Reflecting on the Borley Rectory Mystery

BBC sounds, music, radio podcasts. Hi, I'm Zin ingh, and I'm Simon Jack. And together we host Good Bad Billionaire, The podcast exploring how some of the world's richest people made their fortunes. And we're back for a new season with a brand new lineup of billionaires. Yeah, Gobal pop icon Beyonce. Hollywood movie director, Stehven Spielberg. Football superstar Christiana Ronaldo, anyone And as ever, we're asking you to decide whether they're good, bad or just another billionaire. That's good, bad, billionaire. Listen first on BBC Sounds And welcome back to the Most haunted House in England. Last time we opened the doors to Bory Rctory. We heard about how successive inhabitants of the house had been plagued by unearthly noises, poltergeist activity, ghostly carriages travelling up the drive and a phantom nun stalking the gardens So, who are you going to call? Well, we know back in nineteen twenty nine it was Harry Price, the preeminent ghostbuster of his age. His first visit to the house was an unforgettable experience. Remember, he and a journalist came under attack from invisible assailants, seeing the ghost nun as well and also apparently communicating with the former owner of the house, Harry Bull, who claimed to have been murdered by his wife Ivy. It is, as they say, a lot. So hold on tight because we've got a shed load to investigate already And plenty more to come. Welcome back to Bally Rectory. I'm Danny Robins and this is Uncanny cold cases. What has passed again in the c. see good st secret still rem Hello, I am back with our experts, the highigh priestess. of haauntings, writer and parapsychologist Evelyn Holle and the sultan of skepticism, Dr. Kirin O'Keeith forensic psychologist. Kiran we heard a lot last episode about the Bull family, how they built Bally rectory. We then saw the new rector, Reverend Eric Smith and Mabel his wife coming into this place, but we finished part one with new characters, the Reverend Lionel Fster and Marianne taking over this place. They're going to be really significant characters for us this episode. They're a really interesting couple. Lionel had spent some time as a missionary in Canada and he wanted to return to his home country, with his wife, Marianne and also adopted daughter, Adelaide And what's interesting, there's a huge age gap them both, even to the extent where Lionel even baptized his future wife as a baby. Oh my goodness, is that even allowed? That sounds pretty dark. It does sound really weird, but Marianne was an incredibly glamorous woman. She was young. She wore lipstick, which was kind of frowned upon at that time, especially married to, you know a vicar. but also she would beat all of the men at tennis, you know, she was glamorous and yet she was really extrovert or really out there. Okay, a lot of stuff going on then with this new couple into the house. We had that really amazing moment at the end of the episode, Evelyn, where Marianne saw what we think might have been Reverend Harry Bull, that figure in the plum coloured smoking jacket Yeah it's a really striking moment because this is the first time where we can potentially put a name to one of the figures that are seen haunting the house that we do believe that it is Harry Bull. They sort of can't escape the shadow of that family really. it begs the question, if you move into a house that has strong paranormal activity And then you pass away. Do you become one of the ghlosts in the house? Do you return to the house? It is a really interesting idea, isn no? but potentially that could happen to generations of people. Well, True also Harry Bill specifically said that he would come back He said that if he didn't approve of the rector that took over, he would come back as a poltergeist and he would pelt them with moth balls. And what happened here He did, apparently. Moth balls were thrown, weren't they? Mothballs were thrown. Yes. I mean, whether we think it's paranormal or not, it's an incredible coincidence that he said he would do it and apparently he did Okay, well let's embed ourselves back in the rectory with the Reverend Lyionel and Maron. apparent appearance of the late Harry Bull has been pretty bloody unsettling. but then things become downright dangerous. Late one night, Lionel is in the bathroom when he hears a sudden cry. Rushing to the bedroom, he finds Marianne confused and distressed, holding her hand up to her face. There is a bloody cut under her left eye. She's been seemingly attacked by an invisible assailant The next morning she's got a black eye. Events quickly escalate from there. shharp pins are left on chairs, Lge objects appear on the floor, designed it seems to trip up any unsuspecting victim. A heavy doorknob flies at Marianne's head missing her by inches. The activity does seem to be targeted at Marianne, who, in front of their daughter, jokingly blames it on mischievous goblins But in reality, she is exhausted and her own health is beginning to suffer. One night, the family sit down to eat dinner but are interrupted every few minutes by a stone or kitchen utensil flying across the room of them. They resolutely try to ignore these objects whizzing around their heads and carry on eating until A knife strikes Lionel's. This has gone too far now. Marianne suggests a DIY exorcism and she wants to do it in a way that may seem rather bizarre, quite frankly to the rest of us. Using creosote, a chemical mixture derived from tar, often used for preserving wood. But back then, people would sometimes burn it to fumigate a house, using it to smoke out mites Will it work on the invisible forces in the rectory? Well, let's see. because Lionel and Marianne pour cophone ont two hot coals, filling their house with an acrid smoke that wafts through every room. now Goblins, Lel says, How do you like this? Wow, Exorcism by Kriosot. Kirin, is this a new one on you It is new, but then again, with my research into exorcisms, I know people would just grab anything that they think will work. And also Cosote feels like an older version of a contemporary approach which is using sage to kind of cleanse the house. You know, the idea of using Cosote to kind of cleanse the house of mites and others. It's a muchess environmentally friendly exercism. It is environmentally unfriendly. I'll give you that much. But like I said, you know, it's the sort of thing where you can imagine anybody grabbing anything that they think might work because they're just desperate to get rid of whatever's there thingsings really do feel like they're kicking off in a big way here. You've got Marianne receiving that injury to her face, having a doorknob thrown at her. It reminds me of those moments in the first part where we had that glass in smashing and the vars flying past the daily mirror journalist Do we feel that this is a house where people are potentially in danger? I think you're in danger regardless of whether they think it's paranormal or not, because if it's an outsider doing it, then someone means you harm. They're trying to drive you off the property. If it's inside the house, it's your own partner or your own staff or people that you're friends with, in which case that's horrible and psychologically damaging Or the other option is that it's somebody doing it to themselves. I mean, are we talking about Marianne gone girling herself? She bashing herself in the skull with something? that's psychotic. Did you say gone girling? Gone girling herself. There's a scene in Gone Girl where Rosmamond Pike's character takes a ball peen hammer to her own face to give herself a black eye. Spoiler alert,n't it? I mean, that's a level of psychosis. Do you know? I mean that's not just faking or haunting or making banging noises. To injure yourself to the point of cutting your eye giving yourself a black eye is psychotic I don't know what to say I'm just thinking about. Gone girling now I thought it was like gondolas or Noelt really old and out of date now. You've never seen G goola. they haven't gone My my God, Jesus Christ. There we go. I was too busy reading up about bully reetory. Kirin, where are we at in this case right now, do you feel? in the levels of jeopardy going on I think we're at a high jeopardy moment. because we don't know what is causing this phenomenon. And yet it's harming, Marianne. We've got physical after effffects and it is you know genuinely concerning. Okay, thanks both. So after all that you have heard so far, last episode and right now, how are you feeling uncanny community. Are you team skeceptic or team bally believer? Have you been having any disturbing dreams about scary ghost nuns since we last spoke? Let me know what you think, but for now. As the cosot fumes subside Lionel and Marianne still have to live in his house with all its strange activity. So Lionel decides to act. He walks from room to room with Marianne, sprinkling holy water and reciting prayers. When a large stone, the size of a fist is suddenly hurled across the room and strikes him on the shoulder. Ow it is a shock. It leaves him sore and shaken. Then they hear noises from the sewing room. Wouldn't you like to live in a house with a sewing room, even if it was wanted? And upon entering, they find things strewn all over the floor. Over the next few days, the violent phenomena increase in the house. Lionel decides to document their experiences, writing them down in a bid to make sense of it. and he sits down one night at his typewer. whilst typing, one of his walking sticks flies from one side of the room to the other. next day He finds that document he's been typing up, torn to pieces. It all seems nasty now, doesn't it? Like someone or something is slowly upping the dosage of fear. and then something really creepy happens. The fosters begin to find strange scribbles on the walls of the rectory. the name Anne appears scrawleded in shaky handwriting on a corridor walk. Lionel writes a reply beneath it, What can we do? Days later A new message appears, Marianne Please get help, followed by getet light, mass, prayers, here. a command, they believe, to hold a Catholic mass inside the Rctroom They hold a mass, but events just seem to escalate even further now. A fire is deliberately started in an unused room. Marianne is thrown repeatedly from her bed, lying on the floor a mattress and bedding thrown over Both her and his health suffering now. Lionel is at a loss for what to do whichich is when he gets talking. Bull sisters, still living down the road in the village and still wanting proof that their brother, Harry Bull was murdered They suggest to Limel Getting the other Harry back. Harry Price Price takes the call and he's delighted to get a chance to investigate the house again. So on the thirteenth of october, nineteen thirty one, the great Harry Price returns to Balley Rctory, this time, accompanied by members of his group, the National Laboratory of Psychical Research Marianne Foster is feeling poorly that first evening when they arrive and soon after dinner, she faints and is taken to bed As Harry's team prepare to investigate, suddenly a claret bottle is thrown down the stairs, smashing in the kitchen below. Bells ring by themselves again. Pebbles rain down the stairs and they hear a cry from Marianne's room They find her bedroom door is mysteriously locked and can only, it seems, be opened by a power of prayer Marianne, exhausted, begs Lyionel to send their guests away The next morning Harry Price returns to the rectory to give Lionel his conclusions Fully expecting price to be astounded by the previous night's events Lionel is speechless when Harry instead announces that he believes the phenomenon the previous evening It' trickery, fake, activity staged and orchestrated by a human hand and that the culprit is Lionel's wife Maria. What the flip is going on here. Evan, it's a mic drop moment from Harry, isn't it? Do we feel this is an unfair accusation towards Marianne or does he have a point here? We were talking about earer how they were potentially controversial figures in this area for anybody who's read about Buling and there's lots of interesting books out there. There's a great book by the writer Seaan O'Connor that came out a couple of years ago. If you read those kind of books, you will know that she is a really controversial figure. Y, I think there's a level of demonization to Marianne In the people in the town don't like her, Oviously she's out there. she wears lipsticks, she beats all the men at tennis. And so is that why people automatically assume that she's doing it for attention? that she's attention seeking? But then why would she? What is her motive for that? The point of injuring herself to the point of giving herself a black eye, cutting herself What does that achieve? So you feel she could be being demonised here potentially? I mean I feel it's not impossible that she could be at it. However, what happens to all the other people and all the other families that lived in the house? Because Marianne is a much later character. Right. It's interesting that earlier phenomena, the stuff we talked about, particularly in part one, Karen Harry Price believed that was genuine. He witnessed things himself. What is going on now? Why does flip Well, the problem is his whole history in terms of his investigations of all manner of paranormal phenomena, there are moments where he comes out with conclusions to say, this paranormal stuff is real. There are other times when he genuinely exposes fraud. And two things can be true. you know, you can absolutely believe that some stuff was genuine and some stuff is fraudulent. You know, having a vase flying towards you, mothballs, that absolutely could have been genuine. Evelyn writing on the wall. It's a strange ent particularly the fact that people are writing responses and getting answers. Yeah, it's really, really bizarre and it's telling them to get help. In order to achieve that, you'd have to have a level of agency. Whatever is in the house would have to have thoughts, feelings and intentions. So are we talking about it being the spirits of deceased people You know people with agendas in the house and we already have a couple of suspects for who that might be writing on the wall responses couldould be a ghost T be a person Is this something that we could pin on Marianne potentially? I think from my perspective, I think the evidence is building, but also let's look at her profile. You know all of the activity seems to happen when she's conveniently absent But also she's in a situation in this small Essex village 's bored. She's isolated. She's also somebody who, you know, she has a real creative streak and she's really interested in theatrics and drama. So you know all of that makes her a strong suspect in this particular case. But not only that, you know, Evelyn said herself. We know that she was having an affair with the handyman. She may have been having other affairs. Maybe she's using this phenomenon to mask those affairs in some way to kind of deflect attention But there's another That's pretty extreme, isn't it? You'd invent pololtergeist to deflect attention from having it off with a handyman. It is, but then people in affairs do some quite extreme things to cover up the fact that they're doing that. So you know it's one possibility. The other possibility is some interesting bit of trivia about her time in Canada She actually spent some time in Amherst Hospital. So she heard of the Esther Cox case. Oh my goodness. We covered two weeks. great Amherst mystery. Yeah, exactly. So she may have got inspiration from that case and been producing some of the phenomena here. Wow.. so much to take in there. Evan, is this a case of extramarital activity or paranormal activity? I think with this case it's so difficult because it spans so many people, so many different families that there's this consistent streak phenomena right the way through the nun the objects, certain other parts of the case, and yet it shifts every single time. But I would always say with longer cases, I would always expect that there's some element of human intervention deliberately or accidentally, but also that anything weird that happens in the house, we automatically say, oh it's part of the haunting where it may just be strangeness itself But there's so much that's inexplicable by human behavior. Okay, well look, let us see what happens next. In the aftermath of Harry's stunning accusation, Lionel absolutely refuses to believe that Marianne is faking phenomena. Harry is not invited back to Borley, but he remains fascinated by the case, convinced that that earlier phenomena he witnessed was genuine. But for now, it seems that his investigations of the house are at an end. Then, in nineteen fifty two, the fooysters are contacted by a group of spiritualists who offer to help, led but brilliantly named Guy Lasrange,iterally Guide Eestrange. The group of mediums hold a seance and claim to make contact with the spirit of the famous Baldi nun. Lestrange claims that the nun was walled up alive, dying from starvation and says that he has helped herer spirit to move on. The next morning, incredibly, all the paranormal activity at the rectory seems to cease The foysters live at Borley for another three years until Lionel's continued ill health finally causes them to leave. And Borley R It stands empty once more. It is just too tempting for a certain individual who has had a very large hand in building this house's reputation Harry Price seizes his chance and is granted permission to rent the house for a year. At last, his investigation into Bally Rhetoric can recommence twenty forty seven. but he's going to need help. So in may nineteen fifty seven He places a classified advert in the Times newspaper, asking for volunteers to investigate Buling forty eight candidates sign up. wororking in shifts, they spend many nights at the directory, alone and in complete darkness, jotting down everything that they see. Though the activity is not as intense as during the foster's time there, they diligently report unexplained noises, objects seemingly moving by themselves, and cold spots throughout the house The walls of the Rctory are still littered with those alleged ghostly messages from the foster years out writing on the walls, which has never been erased, and the researchers discover if they respond to the writing by posing their own questions beneath it, Spirz will seemingly eventually reply Some of the researchers organise a series of seances of immediate And spectacular results. They call forth the spirit of Henry Bull, the original reirector, Harry Bull's father who first built the house rememember In a seance, it seems that he confesses to the death of a maid They then say they speak to that dead maid who says she was impregnated by Henry and murdered by him Harryall who confirms once more that he was murdered by his wife Ivy, and finally They call up the Phantom nun herself, now going by the name Mary Lair who states that she was strangled Suddenly It is like we have paranormal Piccadillite circus in this house with ghosts falling over each other to make sensational claims about their deaths Is it all convenient has the legend of Buly Retory been hijacked by Harry Price's Pard department Let me forat to you care difficult because Harry Price has a career where we know that some of the investigations he did, he encouraged the media to come and get involved and to cover what he was doing. He liked the attention, didn't he? He did, yeah, he was a great self publicist, you know, he was really, really good at it and he chose some particular cases that really had media interest, and here is a classic one. I'm in two minds about whether it's a complete PR stunt or not. We've got rival investigations as well, haven't we? We've got Guy Lestrange coming in here. those claims he makes about the identity of a nun and you know he claims to banish her and release her spirit We feel that doesn't hold water. No, so I can't find any records of a body being found on the property. and we do know that there was a structure here before this one was built that burned down. Also a lot of this, the thing with them having like forty plus investigators at the house reminded me that this is essentially the plot of Sirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House I mean, presumably, she was inspired by this c when she wrot. No, ' that book is well, that story is nineteen fifty nine. and forty eight people turning up working round the clock. To what degree is this that showmanship that we talked about earlier? or is this really him pushing towards the boundaries of parascience? Because it's an incredible level of scrutiny. I think it's both. I think by putting the advert in the times, there's an element of publicity there. He knows that the press will be interested in what he's asking for. so I think that's the publicity part. The other part of it is he doesn't have to say it's for a year. He could say it's for a month or two months. you know to have the resident in the house and investigating for an entire year is huge. I always tell ghost hunters, you cannot get a sense of a place by just investigating one night The phenomenon may not turn up that particular night. The longer you are at a location, the greater the chances of you capturing the phenomenon. And here we've got the holy grail of ghost investigation. Put people in that location for an entire year. Sadly, most of us We can't afford to rent a haunted house for a year to investigate it. We'd love to do that. these seances that go on with Harry's investigators, do we believe any of the claims being made here? They seem so fantastical? They are. They're really specific, which is useful because that means we can fact check them against things, you know, they're not really vague. But I think the difficulty is that when people are hosting seances there are two things happening. People really are experiencing what they believe is information, whether that's psychically isn't what they're seeing in their mind or auditorily, they believe that they're hearing things. Some people just describe it as a feeling. they feel like someone's talking to them, they feel like something's coming through. And that could just be human error. Pe are misinterpreting it. they're looking to stitch bits of information together The other aspect is that people are at it This is the difficulty when you have so many people involved in a case is that everybody wants to be right. everyveryone wants to say I solved Borly Ractory Okay, it is time for one Final trip. to this hugely controversial house On the twenty seventh of march, nineteen thirty eight, during one of their sciences Harry's investigators receive an alarming message from an entity identifying itself as Sunix Aurz It claims that it will burn down the Rctory that very night Nine o'clock and that in the ruins will lie the secret to the haunting. You will find bone of murdder, it says. Under the ruins mean you have proof of haunting of the retriate Blly fortunately, or perhaps unfortunately, the house fails to burn down that night. And a few months later, the Pice investigation ends And As Harry is compiling his findings into a book, the house hits the headlines once more. Because on february twenty seventh, nineteen thirty nine, just a few months before the outbreak of World War two The Balding rectory does mysteriously catch fire and is destroyed. Many villagers gather to watch the old house built by Henry Bull burned to the ground. Some claim to see the figure of a young woman dressed in black at an upstairs window as the flames lick around her A year later Harry Price releases his book, The Most Haunted House in England. To greater claim? When Price is finally able to excavate the cell as of Borley in nineteen forty three, a section of a woman's jaw and a skull piece is found They're more than a hundred years old In march nineteen forty eight, Harry Price dies suddenly aged sixty seven. Within months. questestions begin to be asked about his investigations of Borley. One journalist claims that he faked a photograph that appeaarsred show a brick levitating in the air. says he caught Price throwing pebbles in the house when no one was looking. Could it be that Harry was just as guilty of fakery as Marianne, seeking to benefit from the publicity around this house? But Despite the destruction of the reory The unexplained phenomena on that land seemed to continue. Observers from Cambridge University make regular visits and document hearing unexplained noises and seeing strange lights. Some Polish army officers stay in the Rctory grounds. They witness objects being thrown and hear phantom doors slamming. To this day, ghost hunters still visit the tiny village of Buling. Some claim to hear footsteps around the church. Others heard the sound of those servants bells ringing. Some even say they've had pebbles in front of them just like Harry Price back in nineteen twenty nine. And one of those investigators Two have combed that site looking for clues It you care Yeah it would be pretty strange for a boy that was inspired by Harry Price not to in some way follow in his footsteps. Unfortunately I couldn't go into Borley Rctory, you know haven't been burnt down. but I have been to Borley many times. I've investigated the church itself, but also I have sat on the nun's walk onn the anniversary of her sighting in the hope that I would see the nun I never did, but it was one of the most exciting moments of my life, which says something about my life. I would be sitting on a nun's walk and just thinking, potentially this is what Harry Price was doing all of those decades ago. Well I can say, look, I didn't want to tell you the silly, Here she is now. No, I mean, wouldouldn't it be an amazing thing though to actually have an experience on a Blly? How does it feel being there It was thrilling. It was like oy visiting Disneyland for me. Was it the most haunted house in England but I love it anyway. Evan, will we ever stop being baffled by Baorley? Is this case one that will run and run? Yeah, I think so. and what makes it difficult is because it's burned down, people are sort of just chasing the stories. like Kan says they can go to the area, they can go to the nuns walk. But that means that we can't investigate it with modern techniques, you we can't fill the house with cameras, we can't take environmental readings with the equipment that we do have now. I think for me, this case does have an element of fakery to it. I do think that people embellished it or were at it, either intentionally or not intentionally. The case ran for so long, it's impossible to avoid that However, there are so many things that cannot be explained by human error intervention. The sheer volume of witnesses alone, you had the Bull family, the Smiths, the fosters, their staff, their visitors, friends, even people who came later, Harry Price, all of his investigators on top of it And so I don't believe that absolutely everybody is at it. And I think that's what makes it such a fascinating case. Okay, there you have it. That is it for this series of uncanny cold cases O is it? Because actually We will be back together for a very special bonus episode thirteen next week, a case update into all of our stories from this series, from Black monks to Bori via Betty and Barney Hill, South Sheld scariness. lane, Spring Heill Jack and so much more. We'll be trying to answer all of your questions and theories that have come in. so many brilliant ideas on these cases trying to crack these intriguing mysteries. I can't wait until then Sleep well D you Canny Cold Casis was presented by me, Danny Robbins, with Evelyn Hollllow and doctor Kirin O'Keefe. Thee Music is by Katherine Priddy. The story sections were written by Simon Barnard and Dale Shaw and it was produced by Simon Barnard and Victoria Lloyd. Our editor and sound designer is Charlie Brandon King and music is composed by Evelyn Sykes. This is a battle gab and uncanny media production for BBC Radio fourour and BBC Sounds. Zandy, happappy anniversary What are you talking about? Have I missed something? Yes, Zandy, you have. We are over a year into making Whats upp Docs. You didn't even get me a card Is it really over a year? It is. Think of all the episodes we've done, how to look after our feet, our shoulders, our hips, our teeth. We've explored snoring, cholesterol, the immune system, endometriosis. All with the help of expert guests, I think it's fair to say we have plundered the world