The people of Shepherdstown were hearing things. The police department's phone was ringing with complaints of unexplained phenomena. It was an intruder, someone thought. But then there was no sign of break in. And it was happening to everyone in town. Police were stumped.
So who did they call?
No, not Ghostbusters, that's not a real thing.
The police -- or, we might surmise, the producers of the reality show "Ghosts of Shepherdstown" -- turned to Bill Hartley, head of the Greater Maryland Paranormal Society, and two other ghost hunters, Nick Groff and Elizabeth Saint, to come investigate.
According to a news release, each episode of "Ghosts of Shepherdstown," which airs Sunday on Destination America, begins with a panicked 911 call from a Shepherdstown resident who's just seen something really scary. Maybe a piano playing on its own, or a headless woman walking through the woods.
(Of course if this were a scary movie, this would be the point where the chief of police laughs them off and tells them to not worry their pretty little head. But this is reality TV. They know better.)
The experts then work with local historians and psychics to try to piece together the mystery. One episode discusses a bloody Civil War battle, another a murder from a century ago.
Hartley, who lives in Baltimore, told The Baltimore Sun he first began seeing ghosts as a kid growing up on South Hanover Street. Today he's the groundskeeper at Westminster Hall & Burying Ground, where he tends to the grave of Edgar Allan Poe among other illustrious bodies, and also runs his own company for the investigation of paranormal activity.
Hartley declined to give the full run-down of what was spooking Shepherdstown -- after all, that would spoil the show. But he did say that the town experienced a spike in paranormal activity while he was filming the series.
The six-part series "Ghosts of Shepherdstown" premieres at 10 p.m. Sunday on Destination America, an offshoot of the Discovery channel.