Is Augustana haunted?

We have all seen them.  Those paranormal investigation shows with shaky camera work, night-vision lenses and plenty of scared hosts. But is it all just a hoax?

Paranormal investigator Chris Moon attempted to put doubts to rest during a presentation Oct. 13 in the Back Alley that ended with a real ghost hunt through the tunnels.

Moon is the president of Haunted Timesmagazine and the founder of the lecture series, Ghost Hunter University.

Moon is a self-proclaimed medium and had his first paranormal experience at the age of seven when he witnessed the shadow of a young boy standing over his bed.

He learned, in true classic horror form, that the home he and his family had just moved into was actually built over nothing other than an Indian burial mound.

"To this day, that was one of the most frightening things I ever saw," Moon said.

And he has seen a lot.

After trying his hand at rock-stardom, Moon decided to embrace his gift and become a paranormal investigator leading him to come into contact with ghosts from the likes of 1920's gangsters to Lizzie Borden's angry father.

While he was giving his lecture, the anticipation was building over what we were all really there for: the ghost hunt.

Moon led us through the winding maze of the tunnels with the glimmer of hope that we may just solve the decades-old cold case of a student who was murdered there.

The secret weapon of the investigation was a "telephone to the dead." The concept of the telephone was originally thought up by Thomas Edison and has since been the obsession of many paranormal scientists.

Supposedly, Moon's version of the telephone is supported by an other-worldly operator that allows him to communicate with the dead.

To the rest of the non-medium public, however, it kind of just sounded like a broken radio.

But regardless of whether we believed or not, there we all were, huddled in a circle in a pitch black room somewhere under East Hall that only decades before had been the crime scene of a grisly murder.

According to Moon, through the telephone we were able to come into contact with the woman who was murdered as well as her murderer. The audience was invited to ask them questions and Moon relayed the answers.

From the answers given, we were able to piece together a story of what allegedly happened.

According to Moon, the woman was a student who had an affair with a campus worker of some sort. She got pregnant and so, to keep their secret, he shot her.

But, while it may appear that Moon has solved the mystery, I don't think "telephone to the dead" will exactly hold up as incontrovertible evidence in a court of law.

So, in conclusion, did Moon's demonstration leave me with an unshakable belief in the paranormal?

Not exactly.

Was I sufficiently creeped out?

Definitely.