Katie Webb gives tarot card readings to the dead. On camera.

Webb, an Auburn native and one of four stars of the web series, “Haunt ME,” says it shows the ghost-hunting show’s softer side.

“When a spirit doesn’t instantly want to come out and talk to us like we’re their therapist or something, which is every time — they don’t assume that we’re there to be nice to them — it’s a way that I can pull cards and tell them a little bit about themselves,” said Webb, 34. “It kind of comes from a place of respect instead of, ‘Show me what you can do, do this, do that!'”

But yeah, it gets double takes. “A lot of people are like, ‘Wow, I never even thought of that!'” Webb said, laughing.

Airing its fourth season now and shooting its fifth, “Haunt ME” follows four southern Maine thirtysomethings with a host of electronics as they spend the night in a purportedly haunted locale and try to engage ghosts and gather evidence. 

Each team member’s assigned a handle: Ash Brooks, the folklorist. Carol Cleveland, the manesologist, a paranormal expert with a specialty in human spirits. Ty Gowen, the analyst. Webb, the occultist.

Webb said her title means she’s studied different forms of theology, ley lines and “metaphysical ways of communicating with spirits.”

“I work a lot less with old ideas and really focus on new ideas and how to help spirits,” she said. “If something negative happens on a ghost hunt, it’s super easy to label something as dark and scary, but I’m really interested in figuring out why you were scratched; maybe you weren’t scratched maliciously.”

She said she had her first paranormal experience in 2001, while attending the University of Maine at Farmington. Webb and friends were exploring town one night and came across an abandoned house. She took pictures of the outside, including one of a friend standing in front of a bramble bush that had broken horse-drawn cart parts shoved into it.

“There is a little girl with her in the bush when the picture showed up,” Webb said. “That’s when my third eye started to open and I started to experience ghosts without any type of equipment or anything like that. From that point on, I was like, ‘What is going on with me?’ So I just started exploring every realm I could. I still have so much more exploring to do.”

When she’s deployed tarot card readings on cases, Webb said, it’s elicited a range of reactions.

“Many spirits sort of come around to hear what I have to say,” she said. “I gave a reading to a haunted object and it said that it felt ‘different’ after. Billy, the haunted African Idol, thanked me and said we’re friends.”

While the group ghost-hunts off camera in private homes, locations chosen for the show have some history attached.

“We’re trying to link the past with the present and really work through lore and see how much of it is actually affecting the place, where can we find the truth in the stories and see what happens when we do that,” Gowen said.

One of Webb’s favorite locations, one that ties for the so-far-most haunted (the team assigns a rating at the end of each episode): The Greater Rumford Community Center.

“That one is crazy haunted,” Webb said.

It scored an 8 on the team’s 1-10 haunted scale.

“That’s as high up as we’ve gone; potentially as high up as I want to go,” she said.

An 8, according to the team, means: “Active and intelligent spirit energy, communication in (electronic voice phenomena), visual evidence with added level of malice.”

“There’s almost a portal of energy in the gym and spirits seem to come and go,” Webb said. “It’s very busy and very active all the time: soccer balls getting thrown at you, footsteps everywhere. Not like little creaks: heavy footsteps walking around and surrounding you. When you sit in the dark by yourself in the gym there, it’s very unnerving.”

Each “Haunt ME” season has seven or eight episodes. This season has seen guest appearances from Grant Wilson, formerly of Sy-Fy’s “Ghost Hunters,” Greg Newkirk and Dana Matthews, who run Planet Weird’s Traveling Museum of the Paranormal & Occult, home to Billy the Idol, and Chip Coffey, a psychic, medium and cable TV ghost show regular.

The season four finale airs Aug. 7 on YouTube. The group plans a Facebook LiveStream that night at 8 p.m. for a season recap and fan questions.

Gowen said the show is coming up on 200,000 views on YouTube.

“The future is the internet and we’ve been out here on our little non-TV island doing pretty well so far,” he said. “I think the heart is often what gets lost in ghost hunting. What we really want to do with our show, specifically, is show that it doesn’t have to be scary. Sometimes things just need help.”

Season 5 kicks off next spring and may see the team leave Maine and expand the so-far-only ghost show into cryptids, UFOs and other weirdness.

“It was wonderful to start in Maine,” Webb said. “Maine is so old and it’s so haunted, but the rest of the country is, too. Spirits are everywhere. There’s much more than ghosts going on.”

Weird, Wicked Weird is a monthly feature on the strange, intriguing and unexplained in Maine. Send ideas, photos and positive tarot readings to kskelton@sunjournal.com. 

One of Auburn native Katie Webb’s favorite locations, one that ties for the so-far-most haunted (the team assigns a rating at the end of each episode): The Greater Rumford Community Center.

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