Old Mill Restaurant
On Friday July 18th, the OPS Team visited the Old Mill Restaurant in Waldo, Talladega County, for an investigation into claims of voices being heard by the workers and the owners, strange lights filling the back room near the bathrooms, flashing lights in the ladies bathroom, the old mill wheel has been seen moving, doors have been reported opening and closing on their own and an old antique telephone can be heard on occasion. The workers also claim they have uneasy feelings and they also feel as if they are not alone and that they are being watched.
We arrived on location around 7:30 pm to eat at the restaurant. We would not be able to start our investigation until they closed and cleaned up so we decided to eat some good food, listen to some music and just relax before the long night. We highly recommend the fried green tomatoes, the fried oysters and the steak was great also. We finally started setting up around 10:30 pm.
We decided to set up the monitoring station outside on the deck/walkway to avoid contaminating any of our audio evidence. While 4 of the team members were setting up the equipment, the three founders of OPS were inside doing a 20-30 minute web radio show that will be aired at a later date. One of the cameras was placed inside the dining room facing the swinging door that leads into the kitchen. This door has been reported to open and close on its own. Another camera was placed in the back room where the lights have been seen. We placed one camera in the upstairs dining room capturing all of the table and chairs and the last one was placed in the room that separates the main dining room from the last room where the bathrooms are located. This seems to be the room that contributes to most of the activity that is seen and heard at this location.
We broke up into three teams and the first team went in around 11:00 pm to start the investigation. We rotated in and out of the site throughout the night and roughly 75% of each teams time was probably spent in the back room near the bathrooms. While each team witnessed sounds that night, we have confined them to the obvious wood creaking, metal expanding and contracting, plumbing in the bathrooms and structure settlement. It was very hot and humid that night. All of the sounds seemed familiar though. No team member had any personal experiences that night. Our host for the night kept having goose bumps throughout the night but she said she was nervous and excited about the investigation and its possibilities.
After reviewing all of our evidence, we captured nothing on the video or in any digital photos. We did find a couple of pieces of evidence in the audio files that occurred during the EVP sessions that we are unable to explain. The slight whisper we captured was while one of the team members was talking in the back room and the whisper can be heard talking over the team members voice on two different occasions. While we were unable to find the culprit of all of the weird sounds, sights and occurrences on this investigation we do hope a return trip to further help the gang at the Old Mill Restaurant will happen in the coming future. We wish to thank the owners and the staff for allowing us into their lives for the evening. Go visit the gang at the Old Mill and eat some great food if you find yourself in the area, you will not be disappointed.
