In the autumn of 1978 a close friend of mine, Robert Chalcroft (a Fine Arts graduate) asked me to take him to see the site of Borley Rectory as he had never visited the place before. We arrived in the afternoon on a rather dull and overcast day in November, about 12.30pm. Nothing remarkable happened at first, other than a collection of rather strange objects "fell" on us out of the slate grey sky! There was a large twig with fresh leaves attached, a bronze coin, a small, blue, bird's feather and a yellow flower. Nothing too remarkable about that except there was absolutely nothing overhead, which might have dropped such a strange collection, at least as far as we could determine. (And the fact that it was the beginning of winter and there were not too many flowers, or leaves about at the time!)
This incident happened in the middle of the road outside the Church. As we made to open the gate into the churchyard we were treated to a shower of what we discovered later must have been "Angel Hair", a white foamy-like substance that covered everything in the churchyard in an instant. It was like a surreal, "blobby" snowstorm. My friend Rob went dashing after a huge piece of "hair" as I rushed back to the car to fetch my camera. Ironically, the foamy stuff evaporated the instant it touched our hands and we were unable to get a reliable photograph of any of it. This strange "hair" disappeared just as quickly as it fell out of the sky. It resembled snow but was more like long strips of candy floss, except that there was no smell or taste to it! (Another thing we noted - it wasn't cold to the touch like snow either.)
We then went into the church (which was still open in those days!) and sat in some pews near the door, (on either side of the central aisle) and discussed what we had just experienced. I was a bit nonplussed to say the least. We had almost decided to give it up and go off in search of a hot meal when the church door opened and two attractive young ladies entered the building. They smiled politely at us and then passed by and went up the aisle to look at the altar and the Waldegrave tomb, whilst Rob and I kept on with our conversation. He was busy quizzing me about that night we had spent in the church and precisely where it was I had been sitting when I first saw the lights.
Suddenly, the darker of the two ladies interrupted us to ask about the incident I was describing. We were quite surprised as they had shown little or no interest in us when they first came in. Notwithstanding, they now both came and sat down opposite us. Rob was on the northern side of the church and me on the southern but at a slight diagonal (Rob was about a pew in front across the aisle from me). The dark lady sat down opposite me and the fair-haired lady sat opposite Rob, so the arrangement was boy/girl/boy/girl if you went around us in a circle in any direction. For some time we talked about the history of the place and what I had seen in the church and then the two ladies told us they were cousins, one lived locally and the other was visiting and they both expressed a desire to know more about the history of Borley and about the hauntings.
At this point I became aware that I was experiencing an increased attraction for the lady sitting opposite me. I found this most odd because I was, and still am, a happily married man and sex had been the last thing on my mind when the four of us first sparked up the conversation together. As we continued to chat we became far more animated and open with each other in our discussions, talking about our personal philosophies as well as the strange history of Borley itself. We were all getting on very well indeed, considering none of us had once stopped to introduce ourselves!
We talked for a long time and I began to sense that the young woman sitting opposite me was experiencing a similar sexual attraction, for we had been unconsciously moving closer together as we chatted across the aisle of the church.
Just at that crucial moment the church door burst open and a waft of countryside "odour" assailed our nostrils. The young woman opposite me jumped back in her seat, went beetroot red and stammered: "Oh! Oh! Hello dear! We were just talking to these two nice gentlemen about all the hauntings!" She then fled after her husband (for it was he who had just entered), trying desperately to explain the peculiar situation, whilst he was busy telling her that he hadn't wanted to muck up the church with his muddy boots but he had first seen her car outside hours ago when he had been on his way to empty the slurry on the fields up the road. As the car was still there he had come in to check and see if she was alright! Her cousin lingered a bit longer, gave Rob her address and telephone number, looked a trifle embarrassed, then made her apologies and reluctantly left us in the church. We glanced at our watches and found we had been chatting to the girls for hours!
I looked at Rob and asked: "Were you thinking what I was thinking?" Rob, being a single bloke without all the hang-ups of a married man, said: "So you fancied yours too then?" We both burst out laughing at the same moment. We left the building and returned to the car still discussing the extraordinary situation. We realised that we had both begun to be attracted to the two ladies at precisely the same moment in time. I guess this might have been normal procedure for a single guy like Rob, but such was not the case for a married man like me. Given that the lady who had sat opposite me was married also suggested that there must have been something "reciprocal" about who was being attracted to whom. Curiously, like Rob the fair-haired cousin was not married, we had discovered this when she pointedly gave Rob her address and telephone number!
If we try and analyse precisely what happened that day it would seem, somehow, that the single girl appeared to have homed in on Rob as the single bloke and in turn the married woman had singled me out as the married man. How and why had they done this? What on earth was going on in that church?
I can state, categorically, when the girls first arrived neither Rob, nor myself had any notions of sexual permissiveness, especially not in a church! It is the last place on earth I can think of where one might normally be forgiven for experiencing such ideas!
Remember, it was the girls who had made the overtures to us at the onset of our chat together and they had chosen to sit where they felt most comfortable in the pews. But I do not believe that the girls were going through any deep sexual motivation when we first met. Even my friend Rob was totally surprised by the turn of events.
However, towards the end of our conversations together in the church I was holding back from expressing my increasingly intense feelings for the young woman sitting opposite me because I considered both the location and the social niceties demanded it! As we went on sitting together the feelings continued to get more and more acute. I don't think I could have held out much longer.
For a while there I thought I was going berserk.
When we compared notes afterwards, Rob had felt precisely the same thing. He had felt deeply aroused by the young woman who had been sitting opposite him and was convinced that she felt the same towards him. Were we mistaken? I remember the look of absolute horror and guilt that went across the dark lady's face when her husband appeared at the doorway of the church. Why did she react that way, unless she had been similarly affected? Rob and I are the last people to regard ourselves as God's gift to womankind, but in that instance I do not think we were mistaken about our feelings towards the girls and I am convinced that they both felt the same towards us.
So what exactly had happened to us?
To this day I have no idea who those lovely ladies were. However, they did give me an insight into a possible solution to some of the weird things that have happen at Borley over the years. Let us suppose that the original "Holy Site" at Borley was one concerned with fertility; the name "Boar's Lea" (perhaps "the field of the pigs" could be one translation) suggests an animal often associated with reproductive prowess in ancient times. Did our long distant ancestors understand the qualities of such an energy? Could they pinpoint it in the landscape and know how to harness it and perhaps enhance it? Is the whole site at Borley still echoing or vibrating to this fertility energy? Was it perhaps centred on a standing stone or wood circle? Is it unfocussed these days and inclined to run amok?
There is certainly a farm close at hand and the peculiar (sexual?) frustrations of that poor woman, Marianne Foyster, may have been exacerbated by living in such a lonely environment with a much, much older husband! Poltergeist activity has often been associated with a young person approaching puberty, so who is to say precisely what frustrated sexual energy is truly capable of in such a peculiar environment? Remember, it is not the type of question researchers pose when interviewing the local residents is it? "How has your sexlife been since living at Borley?" One can only guess at the reactions and the responses!
To follow your argument about the ongoing longevity of "hauntings", I believe that an energy like the one at Borley, has the capacity to "trigger" something in receptive subjects who then, perhaps unintentionally, create the types of phenomena associated with poltergeists or hauntings. For example: visions, things flying about, sightings of people long dead, UFOs and odd noises.
Consequently, this would not occur at all times. Perhaps it is triggered when some hypersensitive person enters the energy field and sparks off another series of "incidents". These could attract other like-minded people to the location who might further "fuel" the energy with stuff, which would ultimately die down once interest in the place began to wane. Perhaps loud noises are "collected" in such a location and played back when the conditions are correct, or a sensitive person triggers them off?
The Bull family were particularly sensitive by all accounts and distantly related to Anne Boleyn. [The Boleyn family changed their name to avoid persecution after poor Anne was executed. They changed first to "Bullen" and ultimately to "Bull".] With so many sensitive people living in the Rectory and the Reverend Bull constantly in attendance at the church no wonder they saw "ghosts" quite frequently. Certainly, he had a large family so the fertility aspect must have been working quite well in those days!
I have often wondered what might have happened to Rob, myself and those two ladies in the church if we had not been interrupted that winter's afternoon? Perhaps it is just as well that we were!