For anyone who has never heard of Rolling Hills...here
is a brief overview:
Located in Bethany, New York, this facility which was called the Genesee County Poorhouse
and was located on 100's of acres of land used for farming opened it's doors to the poor in 1827. The facility
also began taking in paupers, the insane, orphans, transients, unwed mothers, the eldery, and anyone else who was unable to
support and care for themselves. All these individuals ate, slept, worked, and lived together amongst each other in overcrowded
and somewhat unfavorable conditions. By the 1950's the facility was solely used as a nursing home only. In
1974 the facility had closed down with any remaining residents being relocated to a facility in a
nearby town called Batavia. Historical records showed that over 1,750 occupants had died at the facility now called
Rolling Hills with many being buried on the property.
In 1992 the building was opened as Carriage
Village, a "mall of unique shops". In 2002, the current owners, Jeff and Lori Carlson, purchased the property
and renamed the building in 2003 as Rolling Hills Country Mall. However, shortly after their purchase of the building,
Lori began noticing unexplained noises, voices, footsteps, misty apparitions, and other unexplainable events. Lori began investigating
the history of the property and discovered her property housed more than just a building. This led Lori to desire more
information on the paranormal. In Sept. 2004 Lori allowed other people who wanted to investigate Rolling Hills
into the building and began holding routine public ghost hunts at what is now called Rolling Hills Paranormal Research Center.
On April 26, 2008, CPEAR did an overnight ghost hunt at Rolling Hills. It was not the first time
at Rolling Hills for Mike or Ray but it was for myself (Carrie). Tyler, being under 18, was not allowed on this
hunt due to age restrictions.
Arriving around 4pm to the area we went to Rolling Hills to get some pictures
during the daylight hours and to see if we could talk with Lori. Although there were some cars outside the enterance
doors were locked. The doors open for the ghost hunt at 9:30p and we arrived around 9:10p and there
were a few other people already present and waiting. Once you get inside you have to sign in and go through a short tour
of the building with a staff member who tells you of some of the experiences that occurred in specific
locations. Following the tour there was a short informational video shown about Rolling Hills. There were
said to be 50 people present during this ghost hunt and there were 2 tour groups. We were part of the first tour
group and when we were done watching the video we were allowed to go to the basement area to begin investigations so
that we did not disturb the other tour group on the upper level. With that....our investigation began.
We used devices such as digital audio recorders, video recorder with nightvision, thermometer gauge, EMF readers, flash
cameras. We also had a ghost box and sound amplifier present with us but we did not get to use. Lastly we
had our own senses to experience all that Rolling Hills has to offer.
As far as apparitions and
shadow people, none made themselves known that night :-( We also did not get any hits on the EMF reader or drastic
changes in temperature with the thermometer gauge.
When it comes to evidence caught on camera
we did catch some orbs in many pictures with some being more impressive than others and what appears to be some mist formation
coming out from behind the nurses station door. Keep in mind though - the facility is very old and there is
a lot of dust within the building.
On film we did catch a rather interesting find using a flashlight
on the second floor hallway where the doors to the solarium has been known to move on their own and shadows of people standing
and walking behind the doors in the solarium appear to occur when nobody is in the solarium. Since it was dark
and catching the shadows of something walking on the other side of the doors was impossible to catch using the video
camera even with night vision, Mike came up with the idea of placing a flashlight on the other side of the doors in the solarium
while we sat in the hallway to see if we could catch sight of any of these shadows walking about and catch them on film.
There is no other way in or out of the solarium and there was nobody in the solarium. A short while after
placing the flashlight within the room the light had began dimming and even completely turned off then back on which
the light had not done previously and all batteries to the flashlights we carried were new. After a few moments the
light had remained on and all flickering and dimming ceased to stop and did not occur again. Was this a paranormal event or
just a flashlight problem? This we can not say - but there has not been any other problems with the flashlight
flickering or turning on/off. Check out the video and let us know what you think as we will be posting the occurance
on our site soon.
We also had caught some EVP's with our digital audio recorders. These will also
be available soon to listen to. One very impressive one was when Mike was trying to provoke the shadow people into coming
into the hallway on the second floor and following a request of telling the residents to come out into the hallway there was
a voice of what sounds like an elderly lady yelling back "You, Go Away!", which we did not hear when recording.
Finding areas that were completely quiet and free of voices of the living were challenging during this ghost hunt. There
were many people within the building, some who were pretty loud at times, and finding quiet places to do EVPs was difficult
and often resulted in short sessions as we had decided ..ping recording when others came into range which could alter the
results of gathering true EVP recordings.
As far as our own experiences - I was the only one that
had experienced anything personally. Upon our arrival in the afternoon the the facility I had felt a dizziness that
had stayed with me while we were there in the afternoon and went away after we were in the car and left the area. I
don't know if this had anything to do with the facility or with the long car ride - I felt it was pretty weird experience
anyhow. When sitting up in the electrotherapy room I had experienced 2 episodes of a sharp pain that lasted approximately
1 minute to my left side of my head , esp right above my left eye. It only happened twice and only while in the electrotherapy
room. Around 4am Mike and I traveled from the area of the organ room down to the second hallway and
sat against the sides of the hall - Mike on one side and myself on the other. During the walk down to the hallway
and while sitting in the hallway I kept getting a "cobweb" effect across my face (this was occurring even when not
walking and just sitting). I was mentioning the feelings to Mike but was thinking to myself that it could just
be my hair. There were a few other people at the end of the hallway near the solarium doors who were quietly talking
amongst themselves. While Mike and I sat there waiting to see if we could see any of the shadow people I began to feel
something lightly touch/move/crawl up my right leg starting where the sock/jean line was and continued up to my mid-calf.
At that point I began thinking possibly a spider which I definately did NOT want crawling up my pant leg causing me to quickly
crawl across the hallway over to Mike startling him while telling him something was crawling on me and I think it's a
spider. The people at the other end of the hall quickly get up and begin to leave after seeing me complain of something crawling
on me. They stopped to ask what I had experienced and they shared that one of them was feeling something touching
her hair and having the "cobweb" effect and another seeing a shadow peeking from around one of the doors which was
making them very uncomfortable and they had to get out of the area. It was actually after this incident in
which Mike and I went over to where the other people were sitting and, since were were the only ones left in the area, began
to do the EVP's and we caught the EVP of the elderly lady's voice.
Would I go back - absolutely.
I am glad to have caught something on audio/video as well as experienced something personal there - whether it was paranormal
or not. I wouldn't mind going back to see if those sensations or feelings re-occur and to see what else we could
catch using our equipment. I also would love to see one of those "shadow people" which people have seen in
the second floor hallway. I also think that when we re-schedule to go back I am sincerely thinking about doing the "we're
alone" investigations. Anyone interested in also going on a "we're alone" investigation, let us know.
Although a little pricier, I feel we would get more investigating done during that one night compared with multiple "public
ghost hunt" nights. We spent a lot of time trying to get away from some of the noise and flashlights of others
to get as accurate and thorough investigation as we could given the circumstances. A definate place to check out and
investigate!
Carrie-------> Ct Paranormal Encounters And Research
