Picture this: You open up a store in Beacon, excited to begin a new business in the Mid-Hudson Valley. Then, strange things that you cannot explain begin to happen. Objects flying off shelves, whispers, perhaps a shadow out of the corner of your eye.

Some might say it is just an old building, an overactive imagination or perhaps a mouse in the walls. But there are other possible explanations. If you’ve got something spooky going on and you need help, a Kingston-based group is ready to assist without judgment or fear.

Nicole Chivattoni, a self-described “history nerd” with a longstanding interest in the paranormal, arrives with her team of all-female researchers and investigators, Full Moon Paranormal.

Chivattoni and her fellow investigators use what is called the Estes Method, putting on headphones and listening to a “spirit box.” This device sweeps through radio stations, sometimes picking up voices in the static that might not be obvious to the human ear.

Using software like Phasmabox or Necrophonic, spirits can manipulate the sound bank to get their point across if they so choose. Chivattoni will also use digital recorders to produce an Electronic Voice Phenomenon (EVP) session, asking questions and then playing it back, hearing voices that were not audible in the room at first.

Chivattoni said one of her favorite methods was not originally intended to be used to find the paranormal at all. It’s a light-up ball for cats to play with, that lights up both when a cat or a spirit hits it. The group likes to begin with questions, and the mood can be light.

“Think about it. If you're at a party, who do you want to hang out with? The person who's like, ‘What's your name? How did you die? How long have you been here?’” Chivattoni said. “Or do you want to hang out with the group of people who are laughing and joking and saying, ‘Hey, I love your home. What's your favorite room in here? Or what's your favorite kind of pie?’”

The answers, as well, can be surprisingly vivid, fascinating, and even delightfully mundane, such as the two ghosts who had apparently made their home in that Beacon store without needing to sign a lease.

“There was a younger female spirit who was kind of [a] free-spirit hippie, and this older male spirit that's more traditional,” Chivattoni said. “I get a response, and then this voice comes through, and she's like, ‘You can be louder than that, Carl.’ And he's like, ‘My name's Clark.’ So that's always funny. Fierce personalities come through.”

For Chivattoni, however, ghosts do not have to be scary, and it does not all have to belong to folklore either. She joined Full Moon Paranormal in 2021 after purchasing tickets for the group’s first public event at The Chance in Poughkeepsie and learned they were looking for more investigators. Since then, it has been a journey into the unknown.

“For us, it's really to understand, to connect with history, and to get some of these stories out because everybody knows the stories of the prominent families in the area,” Chivattoni said. “But what about the servant girl that lived upstairs? What about the child that passed away at the age of four?”

Once, in Montgomery, Chivattoni picked up on a lot of activity on her devices but when the sun went down their connection went quiet. The location was previously inhabited by farmers, and Chivattoni made the connection that in the pre-electric light days, farmers would go to sleep with the sunset.

Along with their private investigations, Full Moon Paranormal also hosts public events, which Chivattoni said are designed to be welcoming, accessible and destigmatizing for those who may have had paranormal experiences of their own but have not been able to share.

Some of these take place at historic locations, which Full Moon Paranormal supports via fundraising, such as an upcoming Oct. 16 investigation at the Historic Hoffman Lodge in Middletown. Events begin with discussing the history of the place, and then splitting guests into groups to try out different investigation methods.

Full Moon Paranormal also hosts monthly “paranormal nights” at Kestrel Tavern in Midtown, each with a different theme. Steven Ives, the owner of the bar, often makes a themed cocktail for guests. The next paranormal night will be on Thursday, Oct. 29 at 8 p.m., featuring a discussion around Kestrel’s campfire of scariest experiences, eerie moments and chilling events that still remain unexplained.

Paranormal nights began when Ives, a ghost enthusiast himself, learned about the group via a Google search. Ives said he was looking for “the coolest ghost hunters in New York State” and believes he was “totally right on that” about Full Moon Paranormal.

“With a growing idiosyncratic population in the Mid-Hudson Valley, I wanted to give them something to do at a bar that wasn't just another karaoke, darts bar,” Ives said. “I wanted to do some cool, interesting stuff, and I thought that ghost hunters would be a great idea. I researched a bunch of them, and Full Moon was the best. So I had them come down every month. Since then, it's been a huge success.”

During the interview, I noticed the strap of my purse randomly fell off and I had to reattach it; perhaps it was a ghost? Chivattoni said that Kestrel Tavern is “definitely haunted,” and at the upcoming paranormal event, you can see for yourself with a basement investigation after talking about scary experiences.

Chivattoni said that when it comes to the more philosophical side of paranormal activity, such as what happens after we die and what leads a spirit to stay in place, she has “more questions than answers” from the diverse range of experiences she has had.

Chivattoni said some spirits may choose to stay put because it was their home or favorite place while they were alive, while others may have deeper motives. She did recall one spirit who she said “felt very stuck” because she lost her baby and appeared to still be searching for him. Chivattoni, along with the other investigators and mediums, tried to communicate to the spirit that it was OK to move on.

“The way that I would describe a situation like that is if you were in a room and somebody told you all the windows and doors were locked, and you never even tried [to open it] because you just thought that they were locked,” Chivattoni said. “It's not that you were physically stuck there; it's more of a mental thing.”

Through it all, for paranormal investigators like Chivattoni, intention is key. At locations such as the Mesier Homestead in Wappingers, which Chivattoni said is usually a “nice, friendly environment.” But on this day, Chivattoni said she and a psychic standing next to her saw something straight out of a horror movie.

The psychic, according to Chivattoni, said that she saw a spirit with blacked-out eyes that resembled the girl from the 2009 horror flick “Orphan.” When Chivattoni did the Estes session in an old part of the house, she saw what resembled the nun from the 2013 horror movie “The Conjuring.” At first, Chivattoni thought it was just the dark and attempted to get a closer look. The image became more vivid and Chivattoni (understandably) “ran the hell out of that room.”

“I just go into these things like nothing bad is gonna happen. We're not gonna communicate with anything malevolent. If we do get those kinds of words coming up, we ignore them,” Chivattoni said. “But it all comes down to intent.”

For the people Chivattoni works with, the goal is “making sure that people feel comfortable in their homes, and understand what's going on and why.” Chivattoni also likes to speak to others about their experiences to make them feel less alone, including on her podcast, Alien8UK, which has delved into everything from aliens to Bigfoot with people from around the world.

Chivattoni recalled one conversation with a man who claimed to have been abducted by the government and spent 30 years in a secret super-soldier program. While Chivattoni was skeptical, and still is, she was moved by how “genuine” his retelling was.

“His experience was so genuine that now — not that I believe that he was on Mars for 30 years, but I believe that that's his reality,” Chivattoni said. “That's one big thing that I take away from talking to so many different people about this type of stuff is that whether or not I experience what you experience. That's your reality, and that happened to you, and that shapes who you are and your beliefs.”