My hand trembled as I reached out to the little girl who was crying for help. Kneeling on the floor of a dirty restaurant attic, I tried to clasp her hand, but something kept me from doing so. Maybe she was scared because her parents had told her not to talk to strangers.

Or maybe it was the fact that I was on a ghost hunt, communicating with what I was told was the ghost of a girl who had died 170 years ago.

Bill Lenga, retail manager of IC Square, had agreed earlier in the week to show my friends and me around Baron’s Inn Restaurant in Greene, N.Y., one of the most haunted buildings in the state, he said.

As a paranormal investigator — certified by The Michigan Ghost Hunter Society — he searches for spirits who are trying to communicate with the living.

Since a near-death experience in a helicopter accident during the Vietnam War, Lenga, 53, has had what he refers to as a “sixth sense.” He became aware of this sense shortly after returning from the war, but said he believes the gift has been with him since childhood.

“I remember a lot of times I’d play with imaginary friends and my mother thought I was nuts,” he said.

“You see a lot where parents think their kids have imaginary friends. [The imaginary friends are] really spirits they’re playing with.”

Lenga’s interest in the spiritual realm has grown since then, taking him on adventures “just for fun” all over New York, as well as to Salem, Mass. and Gettysburg, Pa. His wife, Julie, who usually accompanies him on ghost hunts, was too afraid to go with him to a Gettysburg battlefield after midnight, where he said he stumbled upon the spirits of Confederate soldiers.

“I could smell campfire smoke,” he said. “Everyone was talking Southern. I wasn’t dealing with one ghost, I was dealing with thousands.”

Phil Annese, director of operations for Dining Services, has known Lenga for more than 10 years, and said Lenga enjoys talking about his hobby. Annese has even gone on a hunt with Lenga.

“I’m not a believer, but it opened my eyes and gave me some questions,” he said. “I know a lot of people who have gone and felt something, so I can’t rule it out.”

We entered Baron’s Inn around 8 p.m. As promised, Lenga met us at the bar.

“I’ll have a few beers before we start,” he had joked during our interview. “Then I’ll really be able to see ghosts.”

For several years, Lenga has given free Friday night tours through the restaurant, which he said may have been built on an American Indian burial ground.

Beth Fernandez, a waitress at the restaurant, was skeptical of the claims at first. But seeing what she said she believes to be ghosts changed her mind.

“We’ve had waitresses see shadows jump from the top of the stairs to the bottom but there is no one there,” she said. “Our wine and cocktail encyclopedias have just flown from one end of the bar to the other.”

My heart beating fast, I wished we were just here for dinner. But Lenga assured us there was nothing to be afraid of.

“If a person’s grandmother died and in life she was a kind old lady, in the afterlife she’d be a kind old lady,” he said. “She’s not going to be demonic.”

Lenga gathered his ghost communication equipment — an electromagnetic frequency detector, holy water and extra batteries, which he said were backups in case the ghosts drained energy from his other set. With a crystal from a head priestess and an American Indian necklace tucked into his fisherman’s jacket, he led us into a large meeting room upstairs, empty except for scattered tables.

“There’s something in here now,” he said.

He pulled the detector out of his pocket and scanned the room until the light meter pulsed. Lenga had found his ghost.

Still, I found nothing out of the ordinary. Lenga said the spirit was in a corner near my seat, but when I looked, nothing was there except the blue paisley wallpaper. A coffee pot sat where I half-expected to see a translucent figure.

“I’m not going to tell you to believe in ghosts,” Lenga had told me.

The light meter pulsed again.

“She’s right here,” he said.

He was referring to the spirit of a deaf girl who died in the house in the 1830s.

We moved our hands toward where he said the girl’s ghost was. Though I saw nothing, I noticed a drastic temperature difference and a pressure on my hand. My fingers went numb.

I found myself saying hello, and we all put our hands where Lenga said her spirit was. The skeptic in me was silenced by the thick emotion in the room.

Lenga pulled out the American Indian necklace that he uses to communicate with spirits. He explained the spirit would swing the string one way for “yes,” and the other for “no.” He asked the girl if she was there. The string started to swing back and forth, and we asked if she was OK. It continued to swing “yes.” Then Lenga asked her if she was scared. It stopped. Seconds passed, and it started to swing in the opposite direction.

“Yeah, I know you like to have company,” Lenga said.

There really is no way to tell what happened that night without sounding slightly crazy. It could have all just been in my head. But how do you explain the flashing light meter, the temperature change, and the swinging necklace?

Freshman Danielle Paccione, who was with me, was skeptical before she went on the trip.

“I thought it [sounded] really fraudulent,” she said. “I left with a lot more questions than when we entered.”

Ben Crane, associate professor of television and radio, teaches a class called Critical Thinking. He said many people believe in the phenomenon of ghosts without sufficient evidence.

“Ghost stories are rarely tested rigorously,” Crane said. “If we wish to learn the truth about such extravagant claims, we should demand conclusive evidence, and to my knowledge, no ghost story has ever been validated.”

Though Lenga agreed that the existence of ghosts cannot be proven, he said it can’t be disproved either.

“We do know spirits give off electromagnetic energy,” he said. “We know something is there, and it’s not electrical energy, so what is it?”