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If there was a single person to
come out of the "golden age" of Spiritualism,
and the investigations that surrounded the
movement, with the most influence on the field
of paranormal investigation as we know it today,
that person was Harry Price.
Although
disliked and distrusted by many, there is no
denying that he was one of the most influential
figures in the formative years of ghost
research. He was a highly charismatic
personality whose energy and enthusiasm for the
paranormal made him the first “celebrity ghost
hunter”. Price was instrumental in bringing
ghost research to the general public, realizing
that only by making the research entertaining
could he attract the attention of the masses.
Because of this, after his death in 1948,
jealous “colleagues” would attack not only
Price’s research, but also the man himself,
staining his reputation for years to come. |
Harry Price - The
"Original" Ghost Hunter |
Price
was regarded as an embarrassment during his time and
lingering effects from this still linger today. Despite more
recent work supporting his claims and methods, many British
researchers still regard Price as something of an enigma.
Because of his flamboyant manner and continuous
self-promotion, Price made a number of enemies within the
psychical research field. Much of the resentment revolved
around that fact that Price had no real scientific training
but was still so skillful at what he did. Price was a deft
magician and an expert at detecting fraud, so he was not
taken in by many of the fraudulent mediums that plagued
paranormal research of the time. His success was a slap in
the face to what many considered the “established” psychical
researchers.
Regardless, his work is considered groundbreaking for many
today and his investigations at the house known as Borley
Rectory became some of the first documented attempts to
track down the ghosts of a single haunted location. I have
never made it a secret that I have a great admiration for
Harry Price and his work and continue to defy those who
disregard him to show another investigator who has so shaped
the methods that we continue to use today. If you are not
familiar with his work, you should be and this section will
reveal just how influential he remains.
It was during the golden age of Spiritualism
that Price first emerged as an investigator of psychical
activity. During this era, researchers were working in a
volatile climate that was charged with accusations of fraud
against many of the mediums -- as well as some of the
investigators. Price began
to make a name for himself in the waning days of the
Spiritualist movement ---- and began to make many enemies as
well.
THE BEGINNINGS OF A GHOST HUNTER
Harry
Price was born in London in 1881, the son of a grocer and
traveling salesman. His interest in the paranormal began in
1889 when he saw his first performance by a stage magician.
From that point on, he became an amateur conjurer and began
collecting what would become an immense library of books on
magic.
His
first psychical investigation took place when he was only 15
and still in school. He and a young friend obtained
permission to spend the night in an old manor house that was
rumored to be haunted. They experienced disembodied
footsteps in the house and attempted to photograph the
ghost, which failed when Price loaded far too much flash
powder into his camera. The incident made for an amusing
anecdote that Price often re-told later in life. However, it
did guarantee his future interest in ghosts and strange
phenomenon.
After
graduating from school, Price worked at a number of jobs,
including as a journalist. Then, in 1908, he met and married
a wealthy heiress named Constance Mary Knight. He then
settled down to become what all of us wishes we could be, an
independently wealthy ghost hunter.
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Price began his
psychical career debunking fraudulent mediums.
In this photo, he demonstrates how trick slates
were used by such mediums to fool their sitters.
He would continue to use a great deal of his
time and money on the testing and exposure of
fraud. |
By the time that Price joined the Society for
Psychical Research in 1920, he had already begun
his career as Britain’s most famous ghost
investigator. He had spent many hours at alleged
haunted houses and in the investigation of
Spiritualist mediums. He was also an expert
magician and soon made a name for himself within
the SPR for using his magic skills to debunk
fraudulent psychics, then in keeping with what
was the main thrust of the current SPR
investigations.
One of Price’s first efforts exposed the work of
spirit photographer William Hope (described in
detail earlier in the book), who was making a
fortune taking portraits of people that always
seemed to include the sitter’s dead relatives.
Price was sent to investigate and soon published
his findings. He claimed that Hope used
pre-exposed plates in his camera, which he
learned by secretly switching the plates the
photographer was using with plates of his own.
It was only chance that led Price into another
aspect of his career. One afternoon, while
taking the train from London to his country home
near Pulborough, Price met a young woman named
Stella Cranshaw. The two happened to strike up a
conversation about psychic anomalies, during
which Stella, who was a hospital nurse, told the
investigator that she had been experiencing
strange phenomena for years. She said that
rapping noises, cold chills and household
objects inexplicably taking flight had been
bothering her for some time. Price, excited at
the prospect of a new test subject, told her
that he was a psychic investigator and asked if
she would submit to being tested as a medium.
Stella agreed and a series of séances were
scheduled at the London Spiritualist Alliance.
Stella was given a modest payment for her time
since she was required to take off work in the
afternoons to come to the sittings. |
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The first séance brought some surprises, namely
that Stella, who had never considered herself a
medium, had a spirit control who came through to
the sitters. The spirit guide, “Palma”,
communicated by rapping and would follow
requests made to it, like moving a heavy oak
table in various directions around the room. At
the same séance, thermometers recorded rapid
temperature drops. These swift changes would
become a staple of Stella’s séances.
Price brought a number of devices into the
séance room in an effort to study the phenomena
scientifically. One of the regular sitters built
a special double table with the inner portion of
it being a wire cage where items that were to be
manipulated could be placed. The first time that
it was used, several musical instruments were
placed inside and a rattle was somehow thrown
out of the closed cage.
Price, being an amateur inventor, designed new
equipment of his own to test the young woman’s
abilities. One of them was the “telekinetoscope”,
a clever device that used a telegraph key that
when depressed would cause a red light to turn
on. A glass dome then covered the key so that
only psychic powers could operate it. During the
séances, the red light occasionally turned on.
During the sittings, always conducted in front
of witnesses, Stella managed to produce all
sorts of strange, physical phenomena. During one
séance, for example, she managed to levitate a
table so high that the sitters had to rise out
of their chairs to keep their hands upon it.
Suddenly, three of the table legs broke away and
the table itself folded and collapsed. Needless
to say, this ended the sitting. |
Stella Cranshaw,
who Price referred to as Stella C., was a
hospital nurse who turned out to be superb
medium. She began her experiments with Price
when she was just 21. |
|
(Above) Musical
instruments that Price used during experiments
with Stella Cranshaw.
(Center) The
table constructed by H.W. Pugh. The center
section could only be opened from underneath. |
 |
 |
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(Far Right)
The solid wooden table that Stella's psychic
force somehow smashed into pieces, breaking
the legs and folding the table top onto
itself. |
The
first series of séances ran for 11 sittings and was finally
stopped by Stella, who was exhausted by the weekly trials.
She often grew very tired during the séances, her pulse
would race and the sudden drops in temperature caused her to
shake uncontrollably. She saw a doctor about her exhaustion
and he recommended that she rest. Her exhaustion and her
frequent absences from work caused her to lose her job at
the hospital where she was employed.
Price
also suffered because of the séances with Stella. He had a
background in conjuring and had only recently entered into
psychical research. His fellow magicians criticized him for
taking Stella’s phenomena seriously. In addition, he was
criticized from the other side of his research as well. The
SPR was uncomfortable with Price’s affiliation with the
London Spiritualist Alliance, feeling that it was too
closely aligned with the Spiritualist community, even though
an SPR officer had attended Stella’s sittings. They
convinced Price that any further séances should be held at
the SPR headquarters.
It was
with some difficulty that Price was able to convince Stella
to continue the experiments. She had found a secretarial job
with a manufacturing company and was reluctant to jeopardize
her new employment. Finally, she agreed to two more séances
in late 1923. After this, she immediately ended her
association with him. Their relationship, which had been
warm, now turned chilly, for reasons that are not altogether
clear. Stella publicly pleaded fatigue but different reasons
are suggested in a letter that she wrote to him in 1926. By
this time, whatever had occurred was forgotten and Stella
began working with Price again after an absence of three
years. In her letter, she apologized and stated that she had
“badly misjudged” him in 1923.
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Price was an
amateur inventor with great knowledge of
mechanics and electronics. He used many of his
own devices when testing mediums and later,
haunted locations. |
The 1926 sittings were held at Price’s National
Laboratory for Psychical Research, which was
then newly established at the London
Spiritualist Alliance. Stella’s phenomena was
similar to what it had been, although weaker
than it been a few years before. She offered 14
séances before bringing things to an end in
August. She returned to work with Price again in
1927, so that he could study the anomalous
temperature drops and participated in a series
of 9 final sittings with him in 1928, shortly
before she was married.
Stella married Leslie Deacon in August 1928 and
she brought her short career as a medium to an
end. She never worked professionally and all of
her sittings were conducted with Harry Price.
What became of her later in life is unknown but
she is believed to have lived into her 60’s,
spending the remainder of her life in London.
In the end, Stella’s career as a medium turned
out to be short-lived but the careful research
earned her great respect in psychical circles.
Harry Price’s handling of the investigation
earned him prestige and respectability, as well.
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After
the end of the sessions with Stella, Price began searching
for further mediums to investigate. He traveled to Munich
for a series of sittings with Willi Schneider at the
laboratory of Baron Albert von Schreck-Notzing, a flamboyant
investigator. Price was so impressed with what he saw during
the séances, that he invited Willi to his own laboratories
in 1929. He was also impressed with the publicity-seeking
methods of von Schreck-Notzing too and decided to emulate
him in his own career.
Soon,
Price began testing additional mediums and set about trying
to measure some aspects of the séances in a scientific
manner. He managed to record strange temperature drops and
other phenomena that finally convinced him of the reality of
the paranormal. From this point on, he devoted more of his
time to pursuing genuine phenomena rather than debunking
mediums, which did not sit well with the SPR.
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The relationship between Price and the society
had always been strained so Price formed the
National Laboratory for Psychical Research in
1923. It would take three additional years for
the laboratory to get up and running and would
be located in the London Spiritualist Alliance.
This was the final straw for the SPR and in
1927, they returned Price’s donation of a
massive book collection. To make matters worse,
after Price’s death, it would be three members
of the SPR who would attempt to discredit him.
Most of the members of the SPR treated Price
with something verging on contempt. In those
days, the main officers of the society were made
up of the British upper class and most were
related to one another by marriage. Price was
most definitely not of their class and breeding,
as his father was salesman for a paper
manufacturer, and this in itself seemed to make
his research suspect in many of their eyes. He
was simply, in the words of one of the members
of the society’s governing council, “not a
gentleman.” He was also looked down upon for the
fact that he was not as well educated as other
members and had no formal scientific training.
He remained a member of the organization until
his death in 1948 but he was not always a
welcomed one.
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Price was the
consummate publicity-seeker and for the first
time, made ghost research accessible to the
general public. He is shown here doing the
first-ever live radio broadcast from a haunted
location. |
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Eleonara Zugan,
who was investigated by Price. Some of the
strange marks are visible here on her cheek.
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In 1926, Price came across the case of a
Romanian peasant girl named Eleonora Zugan, who
was apparently experiencing violent poltergeist
phenomena, including flying objects, slapping,
biting and pinching. The girl had been rescued
from an insane asylum by a psychic investigator
that Price had met in Vienna. Price returned to
London, with the girl, and began a series of
laboratory tests that were only partially
successful.
Testimony and reports from the testing claimed
that “stigmata” appeared on the girl’s body
under conditions that precluded the possibility
of the girl producing them by natural means. It
was also stated that she was able to move
objects with her mind, although no cause could
be discovered for her abilities outside of the
fact that she had been severely abused as a
young child. Eleonora’s abilities ceased
abruptly at the age of 14 when she entered
puberty.
In 1929, Rudi Schneider, whose abilities were
said to surpass those of his brother, traveled
to England to be tested by Price. The
investigator was still adding new scientific
technology to his array of gadgets and one
device wired the hands and feet of Rudi, and
everyone else seated around the séance table, to
a display board. A light would signal if anyone
moved enough to break the electrical circuit. |
Despite
these controls, Rudi was said to have produced an array of
effects, including ectoplasmic masses, rappings and table
levitations. Lord Charles Hope, a leading SPR investigator,
was astounded, as was Price himself. At the end of the
sessions, Price declared that the phenomena produced by Rudi
was “absolutely genuine” and “not the slightest suspicious
action was witnessed by any controller or sitter.”
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In the spring of 1932, Price began testing Rudi
again. In these sessions, he planned to
photograph Rudi’s manifestations as further
evidence of his psychic abilities. Although
Price obtained some favorable results, the
sittings were not as successful as before for
Rudi’s talents seemed to have diminished. In the
fall, Lord Charles Hope conducted more tests of
the young man and while he too noticed a decline
in his abilities, still maintained that his
powers were genuine.
And then, even as Hope was preparing his report,
Price rocked the paranormal community with the
announcement that Rudi was a fraud. As evidence,
he produced a photograph that was taken during a
séance and which showed Rudi reaching for a
table. The grainy image managed to destroy
Rudi’s reputation and embarrass the
investigators who had declared him to be
genuine, including Harry Price. Those who
claimed that Price was simply a
publicity-seeking fraud were hard-pressed to
explain why he would have damaged his own
reputation in this way. |
Price with Rudi
Schneider during his testing |
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The photograph
that Price obtained showing that Rudi slipped an
arm free of the restraints and reached for a
table in the darkness. Price's announcement
would destroy Rudi's reputation, as well as the
work of Lord Charles Hope. |
By the time of Rudi Schneider’s downfall, the
appearance of credible new mediums had all but
ceased. Soon, Price had turned his attention
from investigating mediums and psychics to
investigating haunted houses and bizarre
phenomena.
But not all of Price’s cases (or
publicity-seeking antics, as some would call
them) were as successful. One trip took him to
Germany where he went to test a spell that would
convert a mountain goat into a man. Needless to
say, the spell failed and Price was the subject
of much ridicule.
Another of Price’s strangest (although possibly
genuine) cases was that of Gef, the Talking
Mongoose of Cashen’s Gap, and yes, if you are
not familiar with the case, you did read that
right -- a talking animal! The case began in
1931 with a disembodied voice claiming to be
that of a mongoose, a weasel-like creature. It
began at an isolated place on the Isle of Man
and according to the Irving family, who lived at
Cashen’s Gap, this creature ate rabbits, spoke
in various languages, imitated other animals and
even recited nursery rhymes.
Price personally investigated the case in the
company of R.S. Lambert, then editor of a
popular radio show called The Listener,
but the animal refused to manifest until after
they had left.
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The
case may have been related to poltergeist phenomena, as
Voirey Irving, the 13-year old daughter in the family, was
closely associated with the manifestations of the talking
mongoose. Price failed to detect any evidence of fraud.
Lambert, who investigated other supernatural cases with
Price, almost lost his job over the Cashen’s Gap affair. The
publicity around the case caught the attention of his
employers at the BBC and one of his supervisors concluded
that Lambert’s interest in the supernatural reflected poorly
on the broadcaster’s competence. Lambert sued him for
defamation of character and kept his job.
The
Cashen’s Gap case was also investigated by Nandor Fodor, a
pioneer in the field of poltergeist phenomenon related to
human subjects, who interviewed a number of witnesses to the
phenomena, many of them hostile to the haunting, but
couldn’t shake any of the testimony to say that it was not
real. Fodor did not accept the explanation of a poltergeist
and half-seriously suggested that it might have actually
been a mongoose that learned to talk. Many years later,
after the affair had died down, a strange and unidentified
animal was killed in the area. Some suggested that it might
have been Gef.
During
this period, Price also made some serious contributions,
although they were not as widely publicized. In 1933, he
persuaded the University of London to open a library and set
up a University Council for Psychical Investigation. The
library still exists today at the university and consists
mainly of Price’s enormous occult collection.
The
year 1929 marked a turning point in Price’s career, although
the case would not be made public for several years yet. In
was in that year that he became involved in a case which
would take over his life and for which he would become most
famous. The case involved a deteriorating Essex house called
Borley Rectory. It would be during Price’s investigations
of Borley Rectory that he would become the best known and
most accomplished of the early ghost hunters, setting the
standard for those who would follow. He carefully documented
both his findings and methods and established a blueprint
for paranormal investigations.
Many of
Price’s accounts from Borley would be first-hand, as he
claimed to see and hear much of the reported phenomena like
hearing bells ring, rapping noises and seeing objects that
has been moved from one place to another. In addition, he
also collected accounts from scores of witnesses and
previous tenants of the house, even talking to neighbors and
local people who had their own experiences with the rectory.
Price
even leased the house for an extended one-year investigation
that was supposed to run around the clock. He ran an
advertisement looking for open-minded researchers to
literally “camp out” at the rectory and record any phenomena
that took place in their presence. After choosing more than
40 people, he then printed the first-ever handbook on how to
conduct a paranormal investigation. A copy was given to each
investigator and it explained what to do when investigating
the house, along with what equipment they would need.
Price
turned the Borley investigations into two books entitled
The Most Haunted House in England (1940) and The End
of Borley Rectory (1946). Both books became very popular
and entrenched Price solidly as the organizer of well-run
paranormal investigations.
Despite
what his detractors would claim, the books would set the
standard for future investigations and would mark the first
time that detailed accounts of paranormal research had been
exposed to the general public. While his critics saw this
only as further grand-standing, future investigators were
able to use the books when researching their own cases.
Regardless of what some may think of his methods and
research, Harry Price must be remembered today as a pioneer
in paranormal research. He is the one person who so many of
modern researchers (even unknowingly) emulate today with
their investigations. Price managed to give ghost research a
place in the public eye and opened it up to those who don’t
fit into the categories of professional scientists,
hardheaded skeptics, nor fall into the realm of gullible
“true believer”. If for no other reason that this, we owe
him a debt of gratitude.
BORLEY
RECTORY
One of
the most famous haunted houses cases of all time, and
unquestionably the most famous case in the career of Harry
Price, was that of Borley Rectory, a deteriorating house in
Essex. The last 10 years or more of Price’s life were
dominated by the long, complex and rewarding investigation
of this house and its hauntings. None of his earlier cases
had ever involved so many people, aroused so much interest
or caused him so many problems. His two books that were
written on the case became bestsellers and captured the
imagination of the public. At the time of his death, he was
in the final preparations for a third book on Borley Rectory
and event today, interest in the story has never ceased.
There
have been critics and attention-seekers that have maintained
that the whole thing was a hoax, a publicity stunt that was
created by Price. One journalist accused him (after his
death, of course) of deliberately lying about the phenomenon
and producing some of the activity with a “pocketful of
pebbles and bricks”. On the other hand, there are those who
were actually present when the strange activity occurred who
could assure the doubters that the house was truly as
haunted as Price claimed.
The
tiny parish of Borley is located in a desolate, sparsely
populated area near the east coast of England, near the
Suffolk border. It is a lonely place and would be
largely forgotten if not for the fact that it is the
location of what came to be known as “The Most Haunted
House in England”.
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Harry Price would begin the chronicle of Borley
in 1362, when Edward III bestowed the Manor of
Borley upon the Benedictine monks, but as much
of this history is shrouded in mystery, we will
state with more certainty that the manor was in
the possession of the powerful Waldegrave family
for 300 years. Between 1862 and 1892, the
Reverend H.D.E. Bull, a relative of the
Waldegraves, was the Rectory of Borley. A year
after his appointment, he built Borley Rectory.
Despite local warnings, he had built the house
on a site believed by locals to be haunted. His
son, the Rev. H.F. Bull, who remained until his
death in 1927, succeeded him as the rector.
After that, the rectory was vacant for over a
year until October 1928, when the Rev. Guy Eric
Smith was appointed to the role. However, he
quit the rectory just one year after moving in,
plagued by both the ghosts and the house’s
deteriorating state. |
Borley Rectory as
it looked in July 1929 |
There
had been strange happenings in and around the rectory for
many years before the residency of the Rev. Smith but all
concerned had kept them quiet. In 1886, a Mrs. E. Byford
quit her position as a nanny at the rectory because of
“ghostly footsteps”. More than 14 years later, two daughters
of Henry Bull first spotted what would become the famous
“phantom nun” on the rectory’s front lawn. The sighting
occurred in the middle of the afternoon and would coincide
with other strange happenings that were reported by the
family, including phantom rappings, unexplained footsteps
and more. The young women were repeatedly unnerved by these
events but Reverend Bull seemed to regard them as splendid
entertainment. He and his son, Harry, even constructed a
summer house on the property where they could enjoy
after-dinner cigars and watch for the appearance of the
phantom nun as she walked nearby.
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The summer hour
on the Borley Rectory grounds where previous
residents waited for the ghostly nun to appear
and stroll past them. |
Rev. Harry Bull often discussed the spirits with
his friend J. Hartley, who later supplied
information to Harry Price. In 1922, Bull told
Hartley that in his opinion, “the only way for a
spirit, if ignored, to get into touch with a
living person, was by means of a manifestation
causing some violent physical reaction, such as
the breaking of glass or the shattering of other
and similar material elements. The Rector also
declared that on his death, if he were
discontented, he would adopt this method of
communicating with the inhabitants of the
Rectory.”
The members of the Bull family were not the only
ones to see the ghostly nun on the grounds or
outside the gates of the rectory. Fred
Cartwright, a local carpenter, saw her four
times in two weeks, according to his account to
Price. Up until 1939, 14 people were reported to
have seen the nun, three people had seen a
phantom coach and horses with “glittering
harness” sweep across the grounds and two others
had seen the apparition of a headless man. |
In June
1929, two years after the death of Harry Bull and nine
months after Rev. Smith came to the rectory, the story of
ghostly occurrences in Borley was mentioned in the
newspaper. The next day, Harry Price received a telephone
call from a London editor and was asked to investigate. He
was told about various types of phenomena that had been
reported there, like phantom footsteps; strange lights;
ghostly whispers; a headless man; a girl in white; the
sounds of a phantom coach outside; the apparition of the
home’s builder, Henry Bull; and of course, the spirit of the
nun. This spectral figure was said to drift through the
garden with her head bent in sorrow.
Local
legend had it that a monastery had once been located on the
site and that a 13th century monk and a beautiful young
novice were killed while trying to elope from the place. The
monk was hanged and his would-be bride was bricked up alive
within the walls of her convent. Price scoffed at the idea
of such a romantic tale but was intrigued by the phenomena
associated with the house.
Price
was accompanied on his first visit to Borley by V.C. Wall, a
well-known journalist, and Miss Lucie Kaye, his experienced
secretary. Together, they listened to the experiences of
Rev. Smith and even observed some minor examples of
poltergeist phenomenon for themselves. Price also conducted
a long interview with Miss Mary Pearson, the rectory’s maid,
who had seen the ghostly coach and horses twice and was
firmly convinced the house was genuinely haunted. Later that
night, the group held a séance in the “Blue Room” of the
house, where much of the manifestations had allegedly
occurred, and they were purported to make contact with Harry
Bull. Whether they did or not, they were startled when a
piece of soap jumped up off the floor with no assistance.
The following day, Price held more interviews and spoke with
Rev. Bull’s daughters and the Coopers, a man and wife who
had lived in a cottage on the rectory grounds. They had
moved out in 1920, blaming uncomfortable feelings caused by
the ghosts.
The
events that occurred, and the witness interviews that were
documented, were enough to convince Price that something
strange was going on at the house. That June day would begin
more than 18 years of intensive and overwhelming paranormal
investigation. It would be during his investigations of
Borley Rectory that he would become the best known and most
accomplished of the early ghost hunters, setting the
standard for those who would follow. Price coined the idea
of the “ghost hunter’s kit”; used tape measurers to check
the thickness of walls and to search for hidden chambers;
perfected the use of still cameras for indoor and outdoor
photography; brought in a remote-control motion picture
camera; put to use a finger-printing kit; and even used
portable telephones for contact between investigators. He
was quite impressed by the house and believed that it
represented one of the most exciting and fascinating puzzles
of his career.
His
second visit to Borley came two weeks after the first. This
time, he documented the appearance of a religious medal and
some other items that seemed to show there was a Catholic
element to the haunting. There was also a number of times
when bells rang throughout the house, although the bell
wires (once used to summon the servants) had been cut many
years before. The constant ringing was a source of great
worry for Rev. Smith and his wife and this, along with other
manifestations, convinced the couple to abandon the house on
July 14, 1929.
Over
the course of the next 14 months, the rectory remained empty
and yet the happenings reportedly continued. According to
local accounts, a window on the house was opened from the
inside, even though the rectory was deserted and the doors
were securely locked. The main staircase was found covered
with lumps of stone and small pieces of glass were said to
have been scattered about. Locals who lived nearby reported
seeing “lights” in the house and hearing what were described
as “horrible sounds” around the time of the full moon.
Even
though Rev. Smith and his wife moved out of the house
because of the ghosts, things had really been rather
peaceful up until that point. All of that would change
though in October 1930, when the Reverend Lionel Foyster and
his wife, Marianne, replaced Smith. The Foysters time in the
house would see a marked increase in the paranormal
activity. People were locked out of rooms, household items
vanished, windows were broken, furniture was moved, odd
sounds were heard and much more. However, the worst of the
incidents seemed to involve Mrs. Foyster, as she was thrown
from her bed at night, slapped by invisible hands, forced to
dodge heavy objects which flew at her day and night, and was
once almost suffocated with a mattress.
The
activity during this period was more varied and far more
violent than ever before. Rev. Foyster kept a diary and
later compiled a manuscript that was never published called
“Fifteen Months in a Haunted House”. Harry Price would later
use large excerpts from the manuscript in his books on
Borley. There is no question that Rev. Foyster, Marianne,
his adopted daughter and later, a young boy who stayed with
them as a guest, went through some strange and sometimes
terrifying experiences.
Things
took another inexplicable turn when there began to appear a
series of scrawled messages on the walls of the house,
written by an unknown hand. They seemed to be pleading with
Mrs. Foyster, using phrases like “Marianne, please help get”
and “Marianne light mass prayers”.
It had
gotten so bad that by May 1931, the Foysters left the
rectory so that they could get a few days of peace and
quiet. In June, Dom Richard Whitehouse, a friend of the
Foysters, began an investigation. He found that things had
been scattered all over the unoccupied house and when the
family returned, the violent phenomenon began again. At one
point, Mrs. Foyster was hurled from her bed three times.
In
September of that same year, Harry Price learned of these
new and more violent manifestations. A short time later, he
and some of his friends paid a visit to the rectory and had
some weird experiences, including mysterious locking and
unlocking doors and bottles that were tossed about. Because
nearly all of the poltergeist-like activity occurred when
Mrs. Foyster was present, Price was inclined to attribute it
to her unknowing manipulations. He also considered the idea
that some of it might be trickery. However, he did believe
in the possibility of the ghostly nun and some of the other
reported phenomenon. The rectory did not fit into
pre-conceived notions of a haunted house, which was one of
the reasons that it would go on to gain such a reputation.
Despite the implications of the phenomena centering around
Marianne, Price maintained that at least one of the spirits
in the house had found the rector’s wife to be sympathetic
to its plight. This was the only explanation he could find
for the mysterious messages. He believed the writings had
come from another young woman, one who seemed to be from her
references, a Catholic. These clues would later fit well
into Price’s theory that the Borley mystery was a terrible
tale of murder and betrayal, in which the central character
was a young nun, although not the one of legend.
A short
time after Price’s visit, Mrs. Foyster, Dom Richard
Whitehouse and the Foyster’s maid, Katie, were seated in the
kitchen with all of the doors and windows closed, when
bottles began to appear, seemingly from nowhere, only to
shatter on the floor. At the same time, the bells in the
house suddenly began ringing once again.
The
months that followed brought more ringing bells and door
locking but after a séance was held, things quieted down
considerably. The bells still rang occasionally and items
flew about but there was what was described as a “different
atmosphere” after the sittings. The remainder of 1934 was
quiet but in 1935, the manifestations returned and became
more violent. Things frequently vanished and were broken and
by October of that year, the Foysters had reached the limits
of their endurance. They decided to leave the house and the
church decided to sell the place, as they now believed that
it was unfit for any parson to live in.
The
church offered the house to Harry Price – for about one
sixth of its value – but after some hesitation, he decided
not to buy the place but to rent it for a year. Price
planned to conduct an extended, around the clock
investigation of the house, using scores of volunteer
investigators to track and document anything out of the
ordinary that occurred there. As it turned out, the
investigation was never that organized. Even so, in spite
of often poor record keeping and periods when the house was
unoccupied, the year-long investigation remains a landmark
in the annals of the paranormal.
Price’s
first step was to run an advertisement in the personal
column of the Times on May 25, 1937 looking for
open-minded researchers to literally “camp out” at the
rectory. They were to record any phenomena that took place
in their presence. The advertisement read:
HAUNTED HOUSE: Responsible persons of leisure and
intelligence, intrepid, critical, and unbiased, are invited
to join rota of observers in a years night and day
investigation of alleged haunted house in Home counties.
Printed Instructions supplied. Scientific training or
ability to operate simple instruments an advantage. House
situated in lonely hamlet, so own car is essential. Write
Box H.989, The Times, E.C.4
Price
was deluged with potential applicants, most of whom were
unsuitable. After choosing more than 40 people, he then
printed the first-ever handbook on how to conduct a
paranormal investigation. It became known as the “Blue
Book”. A copy was given to each investigator and it
explained what to do when investigating the house, along
with what equipment they would need.
During
the investigations, the researchers were allowed wide
latitude when it came to searching for facts. Some of them
employed their own equipment, others kept precise journals
and others turned to séances, which would prove interesting
over the period of 1935 to 1939. The greatest aid to Price
in the investigations was Mr. S. H. Glanville. He and his
family took a special interest in Borley and spent many,
many hours there. It was Glanville who compiled with great
zeal the famous “Locked Box”, which contained a detailed
record of the Borley story from its beginning to the night
of the fire in 1939. Some of the material was eventually
published in Price’s books and Glanville remained completely
in charge of the investigations when Price was not present.
The
observers that Price recruited came from all different
professions, outlooks and interests but all of them
contributed to the pile of data that began to accumulate.
Many of them spent nights in the empty rectory, where one
room had been set up to serve as a “base” and where various
instruments had been installed. Some of them came alone and
others came in groups, skeptics, believers and debunkers
alike. A good many of them neither saw nor heard anything
but quite a few of them had strange experiences. These
experiences were wildly varied from sounds to moving
objects, weird lights and even full-blown apparitions. Very
few of them were witnessed by one person alone and the
majority of them saw the nun.
The
corps of observers established beyond doubt that Borley
Rectory was the center of some large paranormal
disturbances. The number of the disturbances, their variety
and the length of their observations also supply an answer
to any accusations that Harry Price staged the phenomenon
for publicity or other purposes. Price did not witness the
vast majority of the observations, accounts and reports.
Instead, they came from independent observers who often had
no idea that others were experiencing the same events at
other times.
There
were two important developments during Price’s tenancy of
the house. One was the observation of the “wall writings”.
These frantic cries for help were often heard to decipher
and had first started to appear during the Foyster’s
occupancy of the rectory. Most of them were addressed to
“Marianne” and some non-believers suggested that Mrs.
Foyster herself had written them, although none could
provide a motive for such a pointless hoax. Strangely, the
scrawls continued to appear on the walls long after Mrs.
Foyster had left the Rectory and Price believed that they
provided vital clues to the mystery behind the haunting. The
observers who noted the new messages marked and dated all of
them so that there would be no mistake as to which were old
and which had appeared later on.
The
other important development of 1937 – 1938 was the series of
séances that was held by Mr. Glanville, his family and
several friends. During a sitting with a planchette (a
device used for automatic writing), an alleged spirit named
“Marie Lairre” related that she had been a nun in France but
had left her convent to marry Henry Waldegrave, a member of
a wealthy family whose manor home once stood on the site of
Borley Rectory. While living at the manor, her husband had
strangled her and had buried her remains in the cellar.
The
story went well with the most interesting of the Borley
phenomena, namely the reported phantom nun and the written
messages. Price theorized that the former nun had been
buried in unconsecrated ground and was now doomed to haunt
the property seeking rest.
|
In March of 1938, five months after Marie’s
first appearance, another spirit, which called
itself “Sunex Amures”, promised that the rectory
would burn down that night and that the proof of
the nun’s murder would be found in the ruins.
Borley Rectory did not burn that night, but
exactly 11 months later, on February 27, 1939, a
new owner, Captain W.H. Gregson was unpacking
books in the library when an oil lamp overturned
and started a fire. The blaze quickly spread and
the rectory was gutted. It was said that the
fire started at the exact same point that the
spirit had predicted and that “strange figures
were seen walking in the flames.”
The building itself was finally demolished in
1944 but the story was far from over. |
Borley Rectory
after the 1939 fire |
The
publication of Price’s first book on Borley, The Most
Haunted House in England, brought Price a deluge of
letters. The wall-writings, the planchette messages and the
various reports from the observers led to arguments, new
theories and new facts. Price was able to point out the
parallels and similarities in a dozen other hauntings. The
rectory was now in ruins but this did not keep the
interested away. Throughout the years of World War II,
visitors often explored the rubble and occasionally spent
the night in the eerie remains of the building. In 1941,
H.F. Russell, a businessman, paid a visit to the Borley
grounds with two of his Royal Air Force officer sons. While
there, he claimed that he was seized by an invisible
presence and dashed to the ground. Two years later, some
Polish officers spent the night in the ruins and claimed to
see and hear a number of chilling sounds and sights. In
particular, they saw a shadow on the Nun’s Walk and a man’s
figure in one of the rooms. The Polish officers also rebuilt
the floor in the Blue Room and erected chairs and a table
where séances could continue to be held.
|
THE BORLEY
BRICK PHOTO!
On April 5, 1944, Price visited the ruins of
Borley for one of the last times in the company
of an American photographer named David Scherman,
who was shooting film for Life Magazine,
and a researcher from Time-Life named Cynthia
Ledsham. A strange incident occurred when
Scherman was taking photos, about 150 feet from
the house.
Just as Scherman pressed the shutter of the
camera, a brick, or part of a brick, shot up
about four feet into the air in front of what
remained of the passage to the kitchen. All
three witnessed the event and when they examined
the bricks that were lying about, saw nothing
out of the ordinary. There was no string or wire
attached to any of them and there were no
workmen (doing demolition work) on that side of
the rectory.
A
few days later, Scherman sent Price proofs of
the photos that he had taken and they realized
that he had captured the brick in flight. It can
clearly be seen that the brick is in motion and
also, that there is nothing attached to the
brick that could have suspended it in the air.
The photo became known as the first-ever
photographic evidence of a "poltergeist
projectile" in flight.
Not surprisingly, Price's same jealous
"colleagues" would claim the photo was a hoax.
They stated that the photo only captured a brick
that had been thrown by a workman at the site
and nothing more -- and that Price knew this all
along. If this was the case, he would have had
to convince two employees of Life
magazine to go along with the hoax, since the
photo later appeared in the magazine. Wishful
thinking on the part of the debunkers aside,
this seems highly unlikely. |
|
Other visitors included a commission from
Cambridge University, which was formed by A.J.B.
Robertson of St. Johns College. He would go on
to contribute a long essay to Price’s second
book on Borley. Robertson and his colleagues
were interested in the inexplicable “cold
patches” in the house. They investigated the
house from 1939 until the demolition of the
rectory in 1944. The report that Robertson wrote
at the end of the investigation was cautious but
stated that: “There appears, in fact, to be
something at the rectory which cannot all be
explained away. It must be remembered that the
investigations described here form only part of
a much wider survey which has brought to light
very many mysterious phenomena.”
Rev. W.J. Phythian-Adams, Canon of Carlisle,
conducted some of the most fascinating, and
ultimately relevant, investigations at the
rectory. After reading Price’s book, studying
plans of the house and photographs of the wall
writings and doing a detailed analysis of
Borley’s history, Canon Phythian-Adams prepared
a detailed and convincing account of events
leading up to the haunting. He used the data
connected to the Waldegrave family, as well as
statements from a medium that Price had
contacted to try and use psychometric powers on
an apport that had been found by an observer in
the Borley sewing room, to create his report. He
combined all of the pieces of the Borley story
into a tangible story. He collated the wall
writings with the séance messages and extracted
the symbolic and literal meanings of the
information that had been gathered. There had
been many other attempts at interpreting the
messages, especially the wall writings, and all
had concentrated on the desperate attempts the
nun had made to try and get the living to do
something for her. But no one else tried to what
Canon Phythian-Adams had achieved – creating a
consecutive narrative that sounded convincing.
There would be those who would say that his
story (recounted earlier in the story of “Marie
Lairre”) was nothing more than clever guesswork
but Canon Phythian-Adams told Harry Price to dig
for the nun’s remains and he told him exactly
where to dig. In August 1943, in the company of
Rev. A.C. Henning; Dr. Eric H. Bailey, Senior
Assistant Pathologist of the Ashford County
Hospital; Roland F. Bailey, his brother; Flying
Officer A. A. Creamer; Captain W.H. Gregson and
his two nieces, Georgina Dawson and Mrs. Alex
English, Price began his excavations in the
cellars of the ruined rectory.
On the exact spot where Canon Phythian-Adams
indicated (having never visited the site), they
found a large antique brass preserving pan, a
silver cream jug and a jawbone with five teeth
on it. Dr. Bailey declared it to be a left
mandible, probably from a woman. They also found
part of a skull. The next day, they also found
two religious medals, one of which was made of
poor quality gold. Price took the bone fragments
from Borley to the studios of A. C. Cooper,
Ltd., well-known art photographers, who would
then document the finds. At the studio, another
strange act in the Borley haunting was played
out.
|
|
In May 1945,
burial was provided for the remains found in the
cellar. |
While setting up the skull to have it
photographed, it slipped from four hands and
broke into four pieces. Moments later, an
expensive oil painting fell off its easel with
no explanation and crashed to the floor. A clock
that had not worked in more than ten years
suddenly started back up again, functioning for
just 20 minutes before stopping again, this time
for good. Five months later, the Cooper studios
were destroyed by an air raid. Coincidence?
Perhaps, but based on all of the other strange
happenings connected to Borley, it was worthy of
mention.
In May 1945, a Christian burial for the bones
appeared to provide the ghost with the rest she
had long sought and a service was later
conducted by the Rev. Henning in the small
village of Liston, less than two miles from the
rectory.
|
The nun
was never seen at the house again but the weird events
continued to occur. They were frequent enough that Price
made plans for a third book about the site, although it was
never completed. As his research progressed, Price lined up
50 new witnesses to more recent phenomena, including Rev.
Henning, officials from the B.B.C., local residents and
strangers. It seemed that after the ruins of Borley were
demolished, the ghosts moved to Borley Church, where a great
many manifestations began to occur in the vestry and
throughout the building. Many reliable people heard the
organ being played when the church doors were locked and no
one could possibly enter. Rev. Henning, then rector of the
church, was one of the witnesses and he contributed his
accounts to Price for the third book.
|
Perhaps this was just one of the reasons that
the story of Borley Rectory has never really
“died”. Its legacy remains today and it has gone
done in history as one of the world’s most
haunted houses.
And as for Harry Price himself, his legacy
continues as well. Price died from a heart
attack at his home in Pullborough on March 29,
1948. He was only 67 years old but his
tremendous labors and volumes of research remain
today. He is still regarded as highly
controversial but he is not without
appreciation. One of those who spoke best of
Price, Sir Albion Richardson, Recorder of
Nottingham, stated that: “Borley Rectory stands
by itself in the literature of psychical
manifestation. The large numbers of the public
who are interested in these things are under a
debt of gratitude to Mr. Harry Price, for
without his untiring energy and skilled
experience as an investigator, the story of
Borley Rectory would have remained unrevealed.
The manifestations are proved by the evidence,
to the point of moral certainty.” |
Harry Price
1881-1948
|
©
Copyright 2008 by Troy Taylor. All Rights Reserved.
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