Rick Fisher was 7 years old when he had his first paranormal experience.

He was sleeping at his grandparents' house in the Manheim Township village of Eden, off New Holland Pike.

"I woke up one night and looked out in the hallway and there was a man standing out there," he remembers. "He was in the dim light. I thought it was my grandfather at the time."

Fisher went back to sleep, and the next morning asked his grandmother why the old man had been up so late.

"I saw Pap out in the hallway last night," the boy said at breakfast.

"No you didn't," his grandmother replied. "He was working the third shift."

Two others, Fisher's sister and aunt, later told him they saw the same figure at various times haunting the house late at night — a figure Fisher now believes was his great-grandfather's ghost.

That bone-chilling experience 45 years ago laid the foundation for Fisher's lifelong fascination with all things creepy: ghosts, UFOs, haunted houses and unexplained phenomena.

The Columbia resident, a Lancaster County native, founded the Paranormal Society of Pennsylvania 10 years ago, and since then he and his team of investigators have looked into nearly 1,000 hauntings.

"This is not a business, so there's no career in it. But it's something that's taken very serious," he says.

In fact, one in three people believe in ghosts, and almost one in four people say they've actually seen one or felt its presence, according to a new poll conducted by The Associated Press and Ipsos.

Fisher, 53, is the county's original ghost hunter, and he's obviously very busy as Halloween approaches next week. When he's not working at his day job, which he declines to identify, he's taking calls and answering e-mails from people who claim to have seen some weird stuff.

Fisher's mission is to try and help them.

"It can be a frightening experience, so we try to console them," Fisher says.

Frightening, for sure.

But can ghosts actually be harmful?

"Personally, from my experience, if ghosts can hurt you, I don't know about it. I've done close to 1,000 investigations and not once have I been harmed," says Fisher.

Fisher claims to have seen and heard some pretty wild stuff. But he says his creepiest experience came in February of 2002, while he was driving a lonely stretch of Route 23 near Marietta around 6 in the morning, while it was still dark.

"I thought there was somebody walking in the road," he recalls. "I was thinking, 'What's somebody doing out here in the middle of the road?'"

He slowed down as he got closer and saw that the figure wasn't a man. It was smaller.

"I thought, 'What's a kid doing out here this early?' " he recalls asking himself.

"Then my hair started tingling, and to this day I don't know what it was. It was a bipedal creature walking down the road. The thing was thin. I call it a stick creature. I took my foot off the gas pedal. I was coasting behind it."

Fisher nearly came to a halt when ...

"It turned around and looked me right in the eye — two yellow eyes — and it vanished," he remembers.

Since then, he's gotten reports from people who claim to have seen similar figures walking in roads, including a nearby section of Route 23.

Fisher says the most haunted place in Lancaster County is Chickies Rock Park, the site of numerous accidental deaths and suicides. One man told him that he was hiking in the park early one morning when he heard the sound of Native American drums.

"He followed it, and the drums got louder and louder," Fisher says. "When he got to where it was coming from, nothing was there. The drumming stopped."

Chickies Rock, Fisher says, is also said to be haunted by a long-dead stagecoach robber who hid his loot in the park and died without ever telling of where it was buried.

In another case, a member of a local rescue crew reported seeing a dark, shadow-like figure wearing a cape and fedora following along, hovering above the brush, as he searched for the body of a suicide victim.

"There's a lot of stories up there," Fisher says.

Fisher's big project these days is investigating whether there are ghosts haunting a local home. He goes there every Sunday to do research, carrying with him the tools of the trade: thermal scanner, camera, electromagnetic field meter and his personal favorite, a digital audio recorder.

"I've never left a place without a voice yet," Fisher says. "Where the voices are coming from, I can't explain. I've recorded thousands of voices that can't be heard until playback. Sometimes you get responses to questions you ask."

Fisher runs an annual conference for investigators of the paranormal. He's also written a book, "Ghosts of The Rivertowns," and guest-starred on TV shows such as the Travel Channel's "Supernatural Destinations."

He also hosts a Web radio show, at www.blogtalkradio.com/paranormalparadio.

Fisher says investigating paranormal activity keeps him busy because people are no longer ashamed to talk about their experiences for fear of being thought nuts.

"More people are willing to listen," he says. "It's more open now."

CONTACT US: tmurse@LNPnews.com or 481-6021