Forget the movies. Remember the stories.

This is real life. This is Schwaboo, investigated Sunday night until yesterday morning by the Paranormal Research Society.

Started in September by Ryan Buell (sophomore-film and video), PRS has spent the last few months saving money, researching clairvoyant activity and defending its reputation.

"We're not a bunch of weirdoes that chant to the four corners or dance naked," Buell said.

From 8:30 p.m. to 3:30 a.m. PRS inspected every nook of Schwab, four floors to be exact. Three teams of three to four people broke apart while two-way radios kept them together. Each sound, sight and smell was inspected and recorded with utmost seriousness and assiduousness — orders Buell gave before investigations commenced.

"If you sneeze, record it. If you hiccup, record it," Buell said. "We don't want people freaking out because they heard something through the wall."

Tales of spirits running amuck in Schwab Auditorium have existed since President Atherton's burial underneath the building. During the years, stories of alleged sightings and sensations have been passed down by janitors, security guards and thespians.

"That's the thing about these old places, 85 percent of the time you find nothing, but it makes the 15 percent all the more worth finding," Buell said.

Sunday night, that 15 percent was on their side, thrice.

Camera operator Mandy Bonavita (sophomore-film and video) went to take a bathroom break at 12:25 a.m. in the lobby ladies' room. She got "that" feeling when she closed the door — what followed was self-fulfilled.

"Five seconds after I sat down, the lights went out all of a sudden. I kept them off to see if anything happened — an apparition or a cold spot," Bonavita explained, calmly. "When I went to turn my flashlight on, the lights came back on."

After Bonavita's experience, Buell ordered the bathroom locked for investigation. Digital thermometers were used to detect slight fluctuations in temperatures, often associated with a spectral being's presence. In this case, the temperature dropped from 70 degrees Fahrenheit to 63 in less than half an hour after Bonavita's scare.

"I've been witness to these things before," Bonavita said. "I came into this rather hopeful."

Other equipment: five bags of potato chips, a 12-pack of black VHS tapes, four cameras, two camcorders, 10 or so flashlights of varying size, color, and magnitude, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, tons of batteries, a Harry Potter first-aid kit and The Complete Idiot's Guide to Ghosts & Hauntings. All were stationed on the auditorium stage, where every creeking footstep echoed around the historic hall.

"We have stuff here that'll keep us busy for days," said Matt Ritsko (freshman-chemical engineering), co-director of PRS.

But the most important instruments for PRS members were their senses. Despite the stale humidity of peeling insulation in the tattered attic, a chilling shiver was the common reaction to a distant scraping of the concrete floor behind a large air-conditioning vent system stacked ceiling-high. Buell and Mendel Schmiedekamp (graduate-computer science) crept behind the tin ducts, brushing their backs against the dust-coated brick wall, only to discover a rusted metal chair with no business being there. The sound's cause was undetermined after investigation.

"There's nothing where you can say 'This was a ghost,' " Buell said. "It gets so frustrating sometimes."

But Buell's biggest scare was when a cobweb tickled the back of his neck.

"I have serious arachnophobia," he said.

Downstairs, the basement was dormant, despite being perhaps the spookiest of all floors in Schwab. Connecting each of the storage, dressing and make-up rooms was a four- by seven-foot corridor stained eggshell white. Holes in the ceiling looked like weathering granite; tributary cracks on the concrete floor gave more age than the flat, colorless gum droppings. When the lights turned off, the satanic glow of the hazy exit signs gave PRS a grasp of a hallway's length.

Inside the chirpy "TEN" room, a cool breeze threatened to blow show posters of Les Miserables, Cabaret and Yefim Bronfman off the wall. This room in particular was significantly colder and creepier than the rest downstairs for two possible reasons: outside air may have seeped through the windows and/or because ghosts glided about while the occasional clamor of hot water pipes threatened a presence outside.

"They don't like being called ghosts, especially if they don't know they're dead," Buell said.

To this point, Schwab is the largest ghost hunt Buell and Ritsko have undertaken so far. But each promise that it won't be the last one, citing their interest in the enormous library that stared down Schwab Auditorium as Buell left at 4 a.m. yesterday.

"The ghost hunt is never over when you walk out the door," he said "This isn't the last one."