Paul Halayko is asking the public to help make sense of footage that has left him stumped.
The owner of Newburgh Brewing Company, an approximately 160-year-old building in upstate New York, recently released eerie security camera recordings from his kitchen that show a mysterious white shape, missing knives, and flickering lights in an empty restaurant. Halayko told News 12 Hudson Valley that the activity has concentrated in one area of the historic property.
“It’s mostly been focusing on our kitchen,” he said in the interview.
The footage, originally captured in February 2024, sat with Halayko for months before he posted it online to gauge public reaction. He told the outlet that response has been enormous since he shared it. The recordings were triggered by motion sensors in the overnight hours when no staff were present.
Halayko described one particularly unsettling image in detail while reviewing the material.
“It’s kind of like a grimaced mouth — very creepy with the teeth, definitely see two eyes,” he said, pointing out his observations of the security camera footage.
Two separate overnight recordings captured flashes of light roughly 47 minutes apart while the restaurant sat completely empty, he added. Side-by-side stills from the footage show additional disturbances: pots, a garbage pail, a tray and knives appeared to have shifted from their original positions or vanished from view entirely. Neither video, however, actually captures the items in motion.
“We’ve got two knives right there in the middle on the knife rack,” he told News 12 Hudson Valley while walking through the evidence.
“Now let’s go to the next photo — they are gone,” he continued.
The unexplained activity prompted Halayko to take a methodical approach. He contacted the city historian to investigate whether any tragedies might have occurred at the site over the building’s long history. The historian found no record of fatal accidents in the building, though she noted that industrial work could be dangerous and some incidents may never have been documented.
That dead end has left Halayko without concrete answers. A brewery worker has separately reported spotting a man in overalls several times in the downstairs production area, Halayko claimed, adding another layer to the mystery.
Despite the historian’s findings, Halayko maintains an open mind about what could be causing the phenomena. He told News 12 Hudson Valley that he remains willing to consider explanations outside conventional understanding.
“I’d be crazy to say it’s not possible,” he said. “There are many things in this world that we don’t understand.”
The brewery continues operating in the historic Newburgh building while the footage circulates online.