I first became interested in the stories of the rectory in my late teens, when I was still at school. A friend of mine, a traveling salesmen called Clive Newell, had got hold of both the Harry Price books, I think from the local library, and had lent them to me to read. I was intrigued and remember reading them on shift in a gas station where I worked part-time (I mention this only for the sake of color and completeness!)
The Price books intrigued both Clive and myself, so we decided to travel from Stafford in the Midlands, where I then lived, down to Borley to see for ourselves. Clive was a few years older than me and had a car though his job, so we used that. Another friend about a year older than me called Kevin (can't remember surname) came with us too.
I remember that we left very early one Saturday morning. We stopped off on the way in Birmingham: Clive knew people at the local BBC radio station and I think we may even have gone on air for a short time to talk about the fact we were going to Borley (my memory may be faulty here). About 8 or 9am we set off for the drive to Essex, arriving in Borley via Long Melford late morning.
We parked by the church, and walked around what remained of the site of the old Rectory. I seem to remember it being a dry, clear day, and I decided I would take a photo of the rectory site from the road with a small, easy-to-use camera we had brought with us, and with which we had previously had no problems.
When I tried to take a picture of the rectory site, the camera wouldn't work: the shutter release button wouldn't press down, but simply stuck. I'd never had this before and thought it odd, though I did immediately question, perhaps cynically, whether supernatural causes might be at work. Whenever I turned the camera away from the rectory site and tried to shoot another view, it worked perfectly. Turn it back, though and it wouldn't work again. I was also doing this randomly – taking a couple of shots away before turning back – to make sure it wasn't simply sticking on every other shot. It wasn't.
I thought of a way to try and beat this. I turned the camera away from the rectory site again, then suddenly spun round to face it and quickly pressed the shutter. This time it went down – and stuck down! Only when I turned the camera away from the rectory site did the button pop up again.
At the time, there was absolutely nothing spooky about this – everything felt perfectly normal (it always does, doesn't it?). That perhaps made it all the more odd.
I can't remember what happened to the camera or the film – both long lost. I suspect they were Clive's. What I can say is that nothing ghostly or untoward showed in the exposed film. I would certainly have remembered that. But then, without being able to take a picture of the rectory site itself, it's not likely to, is it?
My friends also claimed that other odd things happened that day – though, to be honest, we were in pretty high spirits and there was a bit of horsing around going on, so I don't really believe them. But I'll mention these things for the sake of completeness. We stopped the car when we arrived at Borley and my friend Kevin stood on the sign carrying the name of the village. He fell off as we were trying to take his picture, claiming he was pushed by unseen forces (yeah…I know…as I say, this is just for completeness). Clive also claimed he felt something brush his face on the rectory site. And, as we were preparing to leave Borley (I'd say we were there about an hour) I tried to climb in the car but the doors were locked. Clive swore he'd already opened them (I think it may have been central locking) and had to open them again.
As I remember it, there were a few bricks still lying around the site, and I was interested in taking one with us. Clive refused to do so – he remembered the flying brick photograph and said he was "taking nothing that could harm me or my family". He also claimed he had heard residents living in the modern houses on the rectory site talking to each other about strange things happening.
I have been back to Borley twice since then. Once, in the late seventies or early eighties, when I traveled there with two other friends. It was fairly late on a Saturday afternoon and I remember little about the trip, save that we were only there a few minutes. I think we walked along the road, looked at the rectory site, and went into the church. Certainly nothing odd happened.
The second time was the summer of 1997. I have been married for 14 years and have told my wife about the Borley stories and she, too, found them fascinating. We were vacationing in the area along with our teenage daughter and decided to go and have a look at the place again. We approached from Long Melford and, even after all these years, I found it easily. It was a dank, wet morning, and we parked on the main road, a few hundred yards up from the church. We then walked back. This time, I found it hard even to spot the rectory site, even though I knew it was opposite the church….it could be that more houses have been built there, or perhaps my memory of the site is now misty. I wanted to look round the church again (studying old English churches is now a hobby of mine, and I would have liked to have seen the Waldegrave tomb again, which I remember as being pretty impressive and ornate) but it was locked up (I think I read on your web site that it is always locked these days). So we wandered around the churchyard for a bit, feeling slightly lost, and then left. We saw no-one all the time we were in Borley, but the place had a distinctly un-welcoming feel which I don't remember having encountered before. It was as if residents were staring at us from behind the curtains. I'm sure I'll go back in the future, but on this occasion I wasn't sorry to leave.