Murderess or martyr? Psychic or psychological misfit? Philanderer or deliverer? Mary Anne Emily Rebecca Shaw Greenwood Foyster Fisher O'Neil was called all those things during her incredible and unique life. There were two distinct parts of her dramatic lifetime which she tried desperately to keep separated. The first 47 years of her life spent in Canada and the United Kingdom were hidden in trunks and laced with intrigue. The last 45 years of her life spent in America were devoted to survival and an intenseneed to help others.

Marianne became the subject of extreme scrutiny on both sides of the ocean. Investigators from Canada, Britain, and the United States delved deeply into her life. They tried hard to open every door to every closet she ever touched. The investigators found a great deal, but they didn't find it all.

The first half of her life was kept locked away not only from researchers, but also from me - her son. When I accidentally tripped over the skeletons in her life, I was in absolute shock and amazement. As my search into the past intensified, I uncovered more and more secrets about this fantastic woman. It read like fiction, but one by one the facts were revealed tome. I became the focal point for gathering facts, and those who knew her best became my mentors. The confidential information they shared with me has never been published - until now.

In this book - for the first time anywhere - the secrets can finally be told about one of the most incredible women of the 20th Century - my mother.

For almost fifty years I had no idea my mother was the most haunted woman in England. I never realized I would some day be called "TheSon of Borley." Since I never really knew who I was, I grabbed onto any story that gave me some clue. Over the years, I pieced together the following synopsis - it was the best I could do.

May 1944 - A man and a woman are about to eat dinner in a restaurant in England during the war. A bomb explodes, cleanly removing one of the walls to the building. A waiter dusts off the table and asks the couple for their order.

The man is very thin, which makes him appear taller than his actual height of five feet, eight inches. Even though he is in the military, he has a shock of thick brown hair that tends to be unruly. When he lets his beard grow, it is red. A long, crooked nose makes observers think this man has been in several fights. His hazel eyes dance over everything and everyone as he soaks up all he can of this foreign land. He is 24 years old.

She is even shorter than her companion, and also has a prominent nose. While her face is pleasant enough, she is somewhat overweight. Her captivating brown eyes contain knowledge the soldier is anxious to learn. She is older than her companion, but then, a woman never tells her age, does she. Their eyes meet as they both reach for the water carafe.

A Bentley waits patiently for them outside, and after dinner it carries them through darkened streets to a remote countryside. The entire nation is in a blackout, which makes the stars brighter and more abundant. They stop to gaze upward, and together they become lost as the vast universe sweeps them up. They hold each other tightly.

The couple is acutely aware there are plans afoot for the biggest invasion in history. An invasion that will separate them, and perhaps even end their relationship forever. She has already seen more than her share of this horrible war. A war that has destroyed so much of humanity and that has robbed her of her beloved brother. She comes from a wealthy family back in Maine, and only came to England to further her education, not to become part of history. He belongs to honest but hardworking farm stock in Minnesota, and marvels that this wonderful woman would be so willing to share her life with him.

April 1945 - During an air raid, the woman from the restaurant stumbles down a darkened stairway. She is two months pregnant, and prays the baby is unhurt. The woman wears a civil defense uniform and carries a heavy stick. She will use the stick on any man who cries out in fear of the bombs. She does not want anyone to panic as she ushers them to the fallout shelters.

The man from the restaurant wasn't involved in D-day, but has been transferred to France in a support role as the war winds down. He drives a mail truck, but the anxiety of what could happen to him causes his hair to temporarily go completely gray.

May 7, 1945 - Germany capitulates. The war is over.

August 11, 1945 - Marianne Emily Rebecca Fisher Foyster marries Robert Vincent O'Neil in the Register Office, Ipswich, England. She is a 32-year-old widow and lists "high school teacher" as her profession. Her father is Shaw Fisher (deceased), a "medical practitioner." He is a 29-year-old bachelor and lists "Engineer's Erector, Railway Plant and Sluice Manufacturer" as his profession. His father is Vincent O'Neil (deceased), a "farmer."

The couple considered themselves married in God's eyes during the terrible turmoil of the war, and have now made it official. They live at 229 Ranelaugh Road in Ipswich.

November 2, 1945 - Robert Vincent O'Neil Jr. is born at 2:00 P.M. in the Nursing Home 54B at Rosehill Road, Ipswich, Suffolk, England. His father has ben sent over to France and cannot be present at the birth. During his infancy, Vincent contracts "Camp Fever." Some German prisoners of war help nurse the child back to health.

January 1946 - Robert O'Neil returns to Caledonia Minnesota, USA. He has served in the U.S. Army for five years, and will now resume farming. He is most anxious for his wife and new son to join him.

May 20, 1946 - The birth of Vincent is registered at the American Embassy in London. The mother will do anything to rejoin her husband. Anything.

She sends a picture of "Junior" to her new in-laws whomshe has never met.

Summer, 1946. A happy time as mother and child rejoin the proud father at his mother's homestead. They will live in an empty house owned by the Malay family just up the ridge from the main house. Everyone is excited for the new couple and the bright future that awaits them. Pictures are taken. Before long, Robert moves his new family a few miles away to Hokah, Minnesota as he prepares to set up a plumbing business.

The child becomes known as "Vincey." His mother calls him"Vinny."

For 49 long years, the preceding story was my only memory of the way things probably happened. I had no real facts to back up those memories,only vague anecdotes told to me as I was growing up. I had no way of knowing how much of the story was true - or if any of it was factual. Whenever I asked for details, all I got back was a glare or a curse. It was really none of my business. Our past was to be a deep, dark secret.

During my youth, I became quite adept at sneaking through drawers and jewelry boxes trying to find out who I was. Quite often, I felt like I was digging for buried treasure. Each hunt turned up something new and wonderful and I enjoyed the mysterious search for my identity.

My mother was a pack rat. For the most part, the documents and letters from her past were stashed wherever there was room. I would carefully peelaway a layer, then another, and then still another. After I was done, I'd carefully replace everything just as I had found it. If I had taken any item, she never would have missed it, but I didn't remove anything until my last visit to her Wisconsin home in October of 1991.

At that time, I put a few things in a trunk of mine in her attic, wrote down a few notes, and brought home a small handful of original documents and letters. I figured when I came back to help Mom move to my home in Utah, I'd retrieve my trunk and that would be that. I never saw that trunk again.

Before 1991, I had written down some of the facts - "just in case."I was so glad I did. Those few scattered clues were all I had to guide me on my search. They hinted at a sister named Astrid and an uncle killed while fighting the Germans. They told me my mother was probably married to someone named Foyster before she met my father. What they did not tell me was anything about who my mother really was, or even who I really was. I couldn't even find any definitive proof of my own birth.

Growing up was hard. We were always poor, and my father was an alcoholic. We moved around a great deal and that meant changing schools quite often. Every time a school administrator would ask for my records, I dutifully reported the request to my mother. She would get furious and take it out on me. "What do they need all this stuff for?" she would fume."It's none of their damn business! Can't you tell them to stop prying into matters that do not concern them!"

I didn't know where I came from, so one day I invented a story about being born in a tank. It took Mom decades to forgive me for that one. I couldn't figure out why I had huge scars on my knees, so I told everyone that I was so big when I was born - one ounce shy of ten pounds - the doctors had to break my legs to get me out. Mom didn't like that story, either.

Still, she would never volunteer any information, so I began digging around in drawers and boxes, trying to figure it out for myself. Over the years, I found some very interesting stuff. I had no idea what it all meant, or how it related to me. Somehow, I felt some of the answers were in England. There just wasn't enough to go on, however. To fill in the gaps, I concocted some really weird stories in my mind, including one about my mother being a German spy.

Mom did tell me she was the daughter of a doctor who lived in Aroostook, Maine. He was the greatest man in the Northeast! One time, while driving his horse and buggy back from a lumber camp, some robbers dropped out of the trees and stopped him. He told the man holding the gun, "Put that thing away, it might go off." He told the man holding his horse,"Let go of that horse, he bites." Then, her dad calmly told his horse, "Git up, Frank," and that was the end of that!

There was disease in the woods, and as a little girl she remembered bodies wrapped in sheets. She waited for her father in the buggy after one patient had died. Eventually, it was camp fever that claimed her father, well before his time.

I pictured my mother's home much the way Clarence Day describes his house in Life With Father. Very Victorian. Very clean, neat, and mannerly. An example I have always yearned to follow. The aristocratic photos we carried carefully from place to place were mysteriously never identified, but I did hear the name "von Kiergraff" from time to time and just knew we had royalty in our heritage.

Mom told me when she was growing up her family had a white carpet, and that seemed symbolic of their life. Maids. Rich furniture. Respect. Because they lived in a bustling community near a logging camp, my mother had to learn many languages so she could answer the phone intelligently for the doctor. Responsibility. Everyone took care of their own pets, and that included the time Mom had to shoot her horse after it broke its leg.

She told me she had many aunts, so she had been named for all of them. She rattled off about six or seven names one time, smiled, and then laughed. She always enjoyed talking about the Maine woods and her home.

One memory she didn't enjoy was the time a maid tied her to her bed and turned out the lights so she could entertain a boyfriend. She told me that was scary.

Although she lost her real mother, it didn't affect her because the poor lady died at childbirth and the daughter never knew her. There was a stepmother, however, and Marianne Emily Rebecca etc. later repented of the hard times she gave that lady when she was growing up.

If the little girl didn't get what she wanted, she had a trusty line that brought her stepmother to tears and produced whatever she desired:"You aren't my real mother. If you were my real mother, you'd know that I need that."

My mother said she lost a brother, too - her only real brother apparently.Although she had stepbrothers, she really missed this young man very much. He was a pilot during World War II, and there were suspicions that his plane was sabotaged by "fifth columnists." Mom always used to say, "It's not the enemy you face that you have to fear."

Before the war, Mom was tearing up the books, and the road. By studying French verbs during visits to the bathroom, and by copying a page out of the dictionary every day, she was able to attend college by age 17. She received a car for high school graduation. She also liked to sneak rides on a friend's motorcycle, much to her fathers chagrin.

I clearly remembered a picture of my mother being held aloft by a ballet dancer. She told me she was once engaged to a Russian prince, but that her father put a stop to that because he was a Jew. I always imagined the prince and the ballet partner were one and the same person.

As a young woman growing up, it was clear my mother could concentrate on her lessons. She won a scholarship, and graduated from Wakefield College of Cambridge in London, England with a Master of Arts (High Order) January 7, 1939. The certificate listed disciplines in psychology, English, scripture, sociology, and humanities. She told me she had intended to be a doctor, like her father, but became nauseated during vivisection classes.

When pressed, Mom always told me she was born in 1920, the same year as my Dad. However, a quick look at the Cambridge degree told me she would be only 19 when she received her masters! Not realistic. Without telling her, I sent away for a copy of her marriage certificate. It said she was born in 1913. That would make her 26 when she graduated - still not too shabby for anyone to be receiving that type of degree!

England remained a vague reference while I was a child - lurking in the background. Dad told me there was lots of property "over there."It had been taken over by the English government during the war as part of the "Defense of the Realm." It became a staging area for tanks. If she had wanted to, my Mother could have gone back and claimed the land, but she didn't. I couldn't figure out why not, since we were always so dirt poor.

I grabbed on to as many of these stories as I could. I had no reason to believe the majority of them were not true. Those that I doubted still became a part of my heritage - I had to believe in something.

Many years later, my mother was busy at the Committee on Aging office in Lacrosse, Wisconsin when she collapsed from a stroke. It was November 28, 1990. A woman who was visiting the office helped her to the hospital, and they evetualy became very close. By the time I arrived from my home in Utah, she was recovering nicely. She didn't like hospitals at all, and it wasn't long before she regained her full speech and mobility. I went back to Utah and my mother went back to work.

In October of 1991, my son Robert was about to leave Holmen, Wisconsin for Brussels Belgium. He was to serve a two-year mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Later-day Saints. I visited Wisconsin in order to hear his "farewell" at church and I stayed at my mother's house in LaCrosse. She asked me to take her ancient Bible back with me to Utah, but I told her that although I was very anxious for the book to remain in the family, I didn't want to take it with me on the airplane for fear it would be damaged. I asked her not to sell it, and told her I would be back for it another time. In my mind, I pictured her moving to Utah, and us packing her effects one last time. I figured there would be plenty of time to obtain the Bible then - I was so afraid she might think me greedy.

During my visit, she recited the rhymes and proverbs she had told me over the years and we talked about getting them published. She wondered if my son David would illustrate each proverb with a picture. Most of the lines were uniquely hers, and I agreed they would make a great book - someday. At the time, however, my heart wasn't in it as I typed the familiar lines for her.

Some time later back in Utah, I decided to take a picture of the surroundings close to Adams Place Retirement Home in Ogden, Utah. I figured if my mother could see how pretty the area was, she would move out to Utah. There were too many clouds for a good picture, so I went inside to ask the desk clerk if there were any pictures I could buy. I had visited before, so the man was familiar with my quest. He quietly informed me my mother was upstairs in Room 225!

After picking myself up off the floor, I went upstairs, and sure enough - there was my mother!

My mother's new friend told me they left LaCrosse to get away from a number of troubles. They literally left in the middle of the night, without telling anyone. I later discovered that several of my mother's friends were hurt by her secret and sudden disappearance. It was February 19, 1992.

My mother and I spent as much time together as we could, trying to make up for decades of lost time. It wasn't easy, however, as I was a single parent with a very demanding job. I knew I should be spending more time with my mother than I was able to, and by December 18, it was too late. She died before we really had a chance to talk things over.

Later, I learned that my mother's new friend had January 26, 1899 written on the death certificate as Mom's birth date. That would have made her 93 years old."Impossible," I exclaimed to myself.

Mom was cremated, and in a few days I began to miss her terribly. I wished very hard she would come back and tell me, "Everything is allright, Vinny. Everything will be just fine." I wanted her to tell me if all those things were true. I wanted desperately for her to tell me the secrets she had kept all those years. Surely, now that she was dead, she could come and tell me the truth? Nothing happened.

Then on August 2, 1994, I received copies of the following two letters from an attorney in LaCrosse who was helping me with probate:

From: T.P.
LaCrosse, Wisconsin June 29, 1994

To: Head, Gifts & Exchanges
Smithsonian Institution Libraries
Washington, D.C. 20560

Re: Estate of Marianne O'Neil

Dear Ms. B:

Please be advised that I have been contacted by members of the Foyster family, regarding the "ancient and historical Matthew Edition of the Bible...," willed to the Smithsonian by Marianne E. O'Neil

It has been brought to my attention that the Bible in question was and never has been Marianne's to dispose of. This Bible has been passed down throughout the Foyster family for hundreds of years, with the intention of it never leaving the family. Marianne E. O'Neil was only a "Foyster"by reason of an illegal, bigamous marriage to the Rev. Lionel Foyster. When Reverend Foyster passed away, Marianne fled to the United States, with the Bible and other Foyster possessions. She was at that time under investigation for the murder (suspected) of Reverend Lionel A. Foyster.

It is with great remorse that I feel I have to tell you the facts concerning this matter. These facts have been confirmed to me by Marianne herself in May of 1992, when she asked me to help her return the Bible to the Foyster family, in England. Her massive stroke was ill fated. I arrived in Utah on August 26, 1992 and she had a massive stroke on August 27, 1992 at 10:30A.M., rendering her unable to change the will.

It is my impression that I may be called to testify in a legal action to determine the ownership of the Bible. The above-mentioned facts are what I believe I would be required to state. It is not my intention to add undo stress to the situation at hand. I was unaware of all of this prior to becoming the Power of Attorney and being designated Personal Representative to the will. I apologize for having to divulge this information at this time. I have been advised by Attorney [for the estate], J.K.F., to send the Bible in question at this time to facilitate the will. Please feel free to contact me, should you decide you need further information.

Sincerely,
T.P.

From: Mrs. Adelaide C.
Mxxxxxxxx
England
Phone number: XXXXXX
June 30, 1994

To Whom It May Concern:

As the only daughter of the late Lionel A. Foyster and Marianne O'Neil, I am writing to you re-the Foyster "Matthew Bible."

It has come to my attention that this "Family Bible" is now in your possession. And as I was told many years ago, it was always to be retained in the Foyster family. I feel I should have a claim to it, and that it should never have left England with M. O'Neil.

...The Bible has no historical interest in the U.S.A...

I am yours truly,

Mrs. Adelaide C.
Formerly Adelaide Foyster

After reading those letters, I remained in a state of shock for several hours. The name "Foyster" and the phone number in England were the first concrete links I had ever had to solving the mystery of my identity. As soon as I could calm down enough to hold a phone, I called Adelaide. I was extremely nervous and my voice shook very badly.

It didn't surprise me much when Adelaide told me, "I know nothing about you." I was extremely relieved to hear her say she knew nothing of any "suspicious death." I could tell she was very uncomfortable talking to me. However, she did agree to answer a letter of inquiry if I sent one. I was extremely agitated, but was able to mail her a letter within three hours.

I faxed my attorney a note asking if I abandoned my claim to the Bible, would that eliminate any court hearing? My first reason was to smooth relations with any potential relatives or other sources of information. Eventually,the Bible was sent to her.

Now, I had "met" Adelaide. I had a few scraps of papers and some foggy memories. With these few clues, I started my search. My next step was the Internet. The real story of Marianne was about to unravel.

The ghosts were waiting for me. I only had to open the door and let them in.