TWO HOURS INTO the setup routine, Laird's face and neck are wet with perspiration. We could all use a cold spot. There are 18 (live) people on the middle deck right now, plus the combined heat of two video monitors, two television cameras and the lighting they require, two computers, a sound boom, and four infrared/UV cameras. All of which are producing electric and magnetic fields, meaning that the ghostbusters may be detecting more busters than ghosts.

The sensitives are in the forecastle, getting psychically tuned for their séance, which they call a "sit-down." Gary Wynn, a producer with Good Morning, America, has been eager for this portion of the evening to begin, because now there'll be something to film besides people fiddling with equipment.

Wynn is over six feet tall and carries a bulky TV camera. Every time he stands up or comes down the steep, narrow staircase to the captain's quarters, he

"I think he's speaking Nigerian," a triprg "sensitive" says of the weird ghost language being channeled by her colleague. "Is Nigeria in Africa?"

hits his camera or his head or both. While we wait for the sensitives to be wired with microphones, Laird tells a story for the GMA camera. He recalls that the first time he visited the Morgan, he saw a man up on deck, leaning on the rails and looking out at the water. Thinking this was a security guard, Laird crossed the deck to talk to him. When he got there, the man had vanished. Laird believes it was a ghost.

"I can't prove it," he says, with camera lights blanching his face. "It's just a feelin' I got."

The GMA soundman attaches a mike to one of the sensitives. He bends over and leans in to the collar of her T-shirt. "Check!" he says to her neck. All in a row, the sensitives head toward the forecastle. Although the sightings were reported in the blubber room, the feeling among the sensitives is that there will be a higher concentration of energy in the sleeping quarters.

Wynn's forehead collides with a crossbeam. "Mike!" he hollers to his cameraman. "Do me a favor."

"What do you need, buddy?"

"Get me a fuckin' helmet."

The forecastle of a whaling ship is a claustrophobe's hell. Laird has mounted a video camera in here, which, he says, gathers images in both infrared and UV. It occurs to me that the "blue light" you see being used by forensics guys on TV to detect semen is some kind of UV. So in that sense, Laird's cameras probably are capable of detecting lingering traces of dead whalers.

The forecastle is crowded, so I go back to monitor the sit-down in the captain's quarters. The infrareds make the women's eyes glow like hyena eyes on Animal Planet. Infrared cameras read heat, which makes them seem like an odd choice for detecting entities that register as cold spots.

The sensitives begin their sensing. "If there are any spirits here, come forward," says Steph. "Let us know. You can either use our meters, a rapping noise, or tell us telepathically." A dead whaler steps up to the telepathic mike, but, alas, he is speaking a foreign tongue.

"Meena na mee ku," says a sensitive, repeating what she's hearing in her head. Her eyes are shut and her palms are turned up.

"I think he's speaking Nigerian," a colleague offers. "Is Nigeria in Africa?"

"Ma taq a ku!"

"I'm getting England. Did this ship go to England?"

"Did it carry precious minerals?"

The Globe reporter has been leaning against the wall beside me, listening to the proceedings. "It was a whaling ship," she says.