BORLEY GHOST SOCIETY

Vince;
"This is a report of a trip I made to Virginia City Nevada with a group sponsored by [BGS Associate] Dave Oester of the Ghostweb web site...
"The Fourth Ward School, was less than a half block from our motel. When Dina and I returned Saturday night from the cemetery, this building loomed in front of us and I thought I should get some pictures of the exterior because there might be something at the windows, but the wind was doing 40 mph by this time and it was getting colder.
"However Sunday morning about 5am I woke and got a strong feeling I should walk across the street and take pictures of the exterior, so by 5:30 am I was dressed and walked across the street, the wind had died down a little. It was overcast but the dawn was breaking...I tried Polaroid with no results, the wind was starting to gust even at that early hour, so then I worked with the 35 mm and I just kept shooting up at the exterior windows.
"Three of the photos show the front center large arch type window with white ectoplasm material in the top half of the window, the next two shots show this starting to break up. I walked across the street to get the whole of the front of the building and this large center window is dark like all the rest of the windows, so whatever is forming in that window is not the morning clouds reflecting in the window. Of all the shots the side view showing two stories of windows is spectacular because in the bottom windows there is energy..the first window on the lower floor has the same kind of white stuff forming in it, the the second window has it only this window has bright spots in the white stuff , then the third window has shadows forming and in the top right corner there is a face (can't tell if it is the same face that I got on the Polaroid the day before, and this face is one floor below where that occurred) but the windows immediately above these windows on the second story are dark with no anomalies in them, so whatever is going on in the first floor windows can't be reflection of the morning sky because the second story windows facing the same direction would be getting the same type of reflections. Then there is a shot of the front exterior with the (hold on to your lens caps) what looks like either two small angels in the upper right corner of the second story window or two children. All the other windows are in this shot are dark.
"When I first got the 35 mm I thought well what a dummy you were Rehm to go out in the wind and the cold to get pictures..I did not catch on to what I had gotten until I looked at the front exterior shot that I took from across the street and realized that all the windows in the front of this building at this time of the morning were dark. So the ones with the odd white stuff in them could not be reflections of the morning overcast sky!
"[Fellow tour member] Dina called me this afternoon, and she's got the same image only instead of profile hers is full face. This puts some holes in the psychokinesis theory, how could two different women using two different types of cameras, impose the same image on film at different angles and in the same spot? And hey if Dina and I are that powerful we will open soon in Vegas with our magic act!
"And I got a face in a window in the Mark Twain Museum, however it is not Mr Samuel Clemens. One lady got a similar face on her digital camera. I called the offices of the Fourth Ward School today, the front of the building faces West ,the rear East, the wall with the two stories of windows where the top story windows are dark and the lower floor has all the action, faces south.
"Well, I can see another trip to Virginia City.
"So trust your instincts Ghostketeers.. see you on the email."
Regards,
Karen Rehm

Dear Vince;
"Regarding the novel "The Haunting of Hill House" resp. the movie "The Haunting". The original, excellent movie (starring Julie Harris and Claire Bloom) is now available on video cassette (MGM/UA - M600903). Highly recommended! Many sequences of the movie were filmed at Ettington Park Hotel, Ettington near Stratford-upon-Avon, GB. The house and the estate have an important record of different, highly intriguing paranormal occurrences. Last year I made several inquires on location.
"Ettington Park Hotel is located in a huge park, close to Halford on the main Stratford-upon-Avon to Oxford road. The village of Ettington is some 1,5 miles distant (and this for a sad reason). This century the estate was also used as a nursing home and a POW camp (Italian POW). It was the seat of the family Shirley (and is still owned by its descendants). The Shirleys were one of the oldest and most powerful but also rather savage Warwickshire families. The former village of Ettington was located where nowadays the hotel park is. In 1795 Evelyn Shirley promoted a bill in Parliament which resulted in the clearing and demolition of the village. The village and its inhabitants were re-settled to the actual Ettington village. In the park are still visible the ruins of the old village church as well of a few houses. Now this occurrence could be linked to one of the active hauntings in the library-bar, formerly the entrance hall. From time to time Sir Walter Scott’s epic "St Ronan’s Well", which is stored on a shelf in the library-bar hurtles across the room to the far end and always comes to rest face down and open at the same page. On it is written (I have a photocopy of this page):
A merry place, tis said, in days of yore,
But something ails it now, - the place is cursed.
"Nobody has ever seen the book flying through the room, but the first few pages of it are indeed in a very bad condition. The book is always found near the armchair nearest the entrance to the library-bar. The same bar is also notorious for poltergeist activities and a transparent Lady in Grey, who is also encountered on the stairs in the main hall (just adjacent to the library-bar). Also near the main entrance an apparition named Lady Emma is regularly seen. In the park are to be found the graves of two Shirley children. These two kids drowned in the nearby river Stour. Quite often guests strolling in the park hear children crying in distress. Alarmed and reporting it to the hotel staff, there are informed about the sad story of the drowning and the haunting. The crying of some children is also heard in the Stour suite and the Grey Lady is seen in room no. 7. Some of the hotel staff are afraid to walk alone through the hotel during in the night and they take the haunting open minded and quite serious.
"If any BGS members are interested in my photographic material on Ettington, they are kindly invited to contact the Fortean Picture Library of Janet and Colin Bord for the respective details and conditions."
With my best regards,
[Ettington photo copyright 1999 by]
Andreas Trottmann

Hello,
"I was an half an hour away from Borley yesterday [May 2], so I decided to go there. It looks by your photo's on the web that I saw the right church. I took a couple of pictures, but I do not know if they are any good because I was rushing. I did not want to upset anyone living there. It was a nice small peaceful village, so I can understand why they do not want publicity. I did not see any people around. I would have looked around the village more, but it was 7:30p.m. an hour before dark and we had a 3 1/2 hour drive home."
Cheers,
Carmen Hutchinson

Dear Borley Ghost Society,
"I first found out about Borley barely a year ago, and have already signed up. I live in New Zealand, am a part time Masters (in Mathematics) student, and part-time Librarian. It was the latter that enabled me to stumble across references to Borley, and I got two of the books The Haunting of Borley Rectory," and "The End of Borley Rectory". Not the usual order to read them in, but definitely interesting.
"Unlike most of the correspondents here, I haven't been to Borley, nor written major novels, or anything like that. Although if anyone knows of any interesting psychical phenomena in New Zealand, I'd like to hear about it.
"The reason why I'm writing is about a Borley reference I've come across. In The Society for Psychical Research 1882-1982: A History, by Renee Haynes. Chapter 6 is 'Fact, Fraud and Furor Scholastics'. This should tell you what sort of reference it is. It skims over some of the details about the hauntings of Borley, and talks about the controversy over Harry Price's books. It refers to The Haunting of Borley Rectory and the Hastings report and some letters in Proceedings.
"Strangely enough, when I looked through our Library's limited copies of Proceedings and Transactions for the Hastings report, I came across Dingwell et al's reply to it at the same time (which wasn't in the section above). Now there's a coincidence.
"I'll write again if I find any more references."
Jamas Enright

Terrance Dicks was kind enough to send me an autographed copy of The Borley Rectory Incident. This is the hard cover version. Picadilly Press is not available in the United States, and I'm at loggerheads with the company about providing copies on ghostbooks.com If associates find any copies at reasonable prices, let me know. After most titles run for a time, they are put in the "dead titles" list, and available at whopping discounts.

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