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REIDSVILLE — Lights mysteriously flash on, then off.

There are screams. Shrill, rumbling shouts of terror.

An icy blast of air caresses your neck.

Then, somewhere close by, a chain saw cranks, and Nightmare on Scales Street is open for business, giving people exactly what they came for: a fright so chilling that visitors leave knowing that they may not sleep in a dark room for many nights to come.

But Steve Moore, the owner of the haunted Halloween attraction in downtown Reidsville, said it’s not the manufactured scares that interfere with his shut-eye. It’s the ones that aren’t part of his show — the unexplainable ones that are not man-made.

Dare we call them the real nightmares on Scales Street?

Heather Garner, a paranormal psychologist with a doctorate in that field, assures Moore that some paranormal activity is occurring at his building at 207 S. Scales St.

Garner and her team, Timestoppers Paranormal of Graham, have been studying the three-story building since 2009, a year after Moore opened the attraction and decided he couldn’t ignore the unexplained phenomena any longer. She has been in the building at least 30 times.

“We’ve seen full-bodied apparitions,” Garner said.

And they’ve recorded disembodied voices. She has even noted the presence of a ghost cat and captured its meowing on audio, yet they can find no evidence of a cat in the building.

Moore has been told there are nine entities in the building, plus the cat. That explains the sensation Moore sometimes feels rubbing against his legs when there is nothing there. Garner’s team members have felt it, too, and one of their photos shows a cat’s reflection.

Moore said the creepy stuff started four years ago, before the attraction opened. He was converting the building, one of the oldest downtown, into Nightmare on Scales Street.

Beginning in the 1940s, the building was home to the medical practice of Dr. Frederick Klenner, who pioneered studies in megadoses of vitamin C. His clinic attracted patients from all over the nation who came for treatments for polio, heart failure and other serious maladies.

That may explain why a paranormal investigator senses there has been a lot of death in the building.

But the Klenner name took on a sinister air in the late 1980s when the physician’s son, Fritz Klenner, went on a murderous spree that ended in nine deaths, including his own suicide. His rampage became more infamous in the book “Bitter Blood” and later in a made-for-TV movie.

It was in the doctor’s former office that Moore said he had his first paranormal experience: He heard whistling.

“It was some kind of Big Band tune,” recalls Moore.

He was doing some late-night work in that corner office when he heard it. No one was in the building. He even checked outside on the street below the room, but no one was there.

Later, he began hearing footsteps. Garner has heard those, too, and captured them on audio recordings. Moore once followed the sound of the footsteps, which seemed to go through a wall and continue in another room.

“I got my tools and left, and I intentionally didn’t look back up at the window,” he said. “I didn’t want to see what could be up there.”

Moore, an Air Force veteran, tries to find logical ways to explain the footsteps, whistling, and light bulbs flashing on and off.

“I’m still skeptic,” he said, but there was no denying some of the strange occurrences — even a menacing voice Garner heard that said, “There is risk.”

Moore and others have seen figures — apparitions, including a bearded man and a woman peeking out from a curtain — especially in one particular room.

One of Moore’s employees saw the man last fall. She called Moore immediately and, in vivid detail, described the person Moore has seen in that same room.

A year ago, Moore’s son wanted to visit that room with some college friends. Moore and his wife, Theresa, joined them.

After midnight, they entered with only a flashlight. When they got to the room, Moore’s son unscrewed the battery compartment of the flashlight, extinguishing the light.

“If you are here, let us know by turning on the light,” Moore’s son instructed. Though the batteries were not making contact, the flashlight blinked on, then off.

He continued asking questions.

“It would only respond to one person,” Moore said. The light would come on to indicate an affirmative answer. They learned that whatever was responding was male, had been a lawyer and did not know the Klenners.

“After about 20 minutes of questioning, the flashlight started getting dimmer,” Moore said.

His son asked if the spirit would like for them to leave.

“That thing came on quick and bright,” Moore said. They made a speedy exit.

During the Halloween season, Garner and her team like to visit the building more often, usually in the early morning hours after the attraction has closed.

“They claim people coming through screaming adds to the energy,” Moore said.

Recently, Garner’s group took a photo of a shadowy figure on the side stairway.

And they’ve gotten some interesting readings on the eerie third floor, where props for the hauntings are stored. Moore said the space was once a meeting hall for the Ku Klux Klan and an organization called the Red Men.

The Timestoppers team asked Moore to pull up the floorboards in a small, interior room where Garner and her team say they followed a shadowy male figure. Once the figure entered the room, he vanished.

Under the flooring, Moore found an empty Seagram liquor bottle and playing cards. It seemed like an excellent spot for the ghost hunters to set up camp.

They turned over a crate, set the bottle on it and trained a video camera on the spot. On the tape, they captured a voice. A male voice.

“That’s not yours,” they heard distinctly. There were only women in their group that evening, Garner said.

Since then, they’ve focused on that room, usually arriving after midnight, walking in the dark, past the creepy props in the former meeting hall.

They enter the small, windowless room, and there, illuminated by flashlights and the glow of their camcorder, they take seats around the crate. They shuffle a deck of cards and deal them, leaving one hand face down at a place marked only by the Seagram bottle.

They glance at their poker hands and call out, inviting others to join the game.

And they wait, in the shadowy dark, for one of the spirits to ante up.

Contact Myla Barnhardt at 627-4881, Ext. 116, or myla.barnhardt@news-record.com.