This is an old Franciscan friary in Middleburgh, NY. It was converted by father Bruce Ritter to a Covenant House location in upstate NY in 1972.
My mom was the executive director and we ( my mom, me, and my 4 siblings) moved in the spring of 1972. We had the left wing, first floor as our "home". There were three married couples who made up the counseling staff of 6 reporting to my mom and about 20 kids assigned by the state and other charities for counseling.
The property was just over 100 acres built into the side of a mountain. The Franciscans had converted the chicken coop into an observatory complete with sliding roof, built a baseball diamond, and installed a full court basketball court on the second floor of the barn. There was also a chapel you can see in the picture on the far right with secret passages and a tunnel to the barn complete with several locked doors under the basement. There was a pond in the back and a large garden where the hippy counsellors grew lots of home grown vegetables and herb. Seemed perfect!
The town had about 1,200 residents and most thought the old friary was haunted and some wouldn't let their kids go near the place or hang out with us (plus, we were from the big city and surely would corrupt their innocent children).
Almost from the time we moved in weird things happened. My sisters bed would be turned 90 degrees. Doors would be locked and then suddenly not. Many other similar things happened. One day I was playing ball with several friends and the ball went over the side fence landing in a small overgrown area that had been a grave site for Franciscans long ago. While we were looking for the ball, one of my friends found a small slab about 2' X 3' sitting on top of a 3" block. We though it was a grave marker that fell over but looked a lot older than the other ones still standing. We tried to lift it to see what it said on the front and discovered that it was actually covering a steep staircase that went down angling towards the barn.
Nobody wanted to go down the stairs as about four feet down, they disappeared into darkness. I went in the house to get my brothers walker talkies and a flashlight. When. I came back, my friends had "volunteered" one to go down while the rest of us talked to them on the walkie talkie. Down my friend Clayton went. We told him to keep talking and describe everything he was seeing. He said it went down about eight feet and continued straight ahead. About twenty feet in, he said it made a sharp right turn heading towards the chapel. He said he was going around the corner and then he stopped talking. We kept calling him and telling him to stop fooling around, but he never responded. As we were trying to figure out who would go get him, the Wilkie talkie started buzzing and clicking and suddenly we heard a deep dry voice say, "fools".
Clayton came running up the stairs tears in his eyes and clearly terrified. He kept running back towards the Friary and we followed. One of the counselers hearing our commotion came out of the house and others soon joined. I told them what happened and they were clearly irritated and skeptical. My mom drove the others home and I showed the other counselers where we were. Two of them went down the stairs and said that we needed to stop telling stories, the stairs ended and the passage way was bricked up about 10 feet in creating a dead end. They made me promise I would never go back there and the following week a cement truck showed up and dumped ten yards of concrete in the opening sealing it up completely.
My friends and I never talked about it and none of them would ever come back. The friary closed a year later and reopened as an old folks home some years after that.
I never went back, but the friary is still there off route 145. Perched up on the hill overlooking the Schoharie valley below. I recommend you check it out if you are ever in upstate NY.