Rolling Hills Asylum

This 1827 poorhouse in East Bethany saw over 1,700 documented deaths (likely three times more) across nearly 150 years of housing society's unwanted. The most famous ghost is Roy Crouse, a gentle seven-foot-six giant who spent 40 years here, now spotted as the tallest shadow in the building's notorious Shadow Hallway.

The owner found a dead rat on the stairs with a giant bloody handprint smeared on the wall above it. Sharon Coyle, who bought Rolling Hills Asylum in 2009, had run screaming from the infirmary the day before when a rat startled her. She believes Roy took care of it for her.

Roy Crouse stood seven feet six inches tall, probably because of a tumor in his pituitary gland. He was brought to the Genesee County Poor Farm at twelve years old and died there at 52 in 1942, having spent four decades in this building. Other residents knew him as a kind, gentle-hearted man who loved opera music. His full-body figure has been spotted in the Shadow Hallway on the second floor, a corridor that leads to the infirmary where dark shapes move through doorways and crawl across the floor toward visitors. Roy is the tallest shadow in the hallway.

Rolling Hills opened on January 1, 1827, as the Genesee County Poor House in the quiet hamlet of East Bethany, New York. It housed whoever society didn't want: orphans, elderly people who couldn't care for themselves, people with mental illness, people with physical disabilities, impoverished families, criminals, vagrants, and what the records call "habitual drunkards." The facility was a self-sufficient working farm spanning over 200 acres, with a bakery, a wood shop that manufactured coffins, and livestock operations. Cost per resident in 1871: about $1.08 a week.

Over 1,700 deaths were documented on the property, a number the asylum's history department pieced together from registration books, coffin purchase records, mortuary listings, and reports from the Superintendents of the Poor to the County Board of Supervisors. Coyle believes the actual number is three times higher because of unmarked graves. No official cemetery register or plot map exists. Five headstones dated 1887-1888 were returned and dedicated on June 6, 2004, the only physical evidence of who's buried on the grounds.

Phoebe White was the first resident. She arrived at nine years old and lived at Rolling Hills for 56 years. Visitors report hearing her screams, which investigators attribute to her frustration at being unable to communicate. Emma, a former nurse, is one of the more reassuring presences. She lingers in her old room and responds when people ask for help.

The most active areas tell you something about the building's history. The Shadow Hallway, the second-floor men's dormitory, is where visitors consistently see dark figures ranging from light gray to pitch black. The Christmas Room, originally used for Santa visits with the children who lived here, still has its decorations up year-round. Toys move on their own. The morgue is where objects shift position and visitors report being shoved by something they can't see.

In 1828, a separate stone building was constructed specifically for what records describe as the "confinement of lunatics." By 1887, the board of supervisors agreed to relocate people with acute insanity elsewhere. The Genesee County Farm closed in the mid-1960s. The nursing home that replaced it closed in 1974, and the building sat empty for decades.

Rolling Hills has been featured on Ghost Adventures, Ghost Hunters, Ghost Asylum, Haunted USA, Legendary Locations, and Destination Fear. The investigations have produced EVP recordings, shadow figure documentation, and footage from the 53,000-square-foot building and its subterranean tunnel that connects sections of the complex. During self-guided ghost hunts, visitors explore the morgue, Shadow Hallway, psych ward, and tunnel with Rolling Hills crew available to assist.

The bloody handprint Roy supposedly left on the wall above the dead rat is still visible. Nobody's cleaned it off.