“Is anyone here?” the intrepid ghost hunter asks while walking into an empty room.  Nothing is heard, but later while listening to audio recordings of the session, there can be heard a faint response. The presence says very clearly, “No, I am not here!”

Some may interpret that answer as a lie; I tend to think of it as a great sense of humor.

If you subscribe to the theory that ghosts are the energy form of a deceased human, then you also have to deal with the reality of individual personality.  The world is full of humans, some happy, some sad, some helpful and some basically nasty.  We can expect nothing less of their earthbound spirits. We all know people who can’t lie, it is not in their nature to tell a fib, while we all also know habitual liars whose very existence depends of the game of misleading those around them. So too with ghosts, we can only assume, with every other variation in between.

At least one researcher from the turn of the last century theorized that in fact, what a ghost says is dependent on the mind of the person asking the question or someone close to them, suggesting that the consciousness associated with a ghost is in actuality the projection of a living human.  We will come back to that hypothesis a little later on, but for the present, let’s explore the possibilities.

The earliest forms of spirit communication can be traced back to scryers and the reading of objects to receive a message, this eventually led to the use of the pendulum, swinging from a subject’s hand, first to signify yes or no and later, with the use of a board with letters and numbers, to spell out words.  Finally, came the Ouija Board, which replaced the pendulum with a planchette which glided over the smooth surface of a lettered board at the touch of two subjects.  The progression is noteworthy for several reasons, the most obvious the fact that the communications passed from soothsayers to the general public as time progressed, eliminating the “middle man.”

In the later 20^th century, as the concepts of radio and TV were introduced, so too moved the notion of spirit communication through electronics, most notably the ITC experiments and later Franks Box and those that followed, giving a “voice” to the spirit.  The observer might assume all of these systems are interrelated, but on close scrutiny, while they share a common goal, there are worlds apart. The one thing they do share is the need for interpretation, be it the soothsayer and his magic crystal ball or the Ghost Box operator listening for Aunt Hattie to send a message. Truth, like beauty is in the eye of the beholder, one might comment.

In order to separate the wheat from the rest, you have to set some realistic limits to any communications inquiry.  To keep it simple, the best way is to limit the information being sought to simple answers; yes or no to start with.  While all of the communications devices I have mentioned can communicate longer and more extensive messages, the researcher will classify most of them as flawed to some degree, thus the rating system used today by most researchers when classifying Electronic Voice Phenomenon.  A Class One EVP is completely understandable, no room for interpretation, no noise factor to deal with. This message is “in the clear” with no room for error.  For example, “What is your name?” followed by an appropriate response in context, “Charles.”  These are not EVPs open to conjecture or interpretation, we are not saying “It sounds like it is saying Charles.”  The Class One EVP could be played to a thousand people and all would say the tape is vocalizing the name, “Charles.”  Every other class of EVP is open to conjecture, so if you want to make a case for real spirit communication, only the Class One will suffice.  Many may disagree, but this is the only logical direction to follow.

The same is true for any other communication in this genre, be it a ghost box or a Ouija Board. Once you enter the realm of interpreting the message, you are opening a can of worms, so a superficial glance at the most significant data is probably the best place to start, not that some very complicated messages can’t be gleaned from these devices. Within the scope of my work in this area, I have heard or witnessed dozens of complicated messages that begged to be confirmed and a good deal of time has been dedicated to researching the truth behind them.

The one case that comes to mind is from a Ouija Board study conducted at NYU many years ago. During those sessions, multiple subjects received messages from a spirit reported to be a young boy, who had been killed in a trolley car accident at the turn of the century, not too far from the cmpus.  More and more information was collected from this spirit and researchers then set to the task to prove or disprove his existence in history.  This was not easy at the time, it required hours of work searching microfiche files and thumbing through dusty newspaper morgues; the Internet did not yet exist.  All of that work did pay off however; the boy did live in the area he said and the accident was reported in the newspaper. As to what else he told the subjects, we have to leave to conjecture, but the basic element, the boy’s existence in context, was astounding to most.

Of course, that should not have surprised the team all that much. Almost a century before, under the supervision of Dr. William James, a Boston psychic made contact with a recently passed member of the ASPR, who entered into elaborate conversations with his late colleagues. Richard Hodgson was a great researcher, probably the first full-time paid paranormal investigator, who had risen from being a self avowed skeptic and debunker into one of the great investigators of his or any later era. Hodgson was an Australian, who earned multiple degrees before undertaking, “the search for the source and secret of all life.”

Hodgson later joined James Hyslop and William James at the ASPR where he acted as the group’s Secretary, field investigator and principal researcher. Hodgson became the point man in the ASPR’s study of Leonore Piper, possibly the most gifted psychic of her generation. During this period he hypothesized that talk of the subliminal self and psychic communications were incompatible.  He had earlier considered that psychics were reading the minds of their clients, either consciously or subconsciously, which he later abandoned in favor of the spirit communications theory.  Hodgson later began to have direct communications with what might be called “spirit guides,” in today’s vernacular.  He later wrote that, “It adds a great deal to life to be assured of the nearness and help of particular discarnate spirits.”

Hodgson died at the age of 50 and was missed by his associates, but none were expecting what was to happen next. Eight days after Hodgson’s death, Ms. Theodate Pope who was a friend of the last researcher, had a sitting with Leonore Piper, who worked primarily through automatic writing.  She began to write the letter H, and her pencil broke.  Once replaces, the message was written, HODGSON.

One January 23^rd, 1906, on a third sitting, Mrs. William James and her son went for a sitting with Piper as part of the ASPRs ongoing study. This time Hodgson communicated directly using Piper’s voice, “Why there is Billy!  Mrs. James and Billy, God Bless You! Well, well, this is good! (laughter) I have found my way and I am here… have patience with me…Where is William?  I am not strong, but have patience with me…I will tell you all.”

Over the next seven months, several ASPR investigators worked with Pipe full time and the spirit of Hodgson emerged with remarkable results. He admitted that some earthly names come and go and that was very difficult to remember some events.  For example, he could recall his last meal with some associates at the Tavern Club, but could not recall the names of those present. This may not have been a defect of being on the other side however; several colleagues noted that in life, Hodgson was very poor when remembering names. The spirit suggested that it was also difficult to manipulate the “organism” (the medium Piper) to communicate.  When writing, the lettering was sometimes illegible, but it was noted that in life, Hodgson had such a bad handwriting that James often had to ask his daughter to decipher it.

The key to believing that this was actually Hodgson communicating was a fact he offered, in a session with several witnesses, alluding to a past affair in Australia, before any of them knew him.  James hired a private investigator, who was able, with great difficulty, to confirm the relationship.   The spirit was most comfortable working with a spirit guide named Rector.  When James asked if he could communicate without Rector, Hodgson explained, “Rector understands the management of the light.” He offered no further explanation. He told James he was far too skeptical and that he (James) had to understand that communications in this fashion are far more difficult than when he was alive.  In time the contacts became less frequent and eventually nothing more was heard from Hodgson.

Of course, the skeptics would say this could be any number of other phenomena, but James and Hyslop admitted that during their sessions and other, the voice of Hodgson was speaking on several topics and ongoing research that was frankly way beyond the understanding or vocabulary of the psychic. They also felt that the information given was true and accurate, but that there were questions left unanswered, either because Hodgson did not have the answer, or was not willing to share it with them.  The problems associated with the stated difficulty in communicating, loss of memory in some areas and a fading link for the continued communications were all potholes on the road to better understanding, but universally, those involved in this case were convinced that they had communicated with their departed colleague.

So, in theory, real communications is possible, based on this early ASPR study, but that begs the question of how to eliminate the false or fictitious from reality in spirit echanges. The first step is the research. While I may not have encountered the phenomena personally, there are many cases where investigators claim that a presence followed them from a haunted location to the individual’s home.  The first question is not the obvious one, however. Rather than questioning the validity of the claim, it is better to look at the details that have led the investigator to believe that this is true.  This is also where the separation of research from field work is important.  If the investigator does not have access to the history of the case beforehand, it is fairly simple to compare the “personality” of the reported traveling spirit with the assumed presence in the target location. If the “guest ghost” can’t articulate specifics as to his history and nature, then it is probably not the same.  This would especially be true in long running phenomena, where the presence at the original target location has been residing and active for some time.

If it is assumed that the two are one in the same, then you have to go back to the original client for further follow-up.  Is the activity still in that location, specific to the “spirit” being identified.  If so, it is unlikely to have achieved the ability to be in more than one place at a time, and whatever is happening, it is unlikely that it can be attributed to a bilocating ghost. But if that is not the answer, what could it be?  There are two possibilities; first it could be another spirit who is playing with the individual, part of a cosmic game that seems to show up all too often, especially in those not fully versed in the field, a kind of initiation prank from the other side.  The second is also possible, a kind of mental projection created by the individual in response to being in close contact, usually again for the first time, by a real spirit. A mental construct is certainly powerful, can manifest in many ways and be very real.

The point here however is the fact that when dealing with a presumed ghost, you can’t necessarily depend on the information you receive, whether it is an EVP or any other form of communication. The integrity of the information is limited by the honesty and possibly the intention of the spirit.  Sometimes the spirit will reveal meaningful information, other times mindless babble. Many times they will simply agree with you or tell you what you hope to hear.  Dozens of folks each year write and call me because they are communicating with a spirit who simply says, “Help me!” which in some ways is very similar to an EVP that says it isn’t there. It is simply something to say, mindless chatter, part of a game.  On the other hand, the message may be revealing and meaningful and a simple “Help me,” might be very real.  How do you know?  Again, go back to the research.

First, identify the entity; don’t assume anything! Carefully question motivation, why would it follow you home?  For what purpose? Hodgson communicated with his colleagues in an attempt to conduct unfinished business.  That is true, as we all know, in most haunting cases; so what is the reason for this hitchhiker? Ghosts do not just go visiting, they do not take vacations, there has to be a purpose.  These are no easy answers to these questions, but the alternative is to ignore the activity all together.

Returning for a moment to the subject at hand, this is not to suggest that all ghosts lie or mislead, nor does in suggest that a spirit who misleads is in some way “demonic.”  That would be mixing apples and oranges. Scrying does not open a door to the damned, if it opens a door at all. We have yet to prove empirically that any of this is “real.” Voices from a ghost box could be simple audio matrixing, and messages from a Ouija Board simple electrical impulses that move the planchette; psychics could be channeling their own abilities through ESP.  Yes, there is a long anecdotal record that suggests it is something else but what, is the question and until as much time is devoted to research in these areas, we are no further along this path than James, Hyslop and Richard Hodgson.

It is nevertheless prudent to take all “communications” with a grain of salt and not be misled. All too often I hear of folks who allow themselves to be manipulated by spirits, they consult with them before any decision of consequence and blindly follow their lead.  This is a pitfall that anyone could easily fall into and one that we have to avoid. There is no proof that what they are hearing is true or in their best interests. That does not mean it is demonic in nature, just dishonest and there is nothing to suggest otherwise. Yes, folklore runs rampant in this context with all sorts of claims, but as with anything else, first you have to confirm the existence of activity, then research its history. Only after all of that can you hope to find answers. That is our quest.

Fate Magazine by Rick Moran

Archive footage of An Interview With Harry Price on Movietone News Theatre

 

 

So much has been published about Borley Rectory that it seems inconceivable that anything new could possibly turn up. Surprisingly, this is not the case. The original researchers of the Borley Rectory left a huge mass of documentation, letters, photographs and other material, which seems to have been ignored by the writers of the more recent books. Harry Price was an instinctive archivist. Eric Dingwall and Mollie Goldney left a treasure-trove of primary material. Recently, the writings and interviews of Marianne Foyster have come to light, along with Caroline Bull’s diary. The full extent of Harry Price’s chicanery and duplicity, documented at the time in ‘confidential files’ is only now being exposed.

One of the more agreeable surprises was the copy of an abandoned BBC program scheduled for broadcast on 10th September 1956, and produced by Joe Burroughs. It was abandoned due to fears in the legal department that Marianne Foyster, who was almost certainly responsible for the more spectacular haunting, could easily sue the BBC for what was said about her in this broadcast. We thought that the script was lost but a copy of the proofs of the script, once owned by Mollie Goldney, turned up in the SPR Archive. It remains a good general guide to the Borley Rectory affair

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In 1940 Harry Price’s first book on Borley Rectory, The Most Haunted House in England, was published. The late Sir Albion Richardson, Recorder of Nottingham, wrote of it:

“The evidence Mr, Price has collected … is as conclusive as human testimony can ever be … The manifestations are proved to the point of moral certainty.”

And the late Sir Ernest Jelf, Senior Master of the Supreme Court:

“A very strong case has undoubtedly been put forward and we are at a loss to understand what cross-examination could possibly shake it.”

There is no doubt that these opinions were shared by the vast majority of Price’s readers. He had marshalled the evidence of his own alleged experiences and those of a hundred other witnesses with no little skill. In 1946 in his second book on Borley – ‘The End of Borley Rectory’- Price wrote:

“If, six years ago, I came to the conclusion that I could find no other explanation for some of the Borley phenomena than the popular theory of survival after death, I unhesitatingly declare I am still of that same opinion … I would go so far as to state that the Borley case presents a better argument for ’survival’ than any case with which I am familiar.”

He went on to say …

“The Borley phenomena occurred in the way they were said to occur. They were of paranormal origin. They have been scientifically proved… Fraud, mal-observation, exaggeration, natural causes and trickery, conscious, unconscious or subconscious could not have accounted for them.”

And Price cited the testimony of another hundred witnesses in support of his claim. What was the story that so strongly impressed so many? We can only briefly recapitulate its main points.

It began for Price on June 11th, 1929. He wrote;

“The News Editor of a national newspaper telephoned me saying that the Reverend G.E. Smith had appealed to him for help. The most extraordinary things were happening at his rectory. Bells were ringing of their own volition, strange lights were seen in empty and locked rooms. The nun had been seen again. Slow, dragging footsteps were heard across the floor of an unoccupied room. A young maidservant, imported from London, had left after two days work and her successor declared she saw an old-fashioned coach, drawn by two brown horses, gallop through the hedge, sweep across the lawn and vanish into thin air. She, too, saw the nun leaning over a gate near the house.”

Price went to Borley the next day. The rectory, a large, ugly, red-brick building with stabling and an adjacent farm, faced the village church, The hill it stood on overlooked Long Melford and Sudbury, each about two miles away. The village, small and scattered, lay round it on the borders of Essex and Suffolk. The Rector and his wife, says Price, confirmed the strange events and added numerous other details. That evening, in the presence of Price, a remarkable sequence of poltergeist phenomena ensued. Price wrote :

“Although I have investigated many haunted houses before and since, never have such phenomena so impressed me as they did on this historic day. Sixteen hours of thrills”

The next day, Price saw members of the family which had lived in the Rectory for years. It had been built in 1863 by the Reverend Henry Bull who had seen the famous nun. Indeed, it was said, he had bricked up a dining-room window to stop her looking in on family meals. His four daughters had seen the nun in broad daylight on July 28, 1900. Their brother, now dead, had seen a variety of apparitions. Strange noises had been heard repeatedly, Other local witnesses later recounted a variety of alarming experiences inside and outside the Rectory. Price noted down the local legend.

“The rectory was built on the site of a thirteenth century monastery. Nearby was a convent. A monk and a nun had been caught in the act of elopement and put to death. The coach was presumably their intended transport,”

Shortly after Price’s first visit the Smiths left the Rectory. It had no piped water, no gas or electricity, was uncomfortable and difficult to run. It had some thirty rooms, mostly of course unoccupied. Price went again on several occasions but had nothing to report comparable to his first visit. The Smiths kept him informed of sporadic incidents that took place in their absence. This comparative calm was shattered with the arrival of a new Rector in October 1930, An astonishing series of phenomena began, reaching their height of violence in June 1931. Their focus appeared to be the wife of the Rector, Marianne Foyster. Numerous witnesses confirmed many of them. 

Price paid one visit to the Rectory while the Foysters were there, in October 1931. A variety of phenomena greeted him. He later stated that from October 1929 to January 1932 over 2,000 paranormal phenomena had occurred in the Rectory. They included, Voices. Footsteps. Apparitions, Strange odours. The production, disappearance, and transference of objects. Bell ringing. The throwing and dropping of bottles, stones and other missiles. Booby traps. The overturning of furniture. Small outbreaks of fire. The locking and unlocking of doors. Personal injuries of a mild nature.

And, of course, the famous messages written on the Rectory walls and pieces of paper addressed to Marianne Foyster and asking for help., prayers and mass. After a séance of exorcism in January 1932 the phenomena virtually ceased. In October 1935 the Foysters left Borley. The succeeding rector obtained permission to live elsewhere and the Rectory was left empty. In May 1937 Harry Price leased it for twelve months and enrolled a corps of 48 unpaid investigators. Paranormal phenomena were reported by some of them – but at their height there was no repetition of the sensations of the Smith and Foyster periods. There was one new development.

The daughter of S.H. Glanville, Price’s leading investigator, obtained information about the supposed murdered nun by means of a planchette – a device for registering automatic writing. In substance it came to this: Her name was Marie Lairre, At the age of nineteen she came to Borley from a convent at Le Havre and was murdered and buried in the vicinity of the Rectory by a member of the Waldegrave family – the local landowners – on May 17, 1667. Price warned his readers not to take this too seriously,

On February 27, 1939, the Rectory was burned down. Apparitions were seen by several witnesses. The owner – who had bought it from Queen Anne’s Bounty for £500 (it was insured for £3,500) – informed Price that he had experienced unaccountable happenings during the short time he lived there.

The earlier monk and nun elopement legend was discredited. It was proved that there had never been a monastery at Borley. Canon Phythian-Adams read Price’s Most Haunted House in England and advanced a theory, based on his interpretation of one of the cryptic wall writings, that the bones of the murdered nun might be found under the ruins of the Rectory. In 1943, Price dug up the floor of one of the cellars. Portions of the skull of a young woman were discovered. Two years later these remains were buried in a nearby churchyard and masses said for the repose of Marie Lairre. The ruins of the Rectory continued to be investigated by groups of investigators. Phenomena continued to be reported. Then when the ruins were being demolished, Price saw the levitation of a brick which was photographed in flight by a press representative. Now, while Price never said that he accepted any of the theories advanced about the nun or that the bones he dug up were hers, he did insist that his whole investigation was scientific.

When he died in 1948 he had presented one of the best ghost stories of all time. Criticism of his methods of investigation and the validity of his claims was unknown outside a small circle, and little heeded. But it did exist. Lord Charles Hope, after two visits to Borley in July 1929, wrote;

“Although I did not feel certain, I left Borley with the definite suspicion that Mr. Price might be responsible for some at least of the phenomena which had occurred when I was present.”

Charles Sutton, a. newspaper reporter, recalls his visit to Borley with Price in July 1929,

“As we stood on the lawn, Harry Price explained to me that when he’d been standing on that same spot with Lord Charles Hope a week previously, a window had broken and the glass had cascaded to the ground. Within two or three seconds of Price pointing out to me, the glassless frame of this window, its neighbour suddenly smashed and another cascade of glass tumbled down.

The three of us went round the ground floor in this order: Price’s secretary opening the doors, I examining each empty room carefully in the light of my hurricane lamp and Harry Price following, turning the key in each door after me, but before he did so there was a resounding crash in each room as if a stone had been thrown. Upon examination, I could not decide whether these stones and pebbles had just been thrown because there were already a number of stones lying around.

We went up to the first floor and entered the first bedroom at the top of the stairs and stood looking out on the lawn, waiting for the famous nun to appear or the coach and horses driven by a headless coachman. Nothing appeared and no more stones were flung anywhere in the house, neither did I hear the ringing of the bells which I had been told to expect.

As I had been concerned about the crashes in the rooms downstairs as Harry Price was about to lock them, I suggested that we should reverse the order of procedure and that Harry Price should walk in front of me and open the doors and that his secretary should follow me and lock them,

Harry Price argued against this change of order so we proceeded as before, but not more than seven or eight steps. As we crossed the landing there was a series of reverberating crashes, later I found that a half brick had rolled down the staircase. Once more I was aware of a swishing sound near me,

My suspicions now thoroughly aroused, I dropped my hurricane lamp, seized Harry Price’s coat and , said; “Now I have got you” I had, for when I plunged my hands into his coat pockets they were full of stones and pebbles.

I needed no further evidence that Harry Price was responsible for the ghostly noises I had heard and I can never forgive him for ruining the atmosphere of a house which seemed to promise so much without the aid of material assistance.”

Mr. Sutton’s newspaper suppressed his story fearing a libel action, “They were two to one” his News Editor said. In both Price’s Borley books it is clear what importance he attaches to the events which took place while the Foysters were at the Rectory. In The Most Haunted House In England he permits himself some criticism of Mrs, Foyster’s evidence. In ‘The End of Borley Rectory”, criticism is suppressed. Mrs. K.M. Goldney, who accompanied Price on the single visit he paid to Borley between 1929 and 1937, speaks of the opinion he then held of Mrs Foyster,

“Well, I and two other friends accompanied Harry Price when he revisited Borley in October 1931 to investigate the astonishing crescendo of alleged psychic phenomena which had occurred after Mr. and Mrs. Foyster came to the Rectory. We were favoured by the alleged ‘poltergeist’ with plenty of his mischiefs: bottles and other missiles came hurtling down the stairs and crashed to pieces in the hall below; Mrs. Foyster was mysteriously locked into her bedroom and couldn’t get out; wine brought for our refreshment was turned into ink. and so on. I am telling of these things from memory, for I took no notes. And the reason neither I nor my friends took any notes was because we all of us, including Mr, Price, had no doubt at all in our minds that all we had seen was produced not by any poltergeist but by Mrs. Foyster.

We told Mr. Foyster our conclusions regarding his wife. Mr Price repeated this view in writing to various friends – among them the Hon. Everard Fielding – to whom he wrote “We were convinced that the Rector’s wife was just fooling us for some reason best known to herself.” Later, in the first edition of his book, Confessions of a Ghost Hunter, he wrote of this occasion for all his readers to see: “We came to the conclusion that the supernormal played no, part in the ‘wonders’ we had witnessed.”

This sentence was deleted in further editions of the book, “in case” wrote Mr. Price “the Foysters took objection to it.” When he came to write

his first book on Borley – The Most Haunted House in England – he asked Mr, Foyster to contribute a section to it. Mr. Foyster wrote back, not unnaturally, expressing surprise at the request since Mr, Price had accused his wife of being responsible for the ‘phenomena’. You may think it is not to Mr. Price’s credit that he replied to Mr. Foyster admitting that this opinion was given in 1931 but he added that “of. course no word of this” would appear in his book.”

After this visit Price stayed away from Borley for five and a half years. In both his books Price described the Reverend L.A. Foyster in terms that left no doubt that he considered him a reliable witness. On the other hand, Mr. W. H. Salter, who also went to Borley in October 1931, records this impression of him.

“I reminded him that a mutual friend, who had seen the wall writings, had pronounced them, and all the other queer happenings, as his wife’s work. He said that was all nonsense. Asked to describe one of the recent occurrences, he said a dreadful thing had happened only the last week-end. His sermon, which he had left on the study table on Saturday night, had disappeared when he went to pick it up on Sunday morning. He spoke of this as if it were obviously the work of the powers of evil, a view I was unable to accept. He seemed to me to have little worldly wisdom and to be entirely dominated by his wife.

Mr. Peter Underwood, who has investigated the Borley story extensively over many years, but who never met either of the Foysters, reaches this conclusion.

All the score or so witnesses whose evidence I have obtained concerning the Foyster incumbency have been emphatic regarding the integrity of the Rev. L, A, Foyster. He does not appear to have been the kind of man to be hoodwinked continuously for five years.

As to suggestion that Mrs. Foyster may have wanted to leave that ugly, remote Rectory and therefore furthered its unpleasant reputation, he says

I find that she told people she loved Borley and spent some of the happiest days of her life there,

Much evidence that could have given at least the opportunity for conclusions rather different than those formulated by Harry Price was not at this time generally available. By the time Price’s tenancy of the Rectory began in May 1937 its reputation was well established. He seldom went there himself, preferring as he said to let others rather than himself report on what went on, Ellic Howe, one of Price’s observers, was one of the few people to visit the Rectory with him at this time.

“Late that afternoon we collected a few small objects, such as empty tobacco tins, cigarette cartons, and the like. We put these on various window-sills in the upstairs rooms and made chalk marks round their areas so that we could check their original positions if they were moved by any invisible agency.

When we had finished we made sure that all the windows were closed, and we also closed all the doors behind us. Then we locked up the house and went to Sudbury for a quick evening meal. We got back to Borley long before twilight and made another tour of the house.

In one of the rooms – next to the famous Blue Room – we found that two objects had ‘moved. A tobacco tin was at least six feet away from its original position and on the floor, and a cigarette carton had moved about a foot along the window-sill. Price was convinced that this was an abnormal occurrence. You might suggest that they had been blown by the wind. But there was no wind. It was a calm, sunny June day, Anyway, the windows were closed and we had blocked the fireplace with newspaper. Price did not move them, because he was never out of my sight. It is all still a mystery as far as I am concerned.”

Another observer to visit Borley with Price and a friend a few months later was Major the Hon. Henry Douglas-Home. He reached this rather different conclusion.

After dark we toured each room every hour, my friend leading, myself, and Price bringing up the rear. The first few hours we found a number of extraordinary squiggles on walls which we all swore had been unmarked on our previous hour’s visit. We each carried a torch and I was so intent on examining each new mark that I failed, at first, to realise how they were being made. The last man had a pencil up his sleeve and as he swept his torch over the wall ahead he made new squiggles in the darkness which would be found on the next inspection.

I suggested that in future I would bring up the rear as I was having all the excitement of finding new marks. I thus kept Harry Price in view. No other poltergeist scribbles appeared that night.

As we said goodbye I asked him if I could spend another night at Borley. He regretted that his list of special investigators was so full that he couldn’t promise it for months. I heard no more from him but went down on my own on several occasions. No curious incident of any kind ever happened,

To which some might reply that poltergeists and phantoms seldom appear when bidden and have no telephone numbers.

Price’s observers reported on what they saw and heard with industry and some with skill and discernment. But much that they did report strikes the careful reader as proceeding from nervous rather than supernatural sources, Indeed, many of them seemed to have gone to Borley with their minds made up in favour of ghosts and to have disregarded or very reluctantly admitted obvious natural reasons for much they saw and heard. In a large empty house with admittedly extraordinary acoustic properties -with a farm nearby and rats and mice and birds abundant, with practical jokers never far away to manufacture what was not otherwise forthcoming -lights and noises and voices and footsteps and ringing bells seemed to have impressed them more than was reasonable. Many of their reports and comments were printed verbatim by Price in ‘The Most Haunted House in England’ But some of them had experiences similar to that of Mr, Gordon Glover who spent a night in the Rectory in February 1938

“There were bumps, and there were thumps, and a shuffle and a crack. My wife, in daylight, fancied that she heard a door quietly close downstairs. The wife of my friend – an intense and highly-strung girl – said that she heard ‘light footsteps1 which were inaudible to the rest of us at the same time and place. This same young woman, while we were peering through the February twilight at the famous ‘Nun’s Walk’, claimed suddenly in a tense whisper to have seen a ‘humped shadow’ move between two fir trees,

These events, together with our observations of rat and mouse droppings, I reported at length to Mr, Price, adding observations of my own to the effect that we could not be convinced of any paranormal happenings. Particularly I doubted the ‘appearance’ of the nun. In the half-light nothing is easier, if the witness is so disposed., than to join together two solid objects (trees) by a third moving object (shadow or ‘nun’) in the last faint light before darkness,

Mr. Price in his book, ‘The Most Haunted House in England’, quoted verbatim and truthfully sections of my report. Other comments – in particular reference to rats and mice – he omitted. The ‘humped shadow’ seen by my impressionable companion, was hailed by Mr. Price as the nun indeed, who, he said, ‘put in one of her rare appearances… in February 1938′. She may have done- but 1 doubt it, and did not scruple to say so.”

Such comments were not welcomed by Harry Price. On the other hand, he did show a tendency to welcome any comment that suggested a supernatural reason for incidents his observers reported. His whole method of conducting his investigation -so written as inevitably to condition the impressionable in advance – to the general lack of critical appraisal of the evidence presented to him left him open to criticism of two main types. The first is made by a lawyer who is also a psychical researcher of experience.

“One thing stands out crystal clear, that owing to the complete lack of liaison between the various groups of observers and the absence of any properly organised plan of investigation, the reports of Price’s observers are really valueless from a scientific standpoint.

The second by Major Douglas-Home, whom you heard ¦ a moment ago.

“As happened in my case, any critical or suspicious observer incurred Price’s extreme displeasure, for he could not afford to have the whole edifice of mystery which he had created destroyed by exposure. From his mass of untrained observers who reported everything from a dog barking to a cloud of gnats, he got exactly what he wanted, All he had to do was to write up and carefully – very carefully -edit these stories for publication and gain. “For publication and gain”.

Was Price indeed building up a story on evidence that had not been subjected to cross-examination? Perhaps even manufacturing evidence when it was not available in sufficient quality for his purpose? In 1945 Mrs. Smith whose action in writing to a national newspaper for advice had set the whole story in motion, wrote again to the Church Times denying that the Rectory had ever been haunted by anything but rats and mice and local superstition. She and her husband had left the Rectory because of its broken down condition and the unwelcome publicity it had attracted. But they had certainly found nothing to fear there.

In March 1948 Harry Price died. In May 1949 Mrs. Smith repeated her disbelief in the Borley haunting in the columns of a national newspaper. The Council of the Society for Psychical Research decided to investigate the case thoroughly. The Secretary, Mr. W. H. Salter says

“It was being quoted as strong evidence for human survival of death, a problem the Society has been carefully examining for more than 70 years. It was, if the account given in Harry Price’s books could be accepted, a quite exceptional case, in which, contrary to general experience, a haunting with 4o years history of apparitions and other probably subjective phenomena suddenly, with Harry Price’s first visit, blossomed out into stone-throwing, followed by other undoubtedly objective . occurrences, like the writing on the walls.

Moreover, the evidence already in the Society’s possession, very incomplete as it was, did not point in the same direction as Harry Price’s books. Doubts therefore arose as to whether these books contained the whole truth, doubts that were freely expressed in his lifetime. It was only after his death, when Mr, Tabori, his literary executor, kindly made Price’s unpublished papers accessible to the Society, that these doubts could be put to the test.”

Three investigators, Mrs. K. M. Goldney, Dr. Eric Dingwall and Mr. Trevor Hall worked for several years on the case, studying the documentary evidence, interviewing witnesses, checking stories presented by Price as accurate. 
They had two main questions to answer

• One, could Price’s account be relied on? 
• Two, apart from Price, was there any evidence to show that the Rectory ever was haunted? 

The first question was much the easier to answer and their Report published under the title – HBR shows only too clearly that Price did manipulate, sub-edit and occasionally heighten the evidence not nearly so impressive in its original form. There are too many examples to be explained away by carelessness or haste. It all seems part of a careful attempt to build up a ‘good story’. They also leave little doubt that, in their view. Price himself was responsible for some of the ‘Phenomena’ he reported – particularly on the occasion of his first visit in 1929. Much turns on this first visit. Did the Smiths believe that the Rectory was haunted? Here is Mr. Peter Underwood’s view

“The late Mrs, Lucie Meeker, Harry Price’s secretary, who went with him on his first visit to Borley, gave me her impression of the Rev, G, Eric Smith. “His physical build” she said, “his character and faith inspired the sort of confidence usually associated with the Rock of Gibraltar.” Long after he left the Rectory, Mr. Smith maintained that it was haunted, that there was an evil atmosphere there and that he would never live there again. She spoke also of his “nervous, kindly wife” who in recent years has told a very different story of events in the Rectory. Mrs. Smith’s mental outlook on these matters leaves much to be desired… Her original opinions were freely given to a wide number of people without pressure of any kind and, to me, carry considerably more value than later evidence provided under pressure.”

And here is the view of Mrs. K.M, Goldney,

“When Dr. Dingwall and I saw Mrs. Smith, now widowed, she recorded without any kind of pressure that she and her husband had had no reason to think Borley Rectory was haunted, but wished to contact a trained investigator in order to dispel the rumours of a haunt which were current among their village parishioners,

Mr, Price came down, and immediately upon, his arrival there occurred a number of extraordinary happenings of a kind that had never occurred before.

Mr. Price, contrary to their expectations, assured the Smiths that Borley was indeed haunted, and urged them to tell him of any unexplained happenings, however small, that had occurred since they came there. They were bewildered, said Mrs. Smith, but did not believe in the haunt.

Now, when we later had Mr. Price’s private files in our hands and examined the letters exchanged at the time between Mr. Price and the Smiths, it was obvious to us that at the time they had leant more towards accepting a paranormal hypothesis than Mrs. Smith had admitted to us, “Borley is undoubtedly haunted” Mr. Smith had written in one of his letters. Well, we had to decide whether their apparent belief in a haunt at that time, 20 years before we met Mrs. Smith, had been a genuine, independent belief, or whether she and her husband had been swayed by Mr. Price’s constant suggestions of a haunt and by the peculiar things which happened only when he was there. We maintain that the Smiths succumbed to suggestion – though only partially; for when Mr. Price later asked the Smiths to contribute an account of their experiences for his own book on Borley, they refused, and Mr. Smith wrote: “Mrs. Smith and I would rather be left out of it… we really did not believe there were any such things as ghosts,”

You must make up your own minds, But the sudden explosion of poltergeist activity of a kind never recorded before is perhaps as unfortunate from the one point of view as it is significant from the other. Moreover, the Smiths’ maid, who still believes the Rectory was haunted, admits to having manufactured a few phenomena herself – having observed Harry Price doing likewise. As to the odd events reported by the Smiths after they left the Rectory – the evidence for a supernatural cause can at least be countered by the evidence that the house, locked up as it was, could fairly easily be entered without trace and that the villagers of Borley have more than a liking for practical jokes, frequently of rather a macabre nature

You’ve heard Harry Price’s first and subsequent opinions of the Foyster period. Here is Mr. Trevor Hall’s summary of his investigations

“The wall writings at Borley were almost unique in records of haunted houses – but not quite. The other and earlier case was at Amherst, Nova Scotia, only a few miles from Sackville, where the Foysters lived before coming to Borley, There were many similarities between the experiences of Esther Cox and Marianne Foyster, but the incidence of wall writings in both cases leads to the suspicion that Amherst may have been used as a pattern. Knowledge of the previous case is implied by Mr. Foyster’s use of the most unusual pseudonym ‘Teed’ in his manuscript about Borley, for Mr. Teed was the owner of the haunted house at Amherst,

There is little doubt that Mrs. Foyster could have faked the supposed manifestations on the basis of the previous stories about the rectory, and that she had a motive for doing so. Mrs. Wildgoose, who as a girl was employed by the Foysters, has told us that Marianne hated Borley, whilst we know from his correspondence that Mr. Foyster was determined to remain.

Many of the alleged phenomena relied entirely upon Mrs. Foyster’s account, and nothing else. A close relative has told us that the elderly Mr. Foyster’s gullibility was almost unbelievable, and that he accepted implicitly everything his young wife told him. The same relative described how he discovered the twine hidden in the ivy of the courtyard wall which when pulled rang the bells in the house.

Mrs. Foyster told some remarkable stories to some of our informants. She said that she was the daughter of a Chilean diplomat and Sarah von Kiergraff, and was born in Schleswig Holstein, when she was in fact the child of a teacher of shorthand in Stockport. The curious circumstances of her life at Borley, and afterwards when she was known as Mrs, Fisher, and Mr. Foyster was believed to be her father do not encourage us to regard her as a reliable witness, or to accept as supernormal any of the incidents recorded during her occupation of the house.

In fairness to her, I must mention that in a recent letter addressed to me she has denied all responsibility for the alleged phenomena at Borley, If I understand her correctly she claims that her husband was unpopular and that this led to trickery by local children.

You’ve heard criticism of Harry Price’s own behaviour and general conduct of his investigation during his tenancy of the Rectory in 1937-38, It must be pointed out that very few of his observers doubted either his sincerity or the fact that experiences inexplicable to them had occurred while they were on duty, Ellic Howe speaks for many of them.

“Suppose for a moment that Price was quite aware that he was setting the stage for a colossal hoax. If he had that sort of thing in mind he never gave the game away – or at least not to me. His acting must have been consummate. But I don’t think he was acting. Why, if the Borley haunt was phoney, did he take the trouble to spend a tedious hour before dawn standing with me in the notorious Blue Room? Was it just to impress me? I don’t think so.”

And Mr. Peter Underwood says this of Price’s chief observer, the late Mr. Sidney Glanville, who he claims was convinced the Rectory was haunted.

“To me it is significant that in the recent report his evidence is admitted to be one of the most puzzling features of the case. It seems to me it would be a phenomenon of the highest order if Glanville and Ms party experienced paranormal happenings and were the only party to do so,”

Mr. Underwood knew Mr. Glanville personally. So did Mr. Trevor Hall,

“Sidney Glanville was the most lovable and honest of men, and nobody who knew him could imagine for one moment that any of our criticisms of Price could possibly extend in any way whatsoever to him. He was in my view grievously misled by Price, and his opinion of the case became greatly modified during the progress of our investigation, in which he took the keenest interest.”

Perhaps we may leave the period of Price’s tenancy with this comment by one accustomed to weighing evidence.

When the mass of credulity, local gossip and superstition, suggestion, mal-observation and personal motive has been cleared away, does anything remain at all remotely indicative of the paranormal? Well, what about the curious incident when Mr, Mark Kerr-Pearse, one of Price’s investigators, found himself locked in the Base Room on October 6th 1937 with the key on the inside? That needs some explaining unless we accept the suggestion that it was he himself who had unconsciously turned the key in the lock when he entered the room, I think this is a far-fetched explanation – because Mr, Kerr-Pearse had been in the room for some time before he heard the key turn. However, a protruding key could have been turned by human agency from the outside. There is no more evidence to support this theory than there is to support a supernatural explanation. And that is true of so much of the Borley evidence at large.

And we may for the moment leave Harry Price and Borley with the reflection that there is first hand evidence that the famous levitated brick – his last personal experience of the Rectory – may have been levitated by a workman, and not by a poltergeist, as Price was aware but never revealed. But apart from Harry Price’s story, is there any worthwhile evidence that the Rectory was haunted? These are the conclusions reached by Mr Trevor Hall on the period prior to 1929 and the period after Price’s active connection ended.

“Who started the ghost stories at Borley? In a recently published article, Mr. J, Harley has recalled that as a boy he was a pupil of the Rev. Harry Bull, arid was frequently present when the Rector tried to communicate with spirits in the garden. It was Mr. Harley who was assured by Harry Bull that when he died he would, if discontented, haunt the Rectory.

Harry Bull was Rector and landowner in a remote hamlet. His spiritualistic beliefs would clearly influence the views of his parishioners, and it is not surprising that stories became current that the Rectory was haunted. Some members of his family seem to have shared his views, whilst others did not. Miss Ethel Bull believes that 56 years ago she saw a figure in the twilight, whilst her late brothers Alfred, Gerald and Walter Bull were entirely sceptical and regarded ‘the ghost”’ as a product of the female imagination

I have recently obtained a copy of an article written by the late Mr. Shaw Jeffrey about his visits to Borley in 1885-6. (Price enthused over what he called the “exceptional value” of Mr. Jeffrey’s testimony for the early haunting of Borley Rectory, but omitted one fact, Mr Jeffrey said that the disconcerting; incidents he experienced were at the time attributed by him to the practical joking of the younger members of the family, In 1941,
after reading The Most Haunted House in England he evidently dallied with the idea that fifty years previously a poltergeist might have been responsible for the placing of his boots on top of the wardrobe, and so forth. If we find this testimony unconvincing, then we are entitled to say that there is no evidence for any objective phenomena at Borley as opposed to vague ghost stories, from 1863 to the 12th June 1929 when Price first visited the house.

After the burning of the Rectory, the publication of ‘The Most Haunted House in England’ and the astonishing newspaper publicity which followed, it is not surprising that visitors to the ruins reported further phenomena. So influenced were people by the stories about the place that the simplest events, such as losing a pencil, the failure of a motor cycle to start or getting a twig attached to one’s clothing, were hailed as examples of supernormal forces still active at Borley. It was during this period that two bone fragments, supposedly the remains of the nun, were unearthed by Price from a trough in the cellar floor which had been mysteriously bricked over by persons unknown.

Mrs. Henning, the widow of the Rector of Lyston-cum-Borley from 1936 to 1945 believes from personal experience that the Rectory was haunted. This belief was shared by her husband. She also thinks that the recent Report is inaccurate and biased.

“I lived at Borley near the Rectory and the Church from March to December 1936 and in the adjacent village for 19 years.

I maintain there is a great deal of evidence that the Rectory was haunted before Mr. Price ever visited it and certainly after Mrs, Foyster had left.

The authors of the recent report suggest that Harry Price was misleading the reader by suppressing information. But they do the same thing. No mention is made of Mr. Edward Cooper and his wife who, as tenants of the cottage in 1916, had experiences of poltergeist activity, saw the nun, and Mr, Cooper saw the coach. They also ruthlessly set aside Mr. Shaw Jeffrey’s evidence about such things in 1885 and 1886. Yet Mr Shaw Jeffrey, as many of his old pupils can, testify, was quite firm about the stones thrown, the nun, the coach, and a French dictionary which had disappeared and was returned into his bedroom when the door was locked. If this evidence is rejected on score of his age, then we must set aside the contributions of Miss Ethel Bull and her brother for the same reason. Miss Ethel Bulls cousin, Lionel Fisher saw the nun before she did. He one day was sent by his mother from Long Melford with a letter to her sister, Mrs. Henry Bull. Entering by the lower wicket gate, he saw a nun in the garden. He continued to the front door, was taken to his aunt and asked her about the nun. She said there was no nun. Friends of the family say that was the official attitude. Such matters were not freely discussed with the younger members. On his return to Long Melford, Mr. Fisher questioned an elderly friend of his who knew the district and its history. This gentleman said that when he was a boy – early in Queen Victoria’s reign – the nun was talked about.

A great deal is made of the nearness of the farm buildings and how that accounts for the unusual smells. But that doesn’t explain the smell of violets in the cottage, the smell of wine in the Rectory garden, and incense on the road between Rectory and the church.

I find it ludicrous that the light in the window is explained as a reflection from a passing train. Let the writers visit Borley again. I live five minutes from a railway line and there is no glimmer in our house from trains. Borley Rectory is ten to fifteen minutes walk up the hill. Do serious researchers accept one Borley villager’s dictum about a light from a car? He might be putting off an inconvenient questioner as has happened in the past.

In 1937 when Mr. Price leased the Rectory, two members of the Society for Psychical Research visited us at Lyston. At the time I considered their visit of no importance and made no note of their names or status. They did remark, “we do not approve of Harry Price and his methods.”

As to my own experiences, In the summer of 1937 when Mr, Mark Kerr-Pearse – an excellent investigator – was in the house with my husband and myself the outer doors were locked and the windows sealed. We heard footsteps approaching along the passage from the kitchen and the swish of garments. When we could no longer restrain ourselves we rose to edge our way to the open door of the room in which we were. But nothing was to be seen or heard. This sound was not of people walking in the courtyard, nor of a rosebush, nor of rats.. Nor could it have been a practical joker entering by the cellars, for he could not have got away in time without our seeing or hearing him.

After the alter stone was lifted in the Church, footsteps, knocks and bumps were heard there. Shortly after this when Mr. Price, my husband and I were in the church, we were interrupted by a wild prolonged calling from the birds, as though in warning, followed by the sound of footsteps coming into the porch. My husband hurried down to see what was the matter. But there was no one there.

In the cottage, after the Rectory was burnt, there was the sound of footsteps, of crockery being smashed; the scent of violets which lasted for nearly a minute at a time when there was no lady in the house. The churchwarden was typing the manuscript of my husband’s book which was later privately published as “Haunted Borley”. My husband had written “I, myself, place no reliance on séances”. As this was being typed, the small hand lamp near the typist that had stood there night by night as he was typing his own poems and novels was suddenly swept from the table.

May I ask for fair play for the villagers of Borley? Anyone who really knows Borley will know that they were not the players of practical jokes – the investigator was nearer the mark who recorded that the knockers at the door ran laughing away and got into a car – mere visitors! May they be spared disturbance in their village and their privacy respected? Above all the church is for worship and not a laboratory for Psychical Research.”

Mr. Peter Underwood has collected a mass of material which he claims offers positive proof Harry Price regardless, of the haunt. Voices, footsteps, curious odours, loud and distinct thumps, crashing crockery, a phantom cat, are all vouched for, he says, by reliable witnesses. So are the Borley Phantoms.

“Early in August 1949 a Lancashire Rector, previously sceptical of the haunting, saw the figure of a veiled girl in Borley churchyard. He told me he was in the church porch at the time. She passed from behind one shrub to another, close by and then vanished. The rector immediately went to the spot but could find no explanation for the appearance or disappearance of the figure. In answer to my questions he added; “She appeared to be a frail girl, I should say between eighteen and twenty-three. She had the shape of a nun’s hood on her head. I couldn’t see her features,”

A figure in black was reported to have been seen in the churchyard in October 1949, it walked quickly and silently towards the little priest’s door and vanished. This report is signed by two witnesses. 

A local doctor saw a stooping, nun-like figure in the roadway between the Rectory site and the church in 1949. One of the present occupiers of the cottage (a boy of fourteen) claims to have seen the ghost nun on three occasions, while his uncle has reported seeing the same figure on the famous Nun’s Walk one day in August 1953.

To which Mrs, Goldney gives this reply.

We obviously cannot discuss items we have not investigated. But we do claim that in our report we have shown that the things which Mr. Price described in his two books on Borley – the story of a haunt from before 1900 until 1945- we claim that we have shown these things to be valueless as evidence for a genuine haunt. 

Nothing that has happened recently can compare with the ‘phenomena’ claimed by Mr. Price. If, then, after our prolonged investigations we have been able to demolish all the main so-called phenomena’ and to show their worthlessness, is it likely that the far feebler claims in recent times are going to be valid evidence for the paranormal?

To sum up. It is quite clear that for the good of psychical research at large the whole Borley story should have been investigated. It is equally clear that Harry Price’s version of it, however consciously or unconsciously misleading, leaves much to be desired. Indeed, to some people, its unreliability is in itself sufficient to discredit everything connected with Borley. To others the authors of the recent report have shown, a bias against the haunting of the Rectory as strong as Price’s bias in favour of the haunting, and to have been more concerned in attacking him than in anything else. Two of them speak from long acquaintance with him. Mrs. Goldney.

“The Society for Psychical Research never favoured Mr Price’s work because they had confidential information which led to certain doubts about him. 

I worked with him for many years and personally never had cause to doubt his own part in his investigations, or I shouldn’t have been working with him. But since his private files have been at my disposal I have, alas, been forced to form an adverse, view of his own activities. I have done so very reluctantly and if anybody can show me a way out which I can accept, I shall be greatly relieved. Nobody would like exposing a one-time colleague; but the duty of establishing the true facts far outweighs personal considerations, and we have in our report set forth what we feel to be the true facts without fear or favour.

Dr. Eric Dingwall:

“It must always be borne in mind that Price was a first-rate journalist and not a scientist trying patiently to ascertain what the facts were and how best to interpret them. He was content to tell the tale in the most interesting and convincing way he could and leave others to pick holes in it if they felt so inclined.

In essence, Price wanted quick and sensational results which he could easily publicise and so earn fame and an enviable notoriety. . It always astonished me that anyone really took him seriously. Yet there were many who believed in him and his work, and he even got support for some of his more spectacular stunts such as those with Joanna. Southcott’s box and the mysterious Brocken manuscript, both of which 1 believed at the time to be fakes. The Borley story was merely another of Price’s sensational cases, and it was certainly the most successful and attracted more attention than any of the others. I think that it deserved it. It is one of the best of all ghost stories and few people could have told it more convincingly than Harry Price.”

Whether or not Borley Rectory was haunted is now virtually impossible to determine. If you want to believe it was, nothing can stop you. Many still do believe. If you want to dismiss the whole affair with contempt or amusement or surrender belief with reluctance, you’ll find plenty to support you whichever course you decide on. 

There is no doubt that much that could be said about Borley will never be published, It concerns the private lives of individuals and is only indirectly concerned with the supernatural. There is equally no doubt that during its lifetime a series of highly unusual characters inhabited the Rectory or were in one way or another connected with it. The combination of local reputation and eccentric behaviour was too good an opportunity for a lover of publicity such as Harry Price to miss, Whether he believed in the story or not is an intriguing speculation but hardly relevant. So much of the important evidence depends not on scientific fact and hard logic but on those much more obviously exciting human fallibilities of observation, supposition, lively imagination and self-persuasion – however sincere. 

It’s hard to prove or disprove emotional conviction. If you think truth frequently lies between extremes, then you may agree with Dr. Andrew Robertson that the haunting of Borley Rectory remains ‘non proven’ but affords a moral worth consideration; The history of Borley Rectory reveals the great care with which one must proceed in these matters. We must consider not only the most dubious evidence for so-called paranormal agency, but also the evidence most difficult to explain away. What we need is not so much discussion of events of so many years ago, as more research into these apparently preternatural manifestations, without publicity and without practical jokers and without fraudulent psychical researchers.

During a BBC interview in 1975, Peter Underwood, a leading ghost hunter and former president of the Ghost Club in England talks about the history of the Uk’s most haunted house, Borley Rectory.

Full Account of England’s Most Famous Modern Ghost by Sidney H. Glanville

Reproduced below is the complete text from an article which appeared in an edition of the American Fate magazine for October 1951. It was written by Sidney H. Glanville who was one of Harry Price’s ‘Official Observers’ during his tenancy year of the Rectory in 1937/38. Glanville gives a concise history of the hauntings as well as describing his visits to Borley in the company of his son, Roger Glanville.

 

 

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No living man is as well qualified to write this account as S.H. Glanville. Harry Price, in his book, “The End of Borley Rectory,” says of the ‘locked book’: “The contents were compiled by my chief official observer, Mr. S.H. Glanville. If all other existing records of Borley were to be destroyed and only the ‘locked book’ saved, it would form a complete history….of the haunting. It will forever be a model for psychical researchers as to how a report should be prepared.”

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ONE OF HISTORY’S MOST AUTHENTIC HAUNTINGS

Borley is a small hamlet in Essex, with a population of about 120 people and lies within a few hundred yards of the Essex-Suffolk county boundary. The nearest town is Long Melford about two miles distant.

The Borley Church built in the 12th Century stands on a hill and contains a fine tomb of Sir Edwards Waldegrave who died in 1561. He was a member of the Waldegrave family who now live in Somerset and who held the Manor of Borley are were patrons of the living for nearly 300 years. In 1362 Edward III gave the Manor of Borley to the Benedictine monks.

The Rectory itself, which was destroyed by fire in 1939, stood about 150 yards from the church and was divided from it by the churchyard and a narrow unfrequented lane. The house was almost entirely surrounded by tall trees which overshadowed it and had a very darkening and depressing effect on the house both inside and out. It was built in 1863 by the Rev. Henry Dawson Ellis Bull, whose family had lived in or near Borley continuously for over 300 years, and who was then the Borley Rector. It was substantially built of brick and stone, all the doors were thick and heavy, the floors were of heavy wood in some parts and stone in other rooms. Some of the windows, such as the dairy, the kitchen, scullery and passages, were iron barred giving that part of the house a rather prison-like appearance. When it was first built it contained 18 rooms but, as Mr. Bull’s family increased, he added a new wing to accommodate them. There were 14 children altogether, of whom 12 survived. The house, when completed, enclosed a central courtyard which had a narrow outlet at one corner. No gas or electricity was, or ever had been available. Lighting was supplied by means of oil lamps and candles; and the only water supply was from a deep well in the courtyard.

The Rev. Henry Bull held the parish for 30 years, from 1862 until 1892, the year of his death. He died in the Blue Room which is immediately over the library and overlooks that part of the garden known as ‘The Nun’s Walk.’ His wife died in the same room. The picture of their father given me by his daughters, shows him to have been an unusual man. He was tall, heavily built and had been a good amateur boxer in his youth. His principal hobby seems to have been shooting and hunting; a typical hard-living country parson of his period. His financial position was secure as, apart from his stipend, he had ample private means.

His son, the Rev. Henry Bull, or

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Harry as he was generally known to avoid confusion with his father, succeeded to the living on the death of his father and remained there as Rectory for 35 years, until his death in 1927. He also died in the ‘Blue Room.’

A year later the Rev. Eric Smith, who had lately returned from several years of missionary work in India, accepted the living. He and his wife remained for less than two years, leaving in 1930. When he accepted the living he was a stranger to England and was, therefore, not aware of the fact that some dozen or so clergymen had already refused it. It had a sinister reputation and the huge, melancholy house could not have been very inviting. Also the stipend was comparatively small.

In October 1930 the Rev. Lionel Foyster, a distant relative of the Bull family, was offered the living and accepted. Neither the Smiths nor the Foysters had any children of their own but the Foysters brought with them a small adopted daughter aged 2½ years. Mr. Foyster and his wife had just returned from Canada where they had been engaged in missionary work for some years. At the end of five years in the Rectory Mr. Foyster’s health completely broke down and he was forced to retire.

The reputation of the Rectory by this time was such that the ecclesiastical authorities decided that it was not a fit house for a Rectory and it was permanently closed in 1935.

This then is the chronological history of the Rectory from 1862 when it was built until 1935 when it was finally left alone with its 23 empty and dusty rooms and its ghosts. The once beautiful lawns and gardens became a veritable jungle of weeds and rotting undergrowth. The once fine vinery became a rickety affair of swinging doors and broken glass. The two summer-houses were derelict and decaying.

This is how I first saw it in 1937 when my son and I unlocked the heavy front door and stepped from the hot June sun into the dark, chill and echoing hall. Our enthusiasm dropped several points. We knew the history of the house, the alleged haunting and the fantastic phenomena reported from there for nearly 15 years. We planned to spend the night locked in the house.

Apart from the evidence of poltergeist activity, there is the age-old story of the ghostly nun who is alleged by many persons to have been seen walking about the garden. There is the apparition of a coach and horses which drives across the lawn. Legend says that a nun eloped, centuries before, with a monk from a nearby monastery, that they were caught, brought to judgement and condemned to death – the monk to be hanged and the nun to be bricked up in the wall of

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a building that once stood on this same site. Later we found parts of the foundation of this old building in the rectory cellars. I express no opinion about the truth of this traditional story but it was told and believed long before the present rectory was built.

Miss Ethel Bull and her sisters Freda and Mabel, daughters of the Rev. Henry Bull, were born in Borley Rectory. They have assured me that on a June afternoon when they were returning from a garden party and had just entered the Rectory garden, they all three simultaneously and quite clearly saw the figure of a nun walking slowly on the other side of the lawn. They were astonished as, although the apparition had been seen many times at dusk, they had never before seen it in daylight. Miss Ethel Bull ran into the house to bring a fourth sister to see the phenomenon and fortunately found her immediately. All four of them watched the grey figure walk slowly across the lawn. As she neared the trees which bounded the lawn the nun gradually faded and disappeared from their sight.

During the past 50 years more than 20 people have reported seeing this apparition. One man, a guest of the Bulls who knew nothing whatever of the story, came into the house one day to ask the Rector about the nun that he had seen walking in the garden. There are people who stoutly maintain that the apparition was seen only a few weeks before the Rectory burned. There is a part of the garden known as ‘The Nun’s Walk.’ She usually appeared from an adjoining field, stepped over a low stone wall and walked across the lawn, to disappear among the trees separating the garden from the lane. There is persistent evidence of this apparition being seen by both the residents of the rectory and by strangers.

Walter Bull, another son of the Rev. Henry Bull, spent a good deal of his life at sea and therefore saw less of these things than the other members of the family. He told me that he frequently heard footsteps following him up the lane both in daylight and at night. Sometimes he slipped behind a tree to catch anyone following him but he never saw anyone. These pattering footsteps also were heard by villagers who used the lane and many of them refused to pass the house after dark if they were alone.

The Rev. Harry Bull would periodically tell his family that he had seen the ‘little man’ again. This was a dwarf-like figure of an old man who he said appeared to him on the lawn. He would raise one arm above his head, then turn and run down the drive and disappear. Miss Ethel Bull is the only other member of the family who has seen this grotesque little figure.

One of the large dining room windows overlooking the drive was

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On a June afternoon, returning from a garden party, the three little Bull sisters saw the figure of a nun walking slowly on the other side of the lawn.

removed and bricked up because Henry Bull said that he objected to an apparition peering through while they were at meals.

During the incumbency of the Rev. Harry Bull there was a good deal of paranormal activity which he quite openly admitted. In nearly all parts of the house footsteps were heard, particularly in the bedroom passages. They would reach a door, stop and then three taps were heard, never more than three. The figure of a tall man in dark clothes was seen on many occasions. One of the Rev. Harry Bull’s sisters was awakened several times by a slap on her face. Now and then loud crashes were heard in different parts of the house.

At this time manifestations were heard in the living rooms over the stables which were entirely separated from the house. The groom-gardener and his wife were disturbed night after night by knocks, thuds and sounds of breaking crockery, although nothing was ever found to have been broken or even moved. They put up with these conditions for three years and then left.

There is a hard core of evidence given by reliable and intelligent persons as a result of their own experience and observation which cannot be shaken by examination and questioning. For instance, Lady Whitehouse, who had known the Rectory and its successive residents for many years, assured me that on one occasion when she was helping to nurse Mrs. Foyster she saw a medicine bottle leave the mantel-piece and float through the air, coming to rest on the floor beside the bed. She not only assured me of the complete truth of this incident and many others but voluntarily offered to swear an affidavit confirming them if I wished her to.

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In 1927 the Rev. Harry Bull died and the Rev. Eric Smith accepted the living. As has been stated he had lately returned from several years of missionary work in India, so that when he and his wife came to Borley neither of them had any warning or knowledge of its reputation.

I spent a good many hours with Mr. and Mrs. Smith at their pleasant rectory in Kent. They very kindly gave me details of the two years they spent at Borley, years which they described as ‘the darkest years years of their life.’ Actually the manifestations during this time were less numerous and not of the violent character experienced by their successors.

The first unusual thing they noticed were the noises in the bedrooms at night. Thuds and knocks were constantly heard, often sufficiently loud to waken them. In an attempt to avoid these disturbances they occupied several rooms in succession but either the sounds were being made in all the rooms at the same time or they followed them about. The noises were loudest and most insistent in the bedroom over the kitchen and in the blue room.

Although no record was kept Mr. Smith tells me that they heard few of these noises on the ground floor and that there was much more noise in the winter than in summer. This bears out an analysis which we made at the end of the investigation to find out what proportion of phenomena happened during the hours of darkness and daytime respectively. The figures show that much the larger proportion happened at night.

Within a week intermittent bell ringing started. The bells are of the old-fashioned spiral spring type and rung by bell-pulls in the rooms. The bells themselves, some 20 of them, were hung high up in the kitchen passage just off the hall. Time after time a bell would ring from one of the rooms though they were all empty since the only people in the house were Mr. and Mrs. Smith. It was rarely that they could prevail on a maid to stop in the house for more than a week.

Keys were frequently picked up and replaced in the locks. The key to the library door was often found at the foot of the main stairs, several feet from the door. At times only an hour or so would elapse between the time a key was replaced and its being found on the floor again. A variation of this phenomena was the locking of doors. This was often extremely inconvenient. On many occasions un-locked doors were found locked, and vice versa. This actually happened to one of our observers who, sitting at the table in the library, heard a sharp metallic click and upon going to the door found that it had been locked from the inside. Several keys disappeared entirely and were never found.

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It is not suggested that there is anything of a paranormal nature in the following incident but it proves the house to be a place of surprises to say the least. In the library there was a large glass-fronted bookcase entirely covering one side of the room, the lower half of which contained cupboards. Mrs. Smith found a paper-wrapped parcel about the size of a football. It was not labelled and she proceeded to unpack it. Under several layers of paper she found a human skull. Despite inquiries no information as to its origin was ever discovered. It was not known to have been there at the time of Harry Bull’s death, neither did any of his family know anything about it. Mr. Smith, therefore, buried it in the churchyard with a short burial service.

Soon after this episode a mirror standing on Mrs. Smith’s dressing table started tapping whenever she approached it. The tapping appeared to come from the back and this continued until they left the Rectory. After they left they lived for some time on the East Coast, near Cromer, and the tapping stopped. That was in 1930 and it was not until 1937 that I first met them in their rectory in a village in Kent. By that time I had already spent a considerable time at Borley. Now a very peculiar thing happened. About a week after I visited them and held the mirror in my hands, I received a letter from Mr. Smith in which he said, “I do not know whether you carry ghosts about with you, but the mirror has started tapping again.” I was not able at the time to go down there again and hear it for myself, and I am sorry to say that soon after this Mr. Smith became seriously ill and died. Mrs. Smith moved and I lost trace of her.

The Smiths told me that on several occasions the heavy wood shutters to the French windows in the library, which slid into cavities in the walls, were pulled sharply together. They had been in the room when this happened. These shutters were exceptionally heavy and require considerable force to bring them together. They were each about six feet high and three feet wide. It was a common thing for them to hear the brass rings, which are let into the wood frames and used for pulling them together, rattling. I heard this myself while sitting in the library at night.

At the end of 18 months Mr. Smith became alarmed at the disturbing influences in the rectory and decided that it was time he sought advice with the object of ridding the place of its troubles. He therefore wrote to a daily newspaper asking for the name of a society connected with psychic matters which might be able to help him. The paper not only sent the information but reporters and photographers as well. The immediate result was a flood of sightseers.

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Crowds invaded the garden, trampled the flower beds, peered through the windows and generally made life a burden to the rector and his wife. The police had to be called and they gradually restored order and sanity.

This human inundation and publicity had no effect whatever on the phenomena. It continued as before and new phenomena appeared from time to time. There was a bedroom in the ‘new’ wing which was formerly used as a schoolroom. The window of this room was seen, on many occasions, to be lit up although the room was known to be empty. One night Mrs. Smith, together with some members of the choir who were leaving the church after practice, witnessed this phenomenon. The present Rector, who lives in a nearby village, maintains that the large window on the main staircase was seen to be lighted up soon after our investigation ended. The house was then empty and locked up. The light was of an unusual character, no rays were visible but it was rather in the nature of a fluorescence inside the room.

One summer afternoon when Mr. Smith was leaving his bedroom he passed under the arch which leads on to the landing and was surprised to hear sounds of whispering over his head. He described them to me as ’soft and sibilant but spoken with urgency, and ending in muttering sounds.’ The voice was undoubtedly that of a woman. He continued across the landing and just as he passed under the arch on the opposite side, which leads to the private chapel, they stopped suddenly as though cut off. No words were heard on this occasion but during the next few weeks he heard them again when some words were distinguishable. The words ‘Don’t, Carlos’ were quite clear. Although many enquiries were made no evidence of any person of that name was traced to anyone connected with the rectory.

The only instance of material damage being done while they were in the rectory happened on an afternoon when they were sitting in the drawing-room. They were alone in the house. Suddenly smashing sounds were heard and they both ran out into the hall. There they found the pieces of a china vase that normally stood on the mantle-piece in their bedroom, which was the Blue Room. By some unaccountable means it had moved from the shelf, travelled out of the room, across the landing and dropped into the hall below where it was shattered on the floor.

Footsteps, thuds, knocks and bell-ringing were an almost daily occurrence. There was no real peace or rest by day or night.

Mr. Smith was anxious about the state of his wife’s health, which was showing signs of strain. They felt it was not possible to continue living under such conditions and

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Mr. Smith regretfully tendered his resignation. It was not easy to find a new incumbent as Borley had become notorious. The Smiths moved into a hostelry in Long Melford and from there Mr. Smith carried on his clerical duties for several months. In August, 1930, he relinquished his work and left. To the end of his life he maintained that the house was a center of some unknown and malign influence.

In October of the same year the Rev. Lionel Foyster, M.A., a scholar of Pembroke College, Cambridge, and his wife and two-year-old adopted daughter came to the Rectory. During their five-year occupation phenomena reached a state of activity and violence never before experienced. Mr. Foyster very kindly sent me over 100 pages of a diary he kept for a period of 15 months, recording some of the events which took place during that time. There are only two copies of this record, one in the safe keeping of the University of London Council for Psychical Investigation, and my own.

Mr. Foyster starts with this head-note, “The only pretensions that these notes claim is the very simple one that it is a record of facts and is, therefore, true. Experiences recorded can be vouched for by my wife and myself; many were also witnessed by other disinterested people. They have been recorded just as they happened.”

Within the first weeks, while Mrs. Foyster was going upstairs on her way to the Blue Room which the Foysters were using as their bedroom, she heard footsteps following her and, turning around, saw the apparition of a man. She continued on her way and when she reached the handing it had disappeared. Some time later she was shown a photograph of the late Harry Bull and recognized him as the man of the apparition. It appeared to her on several occasions attired in a dressing-gown and carrying a small case or wallet. She never saw this figure in any other part of the house, neither was it ever seen by anyone but herself.

The next episode, although less alarming, was more material and exceedingly annoying. She had gone into the bathroom to wash her hands and taking off a wrist watch which was set in a gold bracelet put it on a shelf. Then, having washed and dried her hands, she turned to pick up the watch. To her astonishment she found only the watch, the bracelet had disappeared. It has never been found.

This bracelet was not the only thing that disappeared in an extraordinary way, but it was the only object of any value that was lost. On the other hand things had an odd habit of appearing from no-where. A small silk bag containing lavender was found one day on the mantel-piece in the sewing-room. The Foysters had never seen this

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bag before and never did trace an owner. It would disappear for a few days and re-appear in one of the other rooms. On one occasion Mr. Foyster found it in one of his coat pockets. After several months of this jack-in-the-box existence it disappeared for good.

Books also appeared spontaneously. The first one was found on the bath-room window-sill. Mr. Foyster took little notice of this, thinking that his wife had left it there. She in turn thought that he had put it there. Other books were found in different parts of the house; all of them were over 100 years old and of a theological nature. Later it wa discovered that they had belonged to the Rev. Henry Bull and had been stored on the top shelf of a cupboard in the kitchen. Mr. Foyster says in his diary, “…exactly how many times this happened I have not kept a record, but one day, as a variation, a book was thrown on to the floor on the further side of a closed door in the passage leading to the bathroom.” Going into the kitchen one afternoon he found a whole collection of books placed on the rack over the kitchen range. No one had ever seen any of these books before, and an hour or so later the cover of a book with two pages still adhering to it was found on the bathroom floor.

At 11 o’clock one night Mr. Foyster was in the bathroom when he heard his wife cry out and then heard her running down the passage. He rushed out. She said, “I had been in the bedroom (Blue Room) and had just come out onto the landing when something hit me in the face and nearly stunned me for a moment. I was carrying the candle but saw no one or anything.” The blow had in fact made a cut under her left eye and the blood was running down her face. Nothing was found that could have caused such a wound.

As a result of this Sir George Whitehouse and his wife, who were living at Arthur Hall, Sudbury, a few miles away, and who had themselves witnessed many incidents at the Rectory, insisted on Mr. and Mrs. Foyster coming to stay with them for a few days. For the next several years these friends had them over to stay when things got too bad at the Rectory.

Not long after this another curious thing happened. One evening Mr. Foyster left the sewing-room to get some papers from the library. As he turned into the hall he was startled to find that all the pictures, with one exception, had been taken off the walls of the staircase and laid face down on the hall floor. The exception was a particularly large picture, and that was hanging crookedly as though it had been pushed aside.

The spontaneous appearances of the lavender bag and the books have been mentioned, but many other articles turned up from time

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to time. A plain gold ring, presumably a wedding ring, was found on the landing outside the Blue Room. There were no signs of hard wear and the hall-mark showed it to have been made in Birmingham in 1863, the year the Rectory was finished. No owner for any of these things was ever found.

Walking sticks kept in the corner of the library were seen to move. On one occasion one was seen to travel the entire length of the room. Books and papers were moved. Sometimes the draft of Mr. Foyster’s sermon for the following Sunday was moved into another room. Then one day he decided that if he put it in a large Bible that stood on his desk it might be safe. This he did and in the morning found it intact. He thereafter made this an invariable practice and it was not moved again. The kitchen table was thrown over and the crockery shot onto the floor on many occasions. beds were turned onto their sides and the bedding thrown onto the floor. One morning, upon entering the kitchen, it was found that all the linen from the airing cupboard had been strewn over the floor. Unaccountable footsteps were continuously heard in all parts of the house, a manifestation that had been going on unceasingly for 50 years.

There remains the most contentious of the phenomena – the psychic writing on the walls. These were photographed and carefully traced before the rectory burned and are, therefore, permanently recorded.

One peculiarity of these writings and markings is the height at which they were written. This varies from four feet three inches above floor level to four feet eight inches, which is the highest. No adult would normally write at this height. It is alleged that these writings appeared spontaneously and there is good evidence to support this contention. Some of them are meaningless scrawls. Many of them take the form of the letter ‘M’, and may be an attempt at the beginning of the name ‘Marianne’, the person to whom the messages are addressed and to whom they appeal for help. Marianne is Mrs. Foyster’s Christian name.

The first writing appeared on the wall of the kitchen passage, between the kitchen and the sewing-room. It consists of the words, ‘Marianne get help – ‘, then some words that are indecipherable. Under this Mrs. Foyster herself wrote, ‘I cannot understand, tell me more.’ A few days elapsed and then overnight these words had appeared, ‘lights – Mass and prayers.’ On the opposite side of the kitchen passage wall, another clear request appeared which asked, ‘Marianne please help get.’ The longest piece of continuous writing

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was on the side of the arch on the landing, the arch which leads into the private Chapel, and reads, ‘Get light and prayers here,’ and ending with a few indecipherable words, the last of which may be ‘his body.’

A great deal of consideration has been given to this alleged paranormal writing with little result but there are several points of general interest. The writing was done with a graphite pencil (some of this was flaked off and analyzed). It is quite characterless and if some unknown entity was responsible for them we must presume it to be about for feet six inches in height, or an adult of average height in a kneeling position. Practically all of it has the appearance of being done with difficulty and with great urgency, as though in fear of interruption. In some instances the interruption seems to have occurred. All of the messages start with clarity and firmness, but after a word or two seem to weaken as though energy was dwindling. The photographs and tracings have been examined by doctors, physiologists, physicists, graphologists and church dignitaries, but none has been able to offer an acceptable explanation. They remain a mystery.

In 1935 the Foysters had been living under these fantastic conditions for nearly five years. If they had been a large family living a busy and happy domestic life, it would not have been so bad. With only two persons and a young child living in this great rambling house with its 23 rooms, some of them unfurnished, without electricity, gas or main water, it is not surprising that Mr. Foyster’s health deteriorated. He also felt that the circumstances did not allow him the peace and quiet necessary for a clergyman to carry out his duties properly. After long consideration he reluctantly decided to resign his living. In October of 1935 he closed the door of the Rectory and retired. Retirement, however, did not restore his health and he died not long afterwards.

The ecclesiastical authorities decided that the rectory should be permanently closed. The parishes of Borley and Liston, a small adjoining village, were combined and the present rector, the Rev. A.C. Henning, carries out the duties of both from his rectory in Liston.

After Mr. Foyster’s retirement the rectory remained locked up and empty for two years. The owners were unable to sell it nor could they find a tenant, which is not surprising. The late Harry Price, then Honorary Secretary of the University of London Council for Psychical Investigation, rented the house and grounds for 12 months with the object of making a sustained examination of the place to decide whether phenomena was still active and, if possible, to trace the cause. Mr. Price did not visit the Rectory during the period of the tenancy as he wished to form his own con-

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In a cupboard Mrs. Smith found a parcel. She unwrapped it, found a skull.

clusions from independent evidence, and entrusted this writer with the task of drawing up a full report, upon which he wrote his book, “The Most Haunted House in England.”

My son and I first went to the rectory on the 19 of June, 1937. It has been mentioned that the house was cold, dark and depressing, and during that first night we were struck by two things, the intense cold for that time of year and the almost uncanny silence. Other observers agree that they had never been in any building where the intense quiet was so marked. The only sounds heard were the scuttling of a few mice and the intermittent and mournful calls of owls in the trees; very rarely a belated vehicle would pass through the lane. Otherwise there was a cold silence that was most oppressive.

After examining the gardens, stables, outbuildings and conservatory, we inspected the whole house from the attics to the cellars. Every window and door was sealed with thread and wax or adhesive tape. The only exceptions were the main entrance door in the hall, which we always kept bolted from the inside, and the French windows in the library which were also bolted inside. It was not possible for any person to enter the house without our knowledge and I am quite certain that no one ever did. At fairly regular intervals we made a tour of the whole house, visiting every room and passage, including the attics and cellars.

One of our little difficulties was the continual strain on our ears to catch sounds, especially during the first few nights. Some of these appeared to come from distant parts of the house and often could not be accurately located. Others occurred in the room we were using at the time, usually the library, and were obviously within a few feet of us. This intense listening was no so difficult up to one or two o’clock in the morning but it became very tiring towards five and six. The first light of dawn coming through the dusty windows was very welcome. Certain sounds could be located and accounted for quite

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easily, a rose bush scraping a window, a dripping tap, the very rare scrambling of mice and so on.

There is one episode which, although it is not suggested that it was paranormal, left us completely mystified and was never explained. For many years the Bull family had kept a number of cats about the place and as they died, these were buried in the garden. The whole of the large garden had become an overgrown jungle and in places was almost impenetrable with weeds and bramble. Making our way through this tangle early one morning, we found a half-rotted head board marking the grave of one of the cats. The name and date was cut in the wood. Tearing away some more undergrowth we found several more. This was only of passing interest and we did nothing further about it. On our next visit, a few days later, while walking in the garden we were astonished to find that a pit about five feet in diameter had been dug, the earth thrown up in a ring around the pit, and the head boards thrown about indiscriminately. We made the most careful and guarded inquiries. There were only a few cottages within a mile of the Rectory. We were unable to find any explanation. Someone spent a lot of time labour digging this huge hole – who and why? What were they looking for?

The recital of all the taps, knocks, thuds, scraping and shuffling sounds we heard would be monotonous but some of them were of greater interest than others. On one occasion we had two Royal Air Force Officers with us. My son was a Squadron Leader during the World War, and all of them were seriously interested in psychical matters. During the afternoon my son and I had to go into Long Melford to get oil for the lamps and left the other two alone in the house. Upon our return they reported that, while sitting in the library with the door open, they distinctly heard whey they described as, ‘light tripping footsteps’ coming down the stairs. Having apparently descended the stairs they stopped. Nothing was to be seen. The bottom step of the stairs was about eight feet from where they sat.

One of our most active and valuable observers was Mark Kerr-Pearse, now one of our pro-consuls in Prague. He was the only one of us who actually lived at the Rectory during the investigation. This he did for several weeks continuously, staying in the house for most of the day and sleeping in the large summer house in the garden.

One hot August day three people called, two of them were known to Kerr-Pearse. The third was their friend, a Miss -, who had expressed a wish to see the Rectory. Although they were not official observers they were taken over the house. Everything was quiet and nothing un-

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usual happened until they were crossing the landing outside the Blue Room when Miss R- suddenly came to a standstill saying that she had a feeling of indescribable terror. She had a sensation of ‘pins and needles’ in her hands, which were icy cold. She was trembling violently and asked for help, as she was unable to move. It was as though she was fixed to the floor. About 15 minutes later she was prevailed upon to go to the landing again at which time she experienced exactly the same sensations to a lesser degree.

A month later, a friend of ours, a Group Captain in the Royal Air Force, brought a lady down who was reputed to be hyper-sensitive to ‘psychic’ conditions. We hoped that her presence might induce unusual activity. They also were shown over the house. Nothing happened until they came to the landing where on exactly the same spot this lady experienced the same feeling of horror that had so affected Miss R-. An important point is that neither of these persons had any knowledge of Miss R-’s visit or experience. The exact position of this spot was marked on the floor but great care was taken to make the mark invisible to anyone unless they got down on their knees to look for it. Neither was it known to anyone except my son and myself. As will be seen later, this particular area seemed to have a special significance.

In view of the fact that during the residence of the Foysters so many objects had been unaccountably moved and even transported from one room to another, we placed different things on shelves, window-sills, mantel-pieces and so on, in the hope that they would be moved. These were all ringed with chalk and dated so that we should be able to check any movement at once. Among them was an empty tobacco tin which was placed on the drawing-room mantel-piece. For some time none of these objects showed any signs of movement. But on September 19 we walked into the drawing-room and immediately noticed that the tin from the mantel-piece had gone. We went on our way through the house and on the landing found the tin. It had been placed with almost mathematical accuracy on the very small mark that we had made on the floor to mark the area where the two ladies had been so acutely affected; where Mr. Smith had heard the whispering; where the wedding ring was found and where Mrs. Foyster had been struck in the face.

Another contrivance we set up somewhat in the nature of a trap, was a simple piece of apparatus consisting of an electric bell, a battery and a pile of five books. Into the lower book had been fixed a paper break-contact so that if the books were moved the spring contacts would close and the bell would ring

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continuously. This was placed on the dining-room mantel-piece.

I was unable to get down to the Rectory the following week and had to hand the keys to a doctor friend, who is now the Director of Pathology at one of our large national hospitals. He and his son and a friend, both engineers, were with him. All of them had been to the Rectory before. They made a tour of the house just after midnight and at 12:50 a.m. were in the Blue Room when they heard the bell ringing. They hurried down but by the time they reached the dining-room the bell had stopped ringing. They found that all the books had been pushed to one side and the contact withdrawn. The window and door seals were all inspected and all found to be intact. Yet something had moved the books. The question of trickery can be ruled out completely. The incident was not subjective. Indeed it was very material. It was no manifestation of mental phenomena. Energy was used, and if appropriate preparation could have been made the force used might have been measured in foot pounds. And so it joins the other hundreds of incidents for which there is no explanation.

One of the features of Borley was the variation in the type of phenomena experienced there. We observed an odd incident one night when sitting in the library. Everything was quiet, with the usual oppressive silence. The blind, which reached from the ceiling to the floor, was drawn over the French windows. Dr. B…..y, Captain H…..n, my son and myself were all there when the blind, which was of a heavy canvas-like material, started to move. We watched it and thinking there might be a draught tested the air with smoke, but it was quite still. The movement was undulating, just as though the thing was breathing deeply. The undulation started at the top and spread gradually downwards to the floor. We all stood round watching it for nearly five minutes when it stopped quite suddenly. This sounds a very mild affair but was one of so many unaccountable things that happened. We never saw this again.

The majority of noises were heard during the hours of darkness but just after ten o’clock one morning I was sitting alone in the library when I heard three heavy blows overhead, apparently on the floor of the Blue Room. I immediately called Kerr-Pearse who had gone into the kitchen and just as he entered the room we both heard two more blows. We went up to the Blue Room but it was empty and quiet. The house was still sealed and the doors locked. No one else was in the house.

One night, it was actually 1:10 a.m., Dr. B…..y and my son were having a few moments sleep, while I was sitting at the table reading.

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I heard a sound such as would be made by a chair being dragged across the Blue Room floor overhead. There followed a tremendous blow, which seemed to come from the top of the large bookcase within a few feet of where I was sitting. This woke both the doctor and my son. It was the loudest single noise that we heard during the whole investigation. It is of interest that this noise was made while two persons were asleep. I suggest that the state of sleep, when the conscious mind is at rest, may possibly be of some importance in connection with paranormal activity. The evidence to support this suggestion is not negligible.

Another incident which took place during a ’sleep’ period may be mentioned. Squadron-Leader Alan Cuthbert was with us on this occasion. He was suffering from a very heavy cold and we prevailed on him to lie on the camp bed in the library and get an hour’s rest. This he did and was soon in a deep sleep. About 2 a.m. we decided to leave him and go up onto the landing and sit in complete darkness in the hope that this might produce some phenomena.

After sitting there for 40 minutes, during which time we did not speak, we all simultaneously and distinctly heard footsteps, such as would be made by a heavy man, cross the hall immediately below us. We knew at once they they could not have been made by such a lightly built man as Cuthbert, but we went down to investigate. Everything was quiet, the library dimly lit by the oil lamp and Cuthbert still slept soundly.

One more like instance occurred when a visitor on leave from overseas asked to be allowed to spend a night at the Rectory. He was a man of about 40, athletic, used to big game hunting and certainly not a temperamental type of individual. Kerr-Pearse was alone in the Rectory on this day and welcomed the visitor. Towards three o’clock in the morning they went into the library, made up the fire, and decided to have an hour’s sleep, the visitor on the camp bed and Kerr-Pearse on the floor. About an hour later Kerr-Pearse was awakened by his companion, who was obviously in a state of high nervous tension. He quickly gave an explanation to account for his agitation.

Before leaving the Rectory in the morning, he wrote a short report in which he says, ‘- before waking you I had been awake for a considerable time, I cannot say how long but it must have been half an hour. Everything was perfectly still and I saw and heard nothing, but the air had become icy cold, my hands became numbed, in fact I became cold all over. I was rigid. It was so unpleasant that, in spite of an effort to control my nerves, I was eventually compelled to wake you.’

In view of these many incidents

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I submit that there is a possibility that the state of sleep may beget phenomena. It seems as though energy can be drawn from a sleeping person, and used to produce phenomena of different types. Whether this energy is controlled by an entity or is simply a spontaneous and uncontrolled outburst is a matter for conjecture.

The following occurrence might be cited to confirm that there may be some conscious intention behind the use of such energy. It took place during the same night as the incident just related. That afternoon Kerr-Pearse had ordered a sack of coals to be delivered which had been dumped against the wall in the hall just outside the library. It weighed 56 pounds. At 8:30 p.m. he and his companion were going up to the Blue Room and had reached the landing when they heard a scraping and shuffling sound below them in the hall. It did not recur and after waiting a few moments they went down. To their astonishment the sack of coals had been moved along the floor for about eighteen inches. This would not have been so noticeable had not the sack been put on a patch of un-stained floor where a stove had formally stood, the measurement could therefore be seen fairly accurately.

Kerr-Pearse had a rather uncomfortable experience. He was along in the house on an autumn evening, and was sitting in the library reading when he heard a sharp metallic click. These sounds were not unusual and he took little notice. But after a few moments the thought occurred to him that the sound was like a lock being turned. Going over to the door he found that it had been locked, from the inside.

After a few visits to Borley I remembered an old planchette and rescued it from a lumber room where it was stored. We used it first late one night in the library. No sooner did our fingers come into contact with it than it started to write in large and well formed letters. It ultimately produced words, phrases, dates and even drawings. Some of it was unintelligible, some demonstrably untrue, some impossible to confirm but a certain amount of it was factual and confirmed later. One of the most startling things written was a clear prophecy that the Rectory would be burned and under the ruins would be found the bones of a murdered person. This was written on March 27, 1938. Exactly 11 months later, on February 27, 1939, the house caught fire and was practically destroyed.

In 1943 we made another visit to the site of the house for the purpose of digging in the cellars. The brick well in the further cellar was emptied of its contents of stone, brick and accumulated rubbish. At a depth of five feet six inches a silver-plated jug was found. This was

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submitted to experts and was found to be about 80 years old, making the date of manufacture 1893, the year the Rectory was built.

Next, the passage at the foot of the cellar steps was excavated. Owing to the fallen debris from the burned building this was a much more arduous task and more than a ton of rubbish was removed.

At a depth of three feet a human jaw bone was found and, five minutes later, part of a human skull. These were immediately submitted to an eminent pathologist who described them respectively as, the left mandible with five teeth and left parietal and temporal bone, both belonging to a woman probably about 30 years of age. The name of this long dead lady will almost certainly remain an unsolved mystery, but the fact remains: a woman was buried at the foot of the cellar steps – a strange thing with a churchyard only 100 yards away.

On the publication of these facts we received hundreds of letters pointing out that they must be part of the remains of the nun. But, tempting as this suggestion is, it cannot be accepted without much more evidence than is available at present.

An analysis of the total incidents of a paranormal character, covering many years, shows that 80 per cent occurred during the hours of darkness or dusk, that 46 per cent happened on the ground floor, 37 per cent on the first floor, and 17 percent on the main or back stairs. Paranormal activity was most active during the months of June and July. Sundays and days of Religious Festival were undoubtedly the quietest. Phenomenon does not appear to be influenced by air temperature. There is very good evidence to show that the presence of certain persons made manifestations more active. The state of sleep of one or more persons in the house may have a bearing on the type and frequency of phenomena.

During the whole of its 77 years of existence the Rectory seems to have been the focal point of phenomena outside normal human experience and understanding. One of the last things the Rev. Eric Smith said to me was, ‘the house was evil from top to bottom and it should have been burned to the ground years ago.’ Now all the rectors who once lived in it have passed away – and the house has burned. But if the reports that filter through to me are to be believed, although the ghosts are homeless, they are still there. Evidence obtained after the house was destroyed was too late to be included in the two books already published. But a third and final book will be published, probably next year, which should complete the story of this sinister house.

 

In late August, 1997, Mrs. Peggy Harper, a divorcee in her mid-forties, had put two of her four children to bed. The family was living in a three bedroom, semi-detached council house in Enfield, North London. Late one night Janet, age 11, and her brother Pete, age 10, complained that their beds were “jolting up and down and going all funny.” When Peggy entered the room all movement stopped. She was convinced the children were imagining things or playing a joke on her. The following evening around 9:30 p.m., Peggy was called to Janet and Pete’s room when they complained that something was making a shuffling noise. Janet said it sounded like one of the chairs in the room was moving, so Peggy took the chair out of the bedroom to put their minds at ease. Saying goodnight to the children once more, turning off the light, she heard the shuffling noise. She described the sound as being similar to “feet shuffling across the floor in slippers”. She turned the light on to see the furniture unmoved and the children under their covers. Turning the lights off, the noise resumed.

The family the heard four loud nocks on the partitioning wall of the house. Peggy then saw a heavy chest of drawers moving about 18 inches across the floor, well beyond the reach of her children. When it stopped Peggy pushed it back against the wall but when she turned her back it moved back to it’s former position. This time she found it impossible to move the chest. This caused her to shake with fear, yelling at the children to get out of their beds and to go downstairs – she was convinced something unexplainable was taking place. Seeing the neighbor’s lights were on, the Harpers, still in their pajamas, ran next door for help. The neighbors searched the house and garden, but found no one. Soon the entire group heard the knocks on the walls that continued at spaced out intervals. At 11:00 p.m. they called the police, who also witnessed the knocks. One officer saw a chair move across the floor and later signed a written statement to confirm the events.

The following day, the events continued with small plastic bricks and marbles being hurled around the house – when picked up they were found to be hot. This “attack” continued for three days by which time they sought help again, not only from the police, but a local vicar and a medium. But no one seemed to be able to explain or stop the escalating events. The Harpers eventually turned to the press and the Daily Mirror. A reporter, Douglas Bence and a photographer, Graham Morris, were assigned to stay in the house for several hours. The activity came to a halt and the men decided to leave – they were almost in their car when a disembodied voice wished them both “Bye, Bye!’ and the blocks promptly resumed flying about the house. The men immediately re-entered the house and a toy Lego block flew across the room hitting the photographer in the forehead as he attempted to take a picture. Later, as the photographer developed his negatives he noticed they had an inexplicable hole in it and that the flying block could not be seen. Senior reporter at the Daily Mail, George Fallows, was so impressed with his colleague’s experience that he followed up the story himself. He suggested that the Harpers call in the SPR, (Society for Psychical Research), who in turn contacted Maurice Grosse, a member and resident of North London.

Grosse arrived at the Harpers on September 5, a week after the disturbances had begun. For the next few days nothing out of the ordinary had occurred. Then, on September 8, while Grosse and journalists were keeping vigil, between 10 p.m. and 11 p.m., they heard a crash in Janet’s room. They discovered that her bedside chair had been thrown about four feet across the room where it was lying on it’s side, Janet was asleep at the time and no one saw the chair move. It happened again about an hour later and photographer Morris was there to document it on film. Grosse claims that then he experienced the strange happenings- first a marble was thrown at him from what he described as “an unseen hand”, he saw doors open and close by themselves and claimed to feel a sudden breeze that seemed to move up from his feet to his head. On September 10, the Enfield case made the front page of the Daily Marror , then the story was picked up by LBC (a London based station) and that evening Grosse, Peggy Harper and her neighbor took part in a two and half hour NIGHT LINE program.

The phenomena continued. There was interference with electrical systems in the house, electrical faults and mechanical failure. As soon as camera flashes were recharged they were quickly drained of power. An infra-red sensitive television camera was brought in to do remote monitoring of the bedroom but as soon as it began recording the tape would jam or break. The same thing happened to the BBC Radio reporter’s tapes when tape cassettes were found to be damaged, often the recordings erased, the metal inside some of the equipment would be found bent and even some of the tape decks would dematerialize reappearing several hours later in another location. The knocking on walls and floors became an almost nightly occurrence. Furniture slid across the floor and was thrown down the staircase. Drawers were wrenched out of dressing tables. Toys and other objects would fly around the room. Bedclothes were pulled off family members in the dark of night. Water was found in mysterious puddles on the floor. There were several outbreaks of fire followed by their inexplicable extinguishing. Curtains blowing and twisting in the wind when all windows and doors were tightly closed. There were even accounts of human levitation.

 

 

Janet claimed to have been picked up and thrown about the room by an unseen entity ( witnessed by neighbors passing by and looking up into the girl’s bedroom ). One of the girls claimed that the curtain beside her bed twisted several times into a tight spiral and attempted to wrap itself around her neck trying to strangle her. This was substantiated by her mother who had witnessed this on more than one occasion. Soon a gravelly, guttural male voice could be heard- coming from Janet’s throat. Janet claimed to have no control over the voice and would even appear to be in a trance-like state when the voice manifested. The voice claimed to be several identities, often speaking in obscene language. One character who did keep reappearing, identified himself as ” Bill” who claimed to have died in the house. Out of all the voices this was the only one that could be verified. ” Bill” identified himself as a man who had allegedly died in the house, an event that none of the Harpers were aware of. Naturally, this did not verify that this voice was, in fact, the ghost or spirit of the actual Bill who died. It merely represented itself as being this individual.

Psychiatrists and local doctors were brought in to see whether this was, indeed, Janet being mischievous, a second personality developing, or if perhaps there was a paranormal ” entity” present. Maurice Grosse consulted speech therapists that suspected that the voice was not coming from Janet’s normal vocal chords but by a second set of chords that all people possess but few realize exist. Actors can be trained to speak using these “false chords” to produce a deep gravelly voice, however it becomes a painful process if sustained. A recording of the ” voice” soon backed up this theory on a larynograph.
 
This machine registers patterns made by frequency waves as they pass through the larynx. However, to keep up this voice for hours on end would, naturally, have consequences on Janet’s normal voice. Janet’s voice did not appear to be affected in the least. Grosse deemed that the source of the poltergeist activity seemed to have intelligence of some kind, since it would rap out answers to simple questions- one rap for no and three raps for yes. During a session, Grosse asked how many years ago the supposed entity had lived in the house – there followed 53 raps. Mediums were brought in to help and Janest spent six weeks in Maudsley Hospital in South London under-going extensive tests for any signs of physical or mental abnormality-but none were found and during this time the poltergeist activity ceased.  

Professor Hasted, head of psychics at Birkbeck College, University of London, assigned his assistant to help identify the problems in the house, especially the spontaneous metal bending and snapping which had begun to take place around Janet.

Not everyone was as willing to believe this was an entirely paranormal activity as Grosse and Playfair seemed to. Other researchers were convinced that all the activity stemmed from Janet’s trickery, they claimed they were excluded from the children’s bedroom when the phenomena was said to have occurred. During her visit Anita Gregory from the Society for Psychical Research caught Janet cheating – a video camera had been set up in a room nest door to Janet’s that recorded her bending spoons and bouncing up and down on her bed.

 

Janet admits to having done this claiming “she wanted to see if the investigators would catch her – they always did”. Gregory also claims that Janet’s uncle, John Burcombe, had told her that he believed that Janet had taught herself to talk in a deep voice and she had always been a mischievous child, who enjoyed misleading strangers. Janet was also athletic which would help her jump from her bed to the floor when she claimed she was being thrown by the “entity”.

After two years of activity, the events subsided and the Harper family continued their lives.

Was this genuine phenomena? If not, why did the Harpers have their household disrupted for two years, invaded by investigators, psychiatrists and mediums? What caused the chest of drawers to move in the beginning? What caused the blocks to fly around? What spoke to the reporters in their vehicle? Because the sought out a medium in the beginning, skeptics argue this was a hoax. Did Maurice Grosse, who lost his young daughter in a car accident one year earlier, want to believe too easily that paranormal phenomena was occurring? Was the poltergeist activity caused by frustration externalizing? Was the recent divorce of Janet’s parents a factor? Two years later, why did the activity come to a halt? It was claimed that Peggy Harper was trying to get to the top of the housing queue as it was becoming quite common for council tenants to have created “haunted houses” – however Mrs. Harper refused to leave her home.

It is believed that this case began with genuine phenomena, but soon turned to trickery. The media demanded paranormal activity and Janet and Rose, were not going to allow them to go away disappointed and reveled in the attention. For paranormal researchers this case is a rare find, and some spend allot of time looking for this type of “poltergeist” case.

John Zaffis, PRNSE 

For more on the Enfield Poltergeist We Recommend

 

To the sceptic it may simply look like a fuzzy CCTV image of someone in a long coat walking through a doorway. Experts say the long-coated figure could be the best proof yet found that things really do go bump in the night… and the day too. The mystery surfaced two months ago at the 16th-century palace, once home to King Henry VIII. Security staff heard alarms ringing near an exhibition hall, indicating fire doors had been opened. But on investigation they found the doors closed.

Perplexed, they examined CCTV footage, and that is when it got spooky. The cameras showed the heavy doors popping open but no one there. Then, suddenly, the long- coated figure appeared and slammed the doors shut. The guards were told the same thing happened at the same time – about 1pm – the day before. To add to the mystery, the doors also flew open at the same time the very next day. But the ghostly figure has been spotted only once. The suspected spook has not just been sighted by CCTV. Australian tourists also claim to have seen a ghost near the exhibition area. The palace, in West London, has ruled out its guides as suspects because they do not enter that part of the building. Psychologist Dr Richard Wiseman said the spectre, nicknamed Skeletor, might prove to be a significant discovery. ‘It could be the best ghost sighting ever,’ he said. ‘I haven’t seen anything that would match that at all.’ http://www.thisislondon.co.uk

 

Photograph Copyright Neil Sandbach. All reproduction rights reserved.

 

This is a photo taken by designer Neil Sandbach at a farm in Hertfordshire for inclusion in some Wedding Stationery he was preparing for a couple due to host their wedding at the venue. When Neil opened up the photo on his computer he was surprised, and not a little spooked, when he noticed a blurry white figure that he was certain wasn’t visible when the photo was taken, as there was nobody else around.

Neil explains, “a week or so later, just before the actual wedding, and without mentioning the photograph, the couple getting married asked the staff at the venue if anyone had ever seen something ’spooky’. Their faces went white as they described what they had seen on various occasions: the ghost of a young boy dressed in white night clothes, appearing close to the main barn”.

 

 

http://www.paranormalmagazine.co.uk/2008/11/18/the-ghost-of-tewin-bury-farm/

 

The picture above taken in 1936. It purports to show the ghost of the ‘Brown Lady’ who haunts Raynham Hall in England. The image is widely believed to be one of the best and most convincing of all the known photographs of ghosts. In many publications it is presented as actual photographic proof of the existence of ghosts.

According to legend, the Brown Lady of Raynham is the ghost of Lady Townshend who was married to Charles Townshend, a man known for his fiery temper. When Charles learned of his wife’s infidelity, he punished her by imprisoning her in the family estate at Raynham Hall, located in Norfolk, England. He never allowed her to leave its premises, not even to see her children. She remained there until her death, when she was an old woman.

Over the next two centuries Lady Townshend’s ghost was repeatedly sighted wandering through Raynham Hall, suggesting that she never left its premises even after her death.

For instance, in the early nineteenth century King George IV saw her while he was staying at the hall. He said that she stood beside his bed wearing a brown dress, and that her face was pale and her hair disheveled.

In 1835 Colonel Loftus sighted her. He was visiting the house for the Christmas holidays and was walking to his room late one night when he saw a figure standing in the hall in front of him. The figure was wearing a brown dress. He tried to see who the woman was, but she mysteriously disappeared.

The next week Colonel Loftus again saw the figure. This time, however, he got a better look at her. He said she was an aristocratic looking woman. She was wearing the same brown satin dress, and her skin glowed with a pale luminescence, but, to his horror, her eyes had been gouged out.

Colonel Loftus told others of his experience, and more people then came forward to say that they too had seen a strange figure. An artist drew a painting of the ‘brown lady’ (as she was now known), and this picture was then hung in the room where she was most frequently seen.

A few years later the novelist Captain Frederick Marryat was staying at Raynham Hall. He decided to spend the night in the room in which she was most frequently seen. He studied the painting of her and waited to see her, but she never appeared that night.

However, a few days later he was walking down an upstairs hallway with two friends when they suddenly saw the brown lady. She was carrying a lantern and glided past them as they cowered behind a door. According to Marryat she grinned at them in a ‘diabolical manner’. Before she disappeared, Marryat leapt out from behind the door and fired at her with a pistol that he happened to be carrying. The bullet passed through her and lodged in a wall.

The brown lady continued to be sighted by various people over the next century. However, the most remarkable sighting of her occurred on September 19, 1936.

Two photographers, Captain Provand and Indre Shira, were on assignment at Raynham Hall for the magazine Country Life. According to Shira, this is what happened:

“Captain Provand took one photograph while I flashed the light. He was focusing for another exposure; I was standing by his side just behind the camera with the flashlight pistol in my hand, looking directly up the staircase. All at once I detected an ethereal veiled form coming slowly down the stairs. Rather excitedly, I called out sharply: ‘Quick, quick, there’s something.’ I pressed the trigger of the flashlight pistol. After the flash and on closing the shutter, Captain Provand removed the focusing cloth from his head and turning to me said: ‘What’s all the excitement about?’”

When they developed the picture they found that they had captured the image of a ghostly woman, apparently the famous brown lady, drifting down the stairs. The picture was published in Country Life on December 16, 1936.

Skeptics, however, argue that the picture is a fake. The photo analyst Joe Nickell examined the photograph and concluded that it was nothing more than two images composited together.

While the picture of her might be a fake, there is nothing to prove that the brown lady of Raynham herself isn’t real, although she has rarely been sighted since 1936 (although the late Marchioness of Townshend told Dennis Bardens in the 1960s that she had seen the figure several times).

The absence of Lady Townshend from Raynham Hall may be due to the fact that she reportedly also haunts Sandringham House, and so it could be that she is simply choosing to spend her time there instead. At Sandringham she appears as her young, happy self, whereas in Raynham she appears as the eerie, aged brown lady.

References:

• Dennis Bardens. Ghosts and Hauntings. New York. Taplinger Pub. Co. 1965.
• Daniel Cohen. The Encyclopedia of Ghosts. 1984.