of Asthma and Allergy Center of North Carolina in High Point, said the team recorded clear messages from beyond, such as an ominous "get out," and another statement said in response to a team member's inquiry, "They're from the ghetto like me."

The WSPS's investigation of the property that is home to Spookywoods has discovered that the residence there was once a boarding house and was home to a man who played the fiddle as entertainment for his fellow boarders. Records indicate that he died in the house and that may explain some of the bluegrass-style music that showed up on an EVP, says Sherman (who is a hostess at Salem Tavern).

On another visit to Spookywoods, electronic voice phenomena recorders captured a mysterious drum beat and chanting. This hints at the property's past use by Native Americans, Sherman said. The objects hurled across the room, the scratches that appeared on Kindley and the apparition of the little girl in the woods -- now those are still anyone's guess.

If you suspect that your home or business has paranormal activity, contact the Winston-Salem Paranormal Society at wsparanormalsociety@yahoo.com.

Because it is a nonprofit organization, investigative services are free.

Once you contact the group, they will schedule a time to meet and review details of the activity, and only after you have given them written permission will they investigate your home or business. And unless you give them permission, details of property (such as location) are kept confidential.

For information about the group's activities, visit www.wsparanormalsociety.com

Contact Cathy Weaver at cweavernr@gmail.com or at 883-4422, Ext. 243.