A Third Trip to the Hill House Manor

Date: August 1, 2025 

Location: Hill House Manor, Gainesville, Texas 

After almost 13 years, it was time to revisit the Hill House Manor, which we last investigated in November 2012. While we and the house have aged a bit over the last decade, much of it was just the same as we remembered, and this time granddaughter Lilly went with us for her first visit to the unique, historic house.

At some point in its history, the house appears to have been used as three separate apartments. The downstairs portion of the two-story house is divided in half by the staircase and foyer. To the left upon entry is a door leading to a furnished living room, dining room, bathroom, and kitchen, and to the right is a semi-unfinished part of the house with several rooms used for storage and an old well that has been unearthed and enclosed with plexiglass. Upstairs is another set of semi-furnished rooms, including a partial kitchen, pass-through bathroom, living room, and bedroom.We set up our base station and monitor in the living room on the furnished side of the house, which can be closed off from the un-air conditioned foyer, upstairs, and unfinished half of the downstairs. Much as with our first two visits, the entities of the house seemed to prefer playing games with us rather than giving us any crystal clear evidence. We experienced a variety of personal encounters from hearing voices and getting EMF spikes to seeing things move that weren’t really moving at all. One of the most common occurrences throughout the night was having the motion sensing “cat toy” balls light up along the staircase when no one was near the stairs or even moving through the house. Multiple times throughout the night while one or two team members were either in the unfinished half of the downstairs or upstairs sitting quietly or doing an EVP session, those of us watching the infrared cameras on our monitor would see the light-up balls flashing for several seconds at a time. Often these triggers would be associated with a small orb or two as well. A couple of clips of this are included below.

Similarly, in the upstairs kitchen there is a table with cards, bottles, and another of the motion sensor cat toy/balls on it. Don had several instances of the lights on the ball going off while he was sitting at the table asking questions. When testing why the sensor may have been triggered, it seemed that either pretty firm force had to be applied to the table or direct contact made with the ball. 

We also had several interesting auditory experiences, most of which our recorders did not pick up. Early on in the evening while Beverly and I were upstairs alone in the back toy/sun room, we both heard a single word spoken by a male voice from the front bedroom. John and Don were both downstairs in rooms with doors closed, so it is unlikely a single word of any conversation they may have been having would have travelled upstairs to us. Later on, Beverly heard a single cat’s meow in the unfinished downstairs area.There was no cat in the house, and we heard no other animal noises from outside or inside the house the rest of the night. At one point while Don and Beverly were upstairs in the sunroom they heard what sounded like a metal tray dropping onto tile coming from the adjacent bathroom, but they couldn’t find any source for the sound. Our audio recorders didn’t pick up any of these sounds. 

However, Don had one experience in the upstairs kitchen of a sound being picked up on his recording very plainly that he didn’t hear out loud. While he got no voice responses to any questions on his recorder during his many EVP sessions, the recorder did pick up a brief instance of what sounded like a hard plastic bead or marble bouncing and rolling (like the sound of the marble in a spinning roulette wheel), and nothing of the sort occurred while he was in the room. The brief audio clip of this can be heard below.

Throughout the early part of the night, it seemed as though the odd occurrences we had on our previous visit to the house were not going to be repeated. However, a few hours into the investigation, Don experienced a repeat of the same dancing red camera lights he and John had seen back in 2012. We again had an infrared camera set up in one of the front rooms facing down the hall towards the “muder room” at the back of the house. Again on this visit, the same phenomenon occurred where it looked to Don as though the infrared camera in the other room was moving on the table, rotating in circles and moving side-to-side several inches at a time. However, Lilly and I were not able to see this when we each joined him on separate occasions, and it was clear from the video feed that the camera never actually moved. Once again, just as in 2012, the entire experience seemed to be mentally projected for only certain members of the team to see. 

Hayley.