San Marcos — Around this time of year, everyone has a ghost story that raises hairs and inspires shivers. But only a few people can prove the stories to be true.

Julie Davis says she has proof.

Davis and members of the newest chapter of the Association for the Study of Unexplained Phenomenon (ASUP, Inc.) are hoping to explain San Marcos’ ghost stories.

“We go out to locations that are reported to have paranormal activity,” Davis said. “It’s basically kind of like the show Ghost Hunters but on a less Hollywood scale.”

She and other investigators research and explore the possibility of paranormal activity using everyday devices like video cameras and tape recorders.

During a case, Davis researches a ghost story by finding out everything she can about the location, object or person to which the paranormal activity is attached. Then she and her crew look for proof of hauntings.

“Once all the equipment is set up, the investigators go in two at a time. They’ll just take pictures and they’ll ask questions, ‘is there anyone here?’” Davis said. She pointed out that crews don’t know the back story before entering the location. “That way it’s a clean slate and nobody is leaning one way or another going in to it.”

After scanning a site for activity, Davis listens to recordings for electronic voice phenomenon (EVPs) and looks at photos and video for anomalies, or unexplained visual items.

“We’re listening for anything that we didn’t hear at the time, listening for responses to questions. You sometimes have to listen very closely,” she said.

Davis described her first experience with EVPs on a bridge in Denton. It was her first investigation and she turned on her tape recorder for a few minutes before they began.

“That night I got home and I listened to it and I got hoof beats. They were hoof beats on wood, very distinct,” she said. “That just got me hooked. I was just like, this is so cool.”

She explained the hoof beats as a kind of residual energy that could have been left by someone who road their horse over the bridge every day at the same time, like a tape loop, she said.

Davis has always been interested in the paranormal. It all started for her when she was five, and unexplained phenomena began to occur around her.

“I’ve had some forms of paranormal activity around me since I was very young. I think it’s actually my great grandmother, she passed away when I was about four,” Davis said. “There will be like cabinet doors opening and closing, chairs moving. It’s usually when I’m not in the room. I can hear it. It’s kind of a mischievous thing.”

She said the activity escalates if she’s in a bad situation, which makes her think the cause is something that cares about her.

Strange feelings and incidents don’t always result in paranormal activity, Davis said. Though most of the time when clients approach her, there is a haunting of some degree, occasionally Davis rules out the extraordinary.

Another tool ASUP uses is an electromagnetic field (EMF) reader, which detects large electronic charges.

“We’ll look for if points of high (electromagnetic) activity exist because sometimes if you’ve got something like a bad fuse box or something like that that’s putting out a lot of EMF, high EMF can cause feelings of paranoia,” said Davis.

Video tapes of strange occurrences and voices on tape help to scientifically identify the unexplained, but Davis doesn’t rule out strange feelings that investigators get.

“After each investigation members will do a report to send to me and it’s simple, just basically, ‘I went in to the house at such and such time, I felt strange in the kitchen, or I felt strange here,’” she said. “It’s not something we can document, but if several people have the same feeling in a certain area, then if we go back and do a follow up, we might focus more on that area more than we had the first time. It all kind of guides us towards the end result.”

All ASUP members are volunteers and they don’t charge for investigations.

“I don’t care whether you’re a believer or a skeptic. It’s good to have skeptics involved as well, as long as people have an open mind going in to it,” she said.