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Are you hearing whispers in the night when you are alone?  Is something knocking about in the middle of the night?  Did that watch you left on your nightstand disappear and then reappear on the kitchen counter the next day?  Are you seeing shadows move in ways that they should not?

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:: 03.14.1314 ::

If one researches the most haunted places in Georgia, over and over a particular mill comes up as being haunted.  Yet strangely every entry is exactly the same.  Even the history of that particular property is nothing more than a cut and paste from Wikipedia.  The harder one looks, the more frustrating any attempt to verify paranormal activity at the mill becomes.  To date, not a single book, publication or Internet site has a first hand investigation revealing paranormal activities.

Shocked by the lack of an actual published investigation backing up the claims of the supernatural, the Georgia Society for the Paranormal Sciences contacted the current owners of the mill property and they allowed GASPS to perform a two night investigation.  This is what happened.

Having been started between 1890 and 1905, the Du Pree Manufacturing Company Excelsior Factory was created to produce exceptionally fine wood shavings, called “excelsior.”  In an age prior to foam stuffing, excelsior shavings were used as the padding in mattresses, the stuffing in furniture, the insulation for purses and the stuffing for teddy bears.

According to the historical records, this particular mill was created to support a fabric mill to the south to create ladies’ purses and carpet bag suitcases.

Over the 90 life of the mill, at least five major structural enhancements occurred expanding the tiny one room stoned structure into a sprawling, multi-leveled building.

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Between its open and 1940, one direct death was attributed to excelsior mill activities in the Atlanta area.  In that particular case, a name named Hubert Neal became trapped in the conveyors and torn apart and pounded to death within the facility.  In all likelihood, this was not the only death that occurred there but because Neal was briefly left alive his body was transported to Grady Hospital and therefore made the papers.  Most deaths during that period were managed in house and therefore kept off the books.

Post World War II, the mill saw a decrease in activity with the emergence of foam padding.  Excelsior at that time was used almost exclusively for padding material.

In 1977 , the last of the cloth mills in Atlanta closed.  By that point, the excelsior mills were already primarily being used for storage.

The Du Pree Manufacturing Company Excelsior Factory has been home to several different businesses since its days as an excelsior mill.

Even so, the basic super structure of the facility has remained unchanged.

In an interview with the current owners, it was revealed only one previous group of “amateur paranormal investigators” have ever been allowed in the facility.  As a non-professional group, the results of their investigations were never published and the actual results of the investigation were not known to the owners that authorized it.

This explains why substantial amounts of research on the haunting at the facility revealed no tangible results.

Armed with this information, GASPS began its interviews of current employees (some of which had been at the facility for over 20 years).  The employees provided first hand accounts of encounters with unexplained phenomena as well as second-hand stories from  previous employees.  Examples of such events included:

• A full bodied apparition in early 20th century work garments on the second floor of the secondary building.
• A full bodied apparition in shadow form moving from a doorway to the other side of a room in the second floor of the secondary building.
• A full bodied apparition running up an internal  stairwell and closing a propped open door in the secondary building.
• An object seeming to dance with no apparent source.
• Frequent shadowy seeming to move.
• Unexplained scream s from the stairwell in the secondary building.
• Sound of footsteps following individuals as well as phantom footsteps
• An untraced source calling the manager’s name in the kitchen.
• Uneasy feelings by numerous employees in certain areas of the facility.

Based on all of the submitted testimony, GASPS prepared an extensive two-day investigation using the latest technology.

URBAN LEGENDS OF THE MASQUERADE-  CORRECTING THE PUBLIC RECORD

In the case of the mill, the legends of hauntings are numerous but vague (and strangely generic).  Almost every report in the popular culture is a copy of a small previous reviews.

One web site claims:

The building has a history of fires, structural collapses, numerous accidental deaths of young employees during its turn-of-the-century mill years, and whisperings of a vampire that has long called the Masquerade its home.

The vast majority of the articles echo the following information:

The main report of a haunting at this location is that of seeing the apparition of a tall, black man walking around inside the club. Who he is however is sadly unknown. Also there are many claims from staff about how the very heavy music amplifiers are turned upside down,  [sic] sometimes on a nightly basis when no one is in the rooms they are kept.

Other reports include footsteps from unidentified sources, cold spots and horrifying screams coming from the back stairs. Could these screams be caused by the spirits of several young girls, who all died in freak accidents in the mill? As well as the various stories of deaths on the property, there have also been an unexplained fire and several structural collapses, not to mention the outbreak of tuberculosis that took the lives of several employees.

Aside from the impossible task of the redressing urban legends, GASPS research on the allegations mentioned above are as follow:

The name-  Most casual researchers will be unable to find any information on the mill because most of the historic record is imprecise.  Even though many sources claim 1890 as the facility creation date, as of 1899, it was not on the Sanborn-Perris Map Company’s maps. When the facility did appear in 1911 (no maps of this zone exists between 1899 and 1911), the name of the facility was Du Pree Manufacturing Company Excelsior Factory (according to the Sanborn-Perris Map Co).  The incorporated name was actually the Standard Excelsior Works according to three 1907 lawsuits (Atlanta Georgian and News, Apr. 19, 1907).  The name “Dupre excelsior mill” is a modern construct.

The address-  Again in researching the facility, the current address of 695 North Ave North East is useless prior to 1925 (The city agreed in 1925 to extend North Avenue as part of the opening of Sears, Roebuck & Company's giant Atlanta retail store).  When the mill first appears on the Sanborn-Perris Map Company’s maps, Angier avenue was the only road near it and that ran North-South.  North avenue EAST ended on the opposite side of the rail track and North Avenue west ended at Randolph.

Tuberculosis-  As early as 1863, there were reports of Tuberculosis (or consumption as it was called then) in Atlanta.   After reviewing the records from that point forward, there are no particular indications that the Mill has any higher rate of infection than the general population.  If any particular disease was named for a high number of casualties at the mill, it would have been Spanish Influenza outbreak of 1917 that killed 20% of the American population (7% of all Atlanta residents) and is directly responsible for many of the mass graves at Oakland cemetery.  In fact, as of February 1919, it had killed 17,000 across the state. (The Atlanta Constitution, Feb 2, 1919)

Freak Accidents-  Since 1860, there have only been four major reported accidents at the mill.  In addition to the death of Neal in 1899 and the collapse of the backstairs on 31 December 2001, two other no-life threatening injuries occurred in 1907. According to the Atlanta Georgian and News, Apr. 19, 1907, as of that date there were two other injuries at the plant.  One suffered by William Donaldson after falling from a freight car while engaging the break.  The second accident occurred when Elbert Teal had his left hand "mashed and bruised while oiling the track of a press used in bailing excelsior.”

As far as the stair collapse goes, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, January 1, 2002, it was reported as:

A stairway collapse at the Masquerade night spot on North Avenue near City Hall East sent more than a dozen people to the hospital just before midnight Monday night. Fire officials said that at least 14 or 15 people were injured but that none of the injuries was more serious than a fractured ankle.

Not surprising for a building of its age.

No young women hurt-  There also were no young girls working at the mill.  Many of the reports concerning young girl deaths seem to be confusion among the cotton mills located to the south and the Du Pree Manufacturing Company Excelsior Factory.  Almost all the reported mill stories from 1868 until 1977 concerning mills are specifically referring to the Fulton Bag and Cotton Mills, located in Cabbagetown to the south.  The Fulton Mills employed hundreds of workers to create cloth and paper bags.(FULTON BAGS)   The bulk of the Fulton workers were actually women and children.  In contrast, the Du Pree Manufacturing Company Excelsior Factory which supplied the Fulton Mills with excelsior employed very few people and almost all would have had to be men.(Atlanta Constitution, 29 September 1886)

One other possible source of confusion is the Excelsior Knitting mill in Union, South Carolina.  With similar names appearing in early 1900s Atlanta newspapers the association is probable. (Sunny South, Jun. 17, 1899)

Vampires-  Prior to the rise of Anne Rice and Lestat in the mid-1970s, the thought of a vampire being seen in a hard rock club was beyond reason.  Thanks to Rice and the success of the White Wolf Vampire Masquerade games  (and dozens of spin-offs) the gothic/EMO culture that begs for attention would desperately like to think the Masquerade to be the sort of place a vampire would frequent.  Prior to it being a restaurant, it was just an old mill building.  Today, it is just an old mill building with music.  Absolutely no in-residence vampires.  Of course, if there were, they would be out of scope and we would refer them over to the Slayer for investigation.

Legends start-  Prior to its conversion into the Masquerade in 1989, there are no reports of any paranormal legends or stories indicating that the building was considering as anything other than the “old mill” on North Avenue.

:: 09.12.2010 :: The Masquerade Excelsior Mill Investigation