Robert Rushing said a ghost attacked him when he was a security guard at a church.

“I noticed it in the rafters,” he said.

Then the ghost dropped down and passed through him, Rushing said.

“The skin of my chest got ice cold and I could feel that ice cold feeling in motion, travel all the way through me,” he said. “My heart started palpitating, and I hit the ground.”

The art junior said he is a firm believer that every square inch on this planet is haunted.

Rushing is starting a Paranormal Studies organization on campus for anyone that is interested in ghosts or paranormal activity. The group will meet to discuss the ghosts, watch ghost hunting shows and possibly form a paranormal investigation team. Rushing has Electronic Voice Phenomenon, or white noise, machines to detect sounds inaudible to the human ear.

The group may not have to go far to investigate the paranormal. UTA has areas on campus that are reportedly haunted, Rushing said.

Greek Row, Ransom Hall and the newsroom in the basement of the University Center are rumored to have ghosts.

Rushing doesn’t like to investigate in places like cemeteries because spirits sometimes hang out where they were most active as humans.

Energy attracts paranormal activity and it has been left everywhere by plants, animals and people, he said.

Anything that has mass can be converted into energy, assistant physics professor Chris Jackson said.

Technically, energy is an abstract idea used to measure physical forces, he said.

Rushing said he hopes starting this organization will spark scientific interest in paranormal studies.

“Mainstream science teaches that paranormal studies deals with religion, so it’s not a part of science,” Rushing said.

Jackson said energy can be explained in terms of physics, but spiritual energy is harder to define.

“This is not something we can measure in a laboratory,” he said

Students like Ruby Luu said she would join the organization if it started.

The undeclared freshman said she saw a ghost when she was ten.

Luu said something woke her up in the middle of the night. When she opened her eyes, she saw a figure in the distance.

“I thought it was a burglar, so I grabbed some kind of pillow and threw at it,” Luu said.

But the pillow went through the figure and then it disappeared, she said.

Since then, Luu said she believes paranormal activity exists and loves everything scary.

“I love haunted houses and watching scary movies,” she said.

If the organization did investigations to try and find ghosts on campus, she said she would go and not be afraid.

Some students like mechanical engineering sophomore Boyejo Adefuye think this is a good organization that might be for fun for those interested, but also that some things should be left alone.

“If you don’t have power to do something and fight something, just leave it there, don’t touch it,” he said about paranormal investigations.

But Rushing said the spirits are here anyway, whether we want to believe it.

“Knowledge is everything, and ignorance is only bliss when you’re sick and dying,” Rushing said. “It’s like facing someone with a knife, you can either be terrified and get hurt, or you can know what you’re dealing with and manage to survive the situation.”