BORLEY CHURCH & RECTORY

England's Most Haunted House and Church

There was also the spectral figure of a nun, drifting restlessly through the house and garden, her head bent in sorrow. Local tradition had a romantic explanation for these emanations. It was said that a monastery once stood on the site and also a convent close by and that in the thirteenth century a monk and a beautiful young novice were apprehended while trying to elope. The monk was hanged and the would-be nun bricked up alive in the walls of her convent. To a seasoned researcher such as Price this must have seemed a tired old story spectral nuns and monks like phantom coaches are stock figures of the British ghost story. But Borley proved to be more complex.

At about the time Price took an interest in Borley the rectory began to receive the energetic attentions of a poltergeist. Bells rang, lights flashed and objects flew through the air. Then in 1930, the reverend Lionel Foyster and his attractive much younger wife Marianne moved in and the supernatural manifestations become more frequent. And a new phenomenon one that Harry Price considered unique in the annals of the paranormal manifested itself. Mysterious written messages began to appear on the walls and on scraps of paper scattered through the house. In 1937 after the rectory had been abandoned as a pastoral residence Price rented the house for a year and installed a rotating team of observers to document the manifestations. He later wrote two popular books devoted to the case, and lectured extensively on it and discussed it on the radio. Price’s relentless publicizing earned Borley both notoriety and the attention of rival researchers, who would squabble for decades over the mystery.

Detractors alleged that the entire case was suspect scoffing at Price’s investigator techniques and in particular his crew of amateur observers recruited by newspaper advertisements. Critics even suggested that Price fraudulently orchestrated at least some of the alleged poltergeist phenomena. But in the end the controversial ghost hunter did turn up evidence of a long ago tragedy that seemed to explain the hauntings and convinced many that the manifestations were genuine. The reverend Henry Dawson Ellis Bull who became pastor of Borley Church in 1862 was untroubled by the ghost stories told about his parish and did not hesitate to build his new house on the very site most likely to be haunted by the village’s restless spirits. Local legend had it that Borley Rectory was constructed atop the ruined foundations of two much older structures, the manor house of the noble Waldegrave family and an ancient monastery. Over the years, Bull’s servants, and his daughters were repeatedly unnerved by strange rapping's, phantom footsteps and the disquieting appearance of wraithlike figures. But the worldly Bull seemed to regard these oddities as a splendid form of entertainment. He even built an airy summerhouse where he and his eldest son Harry could enjoy after dinner cigars and observe the twilight wanderings of the spectral nun.

Harry Bull inherited the rectory, its ghosts and the job of parson when his father died in 1892 and stayed on until his own death in 1927. But Bull’s successor rev Guy Smith quit the rectory less than a year after moving in. Plagued both by the Borley ghosts, which had been joined by the apparent poltergeist and by the house’s deplorable and increasingly dilapidated state. Until then the ghosts of Borley had seemed relatively benign. That changed when the Reverend Lionel and Marianne Foyster took up residence in October 1930. The rapping's inside the walls became louder and more frantic, furniture was overturned and doors appeared to lock themselves. More disturbing was the violence that seemed to be directed at Marianne. She was thrown from her bed repeatedly, struck by a bruising unseen hand and forced to dodge heavy objects that came flying at her day and night. Harry Price implied in his first book on the Borley case, published in 1940 five years after the Foysters vacated the rectory, that he suspected Marianne of using sleight of hand to engineer at least some of these disturbances. Nonetheless Price stoutly maintained that at least one of the spirits that had haunted Borley for so many decades had found the rector’s wife to be a sympathetic soul. He felt his theory was borne out by the eerie wall writings addressed to Marianne. The messages plaintive appeals for help written in a childish hand seemed to be from another young woman, one who by her references to prayers masses and incense had been a Catholic. These were important clues that like parts of a puzzle would fit snugly into the story Price ultimately pieced together to explain the Borley mystery. It was a chilling tale of murder and betrayal in which the central figure was a young nun though not the one of local legend. During the year that Harry Price leased Borley Rectory his team of observers uncovered no new phenomena. But a thrilling development of a different kind allegedly provided information that would at last give Price the solution he had been seeking.

The breakthrough came via the planchette, a pencil equipped device that moves supposedly guided by spirits across a board under a sitter’s hand spelling out messages. One alleged spirit identified as Marie Lairre related that she had been a nun in seventeenth century France, but had left her order to marry Henry Waldegrave a member of the wealthy family whose manor house once stood on the site of Borley. There her husband later strangled her and hid her remains in the cellar. This story seemed to dovetail with the most striking Borley phenomena. The restless apparition of the nun, and the written messages could now be seen as signs that the nun had been buried in unconsecrated ground, and was thus condemned to wander ceaselessly in a vain quest for final peace. In March of 1938 five months after Marie Lairre’s introduction, another spirit allegedly promised that the rectory would burn that night and that proof of the nun’s murder would be found in the ruins. Borley Rectory did not burn that night but eleven months later a new owner Captain W. H. Gregson was unpacking books one evening when an oil lamp in the hall was somehow overturned and started a fire. The blaze quickly spread and Borley Rectory was gutted at last, giving Price an opportunity to seek buried physical proof for his explanation of the haunting.

For a variety of reasons he did not ask Gregson’s permission to excavate until 1943, “look under the brick floor in the cellar” one of the spirit messages had implored. After only a day of digging Price’s crew unearthed a few fragile bones that proved to be the remains of a young woman. Evidence, Price concluded that there was indeed some truth to the story of the murdered nun. A Christian burial for the bones appeared to provide the ghost of Borley Rectory with the rest that it had long sought, no further haunting activity was reported in the ruined building which was finally demolished in 1944. After the rectory was torn down all supernatural activity had moved over to the church.

It was back in the 1980’s when I first visited the site of Borley church. As we approached the church I remember Ed Warren explaining the history of Borley to us. We had planned on spending the evening inside the church. It was around 3:00 in the afternoon when we were setting up all of our equipment. You could feel the dampness of the old building especially considering it is made of stone. But I knew what I was experiencing wasn’t the cold of the building. I felt that it was one of the spirits that had brushed by me.

From that point I realized it was going to be a very interesting evening. Things were quiet until 2 a.m. when I felt that cool breeze brush by me again, and things began to materialize. It seemed that there were several human spirits about the church. I was not able to determine if one was the monk or the nun that so many people have seen there. But I do know this, they definitely were there when we were. Unfortunately I was unable to capture anything on film that evening, but it was an outstanding evening at Borley Church. Someday I would like to return and hopefully catch something on film.