St. Louis ? Michael Lynch doesn’t live in the Twilight Zone, although he’s spent enough time there to pay taxes.

A skeptical Lloyd Silverman said his century-old home didn’t qualify as haunted, but he’ll listen to Lynch’s theories on how and why a picture “jumped” several feet from the wall one night.

“It’s not a function of belief or disbelief. Quite simply it’s something the average person doesn’t think about,” said Silverman, a film producer and lecturer at Washington University in St. Louis.

Lynch has investigated paranormal activity with a St. Louis team called Para-Vision for the past decade. The team, with Lynch as its leader, claims to be among the first to develop cameras that videotape ghosts.

Entities the industry term for ghosts, phantoms and angels are not visible to the naked eye and exist on different frequencies, Lynch said. That’s why, he explained, Para-Vision’s cameras record them with halogen and infrared light at the desired frequency.

“If anything, it’s more scientific than horrific. Demons and monsters prowl the night. Most ghosts are just consciousnesses with nothing better to do,” Lynch said.

On-screen, you won’t see a smiling Casper. Instead, small white blobs bounce around with varying speed.

Lynch searched Silverman’s home two weeks before Halloween, using his Extreme Vision 101 glasses. The glasses are connected by cords to a camera hidden inside Lynch’s rubber-lined black vest.

Para-Vision investigates about two cases a month, through word-of-mouth referrals. The team doesn’t eliminate ghosts like “Ghostbusters” but they’ll tell you what you have. Removals are subcontracted out to a dowser someone Lynch says makes the environment less ghost-friendly by moving a chair or making minor changes. Para-Vision takes donations for house calls and appears frequently on late-night radio shows.

The four crew members hold parapsychology doctorates from Celestial Visions School of Metaphysics in Boca Raton, Fla. A handful of schools nationwide offer such degrees.

Michael Lynch uses ghost detection gear to inspect a painting that reportedly jumped off the wall in a home in St. Louis. Lynch has investigated paranormal activity with Para-Vision for the past decade in St. Louis. The team, with Lynch as leader, is the first to develop cameras that videotape ghosts, which go unseen by the naked eye, he said.

Parapsychology is the study of unexplained phenomena, involving dreams, hauntings, and clairvoyance. Research-driven organizations such as the Parapsychological Assn. have been around for years.

Silverman, who frequents the Washington University library’s audio-visual department where Lynch works, mentioned to Lynch how the picture fell one night without touching the piano below. Silverman was out of town at the time.

But his wife was home and thought someone had broken in when she heard a loud crash. She called her neighbor and asked him to look in from the outside. Meeting downstairs, they found the frame and broken glass a few feet from the wall. The situation, the Silvermans said, was unusual, especially because the alarm system didn’t go off. The couple put the picture in the basement and didn’t think much of it.

“I remember thinking ‘This missed the entire piano?'” Victoria Silverman said. “I just thought it was a freak thing. Neither of us thought anything of it.”

Lynch however, did. He examined the print, which depicts a woman from the Victorian-era playing the piano.

Silverman impulsively bought the picture two months before, realizing the same print hung over his grandmother’s sofa.

Lynch figured the picture couldn’t have fallen. Instead, he said an outside force, perhaps the home’s original owner, threw it. Lynch stood up on the piano bench and demonstrated how difficult it would be for the picture to miss the piano if it fell naturally.

If a nail came loose, the picture would have fallen straight down, Lynch said. The piano, slightly dusty, showed no marks. The picture’s paper backing was split all the way down to the bottom. Lynch figures the painting was lifted up, splitting the back, before it was thrown down.

He noted similarities between the painting and Silverman’s living room: the same fireplace, windows and doors, in size and position. It all adds up to painful memories for the entity, Lynch said.

The neighborhood was built for the World’s Fair in 1904 and inhabited by young aristocrats. Lynch wondered whether the former homeowner’s ghost saw the picture and was reminded of a failed romance or a lost love. Seeing the picture probably upset the ghost, Lynch said.

“The entity feels everything was right in his life except for this lost love,” Lynch said.

The home isn’t haunted, only occupied Lynch said, and everything is fine as long as the ghost doesn’t become too upset.

“I’m not a disbeliever or a believer,” Silverman said. “What he presents as theory has some value. The dots connect if you want to believe.”

Lynch understands there’ll be skeptics.

Gregory Comer, an associate professor of physics at Saint Louis University, said using video to film ghosts could be possible, but only the scientific method can validate claims. Other scientists must be able to use their own equipment to arrive at Lynch’s conclusions.

“You can’t deny that Lynch has something in his data, in his images,” Comer said. “But proving that it’s a real phenomenon, that’s a completely different matter.”

After the picture incident, the Silvermans put the print in their basement, where it remained until Lynch’s second investigation. Lloyd Silverman then hung it back above the piano, until his wife noticed the next morning. She wanted it taken down being that Silverman was going out of town again.