Time to bury Borley?
1999 is the 70th
anniversary of Borley Rectory first gaining national
prominence in the press in 1929 and the 60th anniversary of the destruction of
the infamous building by fire. A considerable literature has accumulated over
the years on the haunting of Borley in Essex, centred on the infamous Borley
Rectory and a comprehensive bibliography of book length could probably be
produced by anyone sufficiently interested.Books on
the haunting include: "The Most Haunted House in England" (1940) and
"The End of Borley Rectory"(1945) by Harry
Price which cover the periods both before and during Prices's
investigations which started in 1929 and argue for paranormal explanations to
the phenomena. Against these are "The Haunting of Borley
Rectory"(1956) by Eric Dingwall, K.M. Goldney and Trevor Hall which seeks to demolish the reports
accumulated by Price as the result of malobservation
and fraud. A report by the Society for Psychical Research partly rehabilitated Borley in 1969 as did "The Ghosts of Borley" (1973) by Peter Underwood and Paul Tabori, who between them had the experience of meeting and
corresponding with a great number of the witnesses in the saga.
More recently attention has
switched to some of these characters themselves. Freed from the restraints of
libel law and the sensitivity of relatives, revelations have poured out
concerning the some of these witnesses. In its history the Rectory contained at
least two people suspected of murder, a serial bigamist, and a fascist inclined
arsonist, the last owner Captain Gregson. It was Gregson who burnt the place down in 1939 in an attempted
insurance swindle and tried to blame the ghosts. It is hardly suprising that Borley Rectory was
the inspiration to would-be novelists even when standing.
The entire haunting has
been dismissed by Robert Chambers in "The Widow of Borley"
(1993) which is largely a critcal biography of
Marianne Foyster and contains plenty of sensational theorising and inferences about her private life and that
of one of her husbands (she had five bigamous marriages) the disabled Rev.
Lionel Foyster. The book even implies she may have
ultimately murdered Foyster. Allegations concerning
fraud by Harry Price have been kicked back and forth over the years and as
recently as 1997 there has been fresh debate in the Journal of the Society for
Psychical Research about his deliberate mislabelling
of a photograph of a falling brick.
Some revelations have been
included in pro-paranormal books such as "The Enigma of Borley Rectory" (1996) by Ivan Banks (edited by Andrew
Green and foreword by Tom Perrott) which has been
very thoroughly researched (Reviewed in previous GC Newsletter). Ivan Banks has
uncovered proof that the rector who built Borley
Rectory, the Rev. H.E. Bull, died from syphyllis.
During his incumbency a serving maid died also in mysterious circumstances and
false enteries concerning her death and burial were
entered in the church register. Spiritualist in outlook, Banks even discusses
the possibility that a ghost may have put the idea in Gregson's
mind to set the fire, in an attempt to draw attention to its plight.
With this racy literature
emerging, it might be thought the whole Borley story
is now beyond the pale and is best consigned to history.
However, while critics of
the Borley saga have concentrated on the work of
Price, the evidence for hauntings by no means rests
on the evidence of colourful characters between 1929-45. Philip Paul in "Some Unseen
Power" (1985) argues that an impressive case for hauntings
at the Rectory, a nearby cottage and the Church can be made from accounts of
individuals both before and after the involvment of
Price. Often overlooked (because of its rarity ) is a
privately printed volume "Haunted Borley"
by the Rev A.C. Henning who succeeded the Rev. Foyster
as Rector in 1935.
There are also numerous
accounts from individuals who have visited the site of the Rectory and the
church since 1945 and believe they have encountered ghostly phenomena. These
sightings have never been properly collated to my knowledge.(See
for example, a ghostly mist described in "Haunted East Anglia"(1974)
by Joan Foreman. The number of witnesses has been put in various sources as at
least two hundred and probably there are many more who
have never been recorded. I have met three people who stated that they believed
themselves to have seen ghosts in the area; a man who was in a car that
encountered a spectral pedestrian on the
Arguably, the number of
accounts and the range of phenomena described deserve study as
a psychological phenomena, if nothing else. Perhaps Borley
is nearest in comparison to a UFO flap area where alleged UFO sightings seem to
cluster. On the other hand, so-called "flap areas" may indicate
nothing more than the presence or interest of particularly diligent and
tenacious researchers. If nothing else, Borley
provides evidence of the importance of studying the witness as much as the
alleged phenomena that may be described.