{
  "title": "BORLEY RECTORY PROGRAMMES",
  "category": "[SPECIAL-PROGRAMMES]",
  "article": "[Harry Price, Most Haunted House…] “Mr. [S. J.] de Lotbiniere was also\ninterested in Borley Rectory and wished to visit the place. Of course I agreed…\nWe arrived at Borley on the afternoon of July 21, 1937, at 4 o’clock... I think it was\nMr. de Lotbiniere who said ‘If they want to impress us, let them do something\nnow.’ Before he had finished speaking, the ‘crack’ was heard. Mr. de Lotbiniere,\nin his report, suggests ‘contraction,’ but that was impossible. It was a sharp, hard\nknock—twice…. On December 14, 1937, Mr. de Lotbiniere, Mr. John Snagge and\nMr. Home again visited the Rectory, but ‘things seemed so quiet and uneventful\nthat we decided to return to London.’ On January 8, 1938, Mr. W. S. Hammond,\na member of the staff of the B.B.C., visited the Rectory… ‘Another unproductive\ntour of the house…we heard a door being closed…the sound of a door being gently\nclosed…A rather unpleasant odour was noticed in Room 5… The same kind of\nsmell was afterwards noticed in the Blue Room…the sound of a door closing\nagain…’ Another party from the B.B.C. visited Borley Rectory on Friday, February\n18, 1938…C. Gordon Glover… ‘Mrs. Lloyd Williams suddenly tensed…she\ndeclared that she had distinctly seen ‘a round, dark object.’ This might, she said,\nhave been a short, stooping figure. It appeared to move from the tree closest to\nthe Rectory to the central fir-tree at which spot it vanished…We have since, as\nyou know, ascertained that this ‘Nun,’ when seen, has always been observed at\nthis particular spot… While standing outside the Chapel, my wife declares that\nshe heard a door downstairs quietly close. It was a dead still afternoon, and all\ndoors and windows were shut… While in the scullery Mrs. Lloyd Williams said\nshe heard in the passage outside ‘six quick, young footsteps.’ My wife and I were\nstanding in the doorway of the Chapel, when both of us heard coming from\ndownstairs a dull, heavy thud followed by a short shuffle… The next B.B.C.\nobserver to visit the Rectory was Mr. M. Savage, an electrical engineer, of the\nTelevision Service, Alexandra Palace. The date was Saturday, March 12, 1938…\nMr. Savage again visited Borley Rectory on May 7, 1938, just before my tenancy\nexpired… And so end the investigations by the various members of the British\nBroadcasting Corporation.”\n[Price] “November 1, 1938. Price broadcast story of Borley Rectory and, through\nit, became acquainted with its new owner, Captain Gregson.\n[Price] “April 15, 1939. Captain Gregson broadcast in ‘In Town To-night,’ and\nrelated his strange experiences.”\n[BBC Title Cards] More Things in Heaven and Earth. “The Borley Rectory\nMystery.” (Radio 4, October 11, 1973). “…in his monstrous best-seller, ‘The Most\nHaunted House in England,’ he concocted such a grandiose imbroglio of\nhaunting that its very size cried out for demolition. After Harry Price’s death in\n1951 his fraudulent (though possibly self-fradulent) researches were exposed as\nsuch.”\n[“England’s Most Haunted House Commits Suicide,” San Antonio Light, April 4,\n1939] “The Borley Rectory, of Suffolk, known as the most haunted house in\nEngland, has just been destroyed by a fire which some think quite as mysterious\nas the ghostly visitations which have driven out all tenants, even clergymen, and\nbaffled the most careful scientific investigations during the last ten years.\n“Only last December The American Weekly published a double-page report by\nDr. Harry Price…on this haunted rectory.\n“Not only had he and othered trained men applied every available scientific test\nfrom time to time over a decade, but Dr. Price actually rented the place for 12\nmonths in order to disprove or dispossess the spooks, and the spooks finally won.\n“‘I have investigated alleged haunted houses in many parts of the world and\nhave had some thrilling adventures,’ he said, ‘but the affair of the Suffolk rectory\nis the best-authenticated and documented record in any case book.’\n[DESCRIPTIONS OF MANIFESTATIONS]: “The Smiths’ first shock was to find\nin a closet a skull, supposed to have belonged to a young woman. The rector\nburied it in the churchyard with proper ceremony, but next night it was back\nagain… The nun ghost kept peering in through a window until Mrs. Smith finally\nhad it bricked up. At night there were ghostly footsteps, whispers and cries\nthroughout the house. Books and other objects were thrown at them, keys\njumped out of locks, lamps and candles were extinguished by unseen hands, and\nbells, attached to wires in the old-fashioned system, rang at all hours. The wires\nwere disconnected but still they rang, sometimes when the terrified Smiths were\nlooking right at them. They appealed to Dr. Price for help… In the Blue Room, a\nlarge bedroom, the Professor begged the disembodied entities, if any were there,\nto cease their manifestations… The Professor then asked if Lionel Martin, son of\nthe first occupant of the rectory, was present. A decided rap on the back of a large\nmirror signified ‘Yes.’\n“‘For three hours,’ wrote Professor Price, ‘we questioned whatever it was that\nwas rapping out answers…\n“To keep from going mad, Mr. and Mrs. Smith left and were followed by the\nRev. Mr. B. Morrison, with his wife Marianne and a daughter of 12. The same sort\nof things happened to the new occupants, with a few novelties such as the ‘cold\nspot’ in one of the halls where they got a sudden chill in passing… Mrs.\nMorrison…found strange incoherent messages asking for help, some addressed to\nher and written with a pencil on the walls of empty locked rooms. As his\npredecessor had done Mr. Morrison appealed to Professor Price who then paid\nhis second visit to the rectory. The first night one of the entities received him by\nhurling a quart wine bottle at him, missing him by a few inches. His chauffeur\nsaw a black hand creep over the door of the kitchen, where he was smoking a\npipe, but it was not there when he tried to seize it. Again Dr. Price was completely\nbaffled.\n“A ‘monster, neither human nor animal,’ was seen by Mrs. Morrison and\ntouched her shoulder with an ‘iron-like touch.’ She also saw an apparition she\nbelieved was Lionel Martin. The bishop thought so too and declared the house\nunfit for use as a rectory.\n“It was a hollow victory for the ghosts because it gave Dr. Price the chance to\nrent it. For a year he kept a committee, including 40 doctors, army officers and\nuniversity men constantly working with him to solve the mystery…\n“The ‘spectre’ continued to walk. She was seen three times one evening by an\nofficial of the British Broadcasting Company, moving along the walk at dusk. The\nProfessor, however, did not catch sight of her.\n“When Professor Price concluded his tenancy he sealed up the rectory…\n“ ‘Most ghost stories stand or fall on the evidence of very few people,’ wrote Dr.\nPrice at the end of his report. ‘But I could produce fifty reliable persons who\ncould swear to having seen or heard, at the rectory, things which in our ignorance\nwe are pleased to call ‘supernatural’.’”",
  "origination": "",
  "duration": "",
  "personnel": "",
  "extant_recordings": "",
  "chronology": "",
  "sources": "",
  "gallery": "",
  "images": []
}