Paranormal investigators after eerie human-shaped shadow is caught on video.

Ghost hunters! restaurant calls in paranormal investigators after eerie human-shaped shadow is caught on video.

    An Iowa Maid-Rite called in ghost hunters after seeing security footage of an unexplained shadow
    Other mysterious disturbances have also been noticed at the restaurant
    Owner Pat Orr says he doesn’t know if it’s haunted, but that his four-year-old niece won’t enter
    Paranormal investigator Christopher O’Brien is reviewing evidence gathered

Recent strange events at an Iowa restaurant have the owner and his employees spooked.

Pat Orr, owner of Chuck and Edna’s Maid-Rite, in Cascade, enlisted the help of Iowa City Ghost Hunters to investigate a series of unexplained phenomena in the restaurant that started April 14.

The first seemingly unexplained disturbance took place just before 6pm April 14. The store’s security camera captures an amorphous shadow at the restaurant’s dishwashing station that slowly forms into what looks like a person and drifts off screen.

Haunted: Pat Orr owns the Maid-Rite in Cascade and says he can’t explain the human-shaped shadow that was captured on security footage

Haunted: Pat Orr owns the Maid-Rite in Cascade and says he can’t explain the human-shaped shadow that was captured on security footage

Unexplained: Security footage shows this dark shadow in a place in the restaurant where no shadow can be made

Unexplained: Security footage shows this dark shadow in a place in the restaurant where no shadow can be made

The video shows the feet of a Maid-Rite employee at the edge of the frame, but the employee told Orr she saw nothing unusual.

‘(Employees) have been saying they’ve seen strange things ever since the place opened, and (I) blew it off until I saw the video,’ Orr told the Telegraph Herald.

‘It looks like it’s coming out (from underneath the cooler), goes across the floor and up over the dishwasher,’ Orr said. ‘But, you see, I can’t make a shadow here. I don’t know. I don’t know what it is.’

Orr acknowledged the figure could have been an insect on the camera lens.

Then, at about 10am April 19, another security camera shows a stack of Styrofoam cups sliding off a shelf and hitting a worker in the head, while another stack falls sideways as if it was pushed.

Another night, Orr was alone in the office doing paperwork when he heard a metal spatula fall to the ground, he said.

‘It was on the cooler at the end of kitchen, and I found it on the floor in the middle of the kitchen in front of the fryer,’ as if it had been flung across the room, Orr said.
Caught on camera: ‘Ghost’ filmed at restaurant
Spirit or bug? Orr admits the shadow could be a speck or a bug crawling across the camera

Spirit or bug? Orr admits the shadow could be a speck or a bug crawling across the camera

Normal day: A staff member was working close-by at the time the footage was captured and noticed nothing out of the ordinary

Normal day: A staff member was working close-by at the time the footage was captured and noticed nothing out of the ordinary

Not knowing what to make of the events, a manager typed ‘ghost hunters’ into the Web browser on his smartphone and pulled up Iowa City Ghost Hunters.

Matthew O’Brien, 30, of Iowa City, and his team of paranormal investigators spent the early morning hours one day last month at the restaurant, recording audio, video and electromagnetic field readings and trying to re-create the shadow.

Among the devices they use to record paranormal activity is a ‘ghost box,’ a modified portable radio that continuously scans AM and FM radio bands. When on, it is believed to create white noise and audio remnants from broadcast stations that entities are able to manipulate to create words and sentences. O’Brien said audio and video recording devices are portals for the supernatural to communicate.

The team also tried to provoke activity by talking to the entity and placing flashlights on tables around the restaurant, asking the spirit to turn them off or on to respond to questions.

O’Brien, an entrepreneur by day who is attempting to launch a cleaning service, said he and his team still are reviewing all the evidence collected and can’t say whether the restaurant might be haunted.

He would not share what the team encountered during its investigation, saying Orr signed a confidentiality agreement preventing him from disclosing evidence gathered.
Fall or pushed? A stack of cups falls onto a worker as she prepares food in the Maid-Rite in Cascade

Fall or pushed? A stack of cups falls onto a worker as she prepares food in the Maid-Rite in Cascade