Enigma of Borley Rectory

by Harry Ludlum

  But in spite of the fire, which one might well expect to have put an end to the disturbances, this was to be far from the end of Borley Rectory's extraordinary history.

  It is perhaps worth spending a moment or two looking at the relative levels of allegedly paranormal phenomena in relation to the numbers of people present in the Rectory at any one period in its curious history.

  Although the writer makes no claim that this analysis has any scientific basis, he is of the opinion that the hauntings at Borley Rectory reflect a commonly held view that paranormal phenomena feeds on the presence of people. It does appear in many cases of haunting that such curious events are more frequent in their occurrence the more people there are in the location.

  Looking at the hauntings at Borley Rectory, one notices that the 'golden age' of this particular episode, was not as critics might like to think, during the involvement of Harry Price, but during the heyday of the Bull family. Allowing for the obvious and usual doubts as to the veracity of all the reports of happenings during that time, it is noticeable that there was a greater concentration of combined phenomena during the years from 1863 to 1927. During the young years of the Bull sisters, there was almost every kind of psychic phenomena from visual phantasms to isolated noises.

  Among these phenomena, one can list the nun, the figures of an old man, a strange man in a tall hat, a coach and horses, sounds of rushing water, bell ringing, bangs and crashes with no obvious cause, strange odours and much else besides.

  From the time of the Smiths, things seemed to change quite noticeably, although there is some evidence that there was a degree of overlap in the nature of phenomena from one period to the next.

  With the coming of the Foysters, things altered again. Most of the visual phenomena during this time seem to have petered out, to be replaced by a lot more physical disturbance, some of it considerable violence. At the same time, there is the feeling that some of this may have been provoked, possibly without her realising it, by Marianne, and whilst it is an often expounded view that she faked much of the phenomena of that period, the writer inclines more to the belief that she was acting as a focus, and that by her nature Marianne Foyster was something of a target channel for the disturbances.

  It is rather telling in Harry Price's favour, rather than to his detriment, that the phenomena seemed to have been less marked during the time when his investigation team were on the premises, and less spectacular in many ways, and it is interesting to consider whey this might be so.

  To the writer's way of thinking, a great deal hinges on the fact that during the time of the Bull family's incumbency, there was the highest concentration of people in the house of any period in its history. Remember that during those years especially there was a high concentration of adolescent girls present, and their apparent propensity for attracting psychic activity is of old lineage in the study of this controversial subject.

  It seems relevant that in spite of Harry Price assembling his team to mount a long-term watch on the Rectory and its surroundings the time each of them could give to this task on any given occasion was limited. Thus, there were lengthy periods between visits by the members of the team when the Rectory was devoid of occupants altogether, in stark contrast to the Bull era when the house was a hive of little groups of twos and threes almost all the time. Ghosts prefer not to play to empty houses it seems.

  These comments are not intended to be a scientific analysis of the nature of the phenomena. What they suggest, however, is that the distribution of the different kinds of phenomena and levels thereof, throughout the Rectory's history, rather overturns some popular views as to the validity or otherwise of the case of the Borley Rectory hauntings, and strengthens, in my opinion, the view that there was and is a lot more to this story than any mere commercial or publicity-orientated journalistic exercise!

  CHAPTER 8

  Ghosts Among the Ruins. The Site from 1939 to 1945

  The destruction of the Rectory on February 27, 1939, far from putting an end to the strange disturbances as one might have expected, seemed instead to make not the slightest difference. It would be fair to say that never again was the old building to be the scene of quite so high a level of phenomena but the phenomena did not cease.

  Among numerous occurrences reported during the war there were lights seen in the smashed and burned-out openings that had once been windows, to the extent that ARP wardens were called to deal with what they assumed to be somebody breaking the air-raid blackout regulations, only to find of course that there were no lights showing there at all. Army officers who tried to billet themselves in the grounds had stones thrown at them and found the atmosphere of the site such that they felt disinclined to stay there. One particularly unwarranted act on their part was to pull down the little Gothic summerhouse and dig a large hole upon its former site, for no obvious reason.

  Among other curiosities at the site after the fire was the experience of a group of young people who stood on the lawn, watching the burned-out Rectory by the light of the moon. As they looked, one of the party saw the figure of a girl or young woman appear in the opening of what had been the Blue Room window. As far as could be seen by moonlight, the figure appeared to be clothed in either pale blue or buff. After some seconds, the figure vanished. Among the group of watchers, opinions as to how the figure disappeared were divided. One thought it had, seemingly, fallen backwards into the dark of the ruined building, whilst another thought that the figure turned and faded through one of the walls.

  Either way, the incident was very curious, because the damage to the Blue Room was such that nobody could have been standing at the window opening, the floor having been burned away. When the reader comes to the details of the visits by the Cambridge Commission, there may appear to be a contradiction insofar as members were able to get into the Blue Room and others upstairs, albeit with some difficulty. During a visit by two Polish Army officers, some temporary planking was laid across some of the upstairs floor joists and when the Poles departed, the planks remained.

  Concerning both the figure at the Blue Room window and the light in the window, the writer disagrees with suggestions often made that the Rectory reflected lights from trains on the Sudbury to Long Melford section of the Stour Valley railway line.

  As for lights seen there during the last war: firstly the glass of the Blue Room window had gone and secondly, even when defoliated by winter, the trees in the grounds were dense enough to block any light from a train passing at least half a mile away, if not rather more. Furthermore, the burnt walls of the ruin would not reflect the lights of a train, well obscured by trees, at that distance. There is another technical argument against the train light claims. The writer, amongst other interests, is a railway enthusiast and so the following remarks are made in the context of some knowledge of the working of the London & North Eastern Railway who, as successors to the Great Eastern, operated the Stour Valley line. Even as late as the war years, local trains such as those used between Marks Tey and either Cambridge or Bury St Edmunds, which would pass close by Borley Hall when approaching or just leaving Long Melford, were more usually the preserve of elderly coaches with gas lighting, which is rather yellowish and not bright enough to be seen through woodland at that distance.

  Furthermore, once the Blitz was underway, when trains of stock from other lines might well have come through there carrying troops, trains at night on the Stour Valley line as everywhere else would be required to run with blinds down and very dim lighting. Those lights would not be visible at Borley.

  Yet another curious occurrence was reported by Herbert Mayes, a chauffeur, who was returning home by bicycle one night after dark. As he approached the burnt-out shell of the Rectory, he heard the sound of horses stampeding. He dismounted from his bike and pulled in against the hedge to let the horses pass, but no animals came into view. The sounds passed him, gradually fading away as they did so, but of the horses themselves, there was nothing whatever to be seen. Mayes shone his bicy
cle lamp both up and down the lane but there was nothing there. The reader will recall how, many long years before, Harry Bull had heard a horse-drawn vehicle approach and pass him without anything being visible.

  In Haunted East Anglia, by Joan Forman, is another record of a visit to the burnt-out Rectory not long after the fire, by a group of young people. Among this group was a young girl named Violet Sorfleet. In her account of the incident, she recalled that the group had walked to the ruined Rectory on a very cold night and, having arrived, stood leaning on the drive gate looking at the burnt-out building. The night was clear and a frost was forming. They had stood there for some minutes, wondering, since the place didn't look particularly unusual, why it had been the focus of so much attention, when without warning the party was blotted out from each other's sight by a thick and clammy fog that seemed to drop on them from nowhere. Violet Sorfleet told later of feeling that there was something unnatural and unpleasant about the fog. The group were all young, impressionable and scared! They scarpered and as they ran back down the hill, towards the cottages at the bottom, it felt as though whatever had frightened them off was laughing at them.

  This incident did not appear in Harry Price's accounts of the Borley story, and seems to have been recalled only to Joan Forman by Miss Sorfleet. But was the fog incident a genuine experience or did Miss Sorfleet rehash one of the many already recorded happenings at Borley Rectory? So far as the writer is aware, no other fog phenomena cropped up in relation to Borley, and this incident is therefore mentioned here only as an alleged experience. A couple of points about it are worth noting.

  In view of the weird history of Borley Rectory, one ought not to be surprised at the possibility of fog phenomena. However, it has to be said that this oddity doesn't fit the general pattern, which consisted largely of noises, lights, smells and visual effects such as the nun, the headless man, the coach and horses and the various figures seen inside the Rectory, together with poltergeist activity such as the throwing of objects.

  Now, however, to other incidents. On Easter Monday, April 10, 1939, Mr W. Davey from Ipswich tried to take a photograph of the shell of the building. No sooner had he pressed the shutter on his camera than it opened again immediately of its own accord, spoiling the negative. He tried again, but with the same result. He then gave it up as a bad job. His camera, then five years old, had never malfunctioned in such a fashion before.

  The visits to the site by two Polish Army officers also proved to be rather odd as regards phenomena but, before detailing their experiences, the story of Mr H. F. Russell's strange experience should be told.

  He visited the remains of Borley Rectory on November 12, 1941 and, as far as can be ascertained, he was near the gateway between the back of the Rectory and the stable cottage, when an unseen something seized him from behind and threw him face down in a puddle of muddy water.

  Now we turn to the Polish officers. On June 28 and 29, 1943, two Polish Army officers visited the ruin. They were Lieutenant Kujawa and Lieutenant Nawrocki. On the evening of the 28th, Kujawa was in the remains of the kitchen passage when he was struck on the shoulder by a stone and his colleague had stones thrown at him also.

  The same evening, a moving shadow was seen near the Nun's Walk but it disappeared. Early on the morning of the 29th, Lieutenant Nawrocki heard whisperings in the kitchen passage but couldn't distinguish anything definite. The couple paid another visit on the same days of the following month, July 28 and 29, the supposedly appointed day of the phantom nun's appearance each year and once again, a shadowy figure was seen near the Nun's Walk.

  The major part of the wartime watches on the ruined building were carried out by the University of Cambridge undergraduates, who formed themselves into the 'Cambridge Commission' under the leadership of Andrew J. B. Robertson, MA, of St John's College, Cambridge. Members visited the Rectory on repeated occasions between 1939 and the final removal of the Rectory remains in 1944. Harry Price detailed their findings at some length in Chapter 9 of his second book, The End of Borley Rectory, and the Commission's original reports are currently in the Harry Price Library. From these details, the writer gives the following précis.

  The group's first visit to the Rectory proved unproductive but on the second visit on October 31, 1941, by Mr Robertson and Mr I. P. Williams, during which some temperature readings were taken on the site, a luminous patch appeared on the wall between the sewing room and the remains of the corridor. This happened at about 12.45 am, and lasted about a second or so, but the watchers were not impressed by it. At about 2.10 am, some heavy noises like footsteps were heard on the back stairs and a moving dark outline was spotted flitting rapidly from a moonlit spot into complete darkness.

  On December 20, 1941, Messrs Robertson and Angelbeck were at the Rectory and in response to experimental knocking on one of the walls with a torch, heard a repeated knocking at fixed intervals, seeming to emanate from somewhere near the ruins of the drawing room.

  On February 27, 1942, three years to the day from the time of the fire, Robertson and another colleague, J. P. Grantham, visited the Rectory and again they experimented with knocking signals. In response they heard a click, and then a few minutes later, three heavy knocks from the direction of the front door, not as a result of any visitor to the Rectory. Shortly after this, a luminous patch was again seen on the sewing room wall. Various objects were placed around the house to see if they were paranormally moved, but nothing happened. The observers did, however, hear very clearly at 11.31 pm and then again at 11.34 pm, a noise as of heavy furniture being moved. The sounds seemed to come from the ruined upper floor.

  Further sounds amounted to a single knock, a rustling noise from outside, and the sound of a door closing somewhere inside the ruin. Throughout this time, a thermometer was in use as on the first and second visits. On earlier visits, changes in temperature were noticed but on the February 27 occasion there were no changes recorded.

  July 28, 1942 brought Messrs Armstrong, Robertson, White and Williams to the Rectory, though nothing worthy of comment occurred, but during a visit by three members of the Commission on September 22, 1942, some interesting things did occur. Following some cracking sounds at about 11 pm, the sound of heavy and measured footsteps was heard, coming it seemed from one of the upstairs rooms. The observers walked across the room they had based themselves in, and the footsteps followed them, only to end abruptly.

  Although the observers felt that they couldn't be sure whether the sounds could have been produced by normal means, access to the upper floor was now barred, due to the nailing up of one of the passage doorways. At one stage during the war, however, some observers did get into the upper floor by climbing up over the roof of the boiler house on the far side of the Rectory, but even then, save for the planks left by the two Poles, the upper floor was difficult to traverse.

  But to return to the earlier visit, throughout the night one of the team, Mr Lankester, heard a clock ticking though there wasn't one in earshot. The church tower opposite did not, and still does not, possess a clock. Oddly enough, Mr Lankester's mother, in Ipswich, woke at about midnight on that same night, hearing a clock ticking in her room, though there was no clock there.

  It was not until March 21, 1943 that a visit produced further phenomena:

  1. Two occurrences of a sound resembling that of a horse stamping its hooves, though no horse was anywhere near.

  2. At 10.30 pm, the sound of someone in the garden near the pond-cum-stream.

  3. At 12.38 am, the sound of someone shuffling about in the kitchen passage.

  The next group from Cambridge, Messrs Cook, Hay and Wadsworth, visited the Rectory on the night of April 30, 1943, and during this visit there occurred:

  1. The sound of five footsteps from near the back stairs.

  2. Thuds heard in intermittent twos and threes.

  3. Three occurrences of a noise like moving furniture.

  4. A sound like a packing case being dragged over the floor.

/>   5. Four taps sounding like a mallet striking a wooden surface.

  6. A very loud noise, as of a slamming door.

  7. A noise like a falling brick.

  This last sound could have been a brick, as the shell of the Rectory was in a pretty sorry state by this time and was collapsing bit by bit. The noise happened after a request by the watchers for the door-slamming noise to repeat itself.

  The next group at the Rectory, on June 8, 1943, noticed only a curious halting of what had been a steady drop in temperature. The slowly changing temperature stopped its course for about an hour, before the drop continued. The following night, two visitors, Mr I. G. Gordon and Mr J. R. Palmer, recorded the sighting by one of them of what he thought was a whitish object moving across the lawn and into the trees near the boundary stone.

  During the night there were various squeaks and cracks and assorted other noises, but Mr Gordon noticed that whenever any attempt was made to 'contact' the late Rev. Harry Bull, noises of one sort or another followed shortly afterwards. Whatever the reader might make of these occurrences, they make a rather interesting sideline to Harry Bull's comments to J. Harley in 1922, about making himself known to the future occupants of the house by causing 'mechanical disturbances'.

  The courtyard passage and pump wheel after the fire

  Mr Gordon returned to the Rectory on June 16, 1943, with Mr J. V. Owen and Miss J. Camock, but nothing of interest was recorded. Three days later, Messrs Heap and Longmuir spent a night at the ruined Rectory and reported the following:

  1. The sound of falling rubble in the cellar.

  2. A white shape by one of the trees close to the greenhouse, but this was not a trick of the moonlight, because the moon was well down, though it could possibly have been an instance of bark-fluorescence on a tree. The shape had gone only a short time later.

  3. Various noises like chirping, dismissed as mice.