If you watch What: Ghosts of Shepherdstown When: 10 p.m./ 9 p.m. central, Sundays through July 17 Where: Destination America channel More info: Go to www.destinationamerica.com

Elizabeth Saint is new to Loveland, she’s only been here for a year. She moved with her family from the Washington, D.C., area.

Her husband had been to the area and they wanted to raise their family someplace with more outdoor things to do.

Before leaving the East Coast, she wrapped production on Destination America channel’s new show “Ghosts of Shepherdstown” that premiered last night with repeat airings throughout the week.

The show follows Saint, along with Bill Hartley from the Greater Maryland Paranormal Society and Nick Groff, an investigator who has been seen on shows like “Ghost Adventurers.”

The trio was assembled to investigate Shepherdstown, W.V. They were asked to assist the five-man police team that was getting an increasing number of calls from residents reporting paranormal activity. They worked with the police department and local historians for two to three months in the oldest town in West Virginia. The town has a rich Civil War history.

Saint is a paranormal sensitive. She describes it as having heightened sensitivity to her surroundings

“I can pick up on energy, sometimes to hear and see them,” she said. She said it differs from being a medium in that she has little control over it. She said she mostly picks up on feelings from the locations. It is something that has always happened since she was very young.

“When I was younger, it was a lot more terrifying because I had no one to talk to,” she said. No one understood what she was experiencing. As she has gotten older, she has learned how to ignore it in her daily life and focus on it during investigations.

Saint began investigating paranormal when she moved to the Washington, D.C., area. She had gone back to school for electrical engineering and was working at the Department of Defense. She was experiencing some unexplainable things in her apartment and decided to ask a paranormal group to validate the things she was dealing with.

“I am more of a logical person, which a lot of people wouldn’t think,” she said. She contacted Maryland Paranormal Research and started working with the group. She said it was made up of people that worked for the government or were former military.

It was with them she was approached about the show. She was hesitant at first as she doesn’t see TV show showing the realistic side of her interest: the side where there is a lot of waiting or with nothing happening.

“What really intrigued me is that this is the first time, that I’ve heard of, that a paranormal team got to work with the police,” Saint said. The other new aspect is that it was not one location and then moving on, they had access to the entire town and to the local historians.

Saint, Hartley and Groff had never met before series. The first contact they had was their first day in Shepherdstown.

“The combination of the three of us, we hit it off from the get go,” Groff said. Each brought their own strengths. As the show progresses, viewers see how the team works together.

“Sometimes it was just like working with two older brothers,” Saint said. The team extended past the trio as they work closely with the police department.

“I think the viewers will see as the show progresses, we’ve become very cohesive. We become very much the team you would want to see investigate,” Hartley said.

All three come from logical perspectives. Their focus was more on finding out what was happening in the town and why the calls were increasing suddenly.

“Every time I hear a story someone tells me this is haunted and this is going on, I always pursue it in the realm of trying to disprove a haunting, than prove a haunting,” Hartley said. He is used to leading his own paranormal team, but here he took on more of the role of tech guy with all his different analysis equipment. He said working with the other two was like a re-schooling of his skills.

“I think it bettered me and hope it bettered them for their future endeavors,” Hartley said.

Another new aspect of the team was that they weren’t investigating one building or location like they were used to. They were investigating the whole town.

“I’ve never had the opportunity to investigate an entire town, multiple buildings, the woods, the land, the riverfront, it was amazing to have that opportunity,” Groff said. They had access to local historians to learn about the buildings and the history and they had to balance that with what was happening in the moment.

None of the three were aware of the paranormal side of the town. Groff and Hartley knew of its historical past but had never been to it.

“It was take your pick, the whole town is haunted,” Hartley said. He said that eventually they were issued a scanner. The team started sleeping in shifts so they were always on call. They were able to spend time with the locals and hear stories.

He said no matter where they went or who they talked to, it seemed everyone had their own ghost story. They did run into a few people that had never experienced anything. Hartley said that now that the show is coming out, he sees more and more people on social media that say they haven’t seen anything in the town.

“I am glad to say these people exist,” he said.

Investigating like they did, the show breaks the paranormal reality show mold because the show builds on itself instead of having stand-alone episodes.

“For us, every episode links together in one another,” Hartley said. They were able to be the town for enough time to start seeing certain patters.

“What was interesting about this is that you see how connected the stories were and how connected the hauntings were,” Saint said.

Saint said that there were things that surprised her about the town and because of these experiences, she won’t soon forget her time there.

“I still have a hard time explaining what happened there,” she said.

Michelle Vendegna: 970-699-5407, vendegnam@reporterherald.com