Around midnight, three cars pulled up alongside a run-down building in Piatt County. Eight people wearing dark t-shirts got out of the cars, unloaded their equipment into a garage, and then cased the building before reconvening to make a plan.

These people were not burglars looking for electronics and expensive jewelry. They were investigators from the Champaign Illinois Paranormal Society searching for paranormal activity.

Jim Heater and Jeremiah Benison, both of Rantoul, started the Champaign Illinois Paranormal Society, or CHIPS Group, in August 2007 as a way to allow themselves and others to explore their interest in the supernatural. Since then, the group has grown to include 12 members.

The eight people on this particular investigation early Monday morning split up into two groups of four to take turns going into the building.

“Everyone going in should have an instrument of some sort in their hand,” Benison said as he distributed cameras, thermometers, audio recorders, walkie-talkies and electromagnetic field detectors to the first group.

The equipment the group uses is designed to gather evidence of paranormal activity.

“We do things scientifically,” Heater said. “There’s no Ouija boards, there’s no table tipping, no séances or anything. It’s all scientific.”

While the basis of the investigations is scientific, several members got involved because of personal experiences with the paranormal.

Some members, like Laura Hall and Zoe Stinson, both of Champaign, said they grew up in big, scary houses where they had experiences they could not explain.

“As I got older, I got more and more curious,” Hall said.

Hall said she was looking to start her own group when she found CHIPS Group and decided to join.

Other group members, like Kristy Redenbaugh of Urbana, have always had a fascination with scary movies and ghosts. She said she has always enjoyed the Sci-Fi Network show “Ghost Hunters,” but finds one fundamental difference between the people on the show and the investigators in CHIPS Group.

“They go in to disprove stuff,” Redenbaugh said of the show. “We go in to look for stuff, which is a better way to go about it.”

Despite the different ways the members got involved in CHIPS Group, they all have one characteristic in common — an open mind.

“You have to be open-minded about a lot of things,” Heater said. “You can’t have a wall.”

Benison said people with the ability to open their minds to different possibilities are the people that are most receptive to and perceptive of paranormal activity.

“The people that are more apt to have paranormal experiences are people that are so open; children are much more observant of the world around them than adults are,” Benison said.

Because open-mindedness is such an important aspect of paranormal investigations, Heater and Benison ask that anyone applying to join their group show a commitment to this value.

They also ask members to be open-minded about a certain issue that, at first, may seem to come into conflict with the paranormal: religion. “Religion and ghosts go hand-in-hand,” Benison said. “The religion that you have determines how you interpret spirits.”

Benison said religion is also important in paranormal investigations as a means of protection and peace of mind. It is for this reason that each investigation begins with an opening prayer.

“The Light of God surrounds me, The Love of God enfolds me, The Power of God protects me, The Presence of God watches over me, And, wherever I am, God is,” Heater read before the investigation on Monday.

Following the prayer, each team took a turn going into the house to investigate. They used thermometers to detect unexplainable drops or rises in temperature, audio recorders to pick up on sounds, cameras to capture the presence of a spirit and electromagnetic field, or EMF, detectors to read levels of electromagnetic fluctuations.

Heater said on this particular investigation, there was no power to the building, and, therefore, there was no reason the EMF detector should read anything other than zero.

However, as members of the group asked questions in attempts to communicate with any spirits present, the needle on the EMF detector did fluctuate in response to certain questions.

“Is there anybody here that would like to speak with us tonight?” Heater said.

Other members followed with more questions:

“Why are you here?”

“What is your name?”

“Were you unhappy here?”

When the first team returned, they did not discuss their findings with the second group.

“We’ll let you guys go in blind, like we did,” Benison said.

After both groups had gone in alone, everyone went in together, but still stayed in two distinct groups. This time, however, Heater and Benison were not in charge.

“We use every investigation as a training exercise,” Benison said.

The group is organized into three tiers: the founders — Heater and Benison — investigators, and investigators-in-training. With each investigation, everyone gets to learn more about different techniques of observation and investigation of the paranormal, Benison said.

At the end of the investigation, Heater said a closing prayer, the group packed up their equipment, and they went home.

But that is not where the investigation ends, Benison said.

“For every hour we record it takes us about two hours to listen or watch because we scrutinize everything,” Benison said.

After reviewing all of the evidence, the group presents its findings to the client who asked them to investigate the property, Benison said.

“We answer any questions that they have, and about whether they want additional ideas on how to protect themselves,” Benison said. “We’re really here to help people.”

Because the main goal of the group is to help people, CHIPS Group does not charge for performing investigations or reviewing the evidence, Benison said.

Although they do not charge for their services, the members of CHIPS Group do get non-material benefits out of performing the investigations.

Benison compared the thrill he gets from the investigations to the adrenaline rush on a roller coaster or at a haunted house on Halloween.

“We still get spooked out; we still get chills when something happens. That’s never going to change,” Benison said. “If it changes, we’re out of the business.”