The following theory may be a potential threat to the sanctity of Borley Village if it gets into the wrong hands so please be careful with it. Indeed, “downtown” Borley Village certainly doesn’t want to experience its first traffic jam because of a sudden surge of ghost-hunting tourists who must ultimately trespass in order to park their vehicles. But they just might do so in the hopes of simply being able to watch down the road through their windshields to try to spot what may actually be a partial manifestation of a phantom coach racing up the road.
Throughout Borley Rectory’s history, “out-of-town” coaches were occasionally seen (and heard) on the road, in the fields, at the Rectory’s gates, and outside the Rectory in both the drive and the garden. So the question of a phantom coach at Borley may be complicated by the possibility that there may be more than one phantom coach anyway. In fact, use your web browser to search for the word “coach” on the following page about The Ghosts That Will Not Die by Vincent O’Neil. Your search should yield several examples of the various contexts in which Borley’s phantom coach(es) have been seen.
Indeed, regarding evidence that at least one phantom coach still haunts Borley’s countryside, a curious light has been spotted in the vicinity of Borley Village in recent years as evidenced by the testimonies to follow. These testimonies independently describe the light as having an up and down motion as it moves along. Also, while one of these reports only implies that this moving light has no visible means of support, the other report is explicit about it; the light appeared to be floating in the air as it moved along!
Is it possible that the light’s up and down motion is a clue that what witnesses have seen is a partial manifestation of a phantom coach, more specifically a lantern attached to a coach? Although my knowledge about how coaches are built is limited, I wonder if the light’s motion might be attributed to the various kinds of coach suspension systems? The earliest systems in the 1500’s utilized leaf springs which are said to be known for their infamous bounce. Coaches using springs emerged in the 1700’s. The through-brace system then replaced springs. Mark Twain compared the the ride of the through-brace to the feel of springs, noting that the through-brace system tended to make the coach rock back and forth as opposed to bouncing.
But with all these suspension technologies, a shining lantern attached near the corner of a coach, described simply as a light, would appear to be moving up and down with respect to observers not riding the coach. Such movement would probably be very noticeable, in fact, if the coach was moving fast as the unexplainable sound of galloping horses that has been associated with Borley’s Hall Road suggests.
Consider the following BR web site testimonies
regarding a strange light:
From James Bedford
---Parking the car, dusk was falling, and we walked
towards the gates. As we touched the gates, to
ascertain which period they were from, a bright white
light appeared, not far from the gate, and progressed
towards us, in an “up and down motion”. (quotes added
for emphasis) The light appeared further up the road
near the church, but on the left hand side; and
traveled down towards us, where we were standing by
the gate.---
Note that the light was seen on the left side of the road. Seeing just one approaching light on a road will generally cause any experienced driver to question why there aren’t two lights. In addition, although Mr. Bedford didn’t explicitly state this, I think he reasonably implied that the “up and down” light did follow the road; another clue. We’ll take a closer look at these clues shortly.
Here’s another report about a light with an
interestingly similar description:
From Jaime Dowler:
---Anyway me and friend decided to get out of the car
first and were the only ones to get out, now this only
lasted for a few moments but it seemed like forever we
both stood still not having walked 5 meteres from the
car and thats when we felt a calm breeze not hard like
the wind was that night and a dead silence, and then
we saw a light in the field I believe there corn
fields I think the grass was high anyway, and this was
shaped round like a bycicle light which is what we
thought it was but then it was “bobbing up and down”
(quotes added for emphasis) no bike could be doing
what we were seeing and it was getting faster and
closer the closer it got the more obvious there was
nothing attached to this light.---
Note that the two sightings above happened either in the evening or at night.
Here is a third experience which definitely relates to
a phantom coach.
From Rebecca Markwell:
---We parked in a verge by a field just outside of
Borley and my grandmother, sister and I walked around
the church. My grandfather (now deceased) was annoyed
and extremely skeptical about the whole thing so he
stayed in the parked car. After walking around the
church we walked around a field that ran behind the
houses of Borley. We then returned to the car, having
seen nothing and returned home. I did not realise my
grandfather had experienced anything paranormal until
this week when my grandmother and I got onto the
subject of ghosts. She said that on returning home my
grandmother had commented that she thought we had gone
to the wrong place. My grandfather replied that no, we
definitely hadn't. He then related that as we walked
around the field he had heard the sound of horses
approaching very quickly. He had looked around but
seen nothing. The noise had got closer and closer
until the unseen horses had thundered past the car
window.---
Note that both the mysterious bouncing light and the sound of a team of horses have been associated with strange happenings on the road. As I am about to explain, these and other clues lead me to question if they are actually different aspects of the same phenomena.
To begin with, the Dowler report describes the light as having a round shape. In my opinion, a round shape suggests that the original coach lantern(s) had a reflector to concentrate the light into the area in front of the coach. People who have seen this light in recent years were perhaps in front of the coach in the path of the beam and therefore observed the near full circle of a reflector behind the source of the beam. For a few examples, I think most of the lanterns on this web page have a round reflector.
Also, given that a coach’s lantern consists of an enclosure of which one or two sides may be obstructed, especially if there is a reflector, the lantern’s light wouldn’t necessarily be easy to see from all directions. This may be why this strange light hasn’t been sighted more frequently. For example, consider someone walking along the road that goes through Borley Village. If they initially pay little attention to the distant sound of galloping horses approaching them from behind, especially if their initial glance behind them gives them the impression that the coach must still be around a bend in the road, would they be able to notice a “bouncing light” if they don’t turn their heads until the coach almost passes them? Although they may even catch a glimpse of some moving lights, if the context of the light isn’t obvious then it may just be an overall confusing experience anyway.
But if the light these witnesses saw can possibly be construed as evidence of a phantom coach then why have witnesses seen only one light when we’d really expect them to report seeing two lights, presumably one on each side of the coach? To begin with, I think we’re used to seeing modern vehicles with two headlights and automatically visualize a coach as similarly utilizing a pair of lanterns. But I doubt that coaches were required to have any lanterns at all in those days so maybe some coach drivers navigated the darkness with one lantern.
Regardless, who’s to say that this phantom coach didn’t have two lanterns? If so, then what happened to the other lantern? For one possibility, even if a coach had two lanterns maybe only one lantern was used for economic reasons. But with respect to some of the more recent theories about Borley ghosts as they pertain to private situations, consider that one of the lanterns of this phantom coach may have deliberately been left unlit in an effort to make the coach difficult to spot with respect to some clandestine night mission. Actually, even one glowing lantern would give away a coach in the dark. But I suspect the real concern for lighting only one lantern for some discrete mission would have been to make it difficult for anybody on the unlit side of the coach to positively identify it; the fewer the witnesses the better. Indeed, given coaches were a common sight in those times, not being able to clearly see the distinguishing features of a suspicious coach would have made it more difficult for witnesses to positively identify it.
This Wells Fargo antique coach gives an idea of how lanterns were mounted on the side of a coach. If the lantern shown was the only lantern that was lit, for example, notice that because of where it is mounted you’d at best see a rough silhouette of the coach from the far side of the coach, especially if the leather “curtains” of the coach were down. So even the ghost of this coach may be continuing to thwart potential witnesses.
But let’s not forget that we are addressing what may be genuine paranormal phenomena. So although I can think of reasons as to why the lanterns on a coach that had somehow time-warped from an earlier period may not have been visible, who knows why most of such a specter was invisible if this is indeed what these sightings were.
Getting back to the testimonies, note that the descriptions are somewhat vague with respect to how high the lights were from the ground. However, observed height with respect to suspected ghosts is not necessarily reliable anyway as height anomalies have been noted with respect to phantom sightings, including Borley’s ghost nun. But whenever the height of a ghostly apparition is in question it is often though that the ground where the ghost was seen is simply not at the same level it was at some earlier time when someone had presumably stood there. Therefore, I regard the up and down motion of these curious lights as a better clue as to what these sightings were than if we knew their height above the ground anyway.
Finally, if you do arrange with Borley’s Churchwarden to spend a few evenings on the road in the Village patiently waiting for the first hint of a phantom coach, please keep one thing in mind. Don’t fool yourself into thinking that you’re reasonably safe just because you’re watching from a secluded spot even if it’s off the road a bit. Indeed, consider that the roads in the area as they existed in earlier times are not necessarily the same as they are now. The main concern is that ghost phenomena is not well understood so we don’t know if phantoms and especially phantom coaches have inertia. Inadvertently being the “hit and run” victim of a phantom coach because you discover too late that you were actually in the middle of the path it used to follow is not the way you want to find out either. But even if you are able to tell us from firsthand experience that phantom coaches don’t have inertia, you are still risking a very unsettling experience.
