By Bill Burk
Just outside of Frewsburg, New York, deeper in the woods than might be comfortable, past a small V-shaped ravine, there’s a low wooded area tucked into a valley. You access it by pathways that grow increasingly remote, highway to lane, pavement to dirt, road to path, then by foot into a dense copse. There are no landmarks to orient you, the walking track is your only guide. As you hike into the forest, there’s a Blair-Witch sense of displacement, you can’t help but feel it, either because of the surroundings, or invented by your subconscious, knowing where you’re headed, a disconcerting detachment, passing through the looking glass.
As you ascend a small rise, a rusted metal fence looms, uneven and twisted, the teeth of a predator, as if you were standing still and the fence was thrust out of the ground.
Behind the sepulchral fence is, naturally, a cemetery.
In 2017 New York Makers Magazine made a list of the most haunted places in New York State. The Amityville Horror House on Long Island was, deservedly, first. Letchworth Village, the abandoned mental hospital was named third.
Gurnsey Hollow in Chautauqua County was named second.
Gurnsey Hollow is an infamous destination for ghost-seekers and the morbidly curious. It gets its reputation from a substantial catalogue of independent anecdotes. You can find some great postings on personal experiences all over the internet, on YouTube, and a particularly riveting account on the podcast Educate Me Papa (on Spotify and Apple Podcasts), a weekly look into the strange and occult by Sam Wassman and Haley Betts.
The place is, by every account, haunted.
The reporting from the hollow describes everything from strange noises to floating orbs, apparitions and things that bump in the night. The haunting is based on the legend of a mentally disabled seven-year-old girl who was either stoned to death or hanged by our ancestors (pre-Frewsburg Frewsburgers) in the late 1800s. There’s a large stone cross at the top of a small hill where she reportedly appears (possibly the place where she was hanged), a favored spot for the campfires of visitors who brave the night air in the Hollow. She was then buried in right there, where she was murdered. Bone yards are notoriously spooky without tragic histories, and Gurnsey Hollow hosts several more graves of children, contributing to the uneasy atmosphere. Which might explain other unnatural phenomenon visitors have consistently experienced; a little boy wandering the cemetery, following visitors to the entrance gate then disappearing. A lady in white hovering above the stones, another elderly woman who glares in judgement. Electric equipment that refuses to operate within the cemetery fence for no apparent reason; flashlights, cameras, phones, even vehicles that stall out on the way to the Hollow. And a consistent, overarching moaning that can’t be traced.
Chris Gethard, writing on the web site Weird U.S. says, “I am fascinated by every site I have visited in the course of researching and writing Weird NY. But none have intimidated me and frightened me as much as the Gurnsey Hollow Cemetery. My trip there was easily one of the more chilling experiences I have had in my entire life—including my five years in the employ of the Weird NJ/Weird US family of magazines and books, which have led me to visit hundreds of purportedly haunted sites personally. I don’t think words or even pictures can do justice to the atmosphere of this very unique and disturbing place.”
And there’s that little girl.
The basis of that legend, a young girl murdered because of some sort of mental affliction, has a puritan, purging, evil-mistaken-for-paranoia feel, Carrie and Salem witch burnings rolled into a narrative, supernatural phenomenon that has elements of legitimacy, if visitors are to be believed. The spectral girl puts up bright orbs, laughs at gravesite gawkers, follows people around the grounds, and even scratches them in her haunting. It’s a rare visitor who enters and leaves Gurnsey Hollow unaffected.