Page 50 - Encyclopedia of the Unusual and Unexplained Vol. 3

30 Ghosts and Phantoms

from their doors. The Smiths found themselves tant had just shared a lunch with Mr. and Mrs.
living in what Dr. Harry Price would soon come Smith when a glass candlestick struck an iron
to call “the most haunted house in England.” stove near the investigator’s head and splashed
him with splinters. A mothball came tumbling
In the summer of 1929, Price answered the
down the stairwell, followed by a number of
plea of the haunted rector and his wife. Leav-
pebbles.
ing London, Price and an assistant drove to the
small village of Borley, reviewing what they Price busied himself for the next several
already knew about the eerie rectory. The days with interviewing the surviving daughters
building, though constructed in modern times, of Henry Bull, the builder of the rectory, and as
stood on the site of a medieval monastery many former servants as had remained in the
whose gloomy old vaults still lay beneath it. village. The eldest of the three surviving
Close at hand had been a nunnery, whose ruins daughters told of seeing the nun appear at a
were much in evidence. About a quarter of a lawn party on a sunny July afternoon. She had
mile away stood a castle where many tragic approached the phantom and tried to engage it
events had occurred, ending with a siege by in conversation, but it had disappeared as she
Oliver Cromwell. There was a persistent leg- had drawn near to it. The sisters swore that the
end about a nun who had been walled up alive entire family had often seen the nun and that
in the nunnery for eloping with a lay brother their brother had said that, when dead, he
who had been employed at the monastery. The would attempt to manifest himself in the same
lay brother, who received the punishment way. It was their father, Henry Bull, who had
meted out for such sins, was hanged. Inhabi- bricked up the dining room window so that the
tants of the rectory, and several villagers, had family might eat in peace and not be disturbed
reported seeing the veiled nun walking by the spectral nun peeping in at them.
through the grounds. A headless nobleman A man who had served as gardener for the
and a black coach pursued by armed men had Bull family told Price that every night for
also been listed as a frequent phenomenon. eight months he and his wife heard footsteps
in their rooms over the stables. Several former
maids or grooms testified that they had
remained in the employ of the Bulls for only
BORLEY Rectory presents a combination one or two days before they were driven away

of a “haunting” and the phenomenon of by the strange occurrences which manifested
themselves on the premises.
poltergeistic activity
Mrs. Smith was not at all reluctant to admit
that she, too, had seen the shadowy figure of a
nun walking about the grounds of the rectory.
The rectory had been built in 1863 by the On several occasions, she had hurried to con-
Reverend Henry Bull (sometimes called Mar- front the phantom, but it had always disap-
tin in the literature of psychical research). He peared at the sound of her approach. The
had fathered 14 children and had wanted a Smiths left the rectory shortly after Price’s visit.
large rectory. He died in the Blue Room in They had both begun to suffer the ill effects of
1892 and was succeeded in occupancy by his the lack of sleep and the enormous mental
son, Harry, who died at the rectory in 1927. strain that had been placed on each of them.
The building was vacant for a few months—
while a dozen clergymen refused to take up Borley Rectory presents an interesting
residence there because of the eerie tales they combination of a “haunting” and the phe-
had heard—until Reverend G. E. Smith and nomenon of poltergeistic activity. Harry Price
his family accepted the call in 1928. maintained that approximately one-half of all
hauntings include some type of poltergeistic
Price, the well-known psychical researcher, disturbance. Henry Bull had 14 children who
did not have to wait long for the phenomena lived in the rectory. Phenomena began to
to put on a show for him. Price and his assis- become active about 10 years after he had

The Gale Enc y clopedia of the Unusu al and Unexplained