If there’s something strange in your neighborhood, on Halloween or otherwise, there are people you can call to help you right here in Washington County.

Riverside Iowa Paranormal (or, aptly, RIP) serves eastern Iowa and beyond in all happenings beyond the grave.

Co-founders Michelle Reuss and Kelly Tandy have been involved with paranormal cleansings, tours and investigations for more than a decade, but only founded their organization five years ago.

RIP does more than just investigate hauntings. Its members offer counseling for victims of paranormal activity, cleanse homes of spirits, and remove haunted items. For private residences, they do all of this for free.

“When people see the help RIP does, they know it’s sincere…and they really feel like they are being helped by people who care about the situation,” said junior paranormal investigator Tristen Wendling.

Each member has a particular role to play. Wendling and the other junior members, Carson Netser and Mason Westerhoff, comb through data. Bill Tandy creates equipment; his wife Kelly is a sensitive and reiki master. Drew Hellige helps with equipment and transportation. Reuss acts as a psychic medium, a demonologist and an exorcist. Todd Wendling is the team’s historian.

Reuss and Bill Tandy are ministers; Hellige and both Tandys are military veterans. Everyone at RIP has a day job or attends school.

For RIP, interactions with the paranormal are another part of everyday life. Investigations or event tours can last for days, and when those are done, they need to watch or listen to hours of recordings to pick up any evidence of ghostly activity. Or, as Hellige pointed out, they need to see if what’s going on is paranormal to begin with, as opposed to electrical interference or poisonous gas.

To capture evidence, the team uses both technical and holistic devices, but said the best thing to do for drawing out ghosts was just to try and interact with them.

“They were people at one point in time, I’m sure they get a little bored. Why not give them something new to play with?” Hellige said.

RIP classified encounters into two basic categories: ‘residual’ and ‘intelligent.’ The former is when a spirit repeats the motions of their life, or their death, stuck in a loop until they can pass on. For intelligent hauntings, the entity can interact with the world around them with either positive, passive and malicious intent.

“Spirits go through a transition phase,” Reuss said. “They don’t know they’re dead. Oftentimes it was the way they died, or if they weren’t ready to die.”

The team has had numerous close encounters. They’ve had objects thrown at them, they’ve been scratched, shoved and pushed, and have seen entities with their own eyes. Reuss has even channeled spirits a few times; once, a fellow investigator “ran up the stairs and said, ‘Please don’t ever do that again because your whole face changed’,” she said.

The organization has chapters in five other states and a sixth chapter in Arizona coming soon. Around dozen people serve the Iowa chapter. As part of the Warren Legacy Foundation, a paranormal research group maintained by the grandson of famed investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren, they collaborate with similar groups from across the globe.

When dealing with the deceased, RIP practices safety and respect above all else. They don’t dabble in conjuring (and in fact strongly discourage it). They never hunt alone. Most importantly, they try to treat the spirits with as much reverence as they can to help them reach the other side.

“When you’re alive or if you’re dead, you’ve got free will. That’s something we were all given,” Reuss said. “And they can choose to go to that light, or they can choose not to. If they don’t think they’re worthy enough, oftentimes they won’t go.”