Seeking Beyond Paranormal

Sometimes opportunities come your way, while other times you have to make your own opportunities. That was certainly the case with our Lowe Mill investigation. For those readers who might not be local to Huntsville, Lowe Mill is a historic cotton mill that now houses Lowe Mill Arts & Entertainment, an arts collective and entertainment venue known widely throughout North Alabama. In October of 2025, we saw a flyer at a local restaurant for a "Haunted History" event at Lowe Mill, and we decided to pull on that thread to see if it was just a fun name for a Halloween attraction at the Mill, or if there was an actual haunting behind the name.

As it turns out, we didn't actually get a clear answer as we never got to meet the person who runs the Haunted History event. However, our efforts led us to meet with Marcia Freeland, the Executive Director for Lowe Mill (who also happens to be a personal friend from college). We told her what we were doing these days and that we thought we could up the ante as it were regarding the Haunted History event by doing a investigation at the Mill. We had no idea how that meeting would go, but to our pleasant surprise Marcia was totally open to it, so we worked out the logistics. And as it turns out, the Mill has never had anything like that done, so we'd be the first team ever to do a paranormal investigation at Lowe Mill.

The full history of Lowe Mill can be found on their website, but for the sake of completion of our blog post, here's the condensed version we scripted out for our investigation video. Lowe Mill was originally constructed in 1900 by New England native Arthur Lowe and was opened for textile production in 1901. With business expansion in 1903 (merging with the nextdoor cotton weaving factory) and further construction in 1904 (joining the two buildings together), Lowe Mill effectively became the building we know today.

For its employees, mill work was quite dangerous. Workers faced deafening noise and hearing problems as a result, extreme heat inside the buildings, and a condition known as brown lung. Additionally, accidents around the machinery could occur including broken bones, scalping, maiming, and even death. And to be sure, Lowe Mill wasn't without its deaths — in 1916, two women died at their work stations. Mrs. Lucy White died of heart complications (likely a heart attack) which may have been compounded by the harsh working conditions. Mrs. Canard was also an unfortunate victim of the Mill, though at the time of our research we did not have access to the full article, so we don't know how she died (or her first name, for that matter).

Children also worked at Lowe Mill in its early days. While the Alabama Child Labor Act passed in 1907, it wasn't really until 1915 that children stopped working at the Mill as more adults wanted the work by then, offsetting the need for child labor. Luckily, as dangerous as the work was, we don't have any records of there being any child deaths at Lowe Mill itself. However, there is one child death associated with the Mill in the case of Charles Cobb. Charles was a child that died in Lowe Mill Village in January of 1932 from drowning in a sewer culver. The family blamed Lowe Mill's management, as they were responsible for the village and its infrastructure.

There was a brief shutdown in December of 1932 due to bankruptcy from the Mill's troubles during the Great Depression, and the Mill would ultimately shut down and dissolve as a business in 1937, when it would be sold to become a cotton warehouse. Just a few years later at the end of World War II in 1945, a Nashville company called Genesco would open up the General Shoe Company in the old mill building. During the Vietnam War, the General Shoe Company would manufacture most of the combat boots worn by US soldiers in theater. However Genesco and the General Shoe Company would shut down in 1978, leaving Lowe Mill to decay for the next two decades.

Here's where we start dropping all the names the local Huntsville people will recognize. In the late 1990s, a local real estate agent would buy the property to keep it under some kind of ownership. In 2001, Jim Hudson would buy Lowe Mill with a vision of creating a local arts center. Flying Monkey Arts started hosting regular events on the second floor of the original building in 2002 and would eventually start leasing space and bringing in resident artists in 2004. Then in 2006, Lowe Mill Arts & Entertainment was founded and began transitioning the building from the homegrown look of Flying Monkey Arts into the more finished look you see today. Continuous growth and renovation would occur over the next two decades, bringing us to present day.

The Claims

Normally, we're able to find the claims of paranormal activity on any given location somewhere on the internet. Google searching is our go-to, but we also use common paranormal resources like HauntedPlaces.org. We've also been known to scour social media posts, and on some desparate attempts, we'll even look to other paranormal groups for any possible info we can scrape up. However, this time around we had to start from scratch. In our meeting with Marcia, we decided to come up with a voluntary survey that Lowe Mill leadership could circulate among their resident artists. This survey would last for about a one-month period, during which we'd collect any responses and pour over the data. To our surprise we actually had about eight responses, and even discovered that the artists had been discussing paranormal happenings amongst themselves in their Lowe Mill group chat. We were even sent some screen captures of this group chat for additional claims from vendors who might not have received the survey.

The responses we received reported a bit of almost everything in terms of paranormal activity. Some surveys had stronger cases for activity than others, and taking the size of the Mill into account, we had to pick our battles in terms of what we'd investigate. Regardless, the claims are as follows. One artist's train set would turn on by itself, while another artist's TV and computer monitor would do the same. In the movie theater beside the south building, disembodied voices could be heard, as well as footsteps on the roof. Additionally in the theater, there is a utility sink that would turn on and off, and shadowy figures could be seen in their window through to the south building. In the north building, apparitions have been sighted sitting in the chairs down the center of the building, as well as peering into studios. Lastly, physical activity has been reported in one of the restaurants in the rail car buildings at the southern end of the property in the form of container lids and pots flying off of shelves.

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Equipment and Setup

For our equipment, we brought our usual kit: REM Pods (which are effectively proximity sensors), EMF Meters that detect electromagnetic fields, flashlights for using with flashlight communication, voice recorders, motion-sensitive cat ball toys, and our XLS camera, though we opted not to use it for this first investigation (you can read up on the XLS camera here). We also had a new addition to the kit in the form of a geophone, which visually alerts the user to vibrations (such as footsteps). For managing all this equipment, we looked at our lessons learned from our previous investigation and cleared out my camera bag to hold all the small stuff. As mentioned before, we opted to not use the XLS camera this time around partly to stay more mobile (Lowe Mill is a big building to be running around in), and partly because we wanted to feel out the claims more fully before deploying such a specialized camera.

Not only did we bring new equipment, but our camera setup got a massive upgrade for this investigation. Our video equipment page is a bit outdated and doesn't show our newer Sony AX53 video camera, which replaced our D-SLR. To go along with it, we purchased a Sony AX33 with the intention of phasing out our other, brandless video camera from Amazon. However, as luck would have it, I discovered that I had the right cable to connect that brandless video camera to our SmallRig Camera Battery. This cable allows us to plug that video camera into practically continuous power, which effectively turned it into a new IR-capable static camera. As upsetting as that camera has been to use, it's now one of my favorite pieces of camera equipment just for the fact that the battery will power it for multiple investigations. We ended up setting up this camera on the train set in Studio 115 to see if we could capture the train set moving at all, and it faithfully watched and recorded for the entire duration of the investigation.

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The Investigation

Once on-site, and like any other investigation, our first task was to set up a home base / break area. If you're familiar with Lowe Mill, we utilized some of the tables in the Pofta Buna International restaurant's seating area as our home base. It was right by the main entryway and close to our first investigation location. We had a far more mobile operation this time around than we did on previous investigations, but we still had some equipment to bring in that would stay at home base - utilities bags, batteries, etc. I had thought about how the night would go in the days leading up to the investigation, but this is where we talked gameplan as a team.

Studio 115 (My Homestead-ish Kind of Life) would be our starting point. The studio is located about halfway down the length of the south building on the first floor. Of all the claims of paranormal activity at Lowe Mill, the claims here probably have gained the most attention, so that's why we started here. The paranormal claim here is that the train set in one of the studio's windows will turn on by itself. To elaborate a bit further, several of the train set's separate systems would activate on their own: the train's movement on the tracks, the lighting on the train and in the town, and the sound of the train whistle have all been known to activate. In fact, the day before our investigation, I visited all the spaces we would investigate to talk with their respective owners, and the Studio 115 owner posted on Facebook that the train set would activate shortly after I left that day.

Normally when we investigate, we're at known haunted locations and the resident spirits have all been through the process before. So usually we're able to announce our presence, introduce ourselves to the space, and jump right in. However, with this being Lowe Mill's first ever paranormal investigation, we had to adjust our process. If there were spirits here, they will have never gone through anything like this before, so we had to teach them how to be investigated. This involved the usual process of announcing our presence and introducing ourselves, but it also included talking about the purpose of our presence, and explaining the purpose and features of our equipment in clear and concise terminology. The spirits wouldn't know what even our flashlights were (most likely), so we had to get very granular with it and even explain that the lights they see are not fire and that it won't hurt them. After all, we don't know what they might see or experience on their end of things, so we had to teach them that our investigation wouldn't harm them and that it was purely exploratory on our part.

We decided to keep this first session very simple. We set out some proximity type equipment (REM Pod, catballs) on the train set to alert us of any potential activity, but mostly kept our involvement to the voice recorder and simply listening for sounds. Aside from maybe the flashlights, the voice recorder is probably the easiest to explain to the spirits. We can't normally see or hear them, so we need these devices to help us percieve their presence. The voice recorder, as you'd imagine, records any voices it picks up. Any voices that it picks up that aren't us talking are called EVPs (electronic voice phenomena) and are a staple type of evidence to the paranormal community. Unfortunately — and expectedly — this first session didn't garner any EVPs. We went into this first session not expecting any kind of interaction because as much as a spirit might be trying to figure out the equipment, they are more likely trying to figure US out first and foremost, and are likely standoffish to say the least. Moreover, we didn't get any interaction with our other devices which, again, was to be expected. Before moving onto our next area, though, we announced that any spirits that we may have been talking to were welcome to follow us around the Mill that night. We do that normally too, of course, but we wanted to be extra transparent in our efforts to help teach them the ropes of paranormal investigation. However they might learn, it may have benefitted us as — SPOILER — we'd get some exciting interaction here in Studio 115 later in the night.

After packing things up in Studio 115, we headed for Door 23. The claim here is that a little boy was in the vicinity and heard another child say "Hey!" to them. When the boy turned around to see who the other child was, there was nobody there, which scared the little boy and sent him running for his parents. Now we were getting into the thick of it — something we could test out. While disembodied voices are certainly a known phenomena (having heard several myself at this point), we noticed that there was one of the original freight elevators nearby. These freight elevators have an open elevator shaft that echo sounds very loudly and clearly. So after poking around with our EMF meters for a little while (not finding anything unusual) we decided to see how easily this one could be debunked. In the realm of paranormal investigation, debunking is the act of trying to find rational reasons that could explain potentially paranormal activity. So while we certainly want to find ghosts, we also want to find rational reasons for activity if there can be any so that 1) we're not irresponsibly claiming everything to be of ghostly origin, and 2) we can assure scared clients that their house isn't haunted if it actually isn't. In this case, our debunking work was simple: one of us went upstairs and started talking in a low voice to see how easily it would be for someone downstairs to hear it. As it turned out, the investigators downstairs could hear even the quietest whisper clear as day. So it was certainly possible for a little kid on the first floor to hear another little kid upstairs in the same vicinity. We ruled this one as debunked.

The weather a few days before the investigation was just about as ominous as you can get.

Staying on the first floor, the investigation took us to Studio 150 (The Independent Cinema) next. There are several claims of activity here: first, disembodied voices in the form of full conversations can be heard in the space late at night; second, the sounds of footsteps can be heard coming from the roof; third, the utility sink faucet has been heard turning on but turns off when someone goes to check on it; and fourth, shadowy figures can be seen in the studio's window in the owner's peripheral vision, but disappear when they turn to look. To get started in here, we opted to lay out some equipment. Since the sink is a hotspot, we set our dead bell next to the sink (the dead bell an EMF meter disguised as a desk bell — it rings when it detects electromagnetic energy, but it can also be rung manually). This tool has the benefit of having an audible alert, so we could leave it in that utility space with the curtain closed. We also set out our REM Pod in the middle of the floor just as sort of a catch-all alert if anyone was nearby. Additionally, we set out our voice recorder on the window sill by the snack counter — we've gotten into the habbit of running our voice recorder even if we aren't doing any direct question-and-answer sessions in the event a spirit still tries to address us verbally. We've caught plenty of EVPs this way.

Since one of the other main claims here is the disembodied voices getting all chatty, we decided to run an Estes Method session in this space. The basics of the Estes Method are that there are two parties involved, an asker and a listener. The asker just asks questions in the space, directing any potential spirits to answer by talking to the person with the radio. The listener has a special radio that can rapidly change stations, and they listen to it with noise-cancelling headphones (they also wear a blindfold). The headphones and blindfold induce intense focus on the radio audio, but also eliminate external bias so they can't hear or lip read the person asking questions or otherwise garner any info to provide any false or forced answers. The listener listens to the changing radio stations, and sometimes words become discernible in the static, which the listener then says as a response to any questions asked. The use of a radio is based on decades-old theory that spirits can manipulate radio frequency to communicate with the living.

Shockingly, the audio responses in Studio 150 sounded like intelligent discussion right off the bat. The story that unfolded was that there was a young boy, 4 or 5 years old, whose name may have been Dwight, and an older man named John. John was apparently very angry with us being there, telling us to leave multiple times across the conversation. He swore at us and even told us he hated us. What's interesting about the swearing is that most swear words are banned on radio stations by the FCC. You just won't hear certain words on the radio, suggesting that there was something else adding them to the audio feed. On the more pleasant side of things, it seemed that after a while Dwight found the dead bell in the utility space next to the sink, as something was ringing it... and in an intelligent manner. At one point we even asked for two rings on the bell and got two rings in direct response to the request. There were no other instances of the bell ringing twice like that, which made it very interesting to say the least. Beyond our conversation with Dwight and John, though, we didn't experience anything else in this space. There was an odd instance of one of the theater's side curtains moving (likely due to air flow from us moving in the space), which lead us to explore sounds coming from the ceiling/roof area. We briefly discussed the possibility of the footstep sounds being that of an animal, but we didn't hear anything moving across the roof for comparison. Sometimes you just can't test things, so certain claims remain inconclusive.

After taking a short break and sorting out some camera issues, we headed upstairs to look into the claims in Studio 201 (Studio of Fire) in the connector building. The studio owner reported that their computer monitor and large TV have turned on by themselves, and the computer monitor has even been captured on one of their security cameras. And speaking of cameras, their other security camera has reportedly been triggered by a person passing by, but no one is seen in the footage. Unfortunately, we learned right away that testing the computer monitor wasn't going to be possible, as the computer was on monitoring a 3D print. As for the TV, we'd just have to wait and see if it did anything. That being said, there was other work we could do. During our EMF sweep of the studio, we found an interesting oddity — the security camera that supposedly captured someone passing by emitted rather high EMF, while the security camera that watched the computer didn't. Since we only had the two cameras to compare, it's difficult to say which ought to be the normal situation. However, what is known about high EMF in the paranormal world is that it can cause hallucinations, skin irritation, the hair on your neck to stand on end, feelings of paranoia, and other physiological responses. While a camera isn't going to hallucinate a person walking into its view, it is theorized that high enough EMF can fuel paranormal activity. The EMF field around that camera went out a good 12-18 inches, but is that enough energy to allow an entity to manifest in that space? It's impossible to say with any certainty, so this claim will have to remain inconclusive until it happens again and we can review the footage.

We didn't want to leave that space without putting in our due dilligence, however, so we opted to do another Estes Method session. This time a different investigator went under, and we also changed from the FM band to the AM band on the radio. We also set out some flashlights and the dead bell to allow for a variety of interaction. The responses we got from the Estes Method didn't make much sense for the most part, but interestingly we got some repeated responses from our earlier session (such as the name John — twice). This is particularly interesting because we switched bands from FM to AM, meaning there wouldn't be any repeated programming or commercials that the listener could pull responses from. That pulls it out of the realm of coincedence (at least a little) meaning we ought to still pay attention despite the rest of it being mostly nonsensicle. One thing I mention in the video below, though, is that in methods like the Estes Method (or anything else that utilizes words) responses shouldn't always be taken literally or word-for-word. If a potential spirit is intending to say a specific message, but the only words available on any radio frequency at the time are merely related in definition, they may just choose to put their energy into that word. A loose example would be asking if the spirit is child, and a response given is "toys." The two terms are clearly related in some manner, so it's the investigator's job to piece together that puzzle if some of the responses seem unusual. In our case, one of the responses we got was "ultimate sacrifice." One of our investigators pieced that together with the fact that the Mill was churning out combat boots during the Vietnam War. And since we got John twice during this session, we may have been speaking with a John who worked at the General Shoe Company. But was that John the same John from Studio 150? Did he follow us around that night? Only further investigations can answer that.

In addition to some interesting Estes Method responses, our dead bell was going crazy in Studio 201. At first we had it situated on top of the animal cages where it was actually going off non-stop, so we suspected there was some kind of high EMF occurring in that area and subsequently moved it to a different area. In the new spot, the dead bell exhibited different behavior in that it didn't appear to be responding to any EMF field. About halfway into the Estes Method session, the bell was going off so frequently that we opted to place an EMF meter next to it to see if it would pick up on the same triggering event. Remember how I said earlier that the dead bell was simply an EMF meter in disguise? The intent here was that if the bell was being triggered by EMF, the standard EMF meter ought to go off at the same time — except it didn't. Not once. So what was triggering the bell? One theory we had is that the bell itself wasn't necessarily being triggered for the sake of ringing the bell, that something could have been draining the battery. Investigators often find that their equipment gets drained on investigations, and the theories surrounding that phenomenon all point to spirits drawing energy in order to manifest in some manner (or just otherwise consume the energy). What led us to that theory is that the bell's behavior changed late into the Estes Method session. It changed from a loud, clear ding to a softer, deadened thud sound. Was it a spirit draining the battery, or was the battery going out on it's own? It was fully charged before the investigation, and it should have still been mostly charged at that time. Additionally, if it wasn't something interacting with the device, what then caused the battery power to drop? Our thoughts on this is that the dead bell activity was certainly of paranormal origin, though it wasn't acting in an intelligent manner. So if you ask me personally, I'd say all the signs point to some entity draining it, which is super cool to witness live.

As spooky as it was to investigate inside Lowe Mill at night, it was just as spooky outside after the fog rolled in.

After taking a much needed longer break, we decided to check out Pacific Pearl next. They didn't participate in the artist survey we sent out, but they had contributed to the Lowe Mill group chat I mentioned above with some claims of their own paranormal activity. They claimed that in their supply room, the lids to some plastic containers would fly off violently on occasion, and even had a pot fly off a lower shelf in the kitchen area. Since they weren't participants in the survey, we didn't want to invite ourselves too far into their space, so we just stayed in the seating area and kept our time in there short. As such, any sort of investigation into the storage room or kitchen was necessarily off-limits. Should we do any follow-up investigations, though, we'll do more of a deep-dive into Pacific Pearl, but this time around would just be a cursory investigation.

As we were limiting ourselves to what we could investigate here, we just staged a few pieces of equipment in the seating area. First, we placed our REM Pod on the counter next to the register, then we set out some Mini Maglight flashlights on some of the tables. The flashlights are an interesting means of communications ghost hunters often employ, where the flashlights are twisted just to the point of turning on, then backed off a bit so they are just barely off. The idea is that the internal leads are so close to completing the connection that it shouldn't take much energy for a spirit to complete the connection in some manner and turn the flashlight on. It's a really neat means of communication and remains one of my favorite methods because it's so simple (and honestly, impressive for what it is). Lastly, for what it was worth, we set out a voice recorder — we probably shouldn't have bothered because the noise contamination from the refrigerators and equipment made it outright impossible to get any clear audio. This contamination was so strong that it even caused us to make a mistake during evidence review. We thought a certain sound was a disembodied voice (as it showed up on camera audio too, not just the voice recorder), but it ended up being one of our investigators talking under their breath.

As for activity in Pacific Pearl, we got some arbitrary flashlight activity, but not much else. The flashlights weren't acting in a responsive manner to our questioning, but whatever was turning them on was also turning them off, and on/off fairly frequently. We have two flashlights in our kit, a red one and a black one. Historically, the red one has been the easiest for potential spirits to turn on and off, while the black one is rarely used. I will say, though, despite this specific non-responsive type of activity, having the black one turn on is always exciting because it's the harder of the two to turn on. Other activity we encountered there was a healthy dose of something called audio matrixing, a form of pareidolia where audible sounds are mistakenly recognized as human speech patterns. This phenomena was caused by the various pieces of noisy equipment in the kitchen and three HVAC units outside vibrating and making noise in both rhythmic and arhythmic patterns at the same time, which our brains confuse as sounding like human speech. To be clear, this wasn't a claim the staff made, but just a phenomena that we experienced. It's commonly encountered during investigations, so we thought it was relevant to report on it here.

We decided to end our night back where we started — Studio 115 — we had equipment to collect there anyways. Given the increase in activity throughout the evening, we thought it was worth it to return to see if we could get any activity here since we started the night with nothing. It was basically the same setup as what we started with - REM Pods on the train set, catball by the train controls, and voice recorder in the middle of the room. However, this time we added the flashlights to the mix and placed them on top of the train set's town. Not knowing if whatever potential spirits that might occupy that space had followed us around all evening or not, we of course explained the flashlights again and got started with some questions. To our surprise, thought, the we got some activity from the flashlights. It's impossible to tell if there is some sort of preference or ease-of-use with regards to which piece of equipment goes off during an investigation, but perhaps they liked the flashlights because they are familiar and are timid around the more specialized equipment they don't recognize. Whatever the case, we got activity from both flashlights — each one independently and both together. The flashlight activity didn't seem to be responsive in an intelligent manner, but because none of the other equipment (nor the train set for that matter) was going off, we can't exactly place this activity in the residual category. That is to say, it didn't seem like there was any sort of naturally-occuring energy flowing through the area that might trigger the equipment, so something else was activating the flashlights. We'd guess it was a curious spirit, possibly the same one that plays with the train set given the studio we were in.

This wouldn't be the only activity we'd encounter back in Studio 115, though. As it turned out, our voice recorder managed to capture an EVP (electronic voice phenomena) during our question-and-answer session. We were asking if any potential spirits remembered us from before, specifically if they remembered any of our names. After that question, we found a breathy, multi-syllable response on the voice recorder. Now, our voice recorder is great for recording, but not for playing back in the moment, so all of our audio clips are discovered after the fact during evidence review. So when you watch our videos, that's why we don't stop and listen to any audio clips. EVPs are often super quiet and require headphones and a loud volume to hear anyways. That will be the case when you listen to this audio clip too — you'll want to use the best headphones you can find, and turn your volume up as loud as possible. EVPs also often take multiple passes for you to hone in on the audio too, so be sure to listen to the clip several times. In this EVP audio, no specific word is clear, but we hear three breathy syllables. And given the the question of "Do you remember any of our names?" we think they might be trying to say "Jessica," the only three-syllable name on our team. If you can't hear it, we don't blame you. It often takes a trained ear to hear EVPs, and this one is no exception.

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Our Results

With any investigation at a new location, you never know what you're getting yourself into. That's doubly so with a location that hasn't ever been investigated before. Even if there are claims of paranormal activity, the chances of your investigation being a dud are just so incredibly high. However, we are just so pleasantly surprised with our results, and we feel we've captured enough evidence to warrant future investigations. Here are the results of Lowe Mill's first ever paranormal investigation:

To the staff and resident artists of Lowe Mill, we don't think you have anything to be afraid of at Lowe Mill. While we did encounter one angry entity in Studio 150, nothing felt threatening or dangerous. For all we know we were just keeping him up extra late on a Sunday night, which would make anyone angry! If anything, we hope our findings only add to the rich history of Lowe Mill and make visiting all the more enjoyable knowing the past is here to stay.

Lastly, we'd like to give a whole-hearted THANK YOU to Marcia Freeland, Catherine Shearer, the staff, and all the resident artists for being such wonderful and accomodating hosts during this first paranormal investigation for Lowe Mill. Know that these things can go sideways from the get-go so very easily for all sorts of reasons, and for you all to be so welcoming and accomodating made this go off without a hitch. And to be part of Lowe Mill's history in such a unique way is truly an incredible honor. It's our hope that we can return, and possibly turn this into some kind of regular or annual event in association with your Haunted History event. Thank you again!

by David Reimer, posted Month DD, YYYY

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Who We Are

Seeking Beyond Paranormal is a team of paranormal investigators based in Huntsville, Alabama. First started as a fun way to visit some of the country’s most haunted locations, Seeking Beyond now explores the realm of paranormal investigation.

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