IT was called the most haunted house in England - and with good reason, it seems.
The Rev H D Bull built the rectory in the Essex village of Borley in 1863 to house his large family. Unfortunately, he built it on the route of Marie Lairre's nightly wanderings. Marie was a nun who met a violent death in the 17th Century and she soon made her ghostly presence felt at the rectory.
On several occasions Mr Bull saw her staring wistfully at him through his study window as he sat penning his sermons.
His response was to brick up the window. By 1929, however, the-then incumbent Eric Smith was sufficiently disturbed by unexplained phenomenon at Borley Rectory to accept help from psychic investigator Harry Price. Invisible hands tapped out messages on a mirror, sent vases dashing against walls, or made keys shoot from keyholes. Then a candlestick came flying at Price's head in a near miss.
Smith resigned, but the Rev Lionel Foster took on the rectory. Scribbled messages to his wife Marianne appeared on walls, begging "please get help" and asking her to light mass candles.
In 1937, Price and many others were able to investigate the unoccupied building. Something again hurled objects, and bricks were photographed apparently hovering in mid-air.
During a seance, Marie Lairre came through claiming that after being strangled on March 27, 1638, she had been buried nearby. Excavations were made, but nothing was found. Then, on February 27, 1939, the most haunted house in England was destroyed in a mysterious fire, as predicted at another seance by an entity named "Sunex Amures". Amid the flames, locals claimed to have seen a cowled nun at an upper window, as well as other unidentifiable shapes. Harry Price afterwards reported unearthing a skeleton in the cellar. It was that of a young woman.