Investigating Crow Rock

Crow Rock, in Richhill Township, is a favorite haunt for local paranormal investigators. One of Greene County’s most brutal Indian attacks happened there in the late 18th century and it is said that something still lingers.

Because the event occurred over 220 years ago, there are many conflicting accounts of what happened, but the basic facts remain the same. On May 1, 1791, four of the Crow sisters were walking along the banks of the stream when they were brutally attacked by a group of Indians and a renegade white man.

The sisters were daughters of Jacob Crow, owner of Crow’s Mill, located 5 miles below Ryerson Station. The sisters – Christina (also referred to in accounts as Tena or Lena), Susanna (Susan), Elizabeth (Betsy) and Katherine (Katie) – aged 10 to 16, were walking along a nearby stream. While stopped, their older brother Michael paused there on his way home and offered the youngest sister a ride back. She declined, he told the sisters to be home soon and rode away. Not long after he left, several Indians and a white man, referred to as Spicer, attacked the sisters from their hidden location behind a rock ledge.

The sisters were carried a short distance away, where they were questioned before being murdered. Christina escaped from the person that held her and ran up a steep bank. While climbing, historical reports indicate that she was either shot or clubbed in the head with a gun. Her attacker left her for dead and went back to the other sisters, enabling Christina’s escape.

The search party returned in the morning and found two sisters, Susanna and Elizabeth, dead and Katherine missing. Badly beaten and scalped, she had crawled to a stream for water. She died three days later. The sisters were buried and their graves marked by undressed fieldstones with the year and their initials.

The rock, thought to be the place where the Indians had hid, had the sister’s names and the year engraved upon it. It was eventually moved from its original location to where it sits now. A memorial plaque sits nearby.

Due to this tragic backstory, the place is considered part of Greene County’s haunted history, making it a favorite of paranormal investigators. Outsider Paranormal has investigated the site often and experienced many intriguing situations. Phantom scratches, hair pulling, hoofbeats, and more have been recorded on their trips to the location.

I headed out to Crow’s Rock with Damon and Fred, as well as my husband Daytona, to experience Crow Rock first hand. We arrived around 9pm, dressed for the weather and prepared for whatever we might find. After parking, we headed up the trail towards the rock, pausing briefly at the memorial.

Damon shared some details from previous investigations here while Fred set the equipment up alongside the top part of the rock. The equipment consisted of two Maglites, a temperature, a K2, digital voice recorder, digital camera and a few other items. He pointed out a tree with a large knothole close to the rock where something had once lifted his brother’s ponytail into the air during an investigation. On another occasion, the sound of hoof beats were heard just before a friend was pushed down and appeared to be trampled by an unseen force.

“There’s no controlled environment here, we’re outside,” Damon says. “And there’s no guarantee of what we may talk to tonight. If you reach out, you could get in contact with anything that chooses to communicate.”

Once the equipment was set up, we began by each saying our names for the recorder, so that our voices would be able to be recognized, as well as our names, when the recordings were listened to later. After the introduction, Damon began asking questions to elicit a response from the spirits, while Fred recorded.

“If there is anybody here with us, can you make one of our devices light up,” Damon asked at the start of the session. Following his question, one of the Maglites lit up brightly. After that, Damon continued to ask questions. While asking, the temperature gauge fluctuated as low as 65 degrees and as high as 71, often seemingly in response to the direction of the questioning.

“Something was turning the light off and on, so it’s drawing the energy from the field around it. That’s going to make the temperature drop,” Damon says, in regards to why temperature fluctuations are often found near paranormal activity.

Damon continued his questions, asking for each of the Crow sisters by name. After receiving no response, he asked if Spicer was there. Once Damon mentioned Spicer, more of the equipment registered readings.

At this point in the investigation, Fred removed a spirit box from their equipment to conduct a spirit box session. A spirit box is used to contact spirits, through the use of radio frequency sweeps, done at a rapid rate of speed.

We moved down to the memorial to continue the session by the memorial. While we were by the memorial, the Maglite continued to light up and draw our attention away from the memorial towards the rock, creating an unsettling atmosphere.

Being outside, it was often difficult to tell what sounds we were hearing and where they were coming from. In the Greene County hills, sounds can travel great distances and many animals roam the woods at night. But during the investigation, we did hear some strange, unexplained sounds around us. Not long after out spirit box session, a car drove by our location and parked a little farther up the road. With the noise of the other group of people causing interference, we finished our investigation and headed home, with some interesting points to ponder and discuss.

Published in October 2019 GreeneScene Magazine.