sadly, this priest was incorrect. there are many Greek sources where you can find the toll houses -- Elder Ephraim, Elder Joseph, Elder Paisios, St. Porphyrios, Met. Hierotheos Vlachos, Archimandrite Vasilios Bakoyiannis, Constantine Cavarnos, Nikolaos P. Vassiliadis
, not to mention the many Fathers who wrote about them who were a bunch of Greeks ...
as for hymns, if you were to look through every text of the Church -- the Octoechos, the Menaion, the Triodion, the Pentecostarion, etc you will start to find references to this reality popping up frequently enough. These pages contain just a few of the many references:
Evidence for the Tradition of the Toll Houses found in the Universally Received Tradition of the Church
St. Michael Academy Orthodox Bible College
Answer to a Critic: Appendix III from The Soul After Death
We realize that there are some Greek elders that refer to it, but it's not in our tradition to interpret it that way. The way I understand it, it's more in the Russian tradition. I am indifferent to it, personally. Meaning I'm not against it or totally for it. What my husband said is that the view of the toll houses is the life we are living on earth - spiritual warfare - and not after we pass. That's his understanding/belief, and Elder Paisios is his favorite elder/saint. We do know it's in the Akathist..well, it's mentioned about her guiding our souls to her Son, keeping the demons away.
Also, there's nothing mentioned in it in the Dogmatic Teachings of the Church in my archdiocese:
The Holy Spirit of God, working through the Church and its sacramental life, leads the plan of salvation in Christ to completion and final fulfillment. The final battle with evil that operates in the world will occur just before the coming again of the Lord. In the meantime, the struggle against evil and dark forces in the world continues, with some victories on behalf of the Church, and with some failures on behalf of some of its members. This is the normal condition of the life of the Church, which is the inaugurated Kingdom of God, and which, however, has not yet come fully. Two distinct stages are to be recognized, in terms of Christian Orthodox eschatology: that of a "partial judgment," of a "partial" or "realized" eschatology, and that of a "final judgment," at the coming again of the Lord, which will come at the end of time.
a) Partial judgment - the hour of our death
Our physical death, a consequence of the first man's sin that we still suffer, can be seen in two ways:
negatively, as a kind of catastrophe, especially for those who do not believe in Christ and life everlasting in Him; and
positively, as the end of a maturation process, which leads us to the encounter with our Maker. Christ has destroyed the power of the "last enemy," death (1 Cor. 18:26).
A Christian worthy of the name is not afraid of this physical death insofar as it is not accompanied by a spiritual or eternal (eschatological) death.
A partial judgment is instituted immediately after our physical death, which places us in an intermediate condition of partial blessedness (for the righteous), or partial suffering (for the unrighteous).
Disavowing a belief in the Western "Purgatory," our Church believes that a change is possible during this intermediate state and stage. The Church, militant and triumphant, is still one, which means that we can still influence one another with our prayers and our saintly (or ungodly) life. This is the reason why we pray for our dead. Also, almsgiving on behalf of the dead may be of some help to them, without implying, of course, that those who provide the alms are in some fashion "buying" anybody's salvation.
http://www.goarch.org/ourfaith/ourfaith8038
