LOGAN, Utah — When visiting Country No Nonsense Coffee in Willow Park, visitors may experience a chill beyond what is in their iced coffee.

After several strange occurrences — many of which have started in the last few weeks — two local paranormal groups, with the help of the owner, have begun investigating possible unseen presences in the small shop.

Co-owner Sarah Avalos said since the shop opened, the register has been known to ring up products without the assistance of any tangible employee or visitor. Often, she said, it chooses boba tea or hot chocolate and will price the beverages with a military and employee discount.

Avalos said employees in the shop's break-off rooms have reported hearing whispered bickers in the main building, only to investigate and find no one.

Music in the small shop has also been turned on or off or had its volume sporadically adjusted without anybody touching the controls.

Beyond those strange phenomena, other oddities have begun occurring in more recent weeks. Lori Zitting — Avalos' mom — noticed the employee restroom door swing a few inches open seemingly on its own and remain ajar. What makes this sighting more conspicuous is the door's spring-assisted closing mechanism, which normally closes the door automatically if it is left open.

From the shop's security feed, a video marked August 19 focusing on the space in front of the shop captured a sound that could be described as a guttural, intense growl.

A clip marked August 20 shows the shop's lights being switched on and off at a time Avalos said no one was in the shop.

A third video depicts a light shining from the road in the distance. After a moment, a white shape seems to approach the tree in front of the shop, walk to its side, and vanish behind it.

Haunted or not, Willow Park itself has a history of troublesome events.

In October of last year, a group gathered in the park intending to brawl. While no one died, things did turn bloody, and one participant left the incident with five stab wounds.

In March of 2005, someone was fatally shot near the building that now houses the coffee shop in an incident authorities suspected was gang related. According to an article published by The Herald Journal at the time, the victim had already been transported to Logan Regional Hospital when the police arrived but did not make the journey in time to prevent their death.

The same article references an even earlier shooting that took place in the park in 1996, when carnival worker Brian Ohler shot Theresa Ann. Though she lived four years after the incident, the article says her death was still attributed to the injuries she sustained from Ohler.

If one looks into the surrounding area of the park even earlier — during the final seasons of World War II they may find a little-known piece of Logan history: the prisoner-of-war camp in the Cache County Fairgrounds, only a jaunt away from Willow Park.

According to a 2013 editorial written by The Herald Journal Managing Editor Charles McCollum, the existence of the POW camp was never well-advertised and appeared only sparsely in local news sources. It seems valley residents took issue with the disparity in conditions between how the Nazi prisoners were treated and how ally soldiers were handled in Nazi POW camps.

"I first heard of the camp in Logan from an old timer who remembered a lot of hard feelings in the local populace because German soldiers were often seen playing soccer at the fairgrounds and were reportedly very well treated," McCollum wrote.

The article also spoke of bitter feelings between Austrian and German prisoners kept at the camp.

Tuesday of last week, Bear River Paranormal members Alex Hamson and Shane Daniels paid a visited to the shop to check up on the suspicions and determine whether "cleansing" — a ritual to rid a ground of negative energy — could be helpful.

"We offer a no-cost service," Hamson said. "Then, if they want to do an investigation after cleansing, then we schedule a night for the investigation."

Daniels said the group's busy season is from October to April or May, the months when he said people are more likely to be at home and not on summer trips.

Hamson and Daniels both became interested in paranormal investigating through the television show "Ghost Hunters," a program that began running in 2004 and depicts paranormal investigators exploring strange, unexplainable activity in a variety of locations.

The two used several tools during their first inspection of the shop and determined a cleansing might be a good option for the location.

"We're not removing everything everything, it's just the negative that we're cleansing," Hamson explained about the cleansing process. "It's like washing dirt off your body."

Before they cleansed the coffee shop, however, another local paranormal group — Spiritus Raeda Paranormal — first wanted to investigate the location before any suspected negative energy was dispelled.

On Saturday evening, they did so.

The group's historian, Julia Gill, filled the others in on her findings of the area, which included the POW camp, the killings, and the stabbing.

Members then split into two groups, with several people staying in the shop and others going outside to examine the adjacent batting cages where Avalos had reported other strange sounds and movements.

The group used motion sensors, EMF readers, thermometers and computers disconnected from the internet to try to locate and communicate with any unseen entities.

They also used what are called ghost boxes — devices that scan through radio frequencies to produce white noise and possible messages — and dowsing rods — long sticks that curve 90 degrees to allow a handle.

General belief among paranormal investigators is ghost boxes can allow unseen beings to audibly communicate, and dowsing rods can be used to allow ghosts to answer yes or no questions when the rods cross.

Within the first few minutes of wandering the batting cages, the investigators asked if any spirits were connected to the batting cages.

Seconds after the question, a ghost box emitted a strange snarling noise they characterized as a "yes."

"That was a trip," said Spiritus Raeda member Josh Demler.

For the next few hours, Demler and others continued attempts at communicating. Though they caught onto individual words or small phrases from the ghost box, their requests for an unseen specter to jingle the fence or touch someone went unanswered.

Meanwhile, other investigators inside the coffee shop witnessed other occurrences. On more than one occasion, a motion-sensor light just outside the shop flipped on without anyone or anything seemingly moving nearby.

As the late hours began to grow into early dawn, the team also took note of a laptop computer mouse that they say began to move on its own, clicking and double clicking sporadically.

"We've actually had them tease us," founder and lead investigator Neicole Teare said of other suspected unseen entities before the investigation started.

Bear River Paranormal plans to perform a cleansing on the coffee shop this week. Until they have done so — and potentially after — customers may be sipping lattes with tragic victims of violence, disillusioned German prisoners, or something else that has established a presence in the coffee shop.