Real-life ghostbusters check out the Roxy theatre in Sydney - The Daily Telegraph

Joe Simiana, Barbralea Smith, Jo Jo Casey and Brett Vucko Annett Sharp and Kerry Nelson at the Roxy Theatre in Parramatta. Picture: Stephen Cooper Source: The Sunday Telegraph

THE absence of a Cadillac "Ectomobile" was forgivable. The decision to substitute a rock 'n' roll uniform, black T-shirt and jeans, for tradesman's overalls was, well, understandable.

But the failure to adopt an anthemic Ray Parker Jr style groove was, frankly, inexcusable and deplorable.

As every Ghostbusters fan knows, it is the song, and the arsenal of Proton Packs, Ecto-Strobes and Slime Blowers, that sets a true paranormal investigator apart from rank imitators. How on earth is one to summon a departed cosmic soul without them? My first night as a paranormal sleuth was off to a poor start.

Barbralea Smith vividly recalls the first time she saw a ghost.

The Sydney mother of two, who works as an ice cream telesales rep by day, has a vivid memory of seeing her first apparition in 1992 while having a shower in "a very haunted house" in Granville.

"I had the curtain open and I got a feeling something was looking at me," she says, casting her mind back 21 years. "I could see the reflection in the mirror. It was like a triangle.

"In the mirror I could see the water heater and in between the water heater and the wall there was the face of a man."

The face belonged to her then boyfriend's father who had died seven years earlier.

Convinced she was having a psychic experience, she visited a Macarthur Square crystal shop in Campbelltown where her suspicions were confirmed by the resident medium - she had a mystic gift.

Barbralea's experience is similar to those of her four partners in Sydney paranormal investigation squad, Australia's Most Haunted (AMH), a group of like-minded ghost hunters who invited this rookie to join them on a night search for supernatural evidence at Parramatta's one-time Roxy Theatre, regarded as a metaphysical haven by the psychic investigators.

Looking more like the Scooby Doo Mystery Inc squad gone to seed than proper ghostbusters in ghost-busting overalls, Barbralea and her merry crew - Joe Simiano, Kerry Nelson, Jo Casey and Brett Vucko - were vibrating with excitement as they unpacked half a tonne of psychic detective equipment from the back of a pathetically non Ecto vehicle, a Toyota Rav, on Wednesday night, in readiness for their anticipated night of terror. As I was to discover, the slime blower is still a fanciful concept. Their instruments of psychic detection are infra-red cameras, electromagnetic frequency and temperature-measuring Mel Metres and Olympus voice recorders.

There will be no ghostly traps set down to vacuum spirits into a containment field tonight. We will instead spend our night, from 9pm to 6am - when the cleaners arrive - simply trying to record ghosts at play, watching the disembodied entities as they "apparate" and attempting to record their answers to our questions - a tricky business as, I am soon to discover, a ghostly response cannot usually be heard with the naked ear but can sometimes be detected when recorded digitally and played back, 30 to 50 times, very slooowly. At 9pm the night manager locks us in and turns out the lights, offering a half-amused "good luck" as he confirms that he too thinks he's seen a ghost in the creepy 1930 theatre.

We promptly set up a base camp inside the huge dusty 1970s refurbed theatre space. My Metallica-styled spirit guides insist this enormous space is haunted with headless men in pirate shirts, horned beasts with backwards legs, winged creatures and floating heads. I see nothing but cheap red vinyl seating grating hideously against the ornate 90-year-old plaster ceiling mouldings. My blood chills.

"This place will suck you in and you'll get lost in it," says Jo Casey, mother of three, issuing a stern warning. "Don't go into the women's toilets upstairs! There is a seriously dark force in there and it's a bad one." All agree wholeheartedly, particularly professional psychic Kerry Nelson who comes shrieking from the bathroom claiming she's seen something.

While the women make camp - a task which involves unpacking some suspiciously party-like snacks as well as organising a stockpile of unspent batteries to thwart the ghosts who reputedly drain batteries faster than an iPhone 5 - the menfolk decide I should be pressed into action on my first ghostly mission.

Simiano has conducted 12 overnight vigils at the Roxy and says many gruesome accidents have occurred here - the first of them taking place in 1931, the year after it was opened, when a man fell from the stage and cracked his skull.

A cinematographer by trade, Simiano leads me and Vucko out of the theatre and into a rear projection room and then into the rustic attic space upstairs. Here he points to a pile of dusty light globes at the end of a low ceilinged nook. He says they shouldn't be there. It's a complete mystery as to how they came to be in the confined space.

A broken door nearby is testament to the night when, legend has it, builders were locked in by a phantom and had to break the door down to escape.

The place wheezes with old generators and I wheeze too, the dust triggering the spectre of my dormant asthma back to life.

In the 1984 cult hit film Ghostbusters, New York is under psychic threat from a gigantic reserve of negative energy pooling under the city - the product of greed, wealth, ambition and lust.

It turns out that in Sydney, 2013, a far more malevolent force is at work. Its name strikes fear and terror into the hearts of the hardest men. They call it ... TELEVISION.

By 11pm I realise the AMH team is recording and gathering vision for a TV documentary. Turns out they are not just after ghosts, they are also after the holy grail of the mystical realm - a TV contract.

They are not alone.

With the proliferation of ghostly psychic programs on television in America - hit programs like Medium, and Ghost Whisperer, and less successful ones such as I'm Famous And Frightened and Pet Psychic - a race is under way in Australia to produce a new primetime paranormal program.

Our night at the Roxy, and two more here this month, are location shoots for an unfinished TV documentary.

It's a competition, says one of the AMH team members, that of late has become dirty and "bitchy". At midnight I am yet to observe any conclusive paranormal event. No apparition has appeared to me, no disembodied voice has said "Hey!" or "I'm lost" or "It's freezing here" as others claim to have heard here before.

Nothing has brushed past in the dark. The time has come for serious measures.

Simiano and Vucko suggest that if I am agreeable, I should be taken to the scariest place in this building, the attic loft, and left alone to see if I might perceive the spirit child who lingers there at 4am. After a climb, I am positioned in a small stuffy dark space on the largest pile of aged pigeon waste I have ever seen.

In this fetid place I am left alone to have my encounter with the supernatural. Once the men have departed, I rattle off a list of random questions to the ghost child. Possibly sensing my scepticism, she doesn't answer. It seems she doesn't have a message to impart. She doesn't say if any of my loved ones wish to reach me. She doesn't attempt to tell me her name. It occurs to me that she may just be a stickler for punctuality. She usually appears at 4am. For the first time in my life, I am early. It's only 1am.

A Sydney academic tells me that paranormal investigation is on the rise in Sydney. One reason for this, believes Dr Tony Jinks, a lecturer who teaches neuroscience and paranormal studies at University of Western Sydney, is because modern life is so spiritually void.

"It seems to be flourishing in a space once dominated by mainstream religion but I believe that, for the most part, these are people looking for evidence of an afterlife," Dr Jinks says. "These groups look to be part social club, part quasi religious group.

"Some members have outgrown their theological upbringing ... Some, I believe, just see things."

At around 1.30am, perhaps due to fatigue, I too am seeing things.

Shadows are moving in the corners of the dark room.

They may well belong to the ghosts the AMH crew have been waiting for. With apologies to the physical and the metaphysical, I spirit myself away - more haunted by the crimes against architecture committed in the old theatre than by any entity, living or dead.