There is nothing eccentric about ghost hunter Cindi Muntz. She doesn’t shuffle around in a long velvet robe patterned with glittering stars and moons. She prefers broken-in jeans and a black windbreaker with a front pocket to hold her lip balm. Her cloud of glossy, coffee-colored hair surrounds a sweet face with honest brown eyes and a welcoming smile that puts people immediately at ease.
 

Muntz, 41 from Bolingbrook, is a medium who claims to have been communicating with the dead since she was a child.
 

She said she knows what happens to people once they die—their spirit goes to a different plane of existence. Someone seeking her services might want to believe in Muntz’s power and perhaps it’s true, but whatever the reason, sitting next to her is a great comfort.
 

She also is the head of the Midwest Researchers Investigating the Paranormal, a west suburban-based ghost-hunting group.
 

Since the group’s inception in 2007, it has conducted investigations into more than 52 businesses and residences around Illinois including recent work at a historical estate in Joliet.
 

“It is an amazing feeling to help people in a way no one else can,” Muntz said. “By the time people call us, they are freaking out.”
 

The eight-member group’s approach to investigating paranormal activity is rooted in science with the added advantage of Muntz’s ability to communicate with the other side. Members don’t typically seek out cases, nor do they charge for their services.
 

“A lot of the times our clients will have employees refusing to work in their restaurant or homeowners are hearing their names being called out of nothing,” Muntz said. “People are feeling a presence, hearing noises, footsteps or seeing spirits out the windows or walking down the hallway. Sometimes objects might be moving in the house as well.”
 

To prepare for an investigation, the group uses simple tools like thermometers and electromagnetic field monitors—the kind an electrician would use. Investigators draw a diagram of the area to investigate and take extensive baseline readings, so if their equipment picks up changes in the environment they can compare it to the original measurements.
 

They also use video and digital cameras to record light anomalies and digital voice recorders to pick up the most compelling evidence of all—electric voice phenomenon.
 

Electric voice phenomenon isn’t a new thing. According to the American Association of Electric Voice Phenomena, it is captured speech that is not the result of the intentional recording. In the 1920s Thomas Edison told Scientific American magazine “it is possible to construct an apparatus which will be so delicate to detect personalities in another existence. This apparatus will at least give them a better opportunity to express themselves.” That first device was the electronic recorder.
 

This approach, coupled with Muntz’s sensitivity, is what attracted Joliet homeowners Diethard and Kurt Beyer and Keith Nicholls to MRIP.
 

When the Beyers and Nicholls moved into the 107-year-old, 30-room manor nine years ago, they began hearing things like children running on the third floor when there were no children in the house.
 

Other unexplained occurrences include seeing a figure they mistook as a house guest enter a bedroom, smelling the spicy scent of a smoking pipe in the library or catching the drift of old-fashioned perfume in the hallways.
 

The building was once used as a nursing facility for seniors and was then repurposed as a funeral home. In the past few years the owners have elaborately decorated for Halloween and opened their home free of charge for guests to enjoy.
 

The new owners believe that long-dead inhabitants continue to take up residence there. The Beyers and Nicholls wanted learn more about who was still in the house and why.
 

“You watch these paranormal shows on TV and it is seems like it is a bunch of bologna,” Diethard Beyer said. “Then it happens to you and it becomes real and you are a part of it and you know it can’t be fake.”
 

After the group finished the investigation at the Joliet location, they met with the owners to listen to the recordings taken during the process.
 

Sitting around an antique table in the formal dining room on a recent evening, the group placed an EMF meter on the table’s corner and Muntz played the findings.
Voices from those clearly not part of the group could be heard. Some were static bits of words and sounds.

Others were clear comments including a woman saying, “I am Rebecca” though there was no one named Rebecca involved in the paranormal investigation.
Another childlike voice said, “He noticed me,” perhaps referring to Kurt Beyer’s previous comments about frequently seeing a little boy running around the home out of the corner of his eye, Muntz said.

There was also what sounded like several calls for assistance. “Help me, help me,” could be heard by both male-and female-sounding voices. Muntz explained that sometimes spirits get confused and need to be directed to move on.
 

Each time a new voice was heard, the EMF meter spiked from green to red, indicating environmental changes in the room. Muntz would occasionally pause in between playing a recorded incident to address the air the around her—she claimed the spirits knew they were being talked about.
 

There were more than 150 of these EVP instances to report from the Joliet house. Muntz presents the information and lets her clients make their own judgment.
 

And that includes homeowners learning to live with the uninvited company.
 

“If they were throwing butcher knives at us we would want [the spirits] to move on,” Diethard Beyer said. “We have never had a negative threat and are fine sharing the house with them.”
 

For more information, go to www.ripmidwest.com.

By Elizabeth Vassolo | Triblocal.com reporter