It was so dark in the basement.

The nearly 20 individuals were barely visible where they sat around the room, their silhouettes blending together, their breathing muted.

Mike Beck waited a few seconds to adjust to the black, then delved into his usual lines.

"If there is anyone here to communicate, we're not here to harm you," he said slowly. "We just want to talk. What is your name? Why are you here?"

He paused and asked, "Is there a teacher here? I've heard there's a teacher."

Silence.

And then, a gargle.

He wasn't fooled.

"A stomach growling," he spoke into his hand-held recorder, and chuckled at the group. "Don't be embarrassed by bodily functions, guys. It happens."

Misleads come with the territory of ghost hunting.

Beck is used to it.

"We'll have more luck when we split up," he assured.

The promise, indeed, of a long night ahead.

But then, that's exactly what everyone had signed up for.

"I'll tell you right up front, my wife and I are both huge skeptics," said John Hough, co-owner of the Roosevelt Inn Bed and Breakfast, speaking to the dozen guests eating in the dining room earlier on Friday night. "But there are some things that have occurred that are very unusual."

It's hard to imagine anything ghoulish going down at the cozy inn, with its floral rugs and forest murals wrapping the walls.

John admitted he has never been afraid going to sleep in the 105-year-old building, previously a school and then office space before he and his wife Tina took it over 11 years ago.

But the brick building has housed more than the two of them.

And it might house more still.

That's what Beck, director of the North Idaho/Spokane chapter of the International Paranormal Reporting Group, wants to find out.

"They have had some reports for quite a long time now, with paranormal events happening there (at the Roosevelt Inn)," Beck said.

When the Houghs asked Beck's team to host a ghost hunt for their guests as a Halloween event, Beck said his researchers dug up past incidents at the building in historical records.

For instance, sightings of apparitions, perhaps of a teacher who hanged herself across the street decades ago.

"Either it's a pretty good urban legend, or there might be some truth behind it," he said.

The Houghs, who live in the building's attic, had their own stories to add before the hunt began late Friday night.

Having nicknamed the ghost "Phantom Dennis," Tina spoke of bedspreads thrown into disarray, papers flying off counters and a magnetic cabinet opening and slamming while she was alone in the kitchen.

"I dropped my spoon and ran out," she said with a laugh.

John has repeatedly found all the light bulbs on the third floor unscrewed, he said, including those in lamps and covered ceiling fixtures.

Some guests have actually seen ghosts, he added, recalling one man who stayed overnight with his wife, a psychic medium.

"He told me, 'At about 2:30 in the morning, I woke up and sat up, with the distinct feeling that someone was staring at me,'" John remembered. "My wife tapped me on the shoulder and said, 'Go back to sleep. We just got a visit from a nice little boy who is at the foot of the bed, staring at us. He's very friendly and curious, and I'm sure he'll go away.'"

"I feel a little cheated," John had replied. "I've never seen anything but light bulbs."

Beck, who ghost hunts around his job as an IT director at a Coeur d'Alene real estate company, was impressed by the stories. But his four-person team, which works for free, tends to do more debunking than validating of this kind of stuff, he cautioned.

"If there's no hard evidence, then nothing happened," he said.

Relying on the scientific method, the ghost group chases proof with camcorders, audio recorders and devices that light up when a specter gives off energy.

"Everything we see has to be duplicated. We want to get an exact result," Beck said.

John pointed to this as assurance to his customers that nothing in the hunt was rigged.

"For one, I wouldn't know what to do," he said with a laugh. "And two, these guys would be pissed off."

Remember the number one rule for ghost hunters, Beck said before dividing the guests into smaller groups.

"Never run," he said. "No one's ever been hurt by anything but running into bed posts."

With that, they split up, groups of three and four trailing after their ghost hunters with small flashlights, toys and energy detectors.

Initially, it looked like the ghosts didn't want an audience.

Constantly throwing out questions to prompt paranormal responses, Beck's group lingered without any excitement in the basement and second floor rooms.

For nearly three hours, they found nothing.

It was nearly midnight.

A little discouraged, his group headed to the third floor, where most activity has occurred in the past.

In the second bridal suite, Beck arranged everyone in the dark. One girl lying on the bed, the other three seated around the spacious room.

He placed a ball on the floor, and a flashlight with a twist top on a drawer at the foot of the bed.

Again, most questions got no response.

He pleaded for the ghost to turn the flashlight on.

"I hear you like to play games. Why don't you play a game with us?" he asked.

A touch of orange appeared in the dark. The flashlight had turned on faintly.

It glinted for a few seconds, then turned off.

Everyone exhaled together.

"I'm really, really proud of you," Beck said. "Can you make it come on brighter?"

A few seconds, and it turned on again, brighter this time.

"Ah. There we go," he said as the group members murmured nervously.

Over the next half hour it turned on and off over long stretches, usually when Beck was talking about his own little boy.

When the girl moved off the bed, the flashlight cranked up at full blast, the light splashing on everyone's faces and rousing exclamations.

When it turned off, Beck picked up the flashlight to inspect if something else set it off.

"I don't want any confusion," he said.

"I don't think with that last one there was any confusion," said Shelly Egeland, a Spokane guest.

It happened again in other rooms, the flashlight illuminating at talk of clown dolls and pirate ships.

When Beck asked the ghost to turn on another light if it wanted a ball to play with, the light on a motion detector blared.

But no one had walked past it.

"Whoa," the all-girl group said together.

Afterward, during a break, Beck nodded.

"What just happened was the most clarifying thing," he said. "It seems to be in keeping with the stuff they've said that it's a child."

His advice to those visiting and living at the inn?

"I'd be more open minded to it," he said of paranormal activities. "It's a strong possibility, at this point."

Shelly was already there.

"I expected to be afraid, but when the light was on, I was so calm," she said, her hand on her chest. "I do believe there are spirits in this house. But I don't think they're malicious in any way. I do believe there are spirits in this house."