The wind whipped around the building underneath the quarter moon, just a pale light in the dark, Sunday night sky -- days before Hallow's Eve.

Down in the basement of the Old Botany Building, the warm air was stale, almost suffocating.

Members of the Penn State Paranormal Research Society (PRS) filed into the room that had become a makeshift storage area with boxes upon boxes. They sat down on the sandy ground and wooden planks, in a circle off on the far side of the room.

With the lights turned out and a flashlight in hand, Ryan Buell, director and founder of PRS, advised the members to ask the spirit neutral questions, which would not anger the spirit, while they conducted a series of electronic voice phemenons (EVPs). An EVP is a device that tries to pick up voices of spirits.

And so they began.

"Are you male or female?"

"What year were you born?"

"What do you see?"

Old Main's bells chime. The heater pipes rattle. The floor beams above creak.

Although there were no distinctive sounds of spirit voices picked up by the EVP Sunday night, Buell said there had been an investigation in the past at Old Botany where an EVP picked up a spirit with a raspy voice that sounded like a man.

"Every single question there was a response," Buell said, adding that the spirit said he was trapped in the basement.

Legend has it that the ghost of Mrs. Frances Atherton lingers in the attic of the Old Botany Building to look over the gravesite of George W. Atherton, who served as Penn State president from1882 to 1906.

Atherton's grave is located on the side of Schwab Auditorium on Pollock Road and employees have reportedly heard footsteps and have seen figures in the windows.

You don't have to be a ghost expert to experience the tales that haunt the area. According to some, Centre County is a hotbed of spiritual activity that seems to draw attention every Halloween.

University Park -- Schwab Auditorium, 1903.

Those who have worked inside these walls have experienced things that are unexplainable and best fit for the pages of a haunted thriller.

Tom Hesketh is one of them.

"It's an old building. It creaks and groans," Hesketh, a production coordinator, said. "You kind of get this crawly feeling you're being watched."

Hesketh said former co-worker Hagan King, who was also a production coordinator, once witnessed two shadowy figures -- an adult and child -- floating above the stage one night, when he was closing up the building.

Another worker, Dave Will, told Hesketh that he witnessed apparitions dressed in Revolutionary War costumes.

Although Hesketh has never witnessed a ghost sighting, he does recall working on the auditorium's stage one day about seven years ago, fixing cables with a diagonal cutter. He said he set down the cutters behind him and when he later went to collect them, they were gone.

At first Hesketh thought the cutters had fallen off the stage, but the next day, after unlocking his locker and opening up his toolbox, he found the cutters lying on top of the tools.

"At that point all the hairs on my head stood up," he said.

Boalsburg -- Duffy's Tavern, 1819

"Harry Duffy...he's the ghost," Barbara Sirrani, the daughter of the tavern's current owner and an employee for about 30 years, said. "I feel his presence a lot."

A former owner, Harry Duffy, reportedly died in the tavern in 1961. Sirrani is not sure of how Duffy died.

Since then, employees and guests have witnessed unexplainable sightings and occurrences.

"I know there's definitely, definitely ghosts here," Sirani said. "We just say Harry Duffy because he died here"

One day, Sirrani said she walked into the banquet room and there were chairs all in a circle -- even though no one was in there before.

One Christmas morning, Sirrani said she went to check on the tavern and the water was running from the sinks. She added that guests have reported seeing ghosts floating around the dinning room and latched doors opening.

Jo Knight, a bartender at the tavern, said doors slam and glasses fall off the bar for no apparent reason.

"Just practical joke kind of things," Knight said, who added that many believe Harry does it for attention.

Knight said that people came in one day and asked her if the tales were true, and the power went out.

"I said, 'That's enough, Harry,' and the lights go on," she explained.

Despite the occurrences, Sirrani said Harry and the ghosts are not to be afraid of.

"My hair on my arms may stand up a little bit," she said.

But Sirrani said she's not scared.

"I guess it's because they haven't done anything harmful around here," she said.

Potters Mills -- The Eutaw House, 1823

Currently a restaurant and bar, The Eutaw House was originally a popular hotel and is supposedly haunted by the ghost of Edgar Allan Poe.

"The legend is he was a guest here," Eutaw House General Manager Laura Carver said. "People have seen a ghost-like thing that looked like him."

Carver also said guests and employees have reported other frightening apparitions, some even recently.

"Probably the most famous one is that there's a woman and a little girl crying on the main stairway," she said.

While Carver has not seen any ghosts, she said she was once alone in the basement and felt a presence standing behind her -- but when she turned to look nobody was there.

Although Carver said the creepy experience does not deter her from working at the Eutaw House, there are certain things she won't do for fear of ghosts.

"I love working here," she said. "But I won't go into the basement alone."

Millheim -- Millheim Hotel, 1794

While 13th U.S. President Millard Fillmore was a guest at the old Millheim Hotel, it's the ghost of his mistress who is said to haunt it.

Millheim Hotel Owner Bud Wagner said the hotel was a convenient stop between Washington, D.C., and Fillmore's hometown of Buffalo, New York. According to legend, Wagner said, Fillmore had a passionate love affair with a woman who lived in Millheim and produced an illegitimate child.

"Millard decided he wanted nothing to do with it, and he never came back," Wagner said. "The mother died of a broken heart, and still wanders the hotel, waiting for him to come back."

Although facts are scarce to support the legend, Wagner said people have heard noises in back rooms and reported other unexplained happenings.

"Just the other day, a barmaid said she was in a back room and the door slammed," he said. "She said there was no draft."

But Wagner said the ghost is a "friendly" one and the hotel staff welcomes it.

"It keeps happening, and we get a big kick out of it," he said.

Lemont -- Haunted Granary, 1885

This past weekend Lemont celebrated the spooky legend of a child's death in the town granary with its annual festival to raise money to restore the building.

Lemont's old granary is said to be haunted by the ghost of an 11-year-old boy who was crushed to death under the grain, Ron Smith, volunteer for the festival and professor emeritus of kinesiology at Penn State said. As the legend goes, the boy wasn't found for months, and by then rats had eaten his bones.

"That's the legend, but somebody made up the story," Smith said. "I don't know of anyone who was murdered in the building or suffocated under grain. But it's a really good way to scare young kids."

At the Haunted Granary festival this past weekend, the granary was opened to visitors and contained a maze and a haunted walking tour through the grain elevator, complete with actors dressed in scary costumes.

Even though those who explore "haunted places" around the area do it for spooky fun, experts in the field like the Penn State Paranormal Society find their main purpose to conduct professional investigations.

"We get contacted pretty much daily [about paranormal experiences]," Buell said. "We try to help them as much as possible."