A Newburgh brewery owner says a motion-activated camera in his kitchen recorded something he cannot explain: a white shape with two eyes and bared teeth, moving through the room long after closing. Paul Halayko, who runs Newburgh Brewing Company, says he has no clear explanation for what the camera captured and will not rule out a paranormal one.
Halayko installed the motion-activated camera in the brewery's kitchen in February 2024 and later shared the footage with News 12 Hudson Valley, describing the shape as having a grimaced mouth, teeth and two eyes. According to Dexerto, a camera captured an unsettling image in February 2024 at 10:26 p.m.
Other overnight recordings were also reported. Two recordings occurred about 47 minutes apart while the building sat empty. The still frames appeared to show pots, a garbage pail and a tray that had moved, along with two knives missing from the kitchen's wall rack — yet the recordings themselves never captured any of the objects actually in motion.
A Four-Story Brick Building With a Rough Industrial Past
The brewery occupies a 22,000-square-foot, four-story brick warehouse built in the 1850s. Its taproom is on the fourth floor, with views of the Hudson River.
The building has worn several industrial identities over the decades, having previously housed a steam engine operation, a yarn factory and later the Newburgh Paper Box Company. After reviewing the footage, Halayko dug into that history with the city historian. Mary McTamaney, the City of Newburgh's historian, found no record of fatal accidents tied to the address, but she noted that industrial work from that era could be genuinely dangerous and that some incidents may simply have gone unrecorded. Her review found the paper box company was relatively safe by comparison, while the earlier yarn factory's looms and spinning equipment, and the steam engine shop's heavy iron and steel machinery before it, frequently put workers at risk.
A Friendlier Presence Near the Beer Kettles
The kitchen footage is not the only strange report at the brewery. Halayko says a production worker has repeatedly seen a man in overalls in the downstairs production area, and that the worker has described those encounters as positive rather than frightening.
Halayko himself remains undecided about what any of it means. He has said he would not rule out paranormal explanations and that there is plenty in the world that remains not fully understood.
A Pioneer of Orange County's Craft Beer Scene
Newburgh Brewing Company was founded in 2012 by childhood friends Christopher Basso and Paul Halayko, becoming the first craft brewery to open in Orange County and reviving commercial brewing in a city that had gone without it for generations, according to Orange County Tourism. The brewery leans into local lore elsewhere in its lineup too, including a Russian stout called Newburgh Conspiracy, a name tied to a near-uprising of the Continental Army at the end of the Revolutionary War.
That sense of place runs deep in Newburgh, which holds the second-largest historic district in New York State, with more than 4,000 structures, per Hudson Valley Pleasures. The brewery building has since been repurposed for modern commercial use.
Ghost Stories and Hudson Valley's Haunted History
The Hudson Valley and Catskills are featured on New York State's Haunted History Trail, which promotes haunted and historic destinations, per the Haunted History Trail of New York State. The trail also features ghost tours and investigations.
