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Borley Rectory

Borley Rectory was a house famous for being described as "the most haunted house in England" by psychic researcher Harry Price.[1] Built in 1862 to house the rector of the parish of Borley and his family, it was badly damaged by fire in 1939 and demolished in 1944.

Borley Rectory
The east face of the rectory in 1892
General information
StatusDemolished
TypeRectory
Architectural styleGothic Revival
AddressBorley, Essex, England
Coordinates52°03′17″N 0°41′39″E / 52.0546°N 0.6942°E / 52.0546; 0.6942Coordinates: 52°03′17″N 0°41′39″E / 52.0546°N 0.6942°E / 52.0546; 0.6942
Completed1862 (1862)
Demolished1944 (1944)
Height35ft (10.6m)
Technical details
Floor count4
Floor areaApprox 7,500 sq ft (696.7 sq m)
Grounds11 acres (4.45 hectares)
Other information
Number of rooms32 (11 bedrooms)

The large Gothic-style rectory in the village of Borley had been alleged to be haunted ever since it was built. These reports multiplied suddenly in 1929, after the Daily Mirror published an account of a visit by paranormal researcher Harry Price, who wrote two books supporting claims of paranormal activity.

Price's reports prompted a formal study by the Society for Psychical Research (SPR), which rejected most of the sightings as either imagined or fabricated and cast doubt on Price's credibility. His claims are now generally discredited by ghost historians. However, neither the SPR's report nor the more recent biography of Price has quelled public interest in these stories, and new books and television documentaries continue to satisfy public fascination with the rectory.

A short programme commissioned by the BBC about the alleged manifestations, scheduled to be broadcast in September 1956, was cancelled owing to concerns about a possible legal action by Marianne Foyster, widow of the last rector to live in the house.[2]

In 1975, the BBC aired a programme entitled The Ghost Hunters that focused on Borley Rectory and conducted interviews with several psychic researchers, including Peter Underwood. It also featured a late-night psychic investigation of nearby Borley Church.[3]

History

Borley Rectory was constructed on Hall Road in Borley village near Borley Church by the Reverend Henry Dawson Ellis Bull in 1862;[4] he moved in a year after being named rector of the parish.[5] The house replaced an earlier rectory on the site that had been destroyed by fire in 1841.[6] It was eventually enlarged by the addition of a wing to house Bull's family of fourteen children.[7]

The nearby church, the nave of which may date from the 12th century,[8] serves a scattered rural community of three hamlets that make up the parish. There are several substantial farmhouses and the fragmentary remains of Borley Hall, once the seat of the Waldegrave family. Ghost hunters quote the legend of a Benedictine monastery supposedly built in this area in about 1362, according to which a monk from the monastery conducted a relationship with a nun from a nearby convent. After their affair was discovered, the monk was executed and the nun reportedly bricked up alive in the convent walls. It was confirmed in 1938 that this legend had no historical basis known and could have been fabricated by the rector's children to romanticise their Gothic-style red-brick rectory. The story of the walling up of the nun may have come from Rider Haggard's novel Montezuma's Daughter (1893) or Walter Scott's epic poem Marmion (1808).[9]

Hauntings

The first paranormal events reportedly occurred in about 1863, since a few locals later remembered having heard unexplained footsteps within the house at about that time. On 28 July 1900, four daughters of the rector, Henry Dawson Ellis Bull, saw what they thought was the ghost of a nun at twilight, about 40 yards (37 m) from the house; they tried to talk to it, but it disappeared as they got closer.[10] The local organist Ernest Ambrose later said that the family at the rectory were "very convinced that they had seen an apparition on several occasions".[11] Various people claimed to have witnessed a variety of puzzling incidents, such as a phantom coach driven by two headless horsemen, during the next four decades. Bull died in 1892 and his son, the Reverend Henry ("Harry") Foyster Bull, took over the living.[12]

On 9 June 1927, Harry Bull died and the rectory again became vacant.[13] In the following year, on the second day of October,[14] the Reverend Guy Eric Smith and his wife moved into the house. Soon after moving in, Smith's wife, while cleaning out a cupboard, came across a brown paper package containing the skull of a young woman.[15] Shortly after, the family reported a variety of incidents including the sounds of servant bells ringing despite their being disconnected, lights appearing in windows and unexplained footsteps. In addition, Smith's wife believed she saw a horse-drawn carriage at night. The Smiths contacted the Daily Mirror asking to be put in touch with the Society for Psychical Research (SPR). On 10 June 1929 the newspaper sent a reporter, who promptly wrote the first in a series of articles detailing the mysteries of Borley. The paper also arranged for Harry Price, a paranormal researcher, to make his first visit to the house. He arrived on 12 June[16] and immediately phenomena of a new kind appeared, such as the throwing of stones, a vase and other objects. "Spirit messages" were tapped out from the frame of a mirror. As soon as Price left, these ceased. Smith's wife later maintained that she suspected Price, an expert conjurer, of falsifying the phenomena.[17]

The Smiths left Borley on 14 July 1929 and the parish had some difficulty in finding a replacement. The Reverend Lionel Algernon Foyster (1878–1945), a first cousin of the Bulls, and his wife Marianne (née Mary Anne Emily Rebecca Shaw) (1899–1992) moved into the rectory[14] with their adopted daughter Adelaide, on 16 October 1930.[18] Lionel Foyster wrote an account of various strange incidents that occurred between the time the Foysters moved in and October 1935, which was sent to Harry Price. These included bell-ringing, windows shattering, throwing of stones and bottles, wall-writing and the locking of their daughter in a room with no key. Marianne Foyster reported to her husband a whole range of poltergeist phenomena that included her being thrown from her bed.[19] On one occasion, Adelaide was attacked by "something horrible".[20] Foyster tried twice to conduct an exorcism, but his efforts were fruitless; in the middle of the first exorcism, he was struck in the shoulder by a fist-size stone. Because of the publicity in the Daily Mirror, these incidents attracted the attention of several psychic researchers, who after investigation were unanimous in suspecting that they were caused, consciously or unconsciously, by Marianne Foyster. She later said that she felt that some of the incidents were caused by her husband in concert with one of the psychic researchers, but other events appeared to her to be genuine paranormal phenomena.

She later admitted that she was having a sexual relationship with a lodger Frank Pearless,[21][a] and that she used paranormal explanations, to cover up her liaisons.[22]

The Foysters left Borley in October 1935 as a result of Lionel Foyster's ill health.[18]

Price investigation

Borley remained vacant for some time after the Foysters' departure. In May 1937, Price took out a year-long rental agreement with Queen Anne's Bounty, the owners of the property.[23][24]

Through an advertisement in The Times on 25 May 1937[25] and subsequent personal interviews, Price recruited a corps of 48 "official observers", mostly students, who spent periods, mainly during weekends, at the rectory with instructions to report any phenomena that occurred. In March 1938 Helen Glanville (the daughter of S. J. Glanville, one of Price's helpers) conducted a planchette séance in Streatham in south London.[26] Price reported that she made contact with two spirits, the first of which was that of a young nun who identified herself as Marie Lairre.[26] According to the planchette story, Marie was a French nun who left her religious order and travelled to England to marry a member of the Waldegrave family, the owners of Borley's 17th-century manor house, Borley Hall. She was said to have been murdered in an older building on the site of the rectory, and her body either buried in the cellar or thrown into a disused well.[27] The wall writings were alleged to be her pleas for help; one read "Marianne, please help me get out".[28]

The second spirit to be contacted identified himself as Sunex Amures,[29] and claimed that he would set fire to the rectory at nine o'clock that night, 27 March 1938.[30] He also said that, at that time, the bones of a murdered person would be revealed.[31]

Fire

 
Rectory after the fire

On 27 February 1939 the new owner of the rectory, Captain W. H. Gregson, was unpacking boxes and accidentally knocked over an oil lamp in the hallway.[32] The house was never connected to a gas or electricity supply, and water was obtained from a well in the courtyard.[7] The fire quickly spread and the house was severely damaged. After investigating the cause of the blaze the insurance company concluded that the fire seemed to have been started deliberately.[33]

A Miss Williams from nearby Borley Lodge said she saw the figure of the ghostly nun in the upstairs window and, according to Harry Price, demanded a fee of one guinea for her story.[34] In August 1943, Price conducted a brief dig in the cellars of the ruined house and discovered two bones thought to be of a young woman.[35]

The bones were given a Christian burial in Liston churchyard, after the parish of Borley refused to allow the ceremony to take place on account of the local opinion that the bones found were those of a pig.[36]

Society for Psychical Research investigation

After Price's death in 1948, Daily Mail reporter Charles Sutton accused him of faking phenomena. Sutton claimed that whilst visiting the rectory with Price in 1929 he was hit on the head by a large pebble. Sutton stated that he seized Price and found his coat pockets filled with different sized stones.[37]

In 1948, Eric Dingwall, K. M. Goldney and Trevor H. Hall, three members of the Society for Psychical Research (SPR), two of whom had been Price's most loyal associates, investigated his claims about Borley. Their findings were published in a 1956 book, The Haunting of Borley Rectory, which concluded that Price had fraudulently produced some of the phenomena.[38]

The "Borley Report", as the SPR study has become known, stated that many of the phenomena were either faked or due to natural causes such as rats and the strange acoustics attributed to the odd shape of the house. In their conclusion, Dingwall, Goldney, and Hall wrote "when analysed, the evidence for haunting and poltergeist activity for each and every period appears to diminish in force and finally to vanish away."[38] Terence Hines wrote that "Mrs. Marianne Foyster, wife of the Rev. Lionel Foyster who lived at the rectory from 1930 to 1935, was actively engaged in fraudulently creating [haunted] phenomena. Price himself 'salted the mine' and faked several phenomena while he was at the rectory."[39]

Marianne Foyster, later in her life, admitted she had seen no apparitions and that the alleged ghostly noises were caused by the wind, friends she invited to the house and in other cases by herself playing practical jokes on her husband.[40] Many of the legends about the rectory had been invented. The children of the Rev. Harry Bull who lived in the house before Lionel Foyster claimed to have seen nothing and were surprised they had been living in what was described as England's most haunted house.[40]

Robert Hastings was one of the few SPR researchers to defend Price.[41] Price's literary executor Paul Tabori and Peter Underwood have also defended Price against accusations of fraud. A similar approach was made by Ivan Banks in 1996.[42][43] Michael Coleman in an SPR report in 1997 wrote that Price's defenders were unable to rebut the criticisms convincingly.[44]

Film

In 2017, the part-animated film Borley Rectory: The Most Haunted House in England was released. It was written and directed by Ashley Thorpe and starred Reece Shearsmith and Jonathan Rigby.[45]

In 2021, the feature film The Ghosts Of Borley Rectory was released. It was written and directed by Steven M. Smith and starred Julian Sands, Toyah Willcox, Colin Baker and Christopher Ellison.[46]

See also

References

Notes

  1. ^ Pearless styled himself François D'Arles, and in his diaries Lionel Foyster refers to him as "Frank Lawless".[21]

Citations

  1. ^ Floyd (2002), p. 36.
  2. ^ "The Haunted Rectory ..." The Bones of Borley. Foxearth and District Local History Society. Retrieved 16 August 2013.
  3. ^ "The Ghost Hunters". IMDB.
  4. ^ Bury and Norwich Post, August 1862
  5. ^ Suffolk Free Press, February 20, 1862
  6. ^ Downes (2012), Background to Borley Rectory.
  7. ^ a b Glanville, Sidney H. (October 1951). "The Strange Happenings at Borley Rectory – Full Account of England's Most Famous Modern Ghost". Fate. 4 (7): 89–107.
  8. ^ Pevsner (1973), p. 95
  9. ^ Clarke, Andrew (2000). "Bull. The Bulls at Borley Rectory". The Bones of Borley. Foxearth and District Local History Society. Retrieved 16 August 2013.
  10. ^ Price (2006), pp. 28–30.
  11. ^ Ambrose, Ernest (1972). "Organs and Organists". Melford Memories.
  12. ^ Price (2006), p. 16.
  13. ^ Price (2006), pp. 16–17.
  14. ^ a b Price (2006), p. 17.
  15. ^ Price (2006), p. 20.
  16. ^ Price (2006), p. 19.
  17. ^ Dingwall, Goldney & Hall (1956), p. 44.
  18. ^ a b Dingwall, Goldney & Hall (1956), p. 75.
  19. ^ Price (2006), p. 36.
  20. ^ O'Neal (1994), p. 80.
  21. ^ a b Clarke, Andrew (2003). "Lawless, the Lodger". The Bones of Borley. Foxearth and District Local History Society. Retrieved 16 August 2013.
  22. ^ Wood (1992).
  23. ^ Price (2006).
  24. ^ Nicholas, Margaret (1986), World's Greatest Psychics & Mystics, Octopus, ISBN 978-0-600-58612-8
  25. ^ Price (2006), p. 38.
  26. ^ a b Price (2006), pp. 276–280.
  27. ^ Fanthorpe & Fanthorpe (1997), p. 52.
  28. ^ Floyd (2002), p. 37.
  29. ^ Price (2006), pp. 279–280.
  30. ^ Karl (2007), p. 33.
  31. ^ Wood (1992), p. 50.
  32. ^ Price (2006), p. 13.
  33. ^ Wood (1992), pp. 3–4.
  34. ^ Dingwall, Goldney & Hall (1956), p. 147.
  35. ^ Dingwall, Goldney & Hall (1956), p. 154.
  36. ^ Fielding & O'Keeffe (2011), chapter 4.
  37. ^ Newman, Paul. (2000). A History of Terror: Fear & Dread Through the Ages. Sutton. p. 192. ISBN 978-0750931861
  38. ^ a b Dingwall, E. J.; Goldney, K. M.; Hall, T. H. (1956). The Haunting of Borley Rectory. Duckworth.
  39. ^ Hines, Terence. (2003). Pseudoscience and the Paranormal. Prometheus Books. pp. 94–95. ISBN 978-1573929790
  40. ^ a b Hoggart, Simon., Hutchinson, Mike. (1995). Bizarre Beliefs. Richard Cohen Books. p. 186. ISBN 978-1573921565
  41. ^ Hastings, Robert. (1969). An Examination of the Borley Report. Journal of the Society for Psychical Research 55: 66–175.
  42. ^ Tabori, Paul., Underwood, Peter. (1973). Ghosts of Borley: Annals of the Haunted Rectory. David & Charles. ISBN 978-0715361184
  43. ^ Banks, Ivan. (1996). The Enigma of Borley Rectory. Foulsham & Co Ltd. ISBN 978-0572021627
  44. ^ Coleman, Michael. (1997). The Flying Bricks of Borley. Journal of the Society for Psychical Research. Volume. 61, No. 847.
  45. ^ "Borley Rectory: The Most Haunted House in England (2017) – EOFFTV – the Encyclopedia of Fantastic Film and Television".
  46. ^ "The Ghosts of Borley Rectory (2021)".

Bibliography

Further reading

  • Bardens, Dennis (1997), Ghosts and Hauntings, Senate Books
  • Bloom, Clive (1993), Bloom, Clive (ed.), "Harry Price and the Haunted Rectory", Creepers: British Horror and Fantasy in the Twentieth Century, pp. 75–85
  • Booth, John (1986), Psychic Paradoxes, Prometheus Books
  • Cohen, Daniel (1991), The Encyclopedia of Ghosts, HarperCollins Publishers
  • Dunning, Brian (5 July 2007). "Skeptoid #53: Borley Rectory: the World's Most Haunted House?". Skeptoid.
  • Hall, Trevor (1965), New Light on Old Ghosts, Duckworth
  • Paul, Philip (1985), Some Unseen Power: Diary of a Ghost-hunter, Robert Hale
  • Turner, James (1950), My Life with Borley Rectory, Bodley Head

External links

  • Harry Price Website – Contains a comprehensive section on Borley Rectory
  • Ghostbuster of Fraud by Simon Edge, reprinted in HarryPrice website
  • Local History site for Borley – Has a comprehensive historical analysis of the Borley Rectory affair
  • Large collection of photographs of Borley Rectory and the various participants of the affair
  • Harry Price papers including archives on Borley Rectory
  • 3D Interactive model built in Google Sketchup from the original Glanville plans

borley, rectory, house, famous, being, described, most, haunted, house, england, psychic, researcher, harry, price, built, 1862, house, rector, parish, borley, family, badly, damaged, fire, 1939, demolished, 1944, east, face, rectory, 1892general, informations. Borley Rectory was a house famous for being described as the most haunted house in England by psychic researcher Harry Price 1 Built in 1862 to house the rector of the parish of Borley and his family it was badly damaged by fire in 1939 and demolished in 1944 Borley RectoryThe east face of the rectory in 1892General informationStatusDemolishedTypeRectoryArchitectural styleGothic RevivalAddressBorley Essex EnglandCoordinates52 03 17 N 0 41 39 E 52 0546 N 0 6942 E 52 0546 0 6942 Coordinates 52 03 17 N 0 41 39 E 52 0546 N 0 6942 E 52 0546 0 6942Completed1862 1862 Demolished1944 1944 Height35ft 10 6m Technical detailsFloor count4Floor areaApprox 7 500 sq ft 696 7 sq m Grounds11 acres 4 45 hectares Other informationNumber of rooms32 11 bedrooms The large Gothic style rectory in the village of Borley had been alleged to be haunted ever since it was built These reports multiplied suddenly in 1929 after the Daily Mirror published an account of a visit by paranormal researcher Harry Price who wrote two books supporting claims of paranormal activity Price s reports prompted a formal study by the Society for Psychical Research SPR which rejected most of the sightings as either imagined or fabricated and cast doubt on Price s credibility His claims are now generally discredited by ghost historians However neither the SPR s report nor the more recent biography of Price has quelled public interest in these stories and new books and television documentaries continue to satisfy public fascination with the rectory A short programme commissioned by the BBC about the alleged manifestations scheduled to be broadcast in September 1956 was cancelled owing to concerns about a possible legal action by Marianne Foyster widow of the last rector to live in the house 2 In 1975 the BBC aired a programme entitled The Ghost Hunters that focused on Borley Rectory and conducted interviews with several psychic researchers including Peter Underwood It also featured a late night psychic investigation of nearby Borley Church 3 Contents 1 History 2 Hauntings 3 Price investigation 3 1 Fire 4 Society for Psychical Research investigation 5 Film 6 See also 7 References 7 1 Notes 7 2 Citations 7 3 Bibliography 8 Further reading 9 External linksHistory EditBorley Rectory was constructed on Hall Road in Borley village near Borley Church by the Reverend Henry Dawson Ellis Bull in 1862 4 he moved in a year after being named rector of the parish 5 The house replaced an earlier rectory on the site that had been destroyed by fire in 1841 6 It was eventually enlarged by the addition of a wing to house Bull s family of fourteen children 7 The nearby church the nave of which may date from the 12th century 8 serves a scattered rural community of three hamlets that make up the parish There are several substantial farmhouses and the fragmentary remains of Borley Hall once the seat of the Waldegrave family Ghost hunters quote the legend of a Benedictine monastery supposedly built in this area in about 1362 according to which a monk from the monastery conducted a relationship with a nun from a nearby convent After their affair was discovered the monk was executed and the nun reportedly bricked up alive in the convent walls It was confirmed in 1938 that this legend had no historical basis known and could have been fabricated by the rector s children to romanticise their Gothic style red brick rectory The story of the walling up of the nun may have come from Rider Haggard s novel Montezuma s Daughter 1893 or Walter Scott s epic poem Marmion 1808 9 Hauntings EditThe first paranormal events reportedly occurred in about 1863 since a few locals later remembered having heard unexplained footsteps within the house at about that time On 28 July 1900 four daughters of the rector Henry Dawson Ellis Bull saw what they thought was the ghost of a nun at twilight about 40 yards 37 m from the house they tried to talk to it but it disappeared as they got closer 10 The local organist Ernest Ambrose later said that the family at the rectory were very convinced that they had seen an apparition on several occasions 11 Various people claimed to have witnessed a variety of puzzling incidents such as a phantom coach driven by two headless horsemen during the next four decades Bull died in 1892 and his son the Reverend Henry Harry Foyster Bull took over the living 12 On 9 June 1927 Harry Bull died and the rectory again became vacant 13 In the following year on the second day of October 14 the Reverend Guy Eric Smith and his wife moved into the house Soon after moving in Smith s wife while cleaning out a cupboard came across a brown paper package containing the skull of a young woman 15 Shortly after the family reported a variety of incidents including the sounds of servant bells ringing despite their being disconnected lights appearing in windows and unexplained footsteps In addition Smith s wife believed she saw a horse drawn carriage at night The Smiths contacted the Daily Mirror asking to be put in touch with the Society for Psychical Research SPR On 10 June 1929 the newspaper sent a reporter who promptly wrote the first in a series of articles detailing the mysteries of Borley The paper also arranged for Harry Price a paranormal researcher to make his first visit to the house He arrived on 12 June 16 and immediately phenomena of a new kind appeared such as the throwing of stones a vase and other objects Spirit messages were tapped out from the frame of a mirror As soon as Price left these ceased Smith s wife later maintained that she suspected Price an expert conjurer of falsifying the phenomena 17 The Smiths left Borley on 14 July 1929 and the parish had some difficulty in finding a replacement The Reverend Lionel Algernon Foyster 1878 1945 a first cousin of the Bulls and his wife Marianne nee Mary Anne Emily Rebecca Shaw 1899 1992 moved into the rectory 14 with their adopted daughter Adelaide on 16 October 1930 18 Lionel Foyster wrote an account of various strange incidents that occurred between the time the Foysters moved in and October 1935 which was sent to Harry Price These included bell ringing windows shattering throwing of stones and bottles wall writing and the locking of their daughter in a room with no key Marianne Foyster reported to her husband a whole range of poltergeist phenomena that included her being thrown from her bed 19 On one occasion Adelaide was attacked by something horrible 20 Foyster tried twice to conduct an exorcism but his efforts were fruitless in the middle of the first exorcism he was struck in the shoulder by a fist size stone Because of the publicity in the Daily Mirror these incidents attracted the attention of several psychic researchers who after investigation were unanimous in suspecting that they were caused consciously or unconsciously by Marianne Foyster She later said that she felt that some of the incidents were caused by her husband in concert with one of the psychic researchers but other events appeared to her to be genuine paranormal phenomena She later admitted that she was having a sexual relationship with a lodger Frank Pearless 21 a and that she used paranormal explanations to cover up her liaisons 22 The Foysters left Borley in October 1935 as a result of Lionel Foyster s ill health 18 Price investigation EditBorley remained vacant for some time after the Foysters departure In May 1937 Price took out a year long rental agreement with Queen Anne s Bounty the owners of the property 23 24 Through an advertisement in The Times on 25 May 1937 25 and subsequent personal interviews Price recruited a corps of 48 official observers mostly students who spent periods mainly during weekends at the rectory with instructions to report any phenomena that occurred In March 1938 Helen Glanville the daughter of S J Glanville one of Price s helpers conducted a planchette seance in Streatham in south London 26 Price reported that she made contact with two spirits the first of which was that of a young nun who identified herself as Marie Lairre 26 According to the planchette story Marie was a French nun who left her religious order and travelled to England to marry a member of the Waldegrave family the owners of Borley s 17th century manor house Borley Hall She was said to have been murdered in an older building on the site of the rectory and her body either buried in the cellar or thrown into a disused well 27 The wall writings were alleged to be her pleas for help one read Marianne please help me get out 28 The second spirit to be contacted identified himself as Sunex Amures 29 and claimed that he would set fire to the rectory at nine o clock that night 27 March 1938 30 He also said that at that time the bones of a murdered person would be revealed 31 Fire Edit Rectory after the fire On 27 February 1939 the new owner of the rectory Captain W H Gregson was unpacking boxes and accidentally knocked over an oil lamp in the hallway 32 The house was never connected to a gas or electricity supply and water was obtained from a well in the courtyard 7 The fire quickly spread and the house was severely damaged After investigating the cause of the blaze the insurance company concluded that the fire seemed to have been started deliberately 33 A Miss Williams from nearby Borley Lodge said she saw the figure of the ghostly nun in the upstairs window and according to Harry Price demanded a fee of one guinea for her story 34 In August 1943 Price conducted a brief dig in the cellars of the ruined house and discovered two bones thought to be of a young woman 35 The bones were given a Christian burial in Liston churchyard after the parish of Borley refused to allow the ceremony to take place on account of the local opinion that the bones found were those of a pig 36 Society for Psychical Research investigation EditAfter Price s death in 1948 Daily Mail reporter Charles Sutton accused him of faking phenomena Sutton claimed that whilst visiting the rectory with Price in 1929 he was hit on the head by a large pebble Sutton stated that he seized Price and found his coat pockets filled with different sized stones 37 In 1948 Eric Dingwall K M Goldney and Trevor H Hall three members of the Society for Psychical Research SPR two of whom had been Price s most loyal associates investigated his claims about Borley Their findings were published in a 1956 book The Haunting of Borley Rectory which concluded that Price had fraudulently produced some of the phenomena 38 The Borley Report as the SPR study has become known stated that many of the phenomena were either faked or due to natural causes such as rats and the strange acoustics attributed to the odd shape of the house In their conclusion Dingwall Goldney and Hall wrote when analysed the evidence for haunting and poltergeist activity for each and every period appears to diminish in force and finally to vanish away 38 Terence Hines wrote that Mrs Marianne Foyster wife of the Rev Lionel Foyster who lived at the rectory from 1930 to 1935 was actively engaged in fraudulently creating haunted phenomena Price himself salted the mine and faked several phenomena while he was at the rectory 39 Marianne Foyster later in her life admitted she had seen no apparitions and that the alleged ghostly noises were caused by the wind friends she invited to the house and in other cases by herself playing practical jokes on her husband 40 Many of the legends about the rectory had been invented The children of the Rev Harry Bull who lived in the house before Lionel Foyster claimed to have seen nothing and were surprised they had been living in what was described as England s most haunted house 40 Robert Hastings was one of the few SPR researchers to defend Price 41 Price s literary executor Paul Tabori and Peter Underwood have also defended Price against accusations of fraud A similar approach was made by Ivan Banks in 1996 42 43 Michael Coleman in an SPR report in 1997 wrote that Price s defenders were unable to rebut the criticisms convincingly 44 Film EditIn 2017 the part animated film Borley Rectory The Most Haunted House in England was released It was written and directed by Ashley Thorpe and starred Reece Shearsmith and Jonathan Rigby 45 In 2021 the feature film The Ghosts Of Borley Rectory was released It was written and directed by Steven M Smith and starred Julian Sands Toyah Willcox Colin Baker and Christopher Ellison 46 See also EditList of ghostsReferences EditNotes Edit Pearless styled himself Francois D Arles and in his diaries Lionel Foyster refers to him as Frank Lawless 21 Citations Edit Floyd 2002 p 36 The Haunted Rectory The Bones of Borley Foxearth and District Local History Society Retrieved 16 August 2013 The Ghost Hunters IMDB Bury and Norwich Post August 1862 Suffolk Free Press February 20 1862 Downes 2012 Background to Borley Rectory a b Glanville Sidney H October 1951 The Strange Happenings at Borley Rectory Full Account of England s Most Famous Modern Ghost Fate 4 7 89 107 Pevsner 1973 p 95 Clarke Andrew 2000 Bull The Bulls at Borley Rectory The Bones of Borley Foxearth and District Local History Society Retrieved 16 August 2013 Price 2006 pp 28 30 Ambrose Ernest 1972 Organs and Organists Melford Memories Price 2006 p 16 Price 2006 pp 16 17 a b Price 2006 p 17 Price 2006 p 20 Price 2006 p 19 Dingwall Goldney amp Hall 1956 p 44 a b Dingwall Goldney amp Hall 1956 p 75 Price 2006 p 36 O Neal 1994 p 80 a b Clarke Andrew 2003 Lawless the Lodger The Bones of Borley Foxearth and District Local History Society Retrieved 16 August 2013 Wood 1992 Price 2006 Nicholas Margaret 1986 World s Greatest Psychics amp Mystics Octopus ISBN 978 0 600 58612 8 Price 2006 p 38 a b Price 2006 pp 276 280 Fanthorpe amp Fanthorpe 1997 p 52 Floyd 2002 p 37 Price 2006 pp 279 280 Karl 2007 p 33 Wood 1992 p 50 Price 2006 p 13 Wood 1992 pp 3 4 Dingwall Goldney amp Hall 1956 p 147 Dingwall Goldney amp Hall 1956 p 154 Fielding amp O Keeffe 2011 chapter 4 Newman Paul 2000 A History of Terror Fear amp Dread Through the Ages Sutton p 192 ISBN 978 0750931861 a b Dingwall E J Goldney K M Hall T H 1956 The Haunting of Borley Rectory Duckworth Hines Terence 2003 Pseudoscience and the Paranormal Prometheus Books pp 94 95 ISBN 978 1573929790 a b Hoggart Simon Hutchinson Mike 1995 Bizarre Beliefs Richard Cohen Books p 186 ISBN 978 1573921565 Hastings Robert 1969 An Examination of the Borley Report Journal of the Society for Psychical Research 55 66 175 Tabori Paul Underwood Peter 1973 Ghosts of Borley Annals of the Haunted Rectory David amp Charles ISBN 978 0715361184 Banks Ivan 1996 The Enigma of Borley Rectory Foulsham amp Co Ltd ISBN 978 0572021627 Coleman Michael 1997 The Flying Bricks of Borley Journal of the Society for Psychical Research Volume 61 No 847 Borley Rectory The Most Haunted House in England 2017 EOFFTV the Encyclopedia of Fantastic Film and Television The Ghosts of Borley Rectory 2021 Bibliography Edit Dingwall E J Goldney K M Hall T H 1956 The Haunting of Borley Rectory Duckworth Downes Wesley 2012 Background to Borley Rectory The Ghosts of Borley David amp Charles ISBN 978 1 4463 5788 0 Fanthorpe Lionel Fanthorpe Patricia 1997 World s Greatest Unsolved Mysteries Dundum ISBN 978 0 88882 194 2 Fielding Yvette O Keeffe Ciaran 2011 Ghost Hunters A Guide to Investigating the Paranormal Hachette UK ISBN 978 1 4447 4029 5 Floyd E Randall 2002 In the Realm of Ghosts and Hauntings Harbor House ISBN 978 1 891799 06 8 Karl Jason 2007 Illustrated History of the Haunted World New Holland Publishers ISBN 978 1 845376 87 1 O Neal Michael 1994 Haunted Houses Opposing Viewpoints Greenhaven Press ISBN 978 1 565100 95 4 Pevsner Nikolaus 1973 London Penguin ISBN 978 0 1407 1011 3 Price Harry 2006 1946 The End of Borley Rectory Hesperides Press orig G G Harrap amp Co ISBN 978 1 4067 2212 3 Wood Robert 1992 The Widow of Borley Duckworth ISBN 978 0 7156 2419 7Further reading EditBardens Dennis 1997 Ghosts and Hauntings Senate Books Bloom Clive 1993 Bloom Clive ed Harry Price and the Haunted Rectory Creepers British Horror and Fantasy in the Twentieth Century pp 75 85 Booth John 1986 Psychic Paradoxes Prometheus Books Cohen Daniel 1991 The Encyclopedia of Ghosts HarperCollins Publishers Dunning Brian 5 July 2007 Skeptoid 53 Borley Rectory the World s Most Haunted House Skeptoid Hall Trevor 1965 New Light on Old Ghosts Duckworth Paul Philip 1985 Some Unseen Power Diary of a Ghost hunter Robert Hale Turner James 1950 My Life with Borley Rectory Bodley HeadExternal links Edit Wikimedia Commons has media related to Borley Rectory Harry Price Website Contains a comprehensive section on Borley Rectory Ghostbuster of Fraud by Simon Edge reprinted in HarryPrice website Local History site for Borley Has a comprehensive historical analysis of the Borley Rectory affair Large collection of photographs of Borley Rectory and the various participants of the affair Harry Price papers including archives on Borley Rectory 3D Interactive model built in Google Sketchup from the original Glanville plans Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Borley Rectory amp oldid 1150597835, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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