Rivermill – The German
As you all know, Paranormal Project has started hosting investigations at the incredible, Historic Rivermill. On three separate occasions people have picked up on a spirit working the grounds; and has been nicknamed “The German.” He has been described as a no nonsense man who was a very hard worker. Several people have commented that they felt he was not overly happy that they were there. As if they were wasting his time as he had work to do and they were in the way.
Our psychic Hailey; who was at the first tour described him: “I saw like… hard work style clothes. It reminded me of my uncle who own the UKI sawmill. He was on a mission to get work done but wanted to know why I was on his property.”
At the time, he did not say anything to Hailey directly; however several tour goers described their experience at the end of the night as having picked up on a German fellow, and that some of the sounds and voices coming through our spirit box was German sounding. It was curious but we dismissed it as possibly mishearing or having sound pareidolia. (Yes it’s a thing)
A little over a month later we hosted our second event at Rivermill. We did not recount the stories of the German as we wanted everyone to go in without any preconceived ideas. However shortly after the tour kicked off; multiple people started reporting having seen or heard from “The German.” Hmmm maybe there was something to it after all.
Our psychic Nicky; who had never been to the mill before and had not heard of our accounts of the man stated: “He was yelling at everyone. He had an accent and l said that to one of the participants. “”he has an accent like…. German. I think he said his name is Frank.””
One of the patrons of the tour approached us and stated that she picked up on a German guy which she thought was weird and made no sense, so we told everyone about the previous encounter.
Jani; a patron and psychic medium for the paranormal group P.I.G.S. stated “I can’t pronounce the name but I feel like his surname starts with a K.“ Later that night she messaged us after the tour and stated; “He used machinery that’s there from a long time ago and came after the gold rush and farmed the land.”
We decided to do a little bit of digging as it was too coincidental that so many people now were fixated on this man. We went to the Gold Coast library to look through the archives on the mill to see if we could find any German connections.
According to this article published in 1986, the Kleinschmidt’s name (German) was “synonymous with arrowroot production in the early part of this century.” Were the Kleinschmidts heavily involved with Rivermill alongside the original owner Fred Walker? Was our psychic mistaken at the name she heard? Were we speaking with FRED Kleinschmidt and not Frank? We still have so much research to do on this matter, however finding a German connection is the first step and very exciting! We will continue to look into the Kleinschmidts and their history.
One thing we do know; is that each generation of owners had a great love for this property and the work they did. We believe that to be evident by the way it has stood the test of time, as well as the evidence we are collecting each time we visit.
Did the previous owners think the place was haunted by the spirits of past generations? Tune in next time for our theory about that.
