Don Paul and his son, Mike, barely bat an eye anymore over the myriad unexplained occurrences in their building on Main Street in Butler.

“It’s pretty crazy,” the elder Paul said of the activity in his building, which is across from the Penn Theater.

Don Paul said he bought the building, which houses his business, Don Paul Jewelers, plus Butler SUCCEED and Venue on Main, in 2005.

While the three storefronts are separate, the second and third floors are mainly open areas.

Paul said according to Butler historian Bill May, a home on the lot was occupied by a doctor who moved north in the late 1920s.

The house was torn down and the current building was erected by E.H. Negley, a Butler attorney who served as district attorney from 1932 to 1935. He also built other buildings on and around Main Street that house businesses today.

Crawford Jewelers occupied the building from 1929 to 2002, then a few other businesses until Paul purchased it in 2005.

He said the third floor, or mezzanine level, of the building is the most active. The level once housed a billiards hall, and paranormal investigators have told him spaces where many people have gathered are the most likely to be haunted.

Concert events, including performances by Bo Diddley, The Five Satins, and The Skyliners, took place in the building, along with dances featuring the late Guy Travaglio as DJ.

“This was a happening place back in the day,” Paul said.

But today, the silent third floor, which is mainly used for storage, has a strange and undeniable vibe.

“It’s creepy up there,” Paul said of the third floor. “You always feel like someone is watching you.”

He said during the coronavirus pandemic, he and his son took everything out of the back room on the first floor to put down new flooring.

The pair spent a day setting up the tools and equipment they would need after clearing out the space, but the next day, they found a Cross pen in the middle of the floor that was engraved with Don Paul’s father’s name.

He said items that had been lost, misplaced or forgotten also appear sporadically throughout the building.

Paul said when an ice cream store was in the storefront two doors down, unexplained activity was nearly constant. But once the space was converted to Venue on Main, the paranormal shenanigans ceased.

Similarly, no otherworldly occurrences have happened in the storefront now housing Butler SUCCEED since Paul has owned the building.

But one spine-tingling event that haunts Paul to this day happened when a psychic told him a man with a wounded left arm was looking over Paul’s shoulder, smiling in his fedora and trench coat.

Turns out, Paul’s mentor in the jewelry business, the late Emil Hazy, wore a fedora and trench coat, and his left wrist was injured by a bullet in World War II.

“It’s kind of cool,” Paul said. “(The psychic) said he wants me to hang a picture of him behind the register, which I’m going to do. He was a great guy.”

Another time, he was leaving the building with his son, who asked his dad to wait while he used the bathroom in the back of the building.

Paul waited in the jewelry store, and his son reported that he heard his father whistling while he was in the bathroom.

Although Paul is a frequent whistler, he had not walked to the back of the building, nor had he whistled while waiting for his son.

The younger Paul is the keeper of the most spine-tingling stories about the building, where he formerly housed his 3D printing business.

Paul said nine months ago, he, his sister and two of her friends were chatting at an event going on at Venue on Main about the paranormal activity in the building.

“I asked them if they wanted to see the really haunted area,” Mike said. “I told them ‘nothing is going to jump out at you.’”

The group made its way upstairs to the third floor and into the large space, which is open except for an office and another room with a window where the manager of the billiards room would keep an eye on those playing pool many years ago.

“I was showing them around and we were up there two or three minutes or so,” Mike said. “Then we heard a noise on the other end of the room.”

He and his sister then saw what appeared to be a white light moving back and forth behind some things stored in the room with the window.

“It was sort of like a cellphone light,” Mike said. “We were standing in the main room, and we can see through the window into that back room, and there was nothing there but light moving back and forth coming from that room.”

They could not believe their eyes.

“I tried to debunk it in my head,” Mike said.

As the group silently attempted to make sense of what obviously was an unusual event, something even more unbelievable happened.

“We see the outline of a person walk out of that door, go straight across and through a solid wall,” Mike said. “No sooner did that happen, than my sister said ‘Hey Mike, did you see that?’”

When he replied that he did, his sister “lost her mind, and we ran out of there,” Mike said.

Once downstairs, he asked his sister to describe what she had seen, and it matched his exact interpretation of the outline walking out of the small, windowed room and through a wall.

Mike recalled that the figure was just an outline of a person, about 6 feet tall, without distinguishable eyes, clothing or other features.

He said the group could see the legs and arms moving in a walking motion.

In the same area, on the other side of the wall near the fire escape, Mike took a picture in 2013 or 2014 after he and his father had cleared out the room.

Two months later, he looked at the picture again and saw something terrifying.

“I zoomed in on the picture and clear as day, you can see the outline of what appears to be two people on the back wall,” Mike said.

He went back and looked at the wall again, which displayed no stain or object that could have cast the shadow of two people.

“It looks like a taller person next to a shorter person,” Mike said. “I’ve shown it to several people, and nobody can give me an explanation.”

He has no guesses on who or what might be haunting the building.

“I don’t want to sound crazy, but you get a weird, sinking feeling in that building,” Mike said. “It’s been like that ever since my dad bought the place.”

He said he and the employees at the ice cream store that preceded Venue on Main who worked late at night heard noises like the doorbell ringing and chairs being moved around.

He said in 2014, he sent an employee with whom he was working in the basement upstairs because the doorbell sounded and the pair could clearly hear people walking around and sliding chairs on the floor.

But the employee found no one in the shop and the chairs were exactly where he and Mike had left them.

“It would be constant when we were in the back,” Mike said of the doorbell, footsteps and moving chairs. “We just turned the radio up so we wouldn’t hear it.”

Mike and his father have also heard loud crashing noises that sounded like something large had fallen over and smashed to pieces, but found nothing amiss when they went to investigate.

Don Paul said he is not afraid to be alone in his shop, as he doesn’t feel the spirits that accompany him are malevolent in any way.

He does wonder if the old doctor, E.H. Negley or some other deceased person connected with the building is the one remaining behind, but he is not bothered by their presence.

“They just like to cause mischief sometimes,” Paul said. “They just like to show up and let us know they’re here.”