Beyond the Veil: Rolling Hills Asylum

Beyond the Veil: Rolling Hills Asylum

Last year, in my piece about the Palmyra Historical Museum, I asked the question: what happens when we die?

This Halloween, I ask a different question: what is fear? It’s like our gene expression, or perhaps our alcohol tolerance; it’s different for everyone. 

What frightens you? Is it the shadow that moved on its own? Or is it something more concrete, like the thought of being late to work? Regardless, nobody should have to live in fear like the residents of Rolling Hills Asylum. Abandoned. Left to rot for reasons beyond their control.

The patients of Rolling Hills Asylum in East Bethany, NY didn’t just live in fear; they bathed in it, slept in it, drank and ate it. Today, the spirits of those tortured dead keep the dark history of the Asylum alive, exposing horrors far greater, far deeper than mere bumps in the night.

A History of the Facility:

The Rolling Hills Asylum began as the Genesee County Poor Farm.

When you think of a haunted place, you think of a place that was built with good intentions, only to see tragedy, neglect, or acts of evil that leave spiritual stains on the place.

The Rolling Hills Asylum was never built with good intentions in mind.

The Genesee County Poor Farm broke ground in early 1827. Yes, there were actually places called “poor farms” back in the day, George Carlin be damned. The Genesee County Poor Farm housed some of New York’s “undesirables” (read: people the county didn’t want to take care of) such as orphaned children, destitute elderly,  the physically and mentally handicapped, habitual drunkards, and others who were unable to take care of themselves. 

Perhaps the most controversial inmates were unwed women. In those days, if a woman talked back to her spouse or requested a divorce, her butthurt husband could institutionalize her with no questions asked. It’s believed hundreds, perhaps thousands, of unwed women with complete possession of their mental faculties were locked up here.

Over time, more interesting clientele took up residence in the facility, including lunatics and people cited for misconduct.  A separate solitary confinement branch was opened here, in order to keep these people isolated from the other inmates. 

As you can imagine, the 200-acre facility housed many needy people. This might instantiate images of starving people crowding the halls in your mind, but the place was actually relatively self-sufficient. Physically-able residents would work the farm, raising animals such as chickens, pigs, horses, etc, while others would can fruits, vegetables, and meat. 

Hundreds of people died within the Asylum’s walls over its century of operation, but with no family or loved ones to claim them, many were buried in unmarked graves around the property. A single monument in the nearby Genesee County Park is the only tribute to these tortured souls.

Though the Poor Farm would close in 1974, it continues to stand as a stark reminder of how we treated the destitute in those early days.

Ghost Experiences: 

The Shadow Hallway. A mysterious darkness sometimes envelops the end of the hall.

The Rolling Hills Asylum is considered one of the most haunted places in the world, and is it any wonder? As the Palmyra Historical Museum is any indicator, ghosts exist to tell their life stories even after they have passed, and with the thousands of colorful characters that passed through the Asylum in its heyday, there’s no shortage of stories to tell. 

The most popular spot in the building for seeing ghosts is the Shadow Hallway on the second floor. Here, shadows and apparitions peek out of rooms, walk back and forth, and have even been reported to crawl along the floor. Perhaps the strangest phenomenon reported here is the encroaching darkness itself.

“Sometimes, the entire hallway gets blacked out,” said Gina Bengston, a veteran ghost hunter and host of Ghostly Excursions. The end of the hallway is typically bathed in the red glow of an exit sign, but the darkness can even block that light out. It’s not known why this happens, but it’s frightening nevertheless.

One notable resident of this hallway is Roy. In the 1800’s, Roy was a resident of the poor farm who suffered from gigantism, a disease of the pituitary gland that causes abnormal growth. By age 12, Roy was almost seven feet tall, and his family had him committed out of embarrassment. His hulking shadow has been captured on film throughout the building.
Apparently, Roy has also taken a liking to the owner of the Asylum, Sharon Coyle. During her final walkthrough one night, Coyle saw a rat that caused her to scream and flee the building. The next day, the rat was found in the same part of the building, dead. There was a bloody handprint on the wall near its corpse; Sharon claims the handprint belongs to Roy, who killed the rat for her.

Another interesting room off the Shadow Hallway is the Portal Room. Mediums who have visited the property claim the room contains a portal to another dimension, and as you can expect, many bizarre things have happened here. A woman was photographed here on a ghost hunt, and a strange green shape was seen hovering above her shoulder in the photo. Further analysis revealed a baby’s head, which prompted the woman to make a chilling confession; she had a miscarriage years before.

On the top floor are two notable rooms; the Organ Room and Nurse Emma’s Room. The Organ Room is where a doctor named George Flemming passed away from a stroke. His spirit is said to growl at visitors, but that’s only because the stroke paralyzed his vocal cords; he’s one of the friendliest spirits in the Asylum. 

Nurse Emma has an unfortunate reputation. On Ghost Adventures, she was depicted as an abusive nurse who practiced black magic, a story that would later inspire the film Grave Encounters. In reality, Nurse Emma was a strict disciplinarian, but by no means was she evil. The owner of the Asylum, Sharon Coyle, has had to defend her reputation on several occasions.

“Nurse Emma is NOT evil,” she posted on the Rolling Hills Asylum Facebook page in 2015. “She did not practice satanic rituals. She was a Baptist, and is buried in a local Baptist cemetery.” 

Men are nevertheless asked to declare themselves before entering her room. Why only men? Because back in the day, it would be a major faux pas to enter a women’s changing area without asking. Correct me if I’m wrong...but I think that still applies today.

Most visitors concur that Nurse Emma is not the monster she’s painted out to be. Another character in the building, however, is still a rather divisive figure. In the basement resides Raymond, a maintenance man for the building in life, who many believe abused the female residents of the asylum. In the same Facebook post from 2015, Coyle defended Raymond (first name “John”) from claims that he had been a pedophile in life. Many historians and ghost hunters, however, disagree. Many believe his spirit pushes people around who enter his room.

Also in the basement is the morgue, complete with an embalming table. People who lay on this table and ask for a nurse’s help may report the sensation of being touched or operated on. There is a Christmas Room, where the spirits of children will laugh and move toys around.

There are so many rooms and notable spirits in the Asylum, it would be impossible to describe them all in one post.

My Investigation:

This image was NOT captured during my investigation; it was taken by an employee of the asylum back in 2017. This is believed to be the apparition of Roy.

The drive up to Rolling Hills Asylum doesn’t prepare you at all. The vast farmland and rolling hills (from which the Asylum got its name) of Genesee County, combined with the cool September air wafting through the open car window, put me at ease and lulled me into a false sense of security. After driving through the quiet village of Bethany, I began to wonder where in the endless expanse of Oz-like country an insane asylum could possibly be, when suddenly, as I reached the top of the hill where Routes 15 and 49 meet, there it was. 

Even in a vacuum, the place has an unsettling vibe. It rises from the flat fields of corn like a grotesque shadow, a single cupola clawing at the sky. I got serious concentration camp vibes from the exterior, which was more than enough to give me the heebie-jeebies. 

Once inside, however, I felt strangely cozy. The entrance was decorated with no one holiday in mind. There was a Christmas tree in the entrance hall, Halloween decor in the gift shop, and Leprechaun Hats in some of the downstairs hallways. We were taken into the gift shop to sign waivers, and I finally got to meet the owner, Sharon Coyle. She is ruthlessly dedicated to the Asylum, to the point where she sacrificed her marriage and cushy film career in California to be the caretaker. No food or drink is allowed outside of the gift shop area, lest they attract rats. Residents are expected not to taunt the spirits or perform rituals. 

Coyle keeps a tight ship, which has resulted in some less-than-flattering reviews online, but I personally found no problem with it. 

My night began with Bengston and another paranormal investigator from Texas (whose name sadly escapes me) in the Organ Room. Here, Bengston placed her favorite ghost hunting device, a stuffed fox that measures electromagnetic waves, on the bed. No sooner did she set it down that the thing began to alarm. 

About twenty minutes into our conversation with the spirit, Bengston noticed something strange on her thermal camera. Though I was sitting cross-legged on a chair across from her, the image in her camera was of an older man sitting straight-legged. A trick of the light, or spirit sitting in my lap? We’ll never know for sure…

We next spent an hour in the Shadow Hallway, hoping for an apparition to appear. Though a couple of odd shapes would appear in the doorways throughout the halls, nothing definitive was documented. That didn’t mean strange things didn’t happen, however.

At one point, Bengston asked for one of the spirits to knock to show they were there. A few seconds later, a knock was heard in Roy’s room.

Stranger still, another member of the ghost tour had been standing in the doorway to one of the larger rooms, and reported feeling hands gently nudging her out of the room. I volunteered to stand in the doorway to see if I felt the same thing...and to my surprise, I found it difficult to lean back. It wasn’t a hard push I felt, but rather something that prevented me from leaning back, as if a nurse was gently trying to keep me out of the room.

A trip to the Morgue saw an EMF reader spike to its highest setting on several occasions. The temperature also dropped a considerable five degrees while we were in there. 

No activity was reported in the other rooms in the basement, so the group took one last trip to the Shadow Hallway. Once again, I felt the gentle force on my back, keeping me out of the back room. At one point, something passed by one of the windows in my peripheral vision. Bengston also reported hearing a little girl squealing on her digital recorder during her live EVP review.

Is It Haunted?:

While the paranormal experiences I had in the Rolling Hills Asylum weren’t quite as diverse as the Historic Palmyra Museum, knowing where I was and what had occurred there was more than enough to satiate me. 

Can I personally say the place is haunted?

Strange things definitely happened, but they could easily be explained away. It’s an old building, explaining the knocks and occasional footsteps we may have heard. The pushing sensation on my back wasn’t strong enough to warrant a paranormal explanation, and there was power in the building when the strange EMF readings were recorded. 

The rapid temperature drop and the EVP are a bit more difficult to explain. Nevertheless, there is a strange aura surrounding the Rolling Hills Asylum, even if it isn’t paranormal, no doubt a consequence of the thousands of inhabitants that passed through it in its day.

*The photos used in this blog post are not mine.