by Colin Wilson
As to Harry Price, he continued his triumphant career as the chief Public Relations Officer of the spirit world. He investigated fire-walking and the Indian rope trick, organised seances, was photographed in ‘haunted beds’ (with ‘Professor’ Joad), and staged an experiment on the summit of the Brocken to try to change a goat into a young man. (This was a failure.) Price loved publicity, and lost no opportunity to be photographed by journalists. He was delighted that so many correspondents seemed to think that his name was Sir Harry Price. Yet he also made the general public conscious of psychical research in a way it had never been before. Because Price emphasised that he was a sceptic and a scientist, not a Spiritualist, people took him more seriously than they did a ‘believer’ like Conan Doyle or Sir Oliver Lodge. When he announced in 1933 that he now felt that Rudi Schneider might be a fake, and produced a photograph that seemed to show him cheating during a seance, people felt that he was showing unflinching honesty. (In fact, the photograph was later shown to be a fake; Price’s motive was almost certainly a desire to get his own back on Rudi for, as he saw it, ‘deserting’ him for another investigator, Lord Charles Hope, whose findings Price denounced.)
Yet in spite of his craving for publicity and his desire to get into Who’s Who, Price did much important and valuable work during these years. In a sense, his motivation is irrelevant; he was a genuine enthusiast for psychical research. The majority of his investigations were not spectacular: just the plodding, day-to-day work of a patient researcher, sitting with mediums, psychometrists, healers, miracle workers. And, if anything, Price was inclined to be over-critical. In Norway, he visited the home of Judge Ludwig Dahl, and had a sitting with the judge’s daughter Ingeborg, whose ‘controls’ were her two dead brothers. While not regarding her as a downright fake, Price was unimpressed. Yet one of the dead brothers prophesied that their father would die on August 8, 1934, seven years later, and this was precisely the day on which he did die from a stroke during a swim.
A case which certainly deserves mention in any account of Price’s career is the curious affair of the talking mongoose of Cashen’s Gap. It was far from being one of Price’s successes; yet it remains an intriguing mystery.
In 1932, Price heard about a farmer called Irving, at Cashen’s Gap on the Isle of Man, who had made friends with a mongoose that could speak several languages. It could also read minds and sing hymns. Price could not find time to go to the Isle of Man, but a friend of his, a Captain M.H. Macdonald, offered to go.
It seemed that the Irving family—who (significantly) had a 13-year-old daughter named Voirrey—had been disturbed by noises from behind the panels of the house: barking, spitting and blowing noises. The farmer lay in wait with a gun, without success, and tried putting down poison; the creature eluded him. So the farmer tried communicating with it, making various animal noises; to his astonishment, it seemed to be able to imitate them. Voirrey tried nursery rhymes, and it began to repeat these. Finally, it showed itself—a small, bushy-tailed creature that claimed to be a mongoose. They called it Gef. And Gef told them he was from India. Mr Irving seldom saw Gef, except in glimpses, as he ran along a beam, but Voirrey and Mrs Irving often saw him face to face.
Macdonald arrived at the farm on February 26, 1932, and saw nothing. When he left to go to his hotel a shrill voice screamed: ‘Go away! Who is that man?’ The farmer said this was Gef. The next day, as Macdonald was having tea with the Irvings, a large needle bounced off the teapot; and Irving remarked that Gef was always throwing things. Later, he heard the shrill voice upstairs talking with Voirrey and Mrs Irving; when he called to ask if the mongoose would come down, the voice screamed: ‘No, I don’t like you.’ He tried sneaking upstairs, but the mongoose heard a stair creak, and shrieked: ‘He’s coming!’ And from then on, Macdonald saw and heard no more of Gef.
According to Irving, who kept a diary, Gef talked in a language he claimed to be Russian, sang in Spanish and recited a poem in Welsh. He killed rabbits for them—by strangling them—and left them outside. He claimed to have made visits to the nearest town, and told the Irvings what various people had been doing; Irving checked and found he was correct. He was able to tell Irving what was happening ten miles away without leaving the farm. And when he was asked if he was a spirit, Gef replied: ‘I am an earth-bound spirit.’
In March 1935, Gef told Irving that he had plucked some hairs from his tail and left them on the mantelpiece; these were forwarded to Price, who had them examined. They proved to be dog hairs—probably from the collie dog on the farm.
When Harry Price was mentioned, Gef said he didn’t like him because he ‘had his doubting cap on’. And when Price finally visited Cashen’s Gap, the visit was a waste of time. Gef only came back to the farm after Price had left. And this, virtually, was the end of the story—although Macdonald paid a second visit to the farm and again heard the mongoose talking in its shrill voice.
It is possible, of course, that the Irvings were hoaxers. But they struck the investigators as honest. And it is difficult to see why, if they wanted attention, they should invent anything as bizarre as a talking mongoose. Why should Irving have invited Price to stay if he was simply a hoaxer?
What seems rather more probable is that Gef was a poltergeist— an ‘earth-bound spirit’, as he himself claimed. Voirrey was a lonely girl who had just reached puberty. The disturbances started like most poltergeist disturbances, with noises in the woodwork, scratchings and other sounds. Later small objects flew through the air, and Gef was assumed to have ‘thrown’ them. But he also seemed to be able to cause ‘action at a distance’: when a saucepan of water turned over on the stove and soaked Irving’s shoes, he assumed this was Gef. The clairvoyance also sounds like a poltergeist, and the knowledge of other people’s affairs. And it seems odd that the rabbits were strangled—not a mongoose’s normal method of killing. In fact, the Gef case seems to belong on the borderland between the straightforward poltergeist and the elemental or hobgoblin. (In the mid-19th century, as Robert Dale Owen points out, the word poltergeist was usually translated hobgoblin.)
Trevor Hall is of the opinion that the poltergeist case which Price claimed to be his first experience of ‘ghost hunting’ was pure invention, and he could be right—Price says that it took place when he was 15 at a village which he calls Parton Magna; but since the rest of the details concern his wealthy relatives and his return to a public school, we are probably safe in assuming it never took place. But with Price, one can never be sure. In Confessions of a Ghost Hunter (1936), he has a chapter called ‘The Strange Exploits of a London Poltergeist’, in which he states that he is forced to disguise the names and the location because it occurred so recently. But the case which he goes on to describe is thoroughly well authenticated, and is, in fact, one of the most remarkable of this century.
It actually took place in No. 8 Eland Road, Battersea, and began on November 29, 1927, when lumps of coal, chunks of washing soda, and copper coins began to rain down on the conservatory roof. The house was occupied by an 86-year-old invalid, Henry Robinson, his son Frederick (27), his three daughters, and a grandson of 14, Peter. When some of the falling objects smashed the glass, they sent for the police. As the constable stood in the back-garden, a lump of coal knocked off his helmet. He rushed to the garden wall and pulled himself up—but there was no one around.
The Robinsons’ washerwoman was terrified when she went into the wash-house and found the place full of smoke, and a pile of red-hot cinders on the floor; she gave notice.
Then the poltergeist began to get into its stride—and it was an exceptionally destructive spirit. Ornaments smashed against walls, articles of furniture overturned, windows were broken. When they moved the old man out of his bedroom, a huge chest of drawers toppled over; a few minutes later the hall stand began to move, and broke in two when Frederick tried to hold it.
In January, an out-of-work journalist named Jane Cunningham was passing the house when she heard an almighty crash. A young ma
n in shirtsleeves ran out. Jane grabbed her notebook and went in to investigate. This time, the poltergeist had smashed the whole conservatory just as if it had placed a bomb in it—all over the garden there was glass, lumps of coal and washing soda—and pennies. Her report on the occurrence led to widespread press interest in the case.
Price went to see the house, and the poltergeist threw a gas-lighter past him; otherwise, nothing much happened. Soon afterwards, Frederick had a mental breakdown and had to be sent into hospital. Chairs marched down the hallway in single file. When Mrs Perkins—the mother of the boy Peter—tried to lay the table, chairs kept scattering all the crockery.
Price assumed that Peter was the ‘focus’ and suggested he should be sent away; he went to stay with relatives in the country. But the poltergeist remained. Objects continued to be thrown around. The old man had to be removed to hospital, and one of the daughters fell ill. The police could only advise the family to vacate the house for the time being, which they did, staying with friends.
A medium held a seance in the house, and began to shiver. But she was unsuccessful in identifying the ‘spirit’. Price paid another visit, with a newspaperman, and more objects were thrown—although not when anyone was watching. Finally, Frederick Robinson came home from the mental home where he had been confined, and quickly moved the whole family elsewhere. This was virtually the end of the story.
Yet there was a postscript. Price had heard that small slips of paper with writing on them had fluttered from the air. Frederick, sick of the whole business, declined to comment. But many years later, in 1941, he broke silence in the Spiritualist newspaper Two Worlds, stating that slips of paper had fallen from the air, and that some of them contained writing made by tiny pinholes. (The Seeress of Prevorst also produced sheets of paper with geometrical drawings made by the same method.) One of these messages read: ‘I am having a bad time here. I cannot rest. I was born during the reign of William the Conqueror.’ It was signed ‘Tom Blood’. Other messages were signed ‘Jessie Blood’.
The Battersea poltergeist seems to be in every way typical of the species. Whether or not it was genuinely an earthbound spirit from the days of William the Conqueror must remain in doubt; poltergeists are not necessarily truthful. (But, as the Rocha case (see p. 282) shows, the dead have no sense of passing time.) The chief mystery of the case is where it obtained the energy to continue the ‘haunting’ after the boy Peter left—for it seems reasonable to assume he was the ‘focus’. The answer may be provided by Price’s observation that at the back of the house there was a mental home. Price actually suggested that some ex-servicemen patients in this home might have thrown lumps of coal (but this is probably an example of his desire to be regarded as a hard-headed sceptic). The mentally disturbed are often the ‘focuses’ of poltergeist activity, so it seems possible that the ‘spirit’ found a convenient reservoir of surplus energy just over the garden wall.
The case with which Price’s name has become most widely associated is, of course, that of Borley Rectory. And in spite of the ‘debunking’ that has taken place since Price’s death in 1948, it remains one of the most interesting hauntings of the 20th century. After Price’s death, a whole volume of the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research was devoted to The Haunting of Borley Rectory, ‘A Critical Survey of the Evidence’, by Dingwall, Trevor Hall and Kate Goldney. They allege that Price probably produced some of the ‘poltergeist’ phenomena himself by tossing pebbles—which, from our knowledge of Price, must be admitted as possible. Their overall conclusion is that there are so many doubts that it would probably be simplest to regard the haunting of Borley as a fairy story. But this is to ignore the fact that stories of hauntings were common long before Price came on the scene, and have continued since he left it. Anyone who feels that the SPR survey proves that Price was a liar should read the long account of Borley in Peter Underwood’s Gazetteer of British Ghosts, with Underwood’s own first-hand reports from interviews with witnesses.
Borley Rectory was built in 1863 on the site of Borley Manor House, which in turn seems to have been built on the site of a Benedictine abbey. It was built by the Reverend H.D.E. Bull. It is difficult to pin down the earliest known ‘sightings’, but it is clear that, during Henry Bull’s tenancy, a number of people saw the apparition of a nun. Henry Bull himself knew of the legend that a nun and a Benedictine monk had tried to elope, been caught, and had both been killed, the nun being bricked up alive. Bull’s daughter Ethel confirmed in a letter to Trevor Hall in 1953 that she had awakened to find a strange man standing beside her bed, and had felt someone sitting down on the bed on several occasions; she also told Peter Underwood how, on July 28, 1900, she and her two sisters all saw a nun-like figure gliding along ‘Nun’s Walk’, apparently telling her beads. The other sister, Elsie, saw the nun, who looked quite solid, and went to ask her what she wanted; the nun vanished.
After the Reverend Henry Bull’s death, his son, the Reverend Harry Bull, took over the rectory. He was interested in psychical research, and claimed that he saw many ghosts. His daughter told Price that he had seen a legendary phantom coach (in which the lovers were supposed to have fled) and that, one day in the garden, the retriever had howled with terror, looking towards some legs visible under a fruit tree. Bull, thinking this was a poacher, followed the legs as they walked towards a postern gate; at which point he realised that the ‘poacher’ was somehow incomplete. The legs disappeared through the gate without opening it.
Harry Bull died in 1927, and the rectory was empty until 1928, when the Reverend Guy Smith and his wife moved in. One stormy night, there was a furious ringing of the doorbell; when Smith arrived there, he found no one. It happened again later—a peal so prolonged that Smith was able to get to the door before it stopped; again, there was no one. After that, all the keys of all the rooms fell out of the locks overnight; later, they vanished. Then they began hearing slippered footsteps. Stones were thrown—small pebbles. Lights were switched on. One day, Mrs Smith thought she saw a horse-drawn coach in the drive. Mr Smith thought he heard someone whisper, ‘Don’t, Carlos, don’t’, as he was walking into the chapel. The Smiths decided to contact the Daily Mirror, who asked Harry Price if he would be willing to go along with an investigator. They told Price their story, and gave him every facility to investigate. But within nine months, they had had enough of the place—perhaps because its plumbing left much to be desired—and moved to Norfolk. According to the SPR report, the Smiths only called the Daily Mirror because they were concerned about all the stories that the house was haunted, and wanted to reassure their parishioners by getting the place a clean bill of health. This story sounds, on the face of it, absurd. Moreover, there exists a letter from Mr Smith to Harry Price stating: ‘Borley is undoubtedly haunted.’ (It is true that Mrs Smith wrote a letter to the Church Times in 1929 saying she did not believe the house to be haunted, but this seems to have been a belated attempt to stem the flood of sensational publicity that followed the Daily Mirror story.)
In October 1930, the rectory was taken over by the Reverend L.A. Foyster, and his much younger wife Marianne. Foyster, oddly enough, had lived near Amherst at the time of the Esther Cox case, and the SPR survey makes much of this coincidence; however, it seems doubtful that the vicar would attempt to fake disturbances on the model of his earlier experience. Certainly, the Foyster incumbency saw the most spectacular exhibitions of the Borley poltergeist. Foyster kept a diary of the disturbances. Bells were rung, bricks thrown, footsteps heard and water out of a jug poured over the couple when in bed. Foyster was even awakened by a violent blow on the head from his own hairbrush. They saw a number of apparitions, including the nun and a clergyman who was identified as the Reverend Henry Bull, the builder of the rectory. Writing appeared on the walls, asking for a mass to be said, and asking for ‘Light’.
There is much independent confirmation of all these events. A Justice of the Peace named Guy L’Estrange visited Borley at the invitation of the Fo
ysters, and wrote a lengthy account of it. As soon as he arrived, he saw a dim figure near the porch, which vanished as soon as he approached. Mrs Foyster had a bruise on her forehead—something ‘like a man’s fist’ had struck her the previous evening. The Foysters were telling L’Estrange about mysterious fires that kept breaking out in locked rooms when there was a loud crash in the hall they found it littered with broken crockery. Then bottles began flying about. L’Estrange notes that they seemed to appear suddenly in mid-air. The bottles were coming from a locked storage shed outside. All the bells began to ring, making a deafening clamour—but all the bell wires had been cut. L’Estrange shouted: ‘If some invisible person is present, please stop ringing for a moment.’ Instantly, the bells stopped—stopped dead, as if each clapper had been grabbed by an unseen hand. Later, sitting alone in front of the fire, L’Estrange heard footsteps behind him; he turned, but the room was empty. The footsteps had come from a part of the wall where there had once been a door. In bed, L’Estrange felt the room become icy cold, and saw a kind of shape materialising from a patch of luminosity; he walked towards it, and had a feeling of something trying to push him back. He spoke to it, and it slowly vanished. He was luckier than another visitor who thought that the ghostly figure was someone playing a joke, and tried to grab it; he was given a hard blow in the eye.