L.A.'s OWN GHOSTBUSTER.

OCTOBER was a busy month for Marina del Rey-based ghost investigator Larry Montz.

In the days before Halloween, the founder of the 28-year-old International Society of Paranormal Research (ISPR), was interviewed and consulted by a slew of cable television programs, including "Hollywood Ghost Stories," "Hollywood Haunts" and "Hollywood Spirituality."

Off-camera, things were also humming. He put the finishing touches on a book about Hollywood ghost investigations and held negotiations with a television network about a weekly series on paranormal research. In between, he organized a sold-out "ghost expedition" at the Vogue Theater in Hollywood.

For Montz, the supernatural sector is bustling. He charges $7,500 plus expenses for his team to investigate a ghost sighting. An analysis of a ghostly photograph or video costs $125 per item, and a phone consultation with Montz runs $550 per hour - more than even top corporate attorneys charge.

"We're out to help people, the victims of a traumatic event," he said. "We're not ghost hunters. We don't sell anything. We just sell services."

According to Montz, who holds a doctorate in parapsychology from Trinity College in England, spirits are everywhere, although they are particularly dense in L.A., where fatal tragedies in Hollywood have made the city a great place to study ghosts.

He said he saw his first ghost walking through walls at a friend's house when he was 10. After studying electrical engineering as an undergraduate and parapsychology as a graduate student. he founded the ISPR in 1972. Today, he presides over ISPR's staff of four, conducting research, interviews and tours to educate people about paranormal phenomenon and "to take fear away."

In pursuit of spirits

There seems to be a huge market out there for such services. One-third of Americans, according to one recent survey, say they believe in ghosts. And the huge success of films like "The Sixth Sense" and "The Blair Witch Project," and the growing number of ghost-related Internet sites seem to suggest that millions of Americans are hooked.

"People are curious, and they're looking for answers," Montz said. "They want proof."

That's where the ISPR and its staff of two clairvoyants, an investigative journalist and a professional photographer come in.

They don't use traditional accoutrements like crystal balls, spices and crucifixes. Instead, they do their work armed with oscilloscopes, motion detectors, Geiger counters, infrared and thermal cameras, thermometers and anything else Montz says they can "use to measure the environment."

Once the investigators detect activity on their gadgets, they call on the clairvoyants to tell them what it is. Montz proudly claims to be the first parapsychologist to include professional clairvoyants in his investigations.

"Clairvoyants give us all the information we can't get scientifically," he said. "If I register a cold spot on my temperature gauge, the clairvoyant will say, 'Who is standing in front of me?'"

Is all this really scientific? Not according to Pat Linse, cofounder of the Skeptic Society in Pasadena.

"As Carl Sagan said, 'You've got to keep an open mind, but not so open that your brains fall out," Linse said. "Parapsychology was founded 200 years ago in England when people didn't know the structure of the atom. While science has marched along and made breathtaking discoveries, the parapsychologists have stayed where they started, frozen in time.

"They're always on the edge, always on the verge of breakthrough, but they're never there."

Ghosts on stage

Montz obviously disagrees and points to the Vogue Theatre in Hollywood as a place that is rife with paranormal activity. Among its ghosts is "Fritz," a chubby, older man with small spectacles who died of a heart attack in the projection room. There's also "Danny," who died of a heroin overdose about 10 years ago and has a habit of pushing men while they're standing at a bathroom urinal.

Fritz and Danny and the other five "entities" at the Vogue so impressed Montz that he signed a 10-year lease on the aging theater with the hope of making it the ISPR's new office. But that didn't go over too well with the inhabitants.

"It's not a good place to have an office because of too many disruptions by the entities," Montz said.

Instead, the ISPR conducts monthly ghost expeditions to the haunted theater, charging $45 to join a four-hour ghost investigation with the ISPR team. Besides the crash course in parapsychology at the Vogue, the ISPR also conducts up to 10 investigations a month on behalf of people who are "troubled" by ghosts.

Montz said a number of people e-mail or call because they are genuinely afraid. Those folks are usually directed to one of the s clairvoyants, who quickly determine whether their fears are legitimate or part of a prank.

"You can't lie to a clairvoyant," Montz said.