My new book, The New York Grimpendium, was just released and, like its predecessor The New England Grimpendium, covers my experiences traveling to hundreds of death-related locations and artifacts in the region. Below is one of a series of photo essays from sites in the book that I’ll be posting over the next few weeks. If you live in or like New York, the book is for you. If you’re a bit morbid, the book is also for you, even if you’ve never been to the Empire State. After all, death is a punch line we all get.
October 7, 2012 — Rolling Hills Asylum is a big, spooky, abandoned institutional building with a checkered past and a paranormal present. It sits at a desolate intersection outside of the town of East Bethany. In nicer seasons, the 185-year-old crumbling edifice overlooks fields of corn and swaths of thick forest. However, my private and lonely tour of this hollow monster took place during a January snowstorm. It was creepy. It was cold. And it made me wonder if the afterlife is no more than this:
