The Skagit Valley College Whidbey Campus was decked out this week with Halloween decorations, including white, filmy ghosts hanging from trees.

Staff at the college say real spirits haunt at least one building.

“There’s a little boy on the ground floor — he’s a little poltergeist,” said professor Lou LaBombard. “He moves things around, he pushes things off tables, he giggles.”

The building is the former Seaplane Base hospital, built in the early 1940s.

So many people experienced extraordinary events in the college’s Old Main building that a ghost hunter visited last year. He used a thermal scanner to check for changes in temperature, a compass and an electromagnetic field detector.

He didn’t find anything conclusive.

LaBombard has taught at the college for 26 years and works in an office in Old Main. He’s been around late in the evening many times. He has no doubts that multiple spirits inhabit Old Main.

“I’m Native American,” he said. “It could be I have no fear of them. I recognize them.”

In addition to a lot of unexplained movement of small objects, he’s seen the faint imprint of the little boy riding his tricycle on the basement level. There’s a woman who wanders near the bookstore, which used to be the hospital morgue. And an old man wanders the halls.

The professor doesn’t believe any of the spirits are malevolent.

When he tells people what he’s experienced, some are open to the idea and others are skeptical.

“I believe there are spirits around all the time,” he said. “To me they are real, to other people they are a figment of the imagination.”

Raynette Parks experienced her share of odd incidents. She’s been on campus since 2006, first as a student and now as program manager.

Her office is in the basement of Old Main.

“Some creepy things have happened, especially later in the evening,” she said.

Once she was alone in the bookstore later in the evening. A display of yoga mats tumbled over. She put them back securely. They tumbled again.

In her own office she’s heard what sounds like chairs scraping across the floor and someone typing on computers in the adjoining room while it was empty and locked.

She tried to explain those incidents away. But there’s one particular incident she can’t find a rational explanation for.

One evening she was walking up the stairs, and someone grabbed the back of her leg. She stumbled. She turned expecting to see someone.

No one.

“It felt like someone grabbed my legs and jerked,” she said.

Part of her thinks it’s not real. Part of her isn’t so sure.

She is sure about one thing: “I don’t think it’s anything anyone should be scared of.”