SAVANNA — You’re home alone when you hear a sound. Maybe it’s the wind sneaking through a window, or a door creaking to a close — or maybe it’s something else.

Something … not normal.

Jessica Finley might know what it is. She specializes in getting to the bottom of things that don’t conform to the norm with her business, 2 a.m. Paranormal in Savanna.

Doors and drawers that open and shut by themselves? Weird sounds from a baby monitor? Something that gives you goosebumps in the night? There’s an explanation for everything, and Finely likes to ferret out the phenomena that could explain things.

Her line of work is in the “not normal” — the paranormal, to be exact; those things that seem to lack a scientific explanation. If there’s a mystery behind the mysterious, she likes to solve it, and she doesn’t need Scooby Snacks and a Mystery Machine to do it — nor does she think she’s going to catch a ghost and reveal a sneering villain under a mask grumbling about “meddling kids.” For her, ghosts are the real deal ... or rather, the ethereal deal.

“Yes. Yes I do. I have seen them with my own eyes,” she said, and she’s made it her and her family’s mission to help others make sense of the unexplainable, one eerie creak or flicker of light at a time.

Finley guides her team of family members who enjoy solving mysteries, explaining the unexplainable, and getting to meet new people — living or dead. The team has explored haunted home and places throughout Illinois and Iowa, using equipment that can detect sudden changes in the air to figure out why strange things happen.

“People have reached out and have said they have some weird stuff going on in their house, and want us to come and check it out,” Finley said. “It’s important enough if they are concerned and are upset enough to call me. They probably have something going on.”

Paranormal investigation is the study of unexplained phenomena, primarily focusing on claims of ghosts and hauntings. Equipment and techniques are used to collect evidence and experience supernatural events, a task that involves documenting alleged activity through photos, audio and historical research, while also trying to find natural explanations before considering other possibilities.

It can take a lot of patience to unravel a mystery, Finley said, and she doesn’t want too many details before she takes on a job. She wants to approach each job with eyes wide open, so she’s not influenced one way or the other. Plus, if she runs across something on her own, it can reinforce her findings. There might just be a “there” there, even if she’s not sure what’s there.

“When I go to someone’s house, I don’t want to know a whole lot, just the basics and whatever they have going on,” Finley said. “I want to walk through myself and see what I can pick up. If I pick up something that there’s no way I would have a way of knowing that unless they told me, that can prove that what I’m doing is real.”

Ghosts and paranormal activity fascinated Finley as a child growing up on farms around Independence, Iowa, and she’s turned that fascination into a business, sometimes joined by her sister Angie Speed, husband Harvey Finley and daughter Nicole MacCann on her investigations. She said they’ve come to know different presences throughout Savanna, a town only three years shy of its 200th anniversary, since moving there about a decade ago.

“There’s a lot of energy in this town,” Finley said. “I’m sure there was a lot that went on because there was the railroad, the riverboats, gangsters from Chicago who would come to town.”

Finley has found that some nights on the job place can pass quietly, but even then, she said, she can usually capture something — an unexplained sound, a shift in energy, or a flicker of light that shouldn’t be there.

“You can spend the night somewhere and not get anything,” Finley said. “I’ve been pretty lucky so that I’ve always captured something, somewhere.”

Each investigation begins with a prayer and sometimes ends with a ritual cleansing, like burning sage, to put worried homeowners at ease. Even dolls, she notes, have long been thought of as vessels for spirits.

She and her team come armed with equipment such as milligauss meters that detect changes in magnetic units in open space, and others that pick up changes in temperature, pressure and humidity. Electrical and power sources at the site also are identified beforehand to make sure their equipment isn’t simply picking up electricity. Cameras and recorders also are part of their arsenal. Once they’re in place and set up, then the waiting begins, often two or three hours sitting in the dark, watching monitors and hoping to find answers amid the silence and darkness.

Finley explains to clients what each tool does, and shares with them what readings might mean, a spike for example. She also urges them to take their own photos, since unexplained shapes and shadows sometimes show up best in pictures, she said.

Sometimes connections with a spirit are fleeting — maybe they’re an unwilling tenant tethered to the earthly plane just waiting to go on to the next world.

“A lot of times when a place is being haunted, that spirit is just stuck there because sometimes they need their story told,” Finley said. “We’ve had it happen where we figure what’s going on, get information, and then the activity either slows way down or stops.”

The business is based out of the second floor of downtown Savanna’s Pulford Opera House, itself a place that some say has a haunted history. The second floor once was home to an antique mall (there’s another such store on the first floor today), and Finley has heard stories of customers who said they felt an unexplained presence — a tug on their hair or a pull on their purse.

The building, named for wealthy businessman Bothwell Pulford, was the site of a murder in May 1905. Daniel Berry, a prominent Savanna attorney, legislator, and community leader, was shot and killed outside his second floor office. It was a crime that was never officially solved. Suspicion centered on two men: a recently released ex-convict Berry had prosecuted, and Pulford, rumored to be jealous over Berry’s alleged relationship with his wife Lucinda.

Just days after the murder, Pulford died by suicide in his barn near town, fueling speculation that he had been the killer. While Pulford’s death was ruled a suicide brought on by mental collapse, Berry’s murder remained a mystery, casting a shadow over the community for a time.

Today, the story of the building’s storied past is still being told. During one weekend a year, Finley’s team invites help from others interested in paranormal activity: They hosted an overnight stay there on Nov. 2 last year — a date coinciding with the popular Mexican holiday of Día de los Muertos (The Day of the Dead) that honors deceased loved ones, believing their souls return to visit them — and will have this year’s on Nov. 1 (more information about it will be released on 2 a.m. Paranormal’s Facebook page closer to the event). Tours of the opera house are also available by appointment.

Finley also has cameras keeping on eye on things inside the opera house, keeping closed circuit eyes peeled for anything unusual, such as orbs, doors opening and closing, or the occasional chair sliding on the floor.

“We’ve picked up the spirits of Pulford and of Berry,” Finley said. “There were a couple of kids that I was actually able to get pictures of, and I think it was those of the kids who would pull on the purses and the hair. There are other spirits here other than the ones that you think. What’s unique about this is that generally I can come here and bring some equipment and I can get something almost every time.”

Another local place the team has visited often is Willow Creek Farm, west of Shannon on Spring Valley Road. The farm and its house have been the site of what investigators believe is paranormal activity in recent years. Finley and her team have stayed overnight there to take a closer look, and received a visit from a ghostly guest.

“When we were sitting around a table, there was a little girl there, her name’s Lilly, and we had a piece of equipment and were watching it and talking, and all of a sudden it felt like I had a hand on my leg, and it was almost like a child was climbing up to sit on my lap,” Finley said. “That was pretty cool.”

It’s experiences like that that keep Finley and her family searching for clues to what lies beyond; and while others may have both feet firmly in the physical world, that doesn’t mean they can’t take one step beyond. Who knows that they might find there? It may be even be peace of mind. For some who’ve enlisted 2 a.m. Paranormal’s services, confronting the unexplained has allowed them to not only feel validated, but to confront the mysteries and find comfort in the answers that Finley may provide.

“There are people who say there’s no paranormal activity, or ghosts,” Finley said, though that doesn’t mean there’s not a ghost of a chance that they can’t be convinced. “We’ve had a lot of people up here who have said they don’t believe at all … ,” but she said, “they’re on the road to believing.”