Rolling Hills Asylum

Before Social Security, before unemployment insurance, before nursing homes and food stamps and public housing, there was the poorhouse.

If you were old and had no family to take you in, you might end up there. If you were a widow with small children and no way to feed them. If you were blind, or deaf, or had epilepsy, or an intellectual disability. If you were mentally ill. If you were an orphan. If you drank too much, or couldn’t find work, or were simply too sick or broken to take care of yourself. Almost every county in America had one. They went by many names — the poor farm, the almshouse, the county home — but everyone knew what they meant.

In western New York, between Buffalo and Rochester, the Genesee County Poorhouse operated for nearly 150 years. Today it goes by a different name: Rolling Hills Asylum. And it is said to be one of the most haunted places in the state.

The County Home

In December 1826, the Genesee County Board of Supervisors met to establish a poorhouse for the county. They chose a brick building near the geographic center of the county, in the town of Bethany — a former stagecoach tavern. It opened in 1827. The following year, the county added a stone wing to confine the mentally ill and to house people who had been committed to the poorhouse for misconduct.

The residents were called “inmates.” Those who were able to work were expected to. They farmed the land around the poorhouse — more than two hundred acres by the 1870s — raising dairy cattle, pigs, horses, poultry and crops. They canned food, baked bread, and worked in a woodshop. One of the woodshop’s products was coffins.

For the people who lived there, it was a hard but not always cruel place. It gave them food, shelter and work at a time when the alternative might be starving on the street. But it was also a place of shame, where the poor and the sick were sent away from the rest of society, and many of them lived out their lives and died there.

The Dead

Over the years, the poorhouse buried people who had no family to claim them. Records indicate that there was once a cemetery on the property, though no complete register or map of it has ever been found. Many of the graves were unmarked or had simple markers that have since been lost. In 2004, five old headstones from the 1880s that had been removed from the property were returned to the county.

Promotional materials for Rolling Hills claim that more than 1,700 people died there over its long history. That number hasn’t been independently verified. But it’s certain that many hundreds of people did — the elderly, the sick, infants, the mentally ill — and that a great many of them were buried nearby, in graves no one can find today.

Changing Times

The poorhouse changed with the decades. In the late 1880s, people with acute mental illness were moved to state hospitals elsewhere. In the twentieth century, as government programs began to care for the poor and elderly, the poorhouse became the Genesee County Home and Infirmary, more like a nursing home. It closed in the 1970s.

For a while, the building was used for other purposes, including as an antiques and shopping mall. And then, in the early 2000s, its new owners began offering something else: ghost hunts.

Roy

Of all the presences said to haunt Rolling Hills, the most famous is known simply as Roy.

According to the stories told at Rolling Hills, Roy was a resident of the poorhouse who was unusually tall — some accounts claim close to seven feet, perhaps because of a medical condition. He is said to have lived there for many years. Some versions of the story say he was mistreated or mocked by other residents because of his size.

I haven’t been able to verify Roy’s full story in the historical record, so I’m passing it on as it is told at Rolling Hills. Visitors and investigators report seeing a very tall shadowy figure in the building’s long corridors, especially in the older section, standing at the end of a hallway or passing through a doorway. They say it’s Roy, still walking the halls of the place that was his home.

The Other Residents

Roy is not alone, according to the stories.

Visitors report hearing children’s voices and laughter, especially in the area where orphans were once housed. Some say they’ve seen a little girl, sometimes called Emmie. They hear footsteps, doors opening and closing, and the sound of something being dragged. They report cold spots, the feeling of being touched, and sudden waves of emotion. Investigators have recorded what they say are voices answering their questions.

Rolling Hills has appeared on several national paranormal television shows. It hosts overnight ghost hunts, historical tours and special events, especially around Halloween.

The Poor Farm

I have a soft spot for places like Rolling Hills, because they remind us of something we’d rather forget.

For most of American history, if you were poor, old, sick or disabled, and you had no family to care for you, the community’s answer was to send you somewhere out of sight. The people who lived at the Genesee County Poorhouse were not criminals or monsters. They were simply people who had nowhere else to go. They worked the farm, they made the coffins, and eventually many of them were buried in those coffins, in unmarked graves, in a field that no one can find anymore.

If there are ghosts at Rolling Hills, I hope they know that someone, at least, still remembers they were there.