She chases spirits with a supernatural energy and a practical touch

Balls of light. Moving shadows. Flying objects. Mist. The smell of sulfur. The sound of laughter. A cold corner. A pain in your eyes. What a ghost can be. White sheets that say waaah and boooo. What ghosts aren't. That's how Dusty Smith describes it, anyway, and she may know as well as anyone in this dimension. The 39-year-old chain-smoking redhead from Holly Hill is a ghostbuster. If you have a pesky poltergeist in your powder room, she's the supernatural sheriff who will serve eviction papers. Before she was a certified ghost hunter, she dressed as a giant frog for a radio station. She has worked as a hairdresser, a veterinary technician, a marine biologist and mechanic. She's also a witch. A high priestess, in fact. "Whatever," she says. "I hate tags and titles." Banish all images of an ethereal maiden in flowing gauze wishing you blessed be. Smith is Bewitched meets biker chick. She runs on Diet Mountain Dew, Marlboro Lights and shivers up the spine. She's a woman who has bumped around on the unpaved road of life. Smith has a face that has seen it all, and a mouth that has said it all -- like a truck driver. Her favorite word is unprintable. She is here for the harried haunted homeowner. She documents ghostly activity with a variety of gadgets, and if the ghosts need to go, she gets rid of them with a variety of rituals. She does not charge a fee, saying that would be "morally wrong."

Some people, maybe many people, might say she and her non-paying clients are crazy. She might say back something unprintable.

"I know what I've experienced, seen, felt, smelt, had thrown at me, and you're not gonna tell me that all of these extremely scared people are puttin' on a . . act for me." Policing the borders of the spiritual realm is a public service. For the living public, anyway. Not that she has anything against the departed." The majority of cases are not malevolent, evil poltergeists who are gonna suck your kid into the TV," she says. "Once you start explaining that it's okay for them to be here, but just stop breaking Grandma's good china, the ghosties are OK with it. Most people are, too." Then the show's over. Move on. Or beyond. Whatever. Spooky sleep-over. Welcome to the haunted house. The lights are on but nobody's home. Unless you count Vera, Stanley, George the gardener, the bodyguard and the baby. They are the former residents of this Port Orange home, who may have shuffled off this mortal coil, yet in the sleep of death still pace the grounds. Bring on the Mountain Dew! "There is a phenomenal amount of spirit activity," Smith says on the drive over, gesturing with one hand and smoking with the other, the bobble-head dog on her dashboard nodding like mad. "He has it in the outbuildings, on the property, everywhere."

Smith is talking about the homeowner, Christopher Rollier, a muscular 52-year-old correctional officer who can't sleep without the light on. He says his ghosts have thrown books off the shelves, turned the stereo on, made lights flicker, opened doors, buzzed the phone, made a purring noise, and stomped down the hall. In the spirit of live-and-let-die, Smith has helped Rollier learn to appreciate his uninvited houseguests. The pair have even launched a sort of ghost hunter explorers program. For $55 one night each month, would-be Scoobies can show up with a sleeping bag and spend the night in Rollier's house on a bona fide ghost hunt. They can work the camera and learn to take electromagnetic readings. For a thrill, will they see Vera peeking her head around the corner? Or George's green lights in the garden? Maybe they'll smell the guard's sweaty presence, or hear the baby's awful cry? Smith says the house never disappoints. She walks up the front steps and opens the screen door with a screek. "It's OK, Vera!" she calls into the room. "It's just us!" Photos were the start. The Egyptian Book of the Dead and The Ocean World of Jacques Cousteau. Animal skulls and bones. A food pyramid fridge magnet. Dog food bowls on a Halloween place mat. A battle ax. Just some of the items you'll find at Smith's house. The Thigh Master and the Abdominizer. What you won't find. "No, this is a clothes rack," she says of a large object in her living room. "It's only disguised as an exercise bike."

Her real name is Doris. She got her nickname because when her long hair was blond she looked uncannily like a TV wrestler named Dusty Rhodes. The hair is red now, but the nickname has stuck. It's a funny name for a woman who never stayed in one place long enough to collect much dust.She left home on Long Island at 13. Lived on the street, brushing her teeth with soap from public bathrooms. Hitchhiked to Daytona with a girlfriend. Came back to New York when her dad died. Lived with an uncle who's a motorcycle gang leader. Went through drug rehab. Lost her fiancé in an accident the night before they were to marry. Worked as a marine biologist. Endured seven miscarriages. Married twice. Had a son named Kyle, who's now 14, (and has his mother's brains and lack of appreciation for bull.) Worked as that giant green frog. It has been a singular life, even without the ghosts. "Dusty has lived," says her roommate Rosalind Smith (no relation), a 30-year-old fashion model. "I have lived all over the world and met lots of interesting people, but I can just sit back and listen to Dusty tell these stories, and they're not just climbing a mountain or partying a lot." Smith took her first photos of ghosts in 1999. She developed some snapshots from a trip to St. Augustine and marched them right back to the photo place with a question that would become her mantra: What the [heck] is that? The photos were covered with colored balls of light, like giant transparent confetti. The lights appeared to be in the photographs, not something that was created in the lab.

The photo techs were stumped, so Smith began researching. She learned about "orbs" -- images of what some believe are supernatural energy. Taking photos of orbs (graveyards are good subjects) was fun for a while. Then she decided to find the sources of the orbs. Soon it became her calling. Smith's main income is a disability check. She was in a scuba-diving accident in 1991 and fractured her skull, resulting in a seizure disorder. She is on medication to lessen risk of a cerebral hemorrhage -- the same thing that killed her father at age 40, when she was 15. She was close to her father. She still misses him. "Death doesn't scare me," she says. "Dying scares me, the pain. Death is part of a process -- life, death and rebirth. I've always believed that." In many ways, her work is inspired by a desire to reconnect with her dad. Her Daytona Beach Paranormal Research Group is a not-for-profit corporation that in addition to investigating hauntings, works to repair and restore old cemeteries. Smith and her volunteers are concentrating on two old Volusia graveyards filled with debris and overgrown weeds and vandalized headstones. Smith says they find all manner of garbage in the graveyard -- most recently, it was 400 boxes of illegally dumped snack cakes. Smith is disgusted. "These are people that built the town, county and state we live in. Somebody needs to show them some respect in their resting places," she says. "I think of my dad, he's in a VA cemetery up in New York, and I thank God he's in a vet cemetery, so it will always be maintained. If I had put him in a cemetery [like these], I couldn't live with myself."

The restoration work is partially supported by the group's moneymaking venture -- haunted walking tours and haunted river cruises. Smith leads the tours dressed in a flowing black cape and carrying a glowing lantern. She wears makeup as a concession to the "entertainment nature" of the tours -- which are part history, part mythology. She looks pretty in her black velvet dress, like a grand priestess. Or whatever. In her walking tours through downtown Daytona Beach, she takes you past gravestones of rum-runners, and gardens where unhappy wives met an untimely end, and sidewalks where lovers shared one last kiss. The tour ends at the Pinewood Cemetery across from the famous Boot Hill Saloon. Smith did an investigation at the biker bar after managers complained of hearing footsteps and voices, feeling hot and cold spots, and keys being mysteriously moved. She found a host of ghosts there, just as she does at most bars. She has a theory. "Ask an atheist 'Where you gonna go when you die?' They tell you 'I'm gonna go hang out at the local bar.' Well, maybe that's who we got here!" "I see dead people!" yells a saloon regular who has spotted Smith. The ghost tour group cracks up. Smith laughs the loudest. Spiritual medic -- her other job. Cameras. Motion detectors. Psychics. Walkie-talkies. Batteries. Temperature probes. Toothbrush. Tape recorders. What ghost hunters may bring on an investigation. Hysteria. What isn't allowed. Owners of haunted houses are already freaked out, Smith says. They don't need some excitable human, especially an investigator, making things worse.

"I had one girl investigating with me and a leaf dropped from a tree and she was like 'Did you see what the ghosts did to me?' I'm like 'Dude! It's autumn!' " "Dusty's a straight shooter," says Rick La Gamba, 46, of Daytona, who has been a friend since he met Smith when they worked together as hairdressers 20 years ago. "She won't blow anything out of proportion. She won't ever say 'I see 20 spirits walking out of the wall' if it didn't happen." A dozen Central Floridians have been chosen worthy to attend investigations led by Smith, who was certified by the Nevada-based International Ghost Hunters Society after passing a home-study course that cost $160. There's Thom, who works as a boat maker and runs the camera. Kristi is a pharmaceutical rep and psychic. Her husband Darren sells insurance and handles the digital video. Roommate Rosalind can do anything, from running temp probes to sprinkling sage. Mac is a student pilot and oversees recording equipment. Jackie's a nursing assistant. Mary's a housewife. Roy is a deejay and Wal-Mart stockboy. Susie's an accountant. Edd owns a remodeling company and his wife Beth takes care of their small children. There are others. Many of the members met Smith when they had paranormal experiences in their own homes. They do not need convincing. A spook investigation is not exactly thrilling. Smith spends the beginning of the evening at the dining room table, devouring an Arby's roast beef sandwich and looking almost bored. She goes over paperwork, which will be sent off to other more experienced ghost hunters, for their opinions. She opens some WOW! chips. She smokes a gazillion more cigarettes, which she can't do outside, since the smoke might make it look like ghosts are taking over the garden.

Her crew is wandering the house. Darren is taking recordings. Thom is taking pictures. Kristi is taking feelings. Homeowner Rollier is adjusting the couch pillows. The guys get excited when they think they smell something putrid in the garden. Later, after analyzing the recording devices, they will conclude that someone passed gas. In the guard shack Kristi sees something move. She calls Smith over. The two women peer into the digital camera trained on the shack and see a streak of light move diagonally across the air. "Woley schmoley oley," Smith says in a rare burst of printability. For the first time that day, her eyes widen. Ask if they've collected evidence of ghosts before and the crew has no doubts. They'll show you photographs with streaks of red, see-through mists, or colored balls of light. They'll play you video of opaque mists floating across the room, even one that looks like it stops to pet a dog. They'll describe sounds and smells and electrical charges and temperature anomalies that they can't explain, can you? Sometimes just knowing is enough. Some homeowners are downright chummy with their ghosts. They just like knowing they're not the only ones who see them. But sometimes owners will want the ghosts banished, especially those that Smith calls "the icky, nasty kind." These spirits scare children, or toss objects, or just give people a bad feeling they can't explain. Smith will offer a spiritual cleansing of a house with a ceremony of the owner's choosing. It might involve the burning of sage, the lighting of white or black candles, the "smudging" of salt water on windows, or the sprinkling of protective herbs around the perimeter of the property. Or it could be something as simple as a prayer.

Smith does not impose her beliefs on others. Yes, for 13 years she has been a practicing witch. In a green-walled back bedroom she keeps 27 kinds of water (rain, sea, dew, etc.), 400 essential oils, and what looks like 200 glass jars of dried herbs ranging from the mundane (mustard seed) to the unpronounceable (muira puama). She doesn't practice that which "messes with someone's free will," such as love spells or curses. She sees witchcraft as a helping profession, like being a spiritual medic. "We do it because we're supposed to take care of everything in the universe," she says, "and that includes some guy that's dying of cirrhosis." The witchcraft is not to be confused with her ghost research, which she stresses relies on science, not potions. She doesn't want her work in haunted houses stymied by those who might object to a witch. She's willing to work with ghosts and non-ghosts of any denomination -- Catholic, Jewish, Native American, whatever. But she is not concerned with convincing non-believers. She figures if it ever happens to you, you'll believe. If not, you'll sleep well. "Everybody loves a good ghost story," she says. "Not everybody gets to live one." Those who do say it's to die for. Or not. Whatever.