DE SOTO — Chris Brinley does not entirely buy the stories that his staff of mostly teenagers tells about a ghost that haunts his pizzeria. But even he can't explain some of the events there.

So tonight he's turning to the Jefferson County Paranormal Society in an effort to explore whether the spirit of a little boy lingers in the abandoned apartments above his pizzeria.

"I was planning on rehabbing them and renting them out — unless it's really haunted bad, then we'll have ghost tours," Brinley joked.

It's unclear where the story of the little boy originated. A picture from the 1890s shows a boy in a wheelchair outside Brinley's building at 106 South Main Street. Brinley's staff believes the boy lived in one of the apartments above the pizzeria, and that he was paralyzed after falling on the high school steps about a block away. They don't know where that story originated.

Local historian Betty Olson, who has worked at the De Soto Public Library for 50 years, hasn't heard of such a tragedy. But she noted that a man murdered his girlfriend in the early 1900s in the building that used to sit on the lot next to Brinley's building.

"Maybe the ghosts moved next door," Olson quipped.

When Brinley and his wife, Angie, first visited the building in December, their son, Sawyer, then 2, pointed to a corner shouting, "Boy! Boy! Boy!" The couple saw no one and later bought the building.

They opened Dragon's Den Pizzeria — named after De Soto High School's mascot — in April. A few weeks earlier, an electrician working on the building mentioned to Brinley that his tenants had been up early and were making quite a bit of noise.

"I told him we didn't have any tenants, and that the apartments had been abandoned since the 1960s," Brinley said.

Earlier this week, Brinley saw a window open in one of the two apartments. That apartment is only accessible by ladder. The next day, the window was closed.

"I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen it for myself," Brinley said.

Nathan Husch said Brinley has good reason to be skeptical of the ghost stories. Husch founded the Jefferson County Paranormal Society last year as an affiliate of Midwest Paranormal Investigations. He believes 80 percent of haunting claims can be debunked. He sees his job as trying to explain the unexplainable.

On Thursday, Husch toured the abandoned apartments to scope out where he was going to set up his equipment and station his fellow paranormal detectives for tonight's investigation.

Most of the one-bedroom units sat in darkness, with boarded windows and no electricity. Dust covered nearly every surface. Broken pieces of plaster were piled in corners, near walls covered in 1960s patterns. Corroded light fixtures dangled from the ceilings.

"This makes no sense at all," Husch said, watching the lights on an electronic monitoring device flicker while the indicators on a similar device remained still. "They should be doing the exact same thing."

"Could be faulty equipment," Brinley said.

"Could be," Husch acknowledged. "But there is no electricity up here. I shouldn't be getting any readings at all."

Husch also interviewed pizzeria employees.

Mark Stinson, 41, said he had heard footsteps running from the front to the back of the apartments while he was washing dishes.

Brittany Bailey, 18, said she had seen a wheelchair in the corner of the pizzeria late at night.

Brinley said a worker with the initials T.J. had broken a mirror inside the building and had thrown it away. The next day, the staff noticed the initials, "T.J." carved into a stone threshold by the back door.

Husch said the stories would be tough to investigate. But he didn't have to wait until Halloween night to start. A knocking sound in a closet just feet away caught his attention Thursday.

"Did you hear that?" Husch asked.

"Yep," Brinley said.

They shined a flashlight into the darkness. Nothing appeared amiss.

"Could have been something falling in from the roof," Brinley said.

"Could have been," Husch said.

Brinley poked through decaying ceiling panels with a stick. Plaster poured out from behind some of the tiles. He waited.

But all was quiet in the closet.