AUGUSTA, GA – Rachelle Moran grew up knowing the boundaries of existence were broader than flesh and blood.

As a child in upstate New York, she saw something that, by science’s narrow definition of reality, wasn’t there — a woman standing at the top of the spiral staircase in her family’s old Victorian home.

“I still remember what she looked like,” Rachelle says. “She had a high lace collar, a long dress that was wide with a bustle, and her hair was up in little curls.”

Her sister saw the woman, too, and then, as quickly as she appeared, the woman was gone.

They never discussed what they saw with their parents but, for Rachelle, it was an event that sent her down the road less traveled, one that has brought her to where she is tonight, leading the group of paranormal investigators she founded on an investigation of Augusta’s historic Miller Theatre.

So why am I here along with her, screwing an infrared light into the base of my Handycam in the dank shadows of the Miller?

Because, like Rachelle, I’ve seen things, too.

Like most kids, I was scared of the dark. And storms. And Bigfoot.

Especially Bigfoot.

Once, having heard that Bigfoot sightings were often preceded by an intense odor, I spent a terrifying night at my uncle’s farm, sniffing the foul air wafting in from the cattle yard, convinced that Bigfoot was out there lumbering in the darkness.

Of course, that in no way makes me unique. Those are nothing more than the reactions of a kid whose emotions are unable to keep pace with his growing awareness of the world around him.

From that gap is formed the foundation of fear.

I don’t think it ever completely closes, that gap, though the implications of it change over time. For me, the boundless, irrational fears of youth have been replaced by the low-grade quest for answers.

You can’t reach a certain age without wondering, really wondering, about what goes bump in the night. Once you start losing people, how can you not ponder what happens when the breathing stops?

Is it a fade to black or ascension into the afterlife?

Or can it be something more?

Since none of us can prove with 100percent certainty what happens when we die, it boils down to belief.

What do Rachelle and the members of her Martinez-based South Coast Paranormal Society believe? They believe the world has some explaining to do, and they find value in forcing the reckoning.

“I’ve basically always known there was something out there,” says Josh Wilmoth, the group’s researcher, “but I think we’ve all had one or two main experiences that kept the hope alive.”

I respect their belief. I really do. I respect the fact that they see a face/skull in the misty corner of Savannah’s Moon River Brewing Company but, personally, I can’t make that jump to meaning, even though the photo is there, plain as day, on the group’s Web site.

I’ve seen too many Wile E. Coyotes in the clouds, too many hunchbacked old men in the marble pattern of my bathroom floor, to think that a smudge on a door is anything more than a smudge.

To be fair, I should also say that I feel the same about the Rorschach Virgin Marys that pop up every now and then, drawing the hopeful and the scared.

I also feel the same way about orbs.

Orbs are the round, floating bubbles of color you sometimes see in photographs, especially digital photographs taken at night with a flash.

There are various theories about orbs, even classifications.

“Orbs usually put off their own light, their own power,” Josh says. “They’re self illuminating.

Normally, they kind of morph and move and look like Flubber.”

However, even paranormal investigators don’t consider all orbs to be paranormal.

“A lot of it can be misinterpreted, when all it really is is a little speck of dust or moisture or bugs,” Rachelle says.

This kind of debunking is an important part of what they do. Key, in fact, to their vision of themselves as investigators. Yes, they start their quest for answers further down the path of belief than I do, but they’re not yes men finding confirmation in every creaking banister or unexplainable manifestation. They know the search for the truth is both deep and wide — as big as the afterlife and as small as a pixel — which is why they turn a critical eye to the orbs.

“Dust orbs are usually grey or white and you can see through them,” Rachelle says, “and bugs look like pinpoints of light until you pull them up close.”

But occasionally, she says, an orb turns out to be something more.

“An orb that’s any color and pretty solid, that you can’t see through or explain as dust or bugs or moisture — that’s something we have to put out there,” Rachelle says.

It may be my ignorance talking but, to me, orbs are just bad luck or bad photography, and it’s something I tell the group as we prepare to investigate the Miller.

They listen politely to my arguments in a hate the sin, love the sinner kind of way, but one that is so lacking in the usual condescension that I’m touched.

I feel they honestly respect my doubt just as I respect their belief, and sharing that kind of camaraderie feels good.

Of course, part of the allowance they give me undoubtedly comes from what they know happened to me the weekend before during our cemetery investigation.

Most of the members of Rachelle’s South Coast Paranormal Society have tried other paranormal groups, but they found the other experiences lacking something.

“They said things like ‘Ghost Hunters’ is our favorite program, which is a lot of the mentality in the area, but that’s not why we do it,” Rachelle says. “I experiencedsomething as a child, and I want to know that other people have experienced this, too.”

Josh agrees.

“Once I found the time in my life when I could actually invest time into it, that’s when I decided to find a group,” he says. “When you find people that are the same way that you are and you want to go out and do this sort of thing, you can pretty much tell you’re going to work with the group.”

For all their searching, they’ve found each other, and now they’re a family — Rachelle, the doting mother; husband Tim, the distant but supportive father; Josh, the eager older brother and then the rest of the kids, Thomas, Rina, Justin and Memory.

Yes, Memory.

Because there’s no real consensus about ghosts or spirits, the tools used to investigate them are rudimentary. That doesn’t mean, however, that the crew travels light.

Base camp for our cemetery investigation was a tangle of cords running from their portable power supply. A laptop connected to the static night vision recorder sat on top of a collapsible table along with walkie talkies and other tools of the trade: thermometers to measure temperature change, EMF detectors to monitor variations in the electromagnetic fields, digital cameras and, of course, digital voice recorders (DVRs), which record whatever sounds the investigators might be too distracted or too involved — or too human — to hear.

Listening for such sounds is called EVP work — Electronic Voice Phenomenon — and it represents the bulk of their investigating.

Reaching out. Making contact. Communicating with the beyond.

“Is there anybody here?”

At the cemetery, I was paired with Rachelle and Josh, watching the shadows for anything strange, while listening for anything — a tap, a rustle, a whisper — that might be understood as a response.

We stopped, chose a headstone and sat for awhile.

“Are you a man or a woman?”

I should feel something, I thought to myself. If not scared, then at least sad. Something.

But I didn’t feel anything except aggravated by the live music I could hear in the distance and the way it made it difficult to hear the subtleties around us.

“Is there something you’d like to tell us?”

We moved on. I purposely left my DVR behind, just in case we were being too forward.

Truthfully, I’m skeptical of that, too, but I figured why not. Maybe I’d get lucky enough to get the first verifiable audio from beyond. How would that be for a scoop?
We walked a little farther when I noticed the cold spot.

Earlier, I’d been told that cold spots were recognized as indicators of paranormal activity, so I alerted Rachelle and Josh to what I felt. The cold spot was about waist high above a gravestone and seemed to occupy the space of a pillow.

Josh moved forward and was instantly absorbed by the cold. Absorbed to the point where not only was he cold to my touch, but so was the metal charm that hung around his neck.

This lasted for a couple of minutes. We could see that the hair on his arm was standing up and we continued to feel his cold skin.

Another team had the thermometer, which everyone found disappointing because using science to document things like this gives it a kind of validity. But for me, the skeptic, it didn’t matter, because I trust my senses and I know what I felt. Besides that, I was the first one to feel it, so I know I wasn’t influenced by the circumstances or lead to a hasty conclusion by the suggestive power of someone else’s belief.

Which is pretty much how it went down a couple of hours later when I saw the figure.

At the Miller, I finish screwing the infrared light into the base of my video camera and head off with Rachelle and Josh to the dressing rooms below the stage, which are dark and close and kind of sinister looking, especially when seen through the greenish glow of the Nightshot feature on my camera.

Later, one of the other teams will be down here and hear the sounds of footsteps, see a light go on behind a closed door and possibly make contact with something communicating through some rattling pipes. But for us, the dressing rooms and the rest of the Miller prove fun but relatively fruitless, with the exception of the sound of rustling clothing and the orbs my camera picked up around the balcony seats.

It’s OK, though. I can hardly be disappointed, given what happened at the cemetery. That’s the kind of thing you can investigate for years and not experience.

A figure.

Not only did I see the figure independent of the others (it was dark-bodied and wearing a light-colored top), like the cold spot, Iexperienced it without provocation. And while I didn’t think to snap a photo, I did capture our discovery on my digital voice recorder.

Obviously, hearing people talk about what they see is hardly the confirmation everyone is looking for. But for me, the skeptic, it helps me feel confident in what I remember seeing.
Rachelle, Josh and I were standing among the headstones doing some EVP work, when I thought I heard a sound to my right. I cocked my head, and Josh noticed.

Josh: “I’m hearing that, too.”
Me: “Yeah. You hear that?”
Josh: “Sounds like footsteps.”

A few moments passed, at which point we all saw the figure, which looked so real, not one of us thought in terms of the paranormal. Immediately, all three of us began considering not what we were seeing, but who.

Rachelle: “Is that one of our investigators?”
Me: “Funny how sound travels, because I would have sworn it was over here more, and I heard a…
Josh: “Who is that?”
Me: “Somebody in white. No one was wearing white.”

It’s true. Though Thomas was wearing a grayish hoodie, he was with the others at the other end of the cemetery, and the rest of the team was wearing black T-shirts and dark jackets.
At this point, we were so convinced it was a person, we started to think that someone from the outside had climbed the fence of this locked downtown cemetery. Again, our thoughts were with the here and now, not the hereafter.

Rachelle: “My camcorder. Damn it. I hope it’s not somebody stealing my camcorder.”

From there, it was a frantic, confused race back to base camp, a kind of “Blair Witch” blur that eventually found the equipment untouched. In the process, though, we lost track of the figure that had been so clear to the three of us.

This is what makes the search for ghosts so frustrating and so inconclusive — the lack of a scientific control.

In spite of everything, it still comes down to belief.

Could we have inadvertently seen someone cutting through the cemetery even though we had been locked inside? It’s certainly possible. But not only did we lose sight of the figure, we couldn’t hear it, either. In fact, after the initial, quiet rustle that caused me to cock my head, there were no sounds at all, something that is pretty much impossible, given the amount of dry, crunchy leaves scattered across the grounds.

And how do you explain the cold thatengulfed Josh, that grave-cold air that I alerted everyone to?

Do you believe me?

And what about the light in the Miller’s dressing room that the other investigators saw, that bright light that illuminated the tiny bathroom with the tight, blacked-out window and the blown-out lightbulb?

Do you believe them?

Rachelle will be posting her crew’s evidence soon, but as for me… I can’t help but believe they saw what they saw.