Is their house haunted? The Sylvias believe so.
LEOMINSTER -- From all appearances yesterday, Shannon Sylvia might have been any homeowner giving a visitor a guided tour. That is, until she paused by a large porcelain vase just outside a bathroom and said: "That's the vase that moved." It did so, she insisted, without anyone touching it. In the same area, Sylvia said, she sometimes hears faint voices in the condo when no one is talking. Pointing to the bathroom, she contended that its light bulbs often unscrew themselves.
A few feet away was the kitchen, where her husband, Jeff, said he felt three taps on the shoulder by unseen hands one day, and where Sylvia swears a package of hot dogs simply disappeared one time, vanishing into thin air while the couple stood nearby. And then there's the bedroom, where Sylvia says the door blew open one day so hard that the doorknob punched a hole in the wall.
"It's not normal," Sylvia said, shaking her head. "It's just not normal."
In her view, it's paranormal. Her sleek condominium does not look like your prototypical haunted house, but Sylvia believes it is inhabited by spirits all the same. It is a belief, she acknowledged, that has earned her plenty of derision in this north Central Massachusetts community, where Sylvia works as a graphic designer.
"Everyone in town thought I was nuts," she said. But, she added, "If they catch evidence, I'm not nuts."
By "they," she meant a team of students from the Paranormal Research Society, an organization based at Pennsylvania State University that today will wrap up three days of investigation inside the Sylvias' condo. Headed by 24-year-old graduate student Ryan Buell, the team is being filmed by a crew from "Paranormal U," a new series slated to air this summer on the A&E television network.
The Penn State team has set up infrared cameras and tape recorders that are on around the clock in the condo. According to Buell, on the first night one tape recorder captured some strange and inexplicable sounds, including a voice that appeared to be saying "Katie" and some labored breathing whose source could not be identified. "I'm not ready to say it's a spirit, but it's definitely suspicious," said Buell.
This is the sort of thing that makes skeptics roll their eyes. Ghost stories have long been a staple of Hollywood: Think "The Sixth Sense," "Poltergeist," "The Others," "Ghostbusters," and innumerable other movies and television shows. But in the real world, a belief in the paranormal is not exactly a mainstream position.
"The only thing I can tell them is, 'Wait till it happens to you,' " said Shannon Sylvia.
Alan LaGarde, coexecutive producer of "Paranormal U," said he has always been a skeptic on the question of the paranormal. But he said he has been impressed by the thoroughness and professionalism of the Penn State students, and touched by the sincerity of Sylvia and others who have been filmed for the series. "When you see these people, they're not whackos or anything," said LaGarde. "They believe ghosts are affecting their lives, to the point that they're willing to allow people to help them, and to be on TV."
Which raises the question: Is publicity-seeking a motivating factor? Sylvia insisted that in her case, it is not. "I'm not looking for fame, I want to make that clear," she said. What she is looking for, she said, is "validation" of her beliefs and an answer to these questions: "Who are they? Why are they here?"
The red-brick condominium building where the Sylvias live was formerly a school. Shannon Sylvia, who belongs to a New England organization that investigates paranormal occurrences, says she and others have recorded voices that she believes to be those of the spirits of children. When asked why they don't move, given all of the things they say have occurred, Sylvia replied: "It's not a scary thing to live there. We love it there. It's a beautiful place."
Her husband couldn't resist a joke: "They don't eat much."
Added Shannon Sylvia: "They don't help out with the rent much, either."
Don Aucoin can be reached at aucoin@globe.com. 
