Five students sat quietly, spread out in a pitch-dark bathroom on the seventh floor of Lawrence Hall with their phone recorders running.Just minutes before, they checked that all the doors on the floor were locked and all the stall doors were closed. They had to be sure any rattling, creaking, banging, laughter or footsteps they hear is not random – but evidence of paranormal activity.“Is somebody here with us right now?” Nathan Keenan’s voice echoed in the darkness.After a few seconds, something in the bathroom creaked abruptly, and the group considered it a positive response.“Are you alone?” Keenan, a sophomore broadcast major, continued.There was no response. It was clear to the members that the specific ghost they were trying to communicate with was present with what they believe to be one or more of the four ghosts on the floor.This was not the first time the group has investigated the floor between 12 a.m. and 1 a.m. They found that during this time in the middle of the week when the elevators — which tend to cause interference — are not busy, and the group experiences the most spiritual presence.Started by five students in the spring, the unofficial group calls itself the Point Park Paranormal Society and investigates paranormal events by capturing “evidence” with cameras and audio equipment without the use of Ouija boards. According to its Facebook page, the group “takes things seriously” but “may or may not find a ghost.”Since its inception, the group went on numerous ghost hunts in Lawrence Hall, collecting electronic voice phenomena, or EVP, on recordings and gaining followers.“We try to go in small groups because we believe [the ghosts] are attracted to smaller groups,” said Dylan Liebhart, a Point Park Paranormal Society founder. “When there’s too many people moving around and making noise, it’s hard to kept track of what was there and what wasn’t when we go back and review the footage.”According to previously published Globe articles, the Pittsburgh Paranormal Society visited the campus in the past, reportedly finding paranormal activity in the Playhouse and Lawrence Hall. PPS investigated the old room of the “Shuffler” in 1917 Lawrence Hall but did not detect any paranormal activity.The “Shuffler” is believed to be the ghost of Supreme Court Justice Michael Musmanno who lived in the building when it transitioned from a hotel into Lawrence Hall in 1967. He is a common explanation among students for shuffling footsteps and random misplaced objects.Last year, Liebhart studied cinema during his time at Point Park and resided on the eleventh floor of Lawrence Hall, which was also the paranormal floor, when he said he encountered the “Shuffler.”“The room I was in was actually haunted,” Liebhart said over the phone Tuesday. “So that kind of got me more into it. I could hear someone walking on the floor around me while I was sitting at my desk. Things would fall over; there would be noises in the room. Objects would move themselves in places where I didn’t put them.”After shooting a ghost parody video on the seventh floor of Lawrence Hall, Liebhart said he and his friends started to experience paranormal activity and decided to come back to investigate. Although the group researched the Pitttsburgh Paranormal Society’s findings and used their information when communicating with the ghosts, ghost hunting came natural to Liebhart, who is a fan of ghost hunting shows and horror movies.Once the team addressed the ghost that the Pittsburgh Paranormal Society believed to be named Jacob, they received a number of positive responses, each eight seconds after the questions were asked.One of the members, Garrett Kennell, a sophomore cinema major, was a skeptic about paranormal activity until he went on one of the investigations.“One of the group members asked Jacob if he had died at Point Park,” said Liebhart. “There was a huge, violent bang on the wall and movement on the bathroom floor that scared all of us. We decided to go back a few days later because we didn’t know if Jacob wanted us back there or not after that.”After receiving a response to the question “are there four spirits here?” the team suspects that there are two female spirits in the girl’s bathroom, Jacob and a negative spirit. The society does not believe the “Shuffler” is on the seventh floor.According to Kennell and Keenan, there is a spiritual hierarchy where ghosts cannot talk to or about anything that is considered above them in the hierarchy.“We think that the other spirit is in the locker room and about 12:30 [a.m.] that spirit ends up showing up and becoming dominant, and Jacob becomes very quiet. His answers are very quick, and he wants us to get out. We ask if it wants us to leave and immediately it wants us to leave. It’s as if it doesn’t want us to talk to it when that that thing is there,” Kennell said Wednesday night in Conestoga Hall.

The group follows a list of protocols before each ghost hunt to “debunk everything.” Besides checking for locked doors, the team introduces new members so the ghosts are comfortable with that person.“We heard footsteps in the room and to make sure that those weren’t footsteps from people above or below, we had Dylan [Liebhart] running across the hallways above and below, and you can’t even hear footsteps from either,” Kennell said.They are also careful not provoke the spirit or ask the same question several times. Group members said making noises requires the most energy from a spirit. Drops in temperature also indicate a spirit is present because members said “in theory, spirits take the energy from something.”“We will be skeptical of our own findings we aren’t just like, ‘Oh, you hear this?’ when it’s just like some person walking,” Keenan said.Sometimes the group takes photos of an area in the hallway where someone saw a silhouette of a person or a “foggy haze.” A few of the photos produced a small, white orb indicating paranormal activity, according to the members.Currently, Liebhart is not a student at Point Park, but plans to return soon. In the meantime, he is active on the society’s Facebook page discussing the findings at Point Park and posting his own “evidence” of paranormal activity. The Facebook page features YouTube videos of the EVPs amplified and slowed for full effect. The recordings run the gambit of growls, moans, breaths, whispers and laughs.“Even though they are screaming, sometimes it sounds like [the ghosts] are whispering,” Liebhart said. “There’s been several occasions when we think we’ve got an EVP, but it’s just been someone whispering. We’re listening for things we didn’t notice like banging or movement or talking that we didn’t notice while we were actually there.”In one EVP on the group’s Facebook page, someone asked the ghost if it was attracted to Bethany Barich, a sophomore public relations major, who was with the group during the investigation. A crackled, faint “voice” seems to say, “attracted” in a thoughtful tone and then “yes.”The society is considering applying to be an official club to receive funding from United Student Government. Liebhart said with that money, the group could buy equipment such as a K2 meter which measures levels of “spirit energy” to be more professional and record more “proof.”According to the members, not all of the ghosts they encounter are good. If they come across something with no gender, it is probably an androgynous spirit – something bad that should not be “messed” with.“Rule is if you speak its name, you give it power,” Keenan said. “Generic horror story stuff there: acknowledge presence, there is a presence. Don’t want to mess with that stuff; that’s how you get stuff to follow you.”