Halloween

Mark Fry started turning their barn into a horror of haunts about three years ago just to scare their kids, but as more and more people stopped by, they kept adding to the show.

"This is the biggest yet, 11 rooms," Fry said. "Everybody this year tells us, keep it going. We were going to shut it down, because last year we had about 40 (visitors) but this year we’ve probably already had over 200 come."

And those are 11 pretty scary rooms, filled with more than a dozen local actors portraying everything from ghouls to flesh-eating surgeons.

If you don't get a little jolt of fear before the tour is over, your heart isn't beating.

The haunted barn on Alexander Road (Route 98) is free, and Friday night was going to be the last show, but on the spot last night, Fry and his wife decided to open for three more hours, from 3 to 6 p.m., on Saturday.

It's hard to close a good show.

The staff at Bank of Castile/Tompkins Insurance on Main Street in Batavia are having some Halloween fun today. The top three floors are decorated with various Disney scenes and most of the staff is dressed appropriate to the theme on their floors. Groups of children from the YMCA are visiting throughout the day receiving treats as they visit Batavia's own Disneyland.

My children and I went to the "Haunted Barn" on Hwy 98 between Batavia and Alexander last night and had a blast!  The barn has been fully converted into a haunted house with several themed rooms and many actors to enhance the experience.  I believe it will be open next Friday and Saturday nights, and I highly recommend it!  If I say any more it will spoil the fun, so go and get scared!

Historic Batavia Cemetery Ghost Walk, Candlelight Tour

I volunteered at the ghost walk tonight and it was a great time.  There is going to be another one next Saturday Oct, 24th at 7:00 pm. It's located on Harvester Ave.  Tickets are $10. in advance or $15. at the gate.  It's really worth checking out.  Great fun for the whole family.

I happened down Watson Street today and found this house and yard all decked out for Halloween. I hope this bodes well for how many trick-or-treaters we'll get in our neighborhood this year. It's been a long time since Billie and I lived in a neighborhood with a lot kids and trick-or-treaters.

Here it is folks: Rolling Hills Paranormal Research Center—the tour! A three minute walk through the dank dark corridors and rooms of the old Genesee County Home. All of the sound is natural sound: audio picked up from the walk, which is why you will hear the photographer, Sonia, asking after the ghosts from time to time. As I said, we didn't run into any.

Sonia, however, picked up a few "orbs" on camera. What's an "orb," you ask. Well, orbs are supposed to be floating spirits that get picked up on camera when you take pictures. Not every floating ball of light is an orb, however. Sometimes it's just dust, says Lori Carlson, owner of Rolling Hills.

We'll leave it up to your discretion if you want to believe these blips of fuzzy light to the right here are spiritual orbs or just some dust motes that got too close to the lens.

You'll hear in the beginning of the video when Sonia says that she caught an orb on the window. That photograph is below, as well as another photograph taken a few seconds before with the orb in a different spot.

Anyhow, all orbs aside, Rolling Hills was a fascinating space, and I had no need of talking ghosts or ghost shapes to find the place eerie and disquieting and interesting, especially as an historic artifact. If you haven't already heard Lori talk about the history of the place, make sure and do that. This building has a lot of stories to tell, and you don't necessarily need ghosts to tell those stories. Some of the rooms speak well enough on their own.

Enough of my babble. Let's get to the show...

Here are those other orb pictures:

Don't forget! The Candlelight Cemetery Ghost Walk that was originally planned for this past Saturday at the Batavia Cemetery was rescheduled to tomorrow, so you still have one last chance to get out and meet the ghost of William Morgan, among others.

For those who missed it a couple weeks back, here's the video with all the info:

Here it is, our penultimate video in the countdown to Halloween:

This is the first of two videos on my recent visit to Rolling Hills Paranormal Research Center in East Bethany. Rolling Hills is the site of the old Genesee County Home, former "poor house," home for the "insane," and nursing home. In this video, Rolling Hills owner Lori Carlson gives us a brief overview of the facility, its past inhabitants and its current inhabitants... that latter would be the ghosts.

Tomorrow, we hope to get up the second video, which will consist entirely of footage from my tour of the facility between the hours of 11:00pm and 3:00am. While I wasn't fortunate enough to stumble into any ghosts, I got some great shots of an eerie, disquieting and utterly fascinating space.

In the meantime, let's learn a little about this place...

Be sure to check out part one of our Halloween countdown, posted yesterday: Cooking with the Dairy Princess: Halloween Special (Jell-O Eyeballs).

Folks looking for a good haunting with a touch of local history will get several chances to tour the eerie side of downtown Batavia in the month of October, according to the Daily News. City Ghost Walks kick off this Friday.

Tours out of the east end of the city start at GO ART! Cultural Center and stop at the Masonic Temple, the Cary Mansion, the Mancuso Theater (now City Church), St. Joseph's Church and Richmond Mansion. From there, folks will head to Ross Street and learn about a few haunted houses at Nos. 20, 39 and 41 Ross St., then head on to Present Tense Bookstore at 101 Washington Ave. West end tours start at the Genesee County History Department on West Main Street, where County Historian Sue Conklin will show off her copper divining rods.

Joanne Beck writes of the west end itinerary:

Visitors will tour the former Engine House building and move onto 4 Mix Place, once granted a permit to be a burial ground. The tour also includes the Oak Street Specter and the first known graveyard on the corner of Oak and West Main Streets, where seven known hangings and the man "who was hung twice" occurred.

There's just too much great history and eeriness packed into these walks. Don't know about anyone else, but I'm darned excited.

East end tours will run on October 3, 17 and 24. Two runs will head out each evening, one at 6:00pm and another at 7:30pm. West end tours will run on October 10 and 24, also twice each evening at the same times. Cost is $10 per person. Visit the cultural center's calendar of events for more info.

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