As promised in the last update, we now present the follow-up
to our special
presentation on ghost hunter, Harry Price. This piece
features BORLEY RECTORY,
the most famous and controversial part of Harry Price's
career.
We hope you enjoy it and it follows below. Let us know what
you think!
The most famous case in the career of Harry Price was
undoubtedly that of
Borley Rectory, a deteriorating house in Essex.
The tiny parish of Borley is located in a desolate, sparsely
populated area
near the east coast of England, near the Suffolk border. It
is a lonely place
and would be largely forgotten if not for the fact that it
is the location of
what came to be known as “The Most Haunted House in
England”.
Harry Price got involved in the case after a newspaper
carried a story about a
phantom nun at the house in June 1929. Price was asked by
the paper to
investigate and he was told about various types of phenomena
that had been
reported there, like phantom footsteps; strange lights;
ghostly whispers; a
headless man; a girl in white; the sounds of a phantom coach
outside; the
apparition of the home’s builder, Henry Bull; and of course,
the spirit of the
nun. This spectral figure was said to drift through the
garden with her head
bent in sorrow.
Local legend had it that a monastery had once been located
on the site and that
a 13th century monk and a beautiful young novice were killed
while trying to
elope from the place. The monk was hanged and his would-be
bride was bricked up
alive within the walls of her convent.
Price scoffed at the idea of such a romantic tale but was
intrigued by the
phenomena associated with the house.
It would be during his investigations of Borley Rectory that
he would become
the best-known and most accomplished of the early ghost
hunters, setting the
standard for those who would follow. Price coined the idea
of the “ghost
hunter’s kit”; used tape measurers to check the thickness of
walls and to
search for hidden chambers; perfected the use of still
cameras for indoor and
outdoor photography; brought in a remote-control motion
picture camera; put to
use a finger-printing kit; and even used portable telephones
for contact
between investigators.
Many of Price’s accounts from Borley would be first-hand, as
he claimed to see
and hear much of the reported phenomena like hearing bells
ring, rapping noises
and seeing objects that has been moved from one place to
another. In addition,
he also collected accounts from scores of witnesses and
previous tenants of the
house, even talking to neighbors and local people who had
their own experiences
with the rectory.
Even the original tenants of the house, the Rev. Henry Bull
family had
encountered the spirits. He had become pastor of Borley
Church in 1862 and
despite local warnings, had built the rectory on a site
believed by locals to
be haunted. Over the years, Bull’s servants and his
daughters were repeatedly
unnerved by phantom rappings, unexplained footsteps and the
appearance of
ghosts. Reverend Bull seemed to regard these events as
splendid entertainment
and he and his son, Harry, even constructed a summer house
on the property
where they could enjoy after-dinner cigars and watch for the
appearance of the
phantom nun who walked nearby.
Harry Bull inherited the rectory and the job as parson when
his father died in
1892 and stayed on until his death in 1927.
However, Bull’s successor, Rev. Guy Smith, quit the rectory
just one year after
moving in, plagued by both the ghosts and the house’s
deteriorating state.
Until that point, the ghosts at the rectory had been
relatively peaceful, but
all that would change in October 1930 when Smith was
replaced by the Reverend
Lionel Foyster and his wife, Marianne. Their time in the
house would see a
marked increase in the paranormal activity. People were
locked out of rooms,
household items vanished, windows were broken, furniture was
moved, odd sounds
were heard and much more.
However, the worst of the incidents seemed to involve Mrs.
Foyster, as she was
thrown from her bed at night, slapped by invisible hands,
forced to dodge heavy
objects which flew at her day and night, and was once almost
suffocated with a
mattress.
Soon after, there began to appear a series of scrawled
messages on the walls of
the house, written by an unknown hand. They seemed to be
pleading with Mrs.
Foyster, using phrases like “Marianne, please help get” and
“Marianne light
mass prayers”.
Because nearly all of the poltergeist-like activity occurred
when Mrs. Foyster
was present, Price was inclined to attribute it to her
unknowing manipulations.
However, he did believe in the possibility of the ghostly
nun and some of the
other reported phenomena. The rectory did not fit into
pre-conceived notions of
a haunted house, which was one of the reasons that it would
go on to gain such
a reputation. Despite the implications of the phenomena
centering around
Marianne, Price maintained that at least one of the spirits
in the house had
found the rector’s wife to be sympathetic to its plight.
This was the only
explanation he could find for the mysterious messages.
He believed the writings had come from another young woman,
one who seemed to
be from her references, a Catholic. These clues would later
fit well into
Price’s theory that the Borley mystery was a terrible tale
of murder and
betrayal in which the central character was a young nun,
although not the one
of legend.
The Foysters moved out of the house in 1935 and with the
place now empty, Price
leased the house for an extended, round-the-clock, one year
investigation. He
ran an advertisement in the personal column of the Times on
May 25, 1937
looking for open-minded researchers to literally “camp out”
at the rectory and
record any phenomena which took place in their presence. The
advertisement
read:
“HAUNTED HOUSE: Responsible persons of leisure and
intelligence, intrepid,
critical, and unbiased, are invited to join rota of
observers in a years night
and day investigation of alleged haunted house in Home
counties. Printed
Instructions supplied. Scientific training or ability to
operate simple
instruments an advantage. House situated in lonely hamlet,
so own car is
essential. Write Box H.989, The Times, E.C.4”
Price was deluged with potential applicants, most of whom
were unsuitable.
After choosing more than 40 people, he then printed the
first-ever handbook on
how to conduct a paranormal investigation. A copy was given
to each
investigator and it explained what to do when investigating
the house, along
with what equipment they would need.
During the investigations, the researchers were allowed a
wide latitude when it
came to searching for facts. Some of them employed their own
equipment, others
kept precise journals and others turned to seances, which
would prove
interesting over the period of 1935 to 1939.
During the year that Price leased the rectory, breakthroughs
were made in the
communications with the spirits. One seance would later give
Price the material
that he needed to solve (he believed) the mystery of the
haunting.
During a sitting with a planchette, an alleged spirit named
Marie Lairre
related that she had been a nun in France but had left her
convent to marry
Henry Waldegrave, a member of a wealthy family whose manor
home once stood on
the site of Borley Rectory. There, her husband had strangled
her and had buried
her remains in the cellar.
The story went well with the most interesting of the Borley
phenomena, namely
the reported phantom nun and the written messages. Price
theorized that the
former nun had been buried in unconsecrated ground and was
now doomed to haunt
the property seeking rest.
In March of 1938, five months after Marie’s first
appearance, another spirit
promised that the rectory would burn down that night and
that the proof of the
nun’s murder would be found in the ruins. Borley Rectory did
not burn that
night, but exactly 11 months later, a new owner, Captain WH
Gregson was
unpacking books in the library when an oil lamp overturned
and started a fire.
The blaze quickly spread and the rectory was gutted.
Price took this opportunity to excavate in the cellar of the
house and
discovered a few fragile bones which turned out to be that
of a young woman....
evidence, Price concluded, there was something to the story
of the murdered
nun. A Christian burial for the bones appeared to provide
the ghost with the
rest she had long sought and a service was later conducted
by the Rev. AC
Henning in the small village of Liston, less than two miles
from the rectory.
The building itself was finally demolished in 1944.
Price wrote about Borley Rectory in two books entitled THE
MOST HAUNTED HOUSE
IN ENGLAND (1940) and THE END OF BORLEY RECTORY (1946).