Reporter Gwen Johnson walks on the balcony of the Ione Hotel without any sign of ghosts. Photo by Paul Dale Roberts. A photo taken only seconds later shows a cloud of ectoplasm joining her. Photo by Paul Dale Roberts. The owner of the Ione Hotel points to the black rose.

Turn on the television any night of the week and you're sure to find some sort of paranormal investigation show, such as Syfy's "Ghost Hunters," the Travel Channel's "Ghost Adventures" or A&E's "Paranormal State."

Ghost hunting is big business these days. Audiences are no longer satisfied with just a good ghost story. They want to know if a site actually is haunted. Paranormal investigators like Paul Dale Roberts and his crew at Haunted and Paranormal Investigations International used the Ione Hotel as training grounds for new recruits. Early last month, Roberts brought his latest cohort of scouts to Amador County for a lesson in ectoplasmic studies.

"We bring them here because it's been confirmed haunted," Roberts claimed. "There is always activity."

Roberts and Ione Hotel owner Mahmood Ghani claim there are several ghosts commonly seen at the site. Two of them are the spirits of young children lost in two of the fires at the hotel - one in 1910 and the other in 1988. In Room 7, a woman cries, "Save my baby."

One of the walls in Room 13 has what looks like a grease stain of an upsidedown black rose. Ghani claims that no matter how many times his staff have tried to clean the wall or paint over it, the stain always returns. Legend has it this room was used by a 19th century prostitute who went by the name Black Rose.

Then there's the site's most extroverted ghost - a gambler by the name of George who has a fondness for female patrons.

Ghani recalled one instance of George's flirtations: "Two young ladies came here last week. One girl was taking a shower when she heard three taps on the bathroom door. She thought it was her roommate, so she said, 'you can come in.' Nothing (happened). She got out of the shower and found her roommate lying on the bed reading. She got back in the shower and heard three knocks again. She got spooked. When she said 'Hush up, George,' it stopped."

To examine claims like these, Roberts uses several pieces of equipment, including voice recorders, cameras, temperature gauges, video cameras and electromagnetic field meters. It can take several hours to conduct an investigation.

"Ghosts aren't entertainers," Roberts noted. "They don't perform automatically. You gotta keep trying, sometimes all through the night."

According to Roberts, ghosts feed off energy. This energy is used for ghosts to communicate with people on the earthly realm. He finds that homes located near power lines have more energy for ghosts to draw from and therefore have more paranormal activity.

His voice recorder can often pick up sounds the ghost makes. HPI uses the McCabe method - named after HPI founder Shannon McCabe - of obtaining electronic voice phenomena. He will speak into the voice recorder and wait a few seconds for a response. He then plays back the recording to see if the recorder picked up any noises that couldn't be heard with the naked ear. EVPs are categorized from Class A for clearly audible voices to Class C for less distinct sounds.

"(Ghosts are) just like people," he said. "They'll tell you right on the spot if they're around or if they feel like talking. Most ghosts usually only say three or four words; they can't complete a full paragraph."

Photos taken with his camera occasionally show ectoplasm, which appears as a thick, white mist. Cameras can also pick up orbs of light that hover around a particular object or float around the room.

"Sometimes what looks like an orb may just be a speck of dust or a fleck of skin," he stated. "What we look for is a sign of intelligence. You can say, 'Sit on my lap' and if it hovers, that's a sign of intelligence. If it falls to the ground, it's dust or something. If you (enlarge the photo) on a computer, sometimes you can see a face in it."

Temperature gauges are used to measure heat fluctuations in a room.

"Cold spots mean an entity is sucking the energy in the room," Roberts said. "Hot spots indicate demonic activity."

But what exactly is a ghost or demon?

"A ghost is a spirit that is confined to the earth," Roberts claimed. "It has unfinished business, so it sticks around. It's not ready to go into a light - sort of like the grandma that sticks around to be an angel for a newborn baby or someone who has a hidden diary in the house and wants to protect its secrets. Sometimes they have a fear of being judged and going to hell, so they don't want to go to the light."

Roberts notes that, ever since ancient times, civilizations have talked about a light that a soul goes to when the body dies.

He added that researchers have used special devices to measure a dying person's aura - the energy field surrounding a living being. Upon death, he says, 21 grams of aura leave the brain area.

When the aura leaves the body, it becomes a ghost. From there, it can take the image of what it used to look like. Most ghosts appear as their younger selves, but they can manifest as any image that makes them comfortable.

A demon is an entity that never was human. It comes from a dimension that is not from this world, and usually has some sort of malevolent reason for visiting the earthly realm.

To rid a place of demonic activity or unwanted ghosts, Roberts conducts Catholic-style blessings, a method he claims was taught to him by three different Catholic priests. He tosses holy water throughout the home, places a crucifix along entryways and window-sills, and chants a blessing to send the entity into the light.

As for the ghosts of the Ione Hotel, they're staying.

"They just tease people so far," Ghani said. "People have had good experiences."

The Ione Hotel is at 25 W. Main St. in Ione. For reservations, call 274-6082.

For more information on Haunted and Paranormal Investigations International, visit www.hpiparanormal.net.