Just say "bubble guts."

If a tummy growls, if a cough or sneeze cannot be stopped, or if a shift in body weight leads to the creaking of the floorboards. Just say "bubble guts," or "it was me," or anything to let the investigators know who made the noise.

That is so when the investigators examine the audio tape afterwards, they know that it was a participant, and not a spirit, that made the sound.

The staff and crew of Wareham Community Television show Phantom Paranormal Investigations, or Phantom P.I., spent the evening of May 18 investigating the age old mystery of paranormal activity in an age old Wareham building -- the Fearing Tavern located on Elm Street.

The Fearing Tavern is the four building in the series of investigations on the show. The first was in a hotel in Fairhaven that remains undisclosed due to the wishes of the management, the second was the Sam West House in Acushnet, and the third was the Old Town Hall (WCTV's studio) in Wareham.

The Fearing Tavern is a former home, town meeting place, stagecoach station, and tavern that dates back to the late 1600s, according to Carolyn McMorrow, president of the Wareham Historical Society, which owns the Tavern.

It's also a great place to investigate paranormal activity, said Carlston Wood, director of Phantom P.I.

"This is a prime location because of the [paranormal] activity, the quality of investigators that have been allowed to come here, and the quality of the evidence," said Wood.

The investigative team consists of audio and video professionals who help in the recording of the show as well as two "Spirit Mediums," Stephanie Burke and Nicole Lahousse, who use their talent of sensing spirits and paranormal activity to guide the investigation throughout the house.

At the tavern on Friday evening, the investigation meant a walk through rooms with beds made of rope, kitchens with fireplaces for cooking, and of course, a basement with spider webs and a mysteriously hollow sound in the ground.

At certain locations, however, Burke and Lahousse sensed greater "activity" than in other areas of the house. That is when they would stop, sit down, and everyone took their cue to become completely silent.

That's to help with the audio recordings.

The team uses sensitive microphones during their investigations to record what is known as "electronic voice phenomenons," or EVPs, the type of gurgling high-pitched frequencies that are common to ghost hunter programs and that sound like the noise that comes out of a radio when a person changes the station.

Other times, EVPs can sound like real sentences with unexplained causes, said Michael Markowicz, an audio professional with the team that has published his own book, "EVP: Massachusetts Ghostly Voices."

After the Fearing Tavern investigation was over, Markowicz played EVPs from former unreleased Phantom Paranormal Investigations that, after Marcowicz deciphered them, could be construed to be a little child asking someone to play with them or a spirit occupant of the house answering a question from a member of the investigative team.

"A lot of it can be a person's mind and how they interpret it, but other things are much more difficult to explain," said Wood.

Regardless, one thing that can't come into the equation is human error. Hence the "bubble guts," or the requirement to be completely silent when "Spirit Mediums" Burke and Lahousse sit and attempt to communicate with the spirits in the room.

"This is artistic expression for me," Wood said after the investigation. "It's a subject that I've been interested in all my life, and I want people to see it, and I want to leave it up to them to interpret it."

"I think things happen to us," Wood went on, "and I think there are some things that happen to us that are very personal, that no recorder, no camera, or any type of device can capture on record, and it's those personal things that I think are real."