Late-19th-century Atlanta wood-wool mill that housed the legendary Masquerade nightclub from 1989 to 2016, with Heaven/Hell/Purgatory rooms and decades of staff reports of apparitions, footsteps, and unexplained screams now attached to the surviving brick building.
695 North Avenue NE, Atlanta, GA 30308
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
The Mill operates as an office, retail, and food-and-beverage property with public access to ground-floor tenants; the upper floors are not generally open to the public.
Access
Wheelchair OK
Renovated industrial brick complex with paved exterior; interior tenant spaces vary.
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1890 · Late-19th-century Atlanta excelsior (wood-wool) mill · Home to the Masquerade nightclub 1989-2016 · Iconic Heaven / Hell / Purgatory music venue layout · Adaptive-reuse anchor along the Atlanta BeltLine
The DuPre Excelsior Mill stands at 695 North Avenue NE in Atlanta's Old Fourth Ward. According to Wikipedia and Georgia Public Broadcasting, the mill may have been built as early as 1890 by Frank DuPre / DuPre Manufacturing Company on a site chosen for proximity to Atlanta's rail network. The earliest concrete record of operations is three 1907 lawsuits over workplace accidents at the facility. The mill produced excelsior — fine wood shavings used as packing material — until demand collapsed after World War II with the introduction of foam rubber. All major Atlanta excelsior mills had closed by 1977.
The building was converted in 1977-78 into a pizzeria, theater, and music venue called the Excelsior Mill, featuring a Wurlitzer organ, films, bands, and Shakespearean plays. In September 1989 it reopened as the Masquerade nightclub, with three themed performance rooms named Heaven (top floor, large room), Hell (basement-level), and Purgatory (middle). For more than 25 years the Masquerade was a core venue in Atlanta's alternative-music scene before the operators relocated the brand in 2016.
The building suffered a partial structural collapse during 2018 redevelopment and was subsequently restored by Coro Realty as 'The Mill,' an office, retail, and food-and-beverage complex with direct connectivity to the Atlanta BeltLine. The exterior masonry has been preserved and the building remains an Atlanta industrial landmark.
Sources
According to Wikipedia, an Atlanta Constitution death report from July 17, 1899 described a worker named Hubert Neal who was 'Hurled Against Floor and Ceiling by Belt' at the Atlanta Excelsior Works — though Wikipedia notes there were three excelsior factories in Atlanta at the time and the article does not unambiguously identify the DuPre location. Three 1907 lawsuits document additional workplace accidents at DuPre itself. The building's haunted lore, summarized by Billboard and Atlanta Ghosts, ties most of the reports to these industrial-era deaths and to tuberculosis outbreaks among mill workers.
During the Masquerade era (1989-2016), staff and performers repeatedly reported paranormal experiences. According to Atlanta Ghosts and Billboard's piece on the venue, the most cited account is of a tall, dark apparition seen on or near the stage that allegedly walked over to the amplifiers and turned them off mid-show. A woman's scream is reported near the stairs leading down from the Heaven room and near a restroom on that level. Patrons and staff have also reported phantom footsteps in empty corridors and cold spots throughout the building. The Atlanta History Center's haunted-history coverage groups the building with Atlanta's most-cited paranormal sites tied to industrial labor.
The Masquerade brand left the building in 2016, but the lore is attached to the structure itself. Several Atlanta ghost tours continue to feature the surviving building as a stop. As with the Lemp Mansion and other adaptive-reuse industrial sites, the haunting is best understood as community memory anchored to a documented history of workplace death.
Notable Entities
Media Appearances
Walk past the surviving 19th-century brick mill building, formerly home to the Masquerade nightclub (1989-2016), now redeveloped as 'The Mill' adaptive-reuse complex along the Atlanta BeltLine.
Several Atlanta ghost tours and architecture tours (including Open House Atlanta) feature the DuPre Mill / Masquerade site as a stop. Tour availability varies seasonally.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
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