Searching for the spirits in the dark that haunt Stokes Adobe -- by camping out overnight.

Excerpted from a story that was originally published in the Weekly on Oct. 30, 2008.

During business hours, Monterey’s Stokes Restaurant and Bar gives off a warm glow. But once the patrons drift into the chilly Monterey night, the 185-year-old building takes on a different, darker feel.

Stokes has long been rumored to be haunted by several apparitions, including the ghost of Hattie, a Monterey socialite who lived in the adobe until her death in 1948, and the spirit of Dr. James Stokes, an early owner of the structure who is said to have hanged himself from a chandelier in the building.

To verify or disprove claims of the presence of ghostly tenants at Stokes Adobe, Weekly photographer Nic Coury and I spent a whole night in the restaurant.

We arrive and meet up with paranormal investigator Norene Balovich and her husband, Jim Balovich. Norene lives in Walnut Creek and works for livescifi.tv, a website that broadcasts live paranormal and sci-fi based content. “I’m a real estate agent at day, and I ghost-hunt at night,” she says.

Before all the Stokes employees leave for the evening, our small ghost-hunting crew learns about some recent unexplained occurrences. Manager Dino Giannetta leads us into the adobe’s oldest room: the lounge. He tells us that people have felt invisible fingers tapping their shoulders, and one chair in the corner has inexplicably moved. “This has a lot of activity,” he says. “Voices, cold spots, touchings, pullings.”

Waiter Cesar Cuevas also has a story to tell: While in the busser’s station a year ago, he and another employee witnessed a football-sized dark spot hovering above the floor.

After the goosebump-raising stories, our crew retires to the foyer, where Norene starts unloading her ghost-detecting gear. I show her my plastic Ghost Meter, an arrowhead-shaped electromagnetic field gauge I bought at Ghost-Mark.com for $30. It’s supposed to detect electrical fields including energy from appliances and passing spirits. Meanwhile, she pulls out a more impressive collection of ghost-hunting devices: a digital voice recorder, a flashlight, a digital camera and her own electromagnetic field (EMF) meter that looks like a TV remote control. Then Norene holds up a brick-sized black box with an antenna mounted on the top. “This is the big one,” she says. “This is the Mona Lisa EMF.”

As the restaurant’s customers slowly drain out into the night, we move to the lounge to begin our investigations. Upon entering the room, Norene’s personality changes. She flaps her hands at her side, and shivers. “I’m starting to get my paranormal chill,” she says. “There’s something here.”

Norene begins to ask the spirits a series of questions in a gentle tone. It’s as if she’s a schoolteacher addressing a classroom of invisible students. “This here – you probably haven’t seen one – is a camera,” she says, holding up her digital camera.

Hoping to forge an open relationship with the inhabitants of the spirit world, she decides to reveal our plans for the evening. “We will be talking to you, and Stuart and Nic will be staying overnight,” she says.

I suddenly experience my own flush of chills.

Though Norene politely invites the ghosts to join us, they decline – until we head upstairs to the wine room. Now, with the time sliding past midnight, the darkened, creaky building starts to mess with us. Coury swears a chandelier overhead slowly swings to and fro. Norene and I hear a dull thump above us.

“If you are here, give me a sign,” she says.

A moment later, her camera, which was sitting on the table, falls over. It’s not much, but it’s our strongest response yet from the spirit world.