Things were going bump in the night at the Church Brew Works.

And that was just part of the weirdness. Owner Sean Casey was hearing stories from his employees about strange noises in unoccupied spaces of the vast Lawrenceville complex. There were sightings of a woman dressed in white. Creepy, unexplained things were happening.

So, who you gonna call?

“Ghost Hunters,” of course. In the vast reality television landscape where paranormal activity has come to be viewed as well, normal, it set the spooky tone way back in 2004.

Jason Hawes and his crew rolled up to Church Brew Works on a sunny day last June. Hawes, a plumber who founded The Atlantic Paranormal Society (TAPS) in Rhode Island, was there to shoot footage for the current 15th season.

This “Ghost Hunters” episode begins streaming Jan. 15 on Discovery+.

“The owner reached out to us back in 2016 about some activity. We try to get to as many cases as possible but the thing is, our main focus is residential. So sometimes, there are big places that have to take a back seat,” Hawes said.

The Church Brew Works is big, all right. Its centerpiece is the desanctified site of St. John the Baptist Roman Catholic Church, in addition to the adjacent former grade school and rectory.

“He [Casey] was a little skeptical until he had his own experience, and that’s when he sent an email over to us at TAPS at 1:30 in the morning saying ‘God, I can’t take this anymore,’” said Steve Gonsalves, lead investigator.

The two men sat talking at one of the long tavern tables in the majestic former sanctuary as the crew scrambled here and there, setting up lighting, night-vision cameras and equipment to document – with luck – paranormal activity.

Hawes was a Roto-Rooter plumber with a passion for homespun ghost hunting when he and some friends shot the first season of the show for what was then the SciFi network. He’d actually begun examining the paranormal on his own in 1990.

Since then, the format has gone back and forth, with copycat shows springing up and various incarnations of the original on networks including SciFi/Syfy and A&E.

But what has not changed is the premise: a call goes out to investigate weird happenings. The team (with investigators Dave Tango and Shari DeBenedetti on hand for this trip to Pittsburgh) then digs up some historical background. The real fun, and frights, come when everyone sets out to explore by night.

In the case of Church Brew Works, this required a lot of legwork. The school alone has four floors and while some of it is used as office space, there are large, abandoned areas with stacks of old chairs and clutter in many corners.

“Ghost Hunters” talked to Casey and a number of the Church Brew Works staff for the episode’s spectral anecdotes.

“There needed to be a certain aloofness,” Casey said, not wanting to tell the TAPS crew specifics, lest it influence what they believed they saw or heard.

In addition, local historian James Wudarczyak was interviewed – with an unsettling tale to tell. And a jaunt to one of the Carnegie Libraries reveals the identity of someone killed near the property over a century ago. It all adds to the lore.

Hawes, who is Catholic, said it makes sense that a former church property might attract a presence from beyond: “This is a very spiritual place; people showed up here numerous times a week to pray, to say good-bye to loved ones.

“So if this was the closest place you came to connecting with God, it’s a safe place,” he said. “Like where it used to be a Catholic school, a place where people had their friends, where they spent five days a week.”

“Emotions, right?” added Gonsalves. “Emotions can spark the haunting, extreme emotions on either end: love, devotion, that sort of thing, or trauma.”

The show has been to the Pittsburgh area before, and another episode this season was shot in Cresson, Cambria County. For Gonsalves, it was a homecoming of sorts. He said he spent some of his formative years in Harrison City and attended Penn Trafford for a spell.

“I still have my Terrible Towel,” he said brightly.

Gonsalves has two sleeves of brightly colored tattoos on his arms (you can find pictures on Pinterest), including a ghost with no eyes. There’s also a rambling haunted house inspired by the film “Suspiria” and some “Exorcist” images.

“As the seasons progressed, his tattoos did as well,” Hawes said, laughing.

“Ghost Hunters” has been popular since its inception, and Hawes and Gonsalves say they are well aware of the show’s place in popular culture. But parodies on “South Park” and “Saturday Night Live” to name a few, reflect the natural skepticism the TAPS team has encountered over the years.

That’s cool, said Hawes, adding that the TAPS crew aren’t really fans of seances or Ouija Boards.

“We take everything people say with a grain of salt and look for the true explanation.”

“We sort of want it to be paranormal because that’s what we do,” Gonsalves said. “But [scientifically] is a much safer way to investigate. We don’t want to misrepresent things. It doesn’t do anybody any good if we fool ourselves.”

Maria Sciullo is a Tribune-Review contributing writer.

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