Chris Woodyard is the first to admit it: “I see things. I guess I could be nuts, but I don't think I am.”

        What she sees are dead people. Headless hitchhikers. Blood-stained chauffeurs. Wronged wives. Desperate prisoners. All of them rattling around Ohio.

        Even in Cincinnati?

        “Especially Cincinnati. This is one haunted city,” she says.

        She should know. As author of the Haunted Ohio series, Ms. Woodyard has traveled the state top to bottom investigating hauntings and reporting findings in six books since 1991, including the new Ghost Hunter's Guide to Haunted Ohio (Kestrel; $14.95).

        Strange line of work, 'eh, for a 47-year-old Dayton wife and mother with degrees in medieval studies and library science. Even stranger for a woman who's terrified of ghosts.

        “Very much so. I started researching ghosts to exorcise my fears. I've always been able to see and sense spirits. My father, grandfather and daughter, too.

        “If you're sensitive, you sense them in the atmosphere. For me it feels like electricity. Like walking into a live current.”

        This time of year, she doesn't do much ghost-hunting. Instead, she travels the state in a soccer-mom type mini-van, armed with a rubber skull and a pile of books, presenting programs in schools and libraries. She's booked every weekday in October and many in November.

        “The way it works,” she says, munching something sinful in LeCezanne Pastry Shop after a gig at Wyoming's Bonham Branch Library, “is I talk about ghosts, localizing for where I am, then take questions.”

        OK, here's a question: What's with the rubber skull?

        “It's a mascot. I keep it on the podium during presentations.”

        She says her presentations are fun and fertile, because people bring stories of their own hauntings. “It seems like one ghost story always leads to another and another.”

        Right. And one question always leads to another and another. Like these . . .

        • My favorite Cincinnati ghost story . . .

“The Ghost Who Stopped a Reds' Game.”

        An elderly gentleman who hated flowers but had a wonderful vegetable garden died. After the funeral, his daughter brought home the flowers and threw them in his vegetable garden, saying something like, “Here's your flowers, you old buzzard.” Then she went in and told her husband. They had the Reds game on but the radio suddenly went dead. Her father's voice came out: “I appreciate the flowers.”

        I also like “Headless in Hyde Park.” That's the one about a chauffeur who was decapitated, but later came calling on his boss. He was in the blood-splattered car and headless.

        Oh, and the Taft Museum, which Annie Sinton Taft and her father David Sinton refuse to leave.

        • Three places to avoid on Halloween . . .

Any cemetery, that's for sure. And seances — always.

        The worst is a stretch of highway in Amelia that's haunted by the faceless hitchhiker. I've never put this in a book, because I don't want people going there . . . it was a horrible accident with several fatalities. Since then, there have been instances of a flat, black creature . . . jumping in front of cars. I know of one time when a woman hit it, then saw it climbing on her car.

        • The most scared I've ever been . . .

Was when a ghost smacked me in Springfield. He was a farm hand who died in the attic in the '30s. Not very bright, but very religious and very angry.

        He kept saying, “If I'm dead, why aren't I in heaven?” When I walked into the attic, he jumped out and popped me in the chin. It left a mark. I told the ladies who lived there and they said, “Oh, we never go up there alone.”

        • If someone thinks their house is haunted, they should . . .

Not panic. Look for a logical explanation. I talked to a lady not long ago who was sure Disney World was haunted because the toilets kept flushing. Often, there's a simple, easy answer. If there isn't, talk to someone with experience.

        • The most important lesson I've learned from ghost hunting . . .

Is that there are a lot of fruitcakes out there. I've been lied to more than once by disturbed people with things in their life they can't control. So they turn, wrongly, to the supernatural and use it to avoid real life.

        • Cincinnatians looking for ghosts . . .

Should go to public places — the Taft Museum and Music Hall are particularly rich. There was a lunatic asylum once on Music Hall's site, and there was some kind of cemetery. And the Taft, of course, Annie just won't leave her beloved home.

        Another good one is the bar on the Delta Queen. Mary Greene died at 83 and still haunts it. She hated liquor, so when the Queen's owners turned her library into a bar, you just knew there'd be trouble. Lots of glasses get broken there in the middle of the night.

        • Here's why ghosts frighten me . . .

They don't belong here. They're an abnormality in the universe. I'm not sure ghosts can really hurt us seriously, but they can scare us into hurting ourselves.

        • I'll stop hunting ghosts when . . .

I'm dead and become one myself. No, I hope I don't. It would be a miserable place to spend the afterlife.

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