The Ghost Hunters

by Neil Spring

  ‘What is the explanation? Who knows. I don’t. But I have a feeling you might …’

  It seemed the right time to make our request. We wanted, I said, to excavate the ruined grounds as soon as possible but would need men and tools to assist us. Would the captain agree to help us?

  He gave a short shrug. ‘Well, it’s an unusual request, Miss Grey, but I don’t see the harm. Yes, why not? Might be difficult though, what with the prospect of another war.’

  Price raised a doubtful eyebrow. ‘Oh, I don’t know. I’m not sure that things in Germany are as bad as they were. I know many people who have just returned from holidays in Germany and who report that everything appears normal and they were treated kindly.’

  ‘You approve of the German culture, Mr Price?’ The captain seemed surprised.

  ‘Indeed I do,’ Price replied, insensitively I thought, given that it was at the hands of a German soldier that my father had perished. ‘I want, once more, to dine on the terrace of the Molkenkur restaurant. I have never taken you there, Sarah, but one day I will. From that marvellous elevation one can look out over the town of Heidelberg and its castle, like a collection of model houses hundreds of feet below. I want to observe the peasants making quaint cuckoo clocks on the doorsteps of their Black Forest homes.’ He paused and then said, ‘I am sure that Mr Hitler is a reasonable man. Let us hope, even at this eleventh hour, some means will be found to adjust the differences between our two countries.’

  I had never seen him so passionate about a subject other than the supernormal. Had the comment any meaning? It certainly struck me as odd.

  ‘I will do my best to help you,’ said Captain Gregson, ‘but it won’t happen quickly.’ He promised to clear the arrangements with Reverend Henning, whom he was sure would be compliant, and to let us know when would be convenient. Then he returned to his guests, Price following in his wake like an eager child as he prepared to take to the stage to regale the punters with stories of spirits and table-rapping.

  I lingered a while longer by the summerhouse and closed my eyes, breathing in the sweet scent of honeysuckle. A warm breeze carried music from the fete upon its breath and somewhere, beyond the blackened ruins of the Rectory, the thin cry of a child.

  * * *

  Note

  1 Gregson paid £500 for the property, which was initially valued by the Halstead estate agent Stanley Moger at £450. Mr Moger visited the house shortly after Price had left. The inventory he prepared for the Ecclesiastical Commission on 26 May 1938 describes the interior of the house as ‘… roaming and quite out-of date, requiring much expenditure in refitting and modernising. The decorative condition is decidedly old and of cold appearance.’ Elsewhere in the document Mr Moger records the building’s reputation thus: ‘LOCAL RUMOUR. The Rectory is supposed to be HAUNTED, and a few years ago was the Hunting Ground of many hundreds of Spiritualists and Inquisitive persons, in fact, so many visited the site that the Police had to handle the matter. This, as you may imagine, is a considerable detriment to selling, as many view but turn away on this account.’

  – 33 –

  ‘THE MOST HAUNTED HOUSE IN ENGLAND’

  The sun was burning a fierce orange high over the lonely Essex fields when the first pickaxe broke through the floor of the Rectory cellars. I hoped I would feel some relief once we started digging but the scene was tense and I felt unwell, and had increasingly for some months. The scar from my operation ached. I put it down to agitation that it had taken so long to be granted access to the Rectory site. Three years! The war, as predicted, had rather interrupted our plans.

  Price strode around the site as if he owned it, jacket off, shirt sleeves rolled up to the elbows as he directed each of us to do this or that. My own task was simple: I was to take detailed notes on the proceedings so that Price could draw on these later as he compiled his second monograph of the case – a work he had already decided would be titled The End of Borley Rectory.

  He called down earnestly to the man digging, ‘Do you see anything?’

  ‘No, sir, not yet.’

  Price’s strained heart prevented him from doing any of the digging himself, so Reverend Henning had enlisted the assistance of a local gentleman called Ted Jackson. He was a tall, bespectacled man whose thin frame did not reassure me that he would be equal to the task, but we were grateful for his willingness to help.

  ‘She’s been seen again, you know,’ a voice behind me said quietly. It was Reverend Henning.

  ‘You mean the nun?’ I asked.

  He nodded. ‘Just recently, out there.’ He looked past a belt of elm trees toward the lane which separated the Rectory grounds from the churchyard. ‘By a doctor this time. Reckons he saw a figure all in black robes, bending down at the side of the road. Skin like leather, he said, with just black holes for eyes.’

  Jackson’s pickaxe struck hard into the cellar floor a second time. I felt my stomach lurch with anxiety. I knew that if Marianne Foyster was right and some awful curse had befallen me then I had but one hope: to find the remains of Marie Lairre – if that truly was her name – and lay her to rest. Then, perhaps, I would finally be free from her shadow.

  What if we don’t find anything? The idea was too terrible to contemplate. For too long I had suffered prolonged restlessness, at home and at the film company, where I had not progressed nearly as far as I would have liked. I was sleeping fitfully, sinking ever deeper into depression. I had even fallen into the habit of avoiding mirrors for fear of what I might see. I was beginning to fear for my sanity. How long before I became like Mother, scrubbing the walls in our house and forgetting?

  Suddenly, frighteningly, anything seemed possible.

  As I stared down into the blackened pit of rubble it occurred to me that everything had led me to this moment. All clues converged here. It had taken weeks to clear these cellars of all their debris, but now at last, the excavation had commenced.

  I watched everyone and everything, afraid that some important detail might be overlooked. But I needn’t have worried:

  Price was diligent in applying his scrutinising eye to every inch of the scene. It was easy to see why, for he too had a lot riding on what we might find. His book, The Most Haunted House in England, had been a publishing sensation. Chronicling his involvement with Borley Rectory from our first visit in 1929, the finished article was a thorough deconstruction of all the mysterious events and legends associated with the house. Even the charming Vernon Wall was given a starring guest appearance in the opening chapters. I wondered what the journalist would make of it, wherever he was now, and what the Reverend Foyster would think, for the book even included – to my surprise – a full duplication of Foyster’s Diary of Occurrences, which Price had never returned to the old man. I remembered that he had signed a confidentiality agreement and could only infer that he had used the diary with the certain conviction that the rector would not take legal proceedings against him, for any such action would inevitably have dragged the Foysters into an unwelcome public exhumation of their darker past. The result was a readable and convincing account and the story was believed. University scholars, scientists, the clergy and the nobility sanctioned Price’s findings. Sir Ernest Jelf, senior master of His Majesty’s Supreme Court, confessed in The Law Times that he was ‘at a loss to understand what cross examination could possibly shake it’.1

  It was a valedictory moment that could at last allow the great ‘psychic detective’ to challenge his detractors. Price had come full circle. Sceptic turned believer. He had proved his theory and sold his story to the world.

  But the story was far from over.

  A black dog, wandering aimlessly among the rubble, seemed to sense my unease. It came close and then padded off, before stopping and sitting on the other side of the pit formed by the opened cellars. Its eyes, black as coal, watched me.

  The date was 16 August 1943, the time 11.30 a.m.

  The question will undoubtedly be asked, why didn’t we commence the excavation
sooner? Dig up the cellar ourselves? If only it had been so simple! The truth of it was that the wartime conditions made this idea practically impossible. Manpower was scarce, and the beds that would be needed in the inns and hotels at Long Melford and Sudbury for every participant and onlooker were all given over to military personnel. Nevertheless, as the years wore on and my spirits dampened, we never stopped trying.

  Progress at last came in the spring of 1943, when Price discovered, to his concern, that the rector was preparing to sell the remains of the Rectory. He told me that the new owners might never permit an exploration of the cellars. It was now or never. So I wrote to Reverend Henning myself, insisting that he help us find some men to assist us with the job.

  Just a few weeks later Price telephoned me with the news that the reverend had finally found help for the task. Apparently not everyone approached with the idea was enthusiastic and it had taken some cajoling to persuade them to come. I was hardly surprised. Beneath me the cellar walls, like the rest of the ruins, were stained black from the fire, the floor littered with rubble, dead leaves and other debris that had accumulated here. Gone now were the piles of mouldy boxes, the old wine bottles, the wooden rocking horse with the melancholy eyes. All that remained to indicate that this was the same cellar we had explored all those years ago with Vernon Wall and Reverend Smith were a few bricks, the foundations of an earlier dwelling, protruding from the earth.

  ‘Well?’ cried Price after we had been standing for so long that my legs felt weak. ‘Anything?’

  ‘Afraid not, Mr Price. Nothing yet.’

  Price’s face registered his disappointment.

  I checked my watch and recorded the time in my notebook: 12.45 p.m.

  *

  Those present at the scene were Reverend Henning and his wife; Dr Eric H. Bailey, senior assistant pathologist of the Ashford County Hospital; Mr Roland F. Bailey, his brother, who was a barrister; flying officer A. A. Creamer; Captain W. H. Gregson and his two nieces, Mrs Georgina Dawson and Mrs Alex English; Johnnie Palmer, a dubious looking observer from one of the local cottages; Price, of course, and me.

  Only Sidney Glanville, who had helped lead us here by telling us of the planchette messages received by his daughter, was absent. I wondered why. He was, after all, Price’s ‘most loyal observer’.

  Everyone was intrigued by what we might find in the earth. But more than anyone, I was keyed up with anxiety. I hadn’t noticed until Price instructed me to stop grinding my teeth. ‘You’ve been working that jaw all morning,’ he said. ‘Relax now.’

  It struck me as curious that he could remain so calm in the face of such an important development in our investigation. But then, he wasn’t living each day under the Dark Woman’s gaze; he didn’t feel the problem as I did. For him, this was merely an exercise to complete the remaining chapters of his second book. I, however, was contending with a proliferation of nightmares and unsettling noises which now came almost weekly from my bedroom wall:

  Tap-tap-scratch. Tap-tap, scratch.

  Those insistent sounds reminded me of something – but what? School perhaps … Yes, that was it. St Mary’s and my teacher, Sister Regis … her chalk striking the blackboard.

  Everything I was learning about the insidious long-term effects of the Rectory’s haunting, made me certain now that somehow its legacy had affected Mother, as it was sure to affect me. If the two were connected – the house and our problems – I had to know how, to make us both safe and to end it.

  It was shortly after a quarter to two when, having shovelled and sifted tons of earth, Jackson finally pulled some bricks from the ground and threw them aside. Then he tipped more earth and clay into his sieve. ‘Well?’ I asked hopefully.

  He looked up at me and shook his head.

  I was about to suggest that we take a break for lunch when a cry from behind caused me to look sharply back over my shoulder. ‘Wait a moment, I think I might have something here.’

  I rushed forward, Price close behind me. Somewhere nearby a dog began barking. ‘What, what is it?’ Price demanded.

  Jackson retrieved something from his sieve. He studied it closely, his moustache twitching, his face grey, and then held it aloft for us all to see.

  There was no mistaking the object in his grip.

  ‘Dear God,’ whispered Price.

  ‘Is that what I think it is?’ I felt my heart squeeze.

  ‘Yes,’ said Price quietly, ‘I do believe it is.’

  *

  At the end of the afternoon I went with Price to the rectory at Liston, at Mrs Henning’s invitation, and wrote up my notes. Over dinner that evening Reverend Henning told us of a local woman, one Mrs Collett, who had recently attempted to divine the floor of the Rectory with a hazel twig. When she had passed over the spot where we had dug that day, her twig had snapped. An innocuous occurrence? Perhaps. It would have been easy to think that. But I knew better.

  Because next to the exact spot where Vernon Wall had first crashed his foot through the cellar floor and into the well tank, underneath the cold parts of the house where the planchette messages had instructed us to dig, we found a few curious items: a large antique brass preserving pan, a silver cream jug and, beneath, a fragment of a skull – a jawbone with five teeth in it. Dr Bailey examined it carefully and declared with certainty that it was a left mandible, definitely human, probably from a woman.

  The next day, when we resumed excavations, we found two religious medals.

  I shuddered as I recalled the tantalising prophecy revealed to Glanville’s daughter six years earlier: ‘Under the ruins you will find bones of murdered … Proof of haunting.’

  * * *

  Note

  1 Law Times, 9 August 1941.

  – 34 –

  THE LAST RITES

  The jawbone and fragment of skull were all we ever found of the supposed phantom nun who referred to herself as Marie Lairree. I considered this odd. Where was the rest of the skeleton? Price pointed out that the remains might have been disturbed and scattered when the foundations of the Rectory were built, or parts buried elsewhere intentionally.

  Whatever the explanation, the absence of a complete skeleton wasn’t going to prevent me from insisting that the remains should be given a proper burial, as the planchette messages and wall writings had instructed. It had to be that way, otherwise I could never have hoped for the chance to gaze into a mirror without feeling apprehension. And thankfully Price had demanded as much, although, I think, for reasons very different from my own. Following the success of his first book, his publisher was keen to follow it with another: The End of Borley Rectory. The location and eventual burial of the phantom nun’s remains provided him with the best ending he could have hoped for.

  Curiously, the chosen location for Marie Lairre’s final resting place was not Borley, as one would have expected, but the nearby Liston churchyard. I assumed that Liston was a more convenient location for Reverend Henning, who lived there, and that he had little wish to risk drawing any further unwelcome attention to Borley itself, which had been overrun with overeager ghost hunters since the day Price’s book was published.

  We waited a further two years before it could be done. They were the longest two years of my life. I remember them now as little more than a white, fearful haze. For as much as I tried convincing myself that I was overreacting, the continuing disturbances at home made me worry we were wasting valuable time.

  But what more could we have done? Permission had to be sought for the burial and Reverend Henning thought it would be more appropriate and respectful to the other members of the parish if we waited until the worst of the war was over.

  So we waited until finally, in the honeysuckle heat of a glorious May evening in 1945, our small group gathered for the simplest of ceremonies in Liston churchyard. Those present included the Rector of Borley cum Liston and Mrs Henning and their young son, Stephen; Mr Eric G. Calcraft, who took photos of the session; the sexton; Price, of course, and me.


  Price had placed the fragments of skull and jawbone in a cedarwood casket measuring five inches by four that would, in his own words, ‘be quite immune from insects and other corroders.’ On its surface was a brass tablet which bore the date we had excavated the remains. Only when the lid was finally nailed shut did I allow myself the briefest of sighs.

  The casket was lowered into the grave, then the rector said the Committal. A movement caught my eye. Behind a low stone wall at the far end of the churchyard stood a man, smartly attired in a brown suit and hat, the rim of which was tipped down just low enough to obscure his face. In one hand he held what I thought was a notepad, and slung around his neck was a camera. His stance seemed familiar. And though I wasn’t able to discern his features I was certain he could see me, indeed that he was discreetly watching the proceedings.

  ‘Who’s that?’ I said, turning to address the sexton who was standing a short distance behind me. But he had a face like stone, and instead of answering me he shook his head.

  I would have probed further, such was the peculiarity of his reaction, but the rector was commencing drawing the service to a conclusion. I allowed myself a moment to cherish this, the end of the affair. As he recited the prayer, blessed relief washed over me.

  At last it was over and I could begin again. I could live my life free of regret and misery, and guard the secret I had held all these long years. I breathed in deeply, closed my eyes and thanked God.

  The time was approaching seven. The light was fading, the day draining away. Price posed for a photograph – that now famous image of him standing with Reverend Henning, looking solemnly down at the grave. I was about to suggest to him that we have a photograph of us together when I noticed a small crowd of people gathering at the perimeter of the churchyard, some of them children. A sense of unease began to creep over me, for on their faces were expressions of utmost disapproval bordering on disgust. I glanced at Price. He was consumed with the task of capturing himself on film from the best possible angles, but every now and then his eyes flicked furtively in the direction of the crowd, until at last he stopped and suggested we return to Reverend Henning’s residence.