Canada and the World
Current Events with a Canadian Perspective
Last update
27 June 2011
Borley Rectory:
Britain’s most Haunted House
A house in Essex, England has long had the reputation of being a place where ghostly apparitions were frequently observed, but is the notoriety deserved?
In 1863, the Reverend Henry Bull built a rectory (above) in the village of Borley,
near Sudbury in eastern English county of Essex. It was a large home, necessary for
a man with a wife and 14 children.
Rectory Built on Site of Old Monastery
According to Brittania.com the rectory “was erected on the site of an ancient monastery
and the ghost of a sorrowful nun who strolled along the so-
The legend is that in the 14th century a nun had fallen in love with a monk from a neighbouring monastery. The lovers planned to elope but were caught and came to a sticky end; the monk was hanged, the coachman who was to drive them away was beheaded, and the nun was bricked up, alive, in the monastery’s cellars.
New Paranormal Sightings
Within a few years of the rectory being built strange things started to happen
Ghost-
More unexplained events followed: “A former headmaster of the Colchester Royal Grammar School reported seeing a ghostly nun several times during 1885. A series of pastors and their families who have lived at the rectory have all reported sightings of the nun.”
Guests at dinner parties were treated to the sight of a pale-
Borley Rectory becomes Famous
In 1928, the Reverend Guy Eric Smith was the incumbent vicar in the parish.
He and his family were very disturbed by the apparition of the nun and the menace of the poltergeists, so they turned to the media for help. Reverend Smith contacted the Daily Mirror newspaper, which sent along reporter C.V. Wall to get the story.
The Mirror published Wall’s lurid account (June 10, 1929) in which he wrote of “Ghostly figures of headless coachmen and a nun, an old time coach drawn by two bay horses, which appears and vanishes mysteriously, and dragging footsteps in empty rooms.”
The newspaper followed up by sending “psychic investigator” Harry Price to the house.
Period of Heightened Poltergeist Activity
Lionel and Marianne Foyster were the next residents of the troubled rectory and, according to Vincent O’Neill, writing for Paranormal Insight (1995) “Price estimated ‘that at least two thousand poltergeist phenomena were experienced at the Rectory between October 1930 and October 1935.’ ”
The pebble-
writing appearing
on walls and slips of paper (right), apparently seeking to contact Marianne Foyster.
Glass objects were said to materialize and then be smashed on the floor. O’Neill
writes that “After an attempt at exorcism, Marianne [Foyster] was thrown out of bed
several times.”
Harry Price Investigates Borley Rectory
After the Foysters left the house was empty for a couple of years until Harry Price leased it and set up a team of 48 observers who stayed in the building, mostly over weekends.
After 12 months of observations the Harry Price Website records that, “Rather than stories of spectral sightings, poltergeist effects, and the like, the vast majority of the reports returned routine and mundane information…However, there were several incidents (primarily aural which includes thumps and footsteps) which observers….could not put down to natural causes…”
Undaunted by the lack of evidence, Harry Price published his book, The Most Haunted House in England in 1940.
Was Borley really Haunted?
In 1939, Borley Rectory was destroyed in a fire and the wreckage was removed in 1944, but stories that the ghostly nun has moved her hauntings to the nearby church persist.
However, at the time of Price’s investigation there were plenty of debunkers around who suggested the whole thing was a hoax. The website Skeptoid sides with the disbelievers.
In a July 5, 2007 posting Skeptoid points out that Harry Price was an accomplished magician and deceiver having toured Britain “with a fake statue of Hercules. He exhibited a fake silver ingot from the reign of Roman emperor Honorious. He showed gold coins from the kings of Sussex and a bone carved with hieroglyphics, all proven to be fakes. By every account, Harry Price was a practiced hoaxster…”
The website says all of Borley Rectory’s hauntings can be explained as natural occurrences, exaggerations, and outright fabrications, with Price’s hand detectable behind many of them.
Not so, said Peter Underwood, President of the Ghost Club of England. In a 1975 interview with the BBC he claimed to be convinced “beyond any shadow of doubt that [Borley Rectory] fully lived up to its name as the most haunted house in England.
© Canada and the World, June 2011
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DEFINITION
The word "poltergeist" comes from the German word "poltern," which means to "rumble," "bluster," or "jangle.”
The word “geist” is also of German origin and means "spirit."
Patch the two together and poltergeist means a “noisy spirit,” although according to True Ghost Tales.com “a poltergeist is neither a spirit nor a ghost according to paranormal and parapsychology experts. Usually described as an invisible force and entity, the nature of poltergeists has long been a subject of debate within paranormal circles.”
Poltergeists are usually associated with mischievous activities such as throwing objects or moving them around.
To establish credibility for his investigations at Borley Rectory, Harry Price advertised in The Times for independent observers. Here’s how his ad was worded:
“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”
Harry Price was a bit of a rogue. This photo of him was taken in 1922 and is supposed to show a spirit to his left. The photographer, William Hope, had used plates that had been tampered with.