Enigma of Borley Rectory

by Harry Ludlum

  Were it merely a passing dalliance, it would not have lasted beyond a few brief weeks. Other dalliances were also in play. For a time she ran a flower shop with d'Arles, in a London suburb. This was a business entitled 'Jonquille et Cie' in Worple Road, Wimbledon, and she only returned to Borley at weekends.

  It has been stated that Marianne was responsible for the phenomena that occurred during her and Lionel's tenancy, fraudulently keeping things on the boil in order to give Lionel a reason to take her away from the place, which she supposedly hated. But regarding the truth of the matter consider the following sequence of events:

  1. Things happened at the Rectory during their tenancy which Lionel Foyster, the person most directly associated with Marianne, and Richard Edwin Whitehouse were certain of being genuine. Assertions made in The Haunting of Borley Rectory that Dom Richard's evidence was not valid because he had been suffering from a nervous breakdown were subsequently rejected by the monk, who described the allegations as nonsense.

  2. It will be remembered that even Harry Price, when he and his party made known their feelings about Marianne and the phenomena, incurred the extreme anger of the Rector. He had been told on this occasion that, regrettably, it seemed that some of the phenomena occurred only when his wife was not under controlled observation and that consequently she could be responsible for these phenomena. Mr Foyster would have none of it, and I believe that the Rector was an intelligent man who would not have been seriously misled by fake phenomena.

  3. It has been more reasonably suggested by Harry Price among others, that Marianne could have been an unwitting channel for the disturbances, not by her own doing, but because she may have been a 'psychically tuned focus' through which disturbing energies already in being at the Rectory were reactivated and to some extent enhanced. It has been said more than once that Marianne came from a family with a psychic background, so it might have been a good idea for Price to have tested her as a medium. If she was a channel for disturbances at the Rectory, and assuming that such phenomena surrounding Marianne were peculiar to Borley alone and did not occur anywhere else where she resided, then surely such happenings are or were valid as exclusive Borley Rectory phenomena. The point about localisation of phenomena could be rather significant and will be gone into later.

  4. The experience of previous and later occupants of the place would seem to indicate that Marianne was really rather irrelevant as far as the curious disturbances were concerned. Many of the Foyster phenomena had occurred before their tenancy, and continued after they had gone. The various assaults on inhabitants of the house give some examples of this point. The reader will recall the blow on the face received by Marianne, a similar attack on baby Adelaide and, reportedly, another on Francois d'Arles, who is said to have come down to breakfast one morning sporting a black eye. One should not forget also that during Henry Bull's time one daughter in bed had her face slapped and that a much later visitor was thrown face down in a pool of dirty water at the back of the Rectory yard.

  5. The one thing peculiar to the Foyster tenancy was the wall writing, not seen or at least not reported previously. Incidentally, there is nothing to prove that it had not already occurred in earlier years, during the Bull tenancy for example. With so many people in the house in those days, a housemaid finding messages on any of the walls could well assume that one of the youngest Bull girls might have been responsible and thought no more about it. But in respect of the Foysters, did the writing occur anywhere else that Marianne lived? If not, then again they were valid Borley phenomena, Marianne being nothing more than an unconscious conductor for the energy that produced the scribblings. In other words, it seems feasible that Marianne could have been (and that remark is used with reservation) a channel through which the messages were created. However, one should at this point note that the wall writings also occurred in Marianne and Harry Price's absence. In The Ghosts of Borley, the authors tell of how little Adelaide was a 'terror for scribbling', but it was also pointed out that the child was not only too young to be able to write any real words as such but also had some learning difficulties and, incidentally, not tall enough to reach the level at which the messages were found. It seems, therefore, that there is no clear proof that Marianne was responsible for the wall writings. Consequently, can anyone be sure that she was responsible, even unconsciously, for any of the phenomena? It seems not, unless one takes a more detailed look at the occasions on which Marianne was herself sometimes suddenly taken ill and even on occasions collapsed.

  6. As others have thought, it seems to make little sense for Marianne to have persisted for five years in perpetrating fake phenomena merely to get her husband to take her away from the place. When he did eventually quit the living, it was due to ill health. It would, however, be a fair comment that Marianne disliked the isolation of Borley Rectory (but then so did the Smiths) but when Marianne had a bout of being bored with the monotony of life at Borley, she dealt with it very simply, by taking herself off to London.

  It would seen that the only real pointer to any unconscious or latent involvement in the production of phenomena by Marianne lies in those occasions when she collapsed in the Rectory and was seemingly rather unwell.

  A rather interesting possibility is that Marianne collapsed not through illness, but as a result of exhaustion arising from excessive output of psychic energy, when the phenomena were at their most violent phase. It is to be hoped that experts in psycho-medicine will be able to confirm this idea, or at least provide an answer to the problem in the near future.

  A curious twist to Marianne's story, like that of Mabel Smith, was that many years later, when interviewed in America by Eileen Garrett, Marianne dismissed Borley Rectory's reputation as nonsense, but this completely contradicts the testimony of people like Dom Richard Whitehouse and Mr G. P. L'Estrange, two of the many people who were adamant that the phenomena were genuine. Marianne will probably remain something of a curiosity in relation to Borley, for whatever her true feelings were about her time at Borley Rectory, it seems that they will remain her secret.

  Whatever one might think of Marianne Foyster's lifestyle, who could fail to be intrigued by this enigmatic lady? One of the co-authors of The Haunting of Borley Rectory, T. H. Hall, accumulated a large dossier on Marianne and offered it to the Harry Price Library, but it was declined as being unsuitable for the collection, partly because it would not have been available for general inspection.

  I cannot help feeling that details of such a private nature that this dossier might contain would best be left unpublished and the memory of the remarkable Mrs Marianne Foyster left in peace.

  Marianne Foyster at Worple Road, Wimbledon, in the 1930s. Note the bottle - some things change little!

  Nevertheless, in September 1979, the Journal for the Society for Psychical Research carried an article, in an abridged form, by Iris Owen and Pauline Mitchell, of the New Horizons Research Foundation, Toronto, Canada. It was based chiefly on various statements given by Marianne over the years since the First World War. Not least among these was her claim that there never was anything to the Borley story and the place was not haunted when she lived there.

  Interestingly, more details of her biography have come to light in the Owen & Mitchell report, though as Marianne showed herself to be totally contrary and unreliable on the subject of her one-time home in Essex, one does wonder how much even of her own stated biography is totally accurate.

  Peter Underwood, in a reply he gave in June 1980, to the Owen & Mitchell report, considered that Iris Owen and Pauline Mitchell had dropped into the trap of taking Marianne Foyster at face value, which is risky to say the least, where the subject of Borley Rectory is concerned. The results of doing so are graphically illustrated by the difficulties one encounters when trying to square pre-war and post-war statements by Mabel Smith, until one takes into account how a combination of unpleasant experiences and the passage of time distorts the ability of a witness to recall the truth of what happened. That is som
ething that many critics of the Borley Rectory episode, and of Harry Price, may need to learn and accept.

  Another of Marianne's curiously contrary statements was that Lionel Foyster's diary of events at the Rectory was fictional, and that everyone in the family knew that to be so. This claim conflicts with everybody else's testimony to a point that, as evidence one way or the other, it is completely unreliable.

  Marianne also stated in the Owen & Mitchell report that all the keys to the Rectory had been lost, and that consequently anybody could get in or out of the Rectory at will. Her intended inference was that the phenomena were caused by local children getting into the Rectory and messing about.

  This statement is as contrary as some of the others, because the next Rector after Foyster, the Rev. Alfred Clifford Henning, handed the keys to Price when the latter rented the Rectory in 1937. Furthermore, whereas Marianne claimed that local boys used the Rectory toilet after church, local people tended to give the Rectory a wide berth.

  Marianne also claimed that she was well liked by the Bull sisters, whereas they and their brother Walter made it plain more than once, in front of witnesses, as Peter Underwood tells us, that they could never take to Marianne at all. The reader will recall that many Borley folk used to refer to her as 'that strange woman', though as was pointed out previously, there was no doubt a good deal of judging Marianne by their own standards.

  According to Owen and Mitchell, Marianne also suggested that both Lionel and the tenants of the Rectory cottage, Mr and Mrs Arbon, cashed in on the hauntings and strung Price along over the occurrences. It is quite clear, however, from both Price's writings and files, and from both Hastings and Underwood's work on the subject, that Price did not consider the Foyster testimony essential to the story of Borley Rectory, whereas the happenings of the Smith period did, at least to Price, warrant more serious consideration. We do know that Price's view of the Foyster period did change in time and the intervening row with Foyster over Price's doubts about Marianne's veracity obstructed a clear assessment of the situation, until Sidney Glanville's work cleared the air.

  The persistent suggestions that Harry Price was fooled by Marianne really cannot be accepted, especially in the light of the row, which resulted in Price being shown the door. In any case, this accusation suggests a level of gullibility on Price's part that seems out of character with the man. Marianne claimed that Price, after the row, turned up at the Rectory one night, uninvited, bringing with him a picnic hamper. Hastings tells us that he was in the area on one occasion after the split between him and the Rector, so it is possible that he might have tried to revisit the Rectory, but it is also recorded elsewhere that Price was not able to renew contact with the Rector until much later.

  In the final analysis, having considered the Owen & Mitchell report together with that of the late Robert J. Hastings, and taken account of both Price's own views and those of Peter Underwood and the late Dr Paul Tabori in their respective books, I conclude that Marianne cannot be relied on for evidence and that consequently the case of the haunting can neither stand nor fall on her testimony.

  Her husband's testimony, and that of people such as Dom Richard and very many others, is a different story altogether, and one finds that it is their testimony that is the more honest in many areas of the story.

  Peter Underwood asked the question: 'What sort of priest was Foyster if he presented as fact an account of things that he knew to be bunkum?' No, upon the Foyster period at Borley Rectory, Marianne's claims just will not do. On the other hand, to describe her as the villainess in the Borley story will not do either. Contrary she may have been, but she was very much a part of this extraordinary episode whether she herself believed the place to be haunted, or not.

  The other major published view of the Foyster phenomena, that of Messrs Dingwall, Goldney and Hall, The Haunting of Borley Rectory, can hardly be accepted as being completely accurate, having been shown by the report of Robert J. Hastings to be rather misleading in certain aspects.

  The Owen & Mitchell report is more extensive and I can only present a small portion here of what the report and Peter Underwood's reply contain.

  How does one sum up Marianne Foyster? She was contrary, curiously wayward and, to a degree, a female Walter Mitty character. In spite of all the many versions she gave of her life at Borley Rectory since the thirties, she seems to be one of those extraordinary, sometimes infuriating but always fascinating characters for whom one can hardly avoid feeling some sense of affection. She must surely be regarded as one of the many enigmas of Borley Rectory.

  A strange story about her after she left Borley Rectory reached the public through a short documentary programme on BBC Television in October 1994. It was a story that seems to be very much in keeping with her reputation for waywardness, and her penchant for changing the details of her life with each telling. As the story doesn’t really have any bearing on the story of the Borley Rectory hauntings, it will suffice to say that through the persistence of a young man seeking his natural mother, Marianne's trail of assorted adoptive children finally led to a brother and sister long parted being reunited.

  It will be remembered that Marianne married a Mr Fisher, though at the time she was still legally married to Lionel Foyster. When she married Fisher, Marianne presented two adopted children as being her own, whereas in fact they were not hers, and were to end up, like Adelaide Tower, in care.

  Readers will also recall that after Lionel and Marianne moved to Ipswich, Lionel was often mistaken for Marianne's father, chiefly due to his age. What came to light in the documentary was that Marianne encouraged this state of affairs by actually claiming that Lionel was her father. And yet, when one remembers how she had changed or denied so many aspects of her story throughout her life, this episode serves simply to reinforce her curious and wayward character.

  This episode does, however, touch upon the hauntings at Borley Rectory in one way. The writer has suggested that Marianne might have been acting as a psychic focus through which the disturbances at that time were being channelled. She has since apparently stated that she was not psychic, though as with so much else that she has related about herself, one wonders whether even that denial can be taken at face value! But could it be that the entities active at Borley Rectory, instead of appealing to her for help, as has been thought, were in fact creating their havoc in protest at her presence there?

  Whatever the truth of the matter, and however wayward and deceiving she seems to have been during those momentous years of her extraordinary life, Marianne was with all her apparent faults, deserving of a permanent place in the annals of Borley Rectory and its strange history.

  There is one more character from this extraordinary period in the Rectory's history that we must speak of, though what is known about him is little enough. A frequent occupant of the Rectory during the Foyster's time was Francois d'Arles, a curious character by all accounts. His name was assumed, for he was in fact born Frank Charles Pearless on November 10, 1894, in Bermondsey, South London, and on December 26, 1918 he married Ada Ewens at West Hackney.

  For a time he lived in France, which is when he assumed the name Francois d'Arles, probably nothing more than a version of Francis of Arles, indicating perhaps that it was in that town that he lived. His marriage to Ada lasted until 1933, when in November of that year he was divorced. One cannot help but wonder whether this arose out of his association with Marianne, for between 1932 and 1934 he and Marianne ran the Wimbledon flower shop mentioned earlier, with Marianne only returning to Borley at weekends.

  On August 8, 1934, he remarried, to Jessie Irene Dorothy Mitchell, at Wandsworth Registry Office. That marriage lasted until October 11, 1944, when he was again divorced. He was later married for the third time, to one Jessi Steed and in 1955 he departed for Australia from where he was to return in 1966, dying on October 10 of that year.

  During the Foyster period, he lodged at the Rectory his small son, who acted as a playmate for little Adelaide Tower,
and d'Arles also stayed there frequently himself. It is even suggested that for a time he dominated the Foyster household. Local people recall him weeping at the grave of the dead infant, John Emery, who died aged about five weeks, whilst in Marianne's care.

  He also reported having been a victim of one of the periodic assaults on the residents of the Rectory, appearing for his breakfast one morning sporting a black eye and claiming that a ghost had struck him in the face in his room.

  It is a pity that more is not known about this curious man, and indeed what is recorded about him here only came to light during the research for Peter Underwood and Paul Tabori's joint book, The Ghosts of Borley.

  CHAPTER 13

  The Tenancy of Harry Price

  The author now turns to the man whose work at Borley forms such an essential part of the strange story of the Rectory, and about whom so much has been reported.

  Ultimately, it matters little what one thinks of his work, or of the Borley story in general when one realises that Borley Rectory without the late Harry Price is almost as inconceivable now as would have been wartime Britain without Winston Churchill. That Harry Price and his Borley Rectory investigation have aroused controversy would be something of an understatement. Many believe that without Harry Price the story of Borley Rectory would never have seen the light of day.

  In Sir William Crocker's Far From Humdrum ... A Lawyer's Life, we are told that Price was annoyed that many people wouldn't accept his debunking of some of the more dubious ghosts and various fake mediums, and is alleged to have said 'People don't want debunk - they prefer bunk! All right, I'll give them bunk'. Some then actually believed that he then proceeded to concoct 'bunk' on a grand scale.