BORLEY RECTORY PROGRAMMES
[SPECIAL-PROGRAMMES]
[Harry Price, Most Haunted House…] “Mr. [S. J.] de Lotbiniere was also
interested in Borley Rectory and wished to visit the place. Of course I agreed…
We arrived at Borley on the afternoon of July 21, 1937, at 4 o’clock... I think it was
Mr. de Lotbiniere who said ‘If they want to impress us, let them do something
now.’ Before he had finished speaking, the ‘crack’ was heard. Mr. de Lotbiniere,
in his report, suggests ‘contraction,’ but that was impossible. It was a sharp, hard
knock—twice…. On December 14, 1937, Mr. de Lotbiniere, Mr. John Snagge and
Mr. Home again visited the Rectory, but ‘things seemed so quiet and uneventful
that we decided to return to London.’ On January 8, 1938, Mr. W. S. Hammond,
a member of the staff of the B.B.C., visited the Rectory… ‘Another unproductive
tour of the house…we heard a door being closed…the sound of a door being gently
closed…A rather unpleasant odour was noticed in Room 5… The same kind of
smell was afterwards noticed in the Blue Room…the sound of a door closing
again…’ Another party from the B.B.C. visited Borley Rectory on Friday, February
18, 1938…C. Gordon Glover… ‘Mrs. Lloyd Williams suddenly tensed…she
declared that she had distinctly seen ‘a round, dark object.’ This might, she said,
have been a short, stooping figure. It appeared to move from the tree closest to
the Rectory to the central fir-tree at which spot it vanished…We have since, as
you know, ascertained that this ‘Nun,’ when seen, has always been observed at
this particular spot… While standing outside the Chapel, my wife declares that
she heard a door downstairs quietly close. It was a dead still afternoon, and all
doors and windows were shut… While in the scullery Mrs. Lloyd Williams said
she heard in the passage outside ‘six quick, young footsteps.’ My wife and I were
standing in the doorway of the Chapel, when both of us heard coming from
downstairs a dull, heavy thud followed by a short shuffle… The next B.B.C.
observer to visit the Rectory was Mr. M. Savage, an electrical engineer, of the
Television Service, Alexandra Palace. The date was Saturday, March 12, 1938…
Mr. Savage again visited Borley Rectory on May 7, 1938, just before my tenancy
expired… And so end the investigations by the various members of the British
Broadcasting Corporation.”
[Price] “November 1, 1938. Price broadcast story of Borley Rectory and, through
it, became acquainted with its new owner, Captain Gregson.
[Price] “April 15, 1939. Captain Gregson broadcast in ‘In Town To-night,’ and
related his strange experiences.”
[BBC Title Cards] More Things in Heaven and Earth. “The Borley Rectory
Mystery.” (Radio 4, October 11, 1973). “…in his monstrous best-seller, ‘The Most
Haunted House in England,’ he concocted such a grandiose imbroglio of
haunting that its very size cried out for demolition. After Harry Price’s death in
1951 his fraudulent (though possibly self-fradulent) researches were exposed as
such.”
[“England’s Most Haunted House Commits Suicide,” San Antonio Light, April 4,
1939] “The Borley Rectory, of Suffolk, known as the most haunted house in
England, has just been destroyed by a fire which some think quite as mysterious
as the ghostly visitations which have driven out all tenants, even clergymen, and
baffled the most careful scientific investigations during the last ten years.
“Only last December The American Weekly published a double-page report by
Dr. Harry Price…on this haunted rectory.
“Not only had he and othered trained men applied every available scientific test
from time to time over a decade, but Dr. Price actually rented the place for 12
months in order to disprove or dispossess the spooks, and the spooks finally won.
“‘I have investigated alleged haunted houses in many parts of the world and
have had some thrilling adventures,’ he said, ‘but the affair of the Suffolk rectory
is the best-authenticated and documented record in any case book.’
[DESCRIPTIONS OF MANIFESTATIONS]: “The Smiths’ first shock was to find
in a closet a skull, supposed to have belonged to a young woman. The rector
buried it in the churchyard with proper ceremony, but next night it was back
again… The nun ghost kept peering in through a window until Mrs. Smith finally
had it bricked up. At night there were ghostly footsteps, whispers and cries
throughout the house. Books and other objects were thrown at them, keys
jumped out of locks, lamps and candles were extinguished by unseen hands, and
bells, attached to wires in the old-fashioned system, rang at all hours. The wires
were disconnected but still they rang, sometimes when the terrified Smiths were
looking right at them. They appealed to Dr. Price for help… In the Blue Room, a
large bedroom, the Professor begged the disembodied entities, if any were there,
to cease their manifestations… The Professor then asked if Lionel Martin, son of
the first occupant of the rectory, was present. A decided rap on the back of a large
mirror signified ‘Yes.’
“‘For three hours,’ wrote Professor Price, ‘we questioned whatever it was that
was rapping out answers…
“To keep from going mad, Mr. and Mrs. Smith left and were followed by the
Rev. Mr. B. Morrison, with his wife Marianne and a daughter of 12. The same sort
of things happened to the new occupants, with a few novelties such as the ‘cold
spot’ in one of the halls where they got a sudden chill in passing… Mrs.
Morrison…found strange incoherent messages asking for help, some addressed to
her and written with a pencil on the walls of empty locked rooms. As his
predecessor had done Mr. Morrison appealed to Professor Price who then paid
his second visit to the rectory. The first night one of the entities received him by
hurling a quart wine bottle at him, missing him by a few inches. His chauffeur
saw a black hand creep over the door of the kitchen, where he was smoking a
pipe, but it was not there when he tried to seize it. Again Dr. Price was completely
baffled.
“A ‘monster, neither human nor animal,’ was seen by Mrs. Morrison and
touched her shoulder with an ‘iron-like touch.’ She also saw an apparition she
believed was Lionel Martin. The bishop thought so too and declared the house
unfit for use as a rectory.
“It was a hollow victory for the ghosts because it gave Dr. Price the chance to
rent it. For a year he kept a committee, including 40 doctors, army officers and
university men constantly working with him to solve the mystery…
“The ‘spectre’ continued to walk. She was seen three times one evening by an
official of the British Broadcasting Company, moving along the walk at dusk. The
Professor, however, did not catch sight of her.
“When Professor Price concluded his tenancy he sealed up the rectory…
“ ‘Most ghost stories stand or fall on the evidence of very few people,’ wrote Dr.
Price at the end of his report. ‘But I could produce fifty reliable persons who
could swear to having seen or heard, at the rectory, things which in our ignorance
we are pleased to call ‘supernatural’.’”