Ghost Caught on Trail Cam near Holy Hill

Holy Hill Art Farm recently shared an image they say was captured on the property that appears to show a creepy figure standing at the edge of a cornfield.

“Our trail camera, set up in the southwest corn field, captured a very creepy figure walking along the edge of the field,” they wrote in a statement on Facebook. “The camera (with no possible easy access from the road) is a motion sensor camera and only takes pictures when something triggers the device, which almost proves that the figure must have been moving for the camera to have taken a photo. The figure looks like a tall thin woman in some sort of nightgown or dress. The figure is almost as tall as the corn and if that isn’t’ creepy enough, we can make out another smaller image behind ‘her’.”

Here is the image they shared:

Commenters noted what appears to be someone wearing an old-fashioned dress, a child playing with a “paranormal pooch.”

“People see what they want to see, ” one Facebook user wrote. “As a farmer I see a piece of silage film blowing around in the wind.”

Another poster says the photo wasn’t even from the Holy Hill Art Farm at all, but was taken on their family’s land on St. Patrick’s Road in the town of Erin in 2013, and shared in a paranormal Facebook group in 2021.

Is Holy Hill Haunted?

Is Holy Hill Cemetery haunted by the ghost of a murderous recluse?

The Holy Hill area is fertile ground for the paranormal. The hill where the basilica stands today has been known for its miraculous healing powers for more than 150 years, as evidenced by the eyeglasses, crutches and other items left behind by those who no longer needed them. Many visitors believe they have been cured of cancer and other ailments during their time on the hill – miracles attributed, of course, to God or Mother Mary.

But the hill has stood longer than Christianity, and the land around it is teeming with otherworldly legends and lore that speak to something darker and more mysterious than the dusty dogma of the 2,000-year-old superstitions represented there today.

Holy Ghosts & Monsters

Visitors have reported a strange mist in the Carmalite Cemetery in the woods below Holy Hill, particularly at night. The mist moves in quickly, envelopes them, then forms into the shape of a man with clearly defined features before vanishing.

Some believe the figure is the apparition of Francois Soubrio, the reclusive man known as the Hermit of Holy Hill, who traveled there in the mid-1800s in search of the “sacred hill” dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary that he discovered in an old travel diary and parchment map dated 1676.

According to legend, Soubrio traveled to Holy Hill to pray for forgiveness for murdering his girlfriend in a jealous rage. On the journey, he became stricken with an illness (or divine punishment) that left him partially paralyzed. Still, he made his way to the hill, crawled to the top, and spent the entire first night in prayer. By morning, he had been cured.

Soubrio befriended local farmers and eventually shared his story. He lived on the hill for seven years, and then vanished.

Word of his miraculous healing began to spread throughout the community and beyond, and by the 1890s the land was littered with the braces and crutches of those who also found healing at the summit of Miracle Hill.

Today, the apparition of the hermit is said to still travel along the path from where his crudely constructed cabin had been to the place where he had spent countless hours on his knees in prayer at the base of the old cross that stood there.

There have also been sightings and encounters with other strange creatures such as the Bearwolf (misreported as Bigfoot when it stole a deer carcass from a county contractor’s truck) and the murderous Goatman of Hogsback Road nearby.

A small farm sitting in the shadow of Holy Hill was featured on an episode of The Dead Files, where a terrified family was tormented by a massive, shadowy evil. According to medium Amy Allan, the land “suffers from a curse that hinders the lives of the living.”