We have all heard stories about people who claim to have seen a ghost, or felt a strange presence when no one was there, but not everyone thinks that these claims are made up.

Frank DeAngelis is a parapsychologist who investigates paranormal activity ghosts for local people.

As Halloween approaches, we decided to go on the job with a real life ghost hunter.

Carol Lee Espy reports.

[Music Plays] I wasn't scared.

I wasn't scared at all.

But I seen it.

She saw the light?

Yeah, and I heard the footsteps.

But I didn't see the shadowy thing.

[Footsteps] We went out there because the family, both the husband and the wife, kept feeling things in the house.

Frank DeAngelis has heard it all.

Stories about the unexplained.

DeAngelis has a background in parapsychology.

He's a ghost hunter.

And you call him when things start to go bump in the night.

[Paranormal Noises] [Door Closes] The kind of calls we get today are where people actually see a form, feel a presence, hear someone in a sense, trying to speak or whisper to them.

In some cases, they will feel something touching them, brushing their hair.

There have been many stories of hauntings in Pittsburgh newspapers from the past clippings that tell of an artist seeing a ghost inside a church in Millvale, turn of the century spirits walking around Old Allegheny, and even the Pittsburgh Playhouse is said to have a ghostly cast.

There's a couple of ghosts.

There's the dressing room 13, which is haunted, and then there's so-called John, who walks across the stage occasionally.

[Music Plays] But whe you're being spooked in your own home, well, that's a different story.

[Camera Noises] He went down there and took the light bulb out, shut the doors, put a chair in front of it with wheels on the bottom, an put the light bulb on the chair.

The voice on this tape recorder belongs to a local homeowner who called DeAngelis for help.

And the next day, I went down by myself to see how everything was.

The chair was out in the middle of the room, the doors were open and the light bulb was in and on.

Investigating home hauntings is fairly low tech.

Frank and his crew use a tape recorder, a compass, a flashlight and they ask a lot of questions.

The last question which we ask all of them is what do you want us to do?

And that's really important because there have been some cases where the family will say, well, we just want to know that we're not crazy.

We want to know that what we're seeing is genuine, that it's valid.

To get rid of the ghost.

DeAngelis recommends that a priest or a minister bless the House.

More often than not, the disturbances will stop, and sometimes the family finds out the spirit is that of a loved one and they want it to stay.

Now, there's been some cases where the family has said, that's dad, that's mom, that's grandfather.

We don't want him to leave.

It's okay.

He can stay.

DeAngelis believes there's an afterlife, and that's what he was taught.

The belief of the immortal soul.

But as for ghost, I actually believe that I've seen, too.

And the one that reall stands out in my mind is we were called to a house about ten years ago in the North Side area, and we had just gotten done interviewing the family, and we were kind of in the hallway and we were talking about this person, and she said, well, there's this older woman, and occasionally we see her going up and down the steps, and occasionally we see her in the kitchen.

And just as we were talking, all of a sudden the dog started barking and we looked up the steps, and as we looked up the steps, there was this older woman just all in white.

Just her hair was pulled back in a bun.

Real early 19th century, tur of the century kind of clothing.

And she descended down the steps, came down the flight, went to the landing, came down a second flight and got almost as close as I am to you, and then just disappeared in front of us.

That really stood out.

My in fact, the back of my the hair on the back of my neck is going back up again just now as I speak about it.

Very lasting impression.

[Music Plays] Well, DeAngelis says he does not charge for his services.

He does ask that homeowners keep a diary of strange events before he will even consider a visit.