Bald Rock Lodge - Mt. Cheaha
Bald Rock Lodge
On Friday, May 18th the OPS Team visited Bald Rock Lodge atop Mount Cheaha. The lodge was built in 1939. In the 1930's there were 11 state parks open in Alabama, Cheaha State Park is the oldest park still in operation. The Bald Rock Lodge was the original hotel on the park. On June 20th 2003, the lodge re-opened its doors for business after being renovated and restored. The team arrived on site around 8:00 pm. in which we completed an initial walk-though of the grounds and building, taking digital photos and determining where we would set up our equipment. We set up operation in the up-stairs conference room. We placed four cameras throughout the building, in the kitchen, in the dining hall, in the first floor hallway and in the downstairs hallway. We also placed a hand-held video camera equipped with night vision in the upstairs hallway facing the fire door. We then began taking temperature, humidity and EMF readings throughout the lodge. We split up into two teams; one team watching the monitor in the upstairs conference room and the other team began walking the grounds outside surrounding the lodge. The conditions outside on this night made it easy to presume we were hearing numerous things with the continued wind and frequent wind gusts. In the bottom hallway, in the last room of the corridor one team decided to do some EVP work. Upon leaving the room, the digital audio recorder was left behind to capture any possible evidence. Walk-throughs of the lodge and grounds were made many times throughout the night with the hand-held night vision recorder, emf meter, and digital audio recorders. Sometime around 12:30 am, while one team was upstairs watching the monitor and the other team returned outside, the downstairs door leading to the patio opened and slammed itself shut. One of the team members outside actually saw the door while it was opened and watched it slammed shut, no one was visible at the door at the time it closed. This door can only be opened from the outside with a key-card and from the inside the dead bolt must be turned before opening the door. The two teams met at the door to determine if the wind might have caused this infraction. The door was locked and the dead bolt had to be turned to let the team in from the outside, which leads us to believe that the wind was most likely not the cause of the door opening, but we are not sure that this was a result of paranormal activity either. As we discovered, we did not have a video camera on the door when the incident occurred or did we have a audio recorder close to the location either. We finished our investigation around 4:15 am. After reviewing the evidence we noticed that we did capture a sound in the lower hall in the back bedroom where the audio recorder was placed. While two team members were in the room doing EVP work, you can hear one investigator ask for the light off of his head to be knocked off, you then hear a strange sound that we are not sure of, neither team member recognizes the sound or remembers hearing it that night. The other piece of evidence we captured is a video clip of the fireplace at 1:10 am. After the door had slammed that night we had moved the camera that was on the first floor hallway to capture the door and thus the fireplace was included in the shot. We are not sure if this is a reflection or if this is something we are unable to explain at this time. You can see the fireplace light up, then you see a white glow near the right bottom of the fireplace, then you see the light on the chair to the right of the fireplace in two different locations. We are currently working on returning to the lodge to see if we can either re-enact some of the evidence we caught on the audio and video recorders or debunk it as human occurrences. Note: The two photo's taken on the grounds outside, shot simultaneously, showed some differences either in lighting or something the camera was trying to focus in on. Take a listen to the clip, watch the video and view the pictures and tell us what you think. The lodge is a beautiful place we enjoyed spending the night investigating, and hope a return trip is in the works soon. Thanks again for believing in what we do, and as always, thanks for your continued support, OPS Out!!
UPDATE: June 22, 2007 Mt. Cheaha Bald Rock Lodge Re-visited
The OPS team returned to the Lodge to further investigate claims of sightings and mysterious sounds, also to see if we could test some theories of possible causes of evidence captured during our previous visit. We arrived around 7:30 p.m. and set up four infrared cameras, directing one at the fire place/patio door where we captured an unusual moving light and also the incident of the door opening and shutting on its own. We were granted access to the boiler room this trip where a lot of our efforts were concentrated. Some of the members had numerous personal experiences, nothing we really captured on video, but there were some interesting sounds caught on the audio though. Each bedroom has its own bathroom, in one of the bathrooms the shower stall was soaking wet like someone had just taken a shower and there had been no one in the room previous to our arrival. In one of the other rooms a team member was sitting on the bed asking questions when she heard the water in the sink turn on, there was no one in the bathroom when she looked in. There were all kinds of strange noises coming from the boiler room, in one instance two team members were asking questions when it seems as if they might have received an answer. NOTE: all the electrical boxes, duct work leading from the boiler room, water lines etc. were all housed in the boiler room and were continuously running while some would start and shut off. We are beginning to believe that most of the sounds captured on audio might have come from this equipment located in the boiler room. We were unable to duplicate the light at the fire place or even attempting to make the door open/close on its own without a lot of force. While at Cheaha, some of the team decided to go investigate the look-out tower. A couple of sounds captured on audio have not been identified. We wrapped up our investigation sometime after 4 a.m.
Bald Rock Lodge
These 2 pictures were taken seconds apart. Compare the picture above with the one below.
