After the end of the Bulls' years at Borley Rectory, and following on the experiences of Edward Cooper and his wife and Fred Cartwright's story, the strange story entered a new phase, probably the most argued-over period of its whole history.
The remaining members of the Borley branch of the Bull family now had some considerable difficulty in finding a new Rector to take up the living. Some 10 or 12 hopefuls came to look and said 'No!'. The isolated location of the old Victorian rabbit warren that was Borley Rectory and its total lack of common domestic amenities put off one prospective tenant after another, until finally a cultured and pleasant Eurasian gentleman, The Rev. Guy Eric Smith, accepted the living and in the autumn of 1928 he moved into the Rectory with his wife Mabel. The couple had no children.
Their curious experiences began even before they had settled in, although it was not so much the phenomena that drove them out some nine months later, but rather the appalling state of the place, which they found depressing and very hard work to manage, in addition to which Mabel Smith was quite unwell for some time. They did, however, seem to suffer more than their fair share of the Rectory's odd and often unwelcome curiosities, which only served to further their general dislike of the property.
This point was made quite clear by Price in his book, The Most Haunted House in England, and it is perhaps worth mentioning at this point that it has been other writers, and not Harry Price, who have recounted this aspect of the Smiths' tenure the wrong way round, by stating that the ghosts drove them out. If Price can be criticised at all over the Smiths' period at Borley, then it is in unwittingly causing the extraordinary interest that arose when he did agree to investigate the place, which he would not have done, had not Guy Smith contacted a national newspaper, which passed details to Price, thereby resulting in the Rector having unwittingly destroyed his own privacy.
The bringing to the public notice of the Borley story did, of course, bring to the hapless village the inevitable sightseers and would-be ghost-hunting brigade, but it seems a mistake, on reflection, to blame Harry Price for that. Indeed, Price had little time for these folks, whom he referred to as 'rubbernecks', and when a party of youngsters later caused some trouble at the Rectory he made some caustic remarks about them in his book.
But to continue. Before they had properly moved all their belongings into the Rectory, Mabel Smith was cleaning the house, which must have been in a pretty scruffy state, having been empty since the summer of 1927. In cleaning out a cupboard in the Rectory, she came upon a brown paper parcel which, when untied, was found to contain a somewhat unpleasant souvenir in the shape of a small human skull, thought upon closer inspection to be that of a young woman.
Enquiries failed to reveal how it came to be in the Rectory, though a local belief was that any attempt to remove it from the Rectory resulted in an increase in the disturbances therein. True or not, it could be said to have lived up to its supposed reputation in the light of the subsequent happenings in the house.
Guy Smith, doubtless somewhat puzzled by the rather gruesome relic, reburied it in the churchyard and thought no more about it. One wonders what he would have thought about the skull had he had any inkling at the time of what lay in store.
Not long after they had moved in, Guy Smith was on his own in the house and on crossing the landing outside the Blue Room he heard a gradually rising whispering, culminating in a pleading voice crying 'Don't Carlos, Don't', before the sound faded away. It was not the first time Smith had heard strange mutterings on the landing but only on this occasion did he hear some definite words. One suggestion made since is that the Rectory had a habit of trapping sounds originating from people in the stable cottage behind the Rectory, which seems reasonable until one looks at the plans of the Rectory and realises that the Blue Room landing was at the front of the house, several feet from the stable cottage, with numerous solid brick walls in between. The writer, having studied the Glanville plans, cannot accept that such sounds from the cottage would have carried that far within the solid and hefty structure of the Rectory.
The strange footsteps common in the Bull years were also heard by the Smiths, chiefly in locked and disused upstairs rooms, of which there were plenty, for apart from Mary Pearson and a part-time maid who left after only two days, they had no regular servants. Consequently they had little option but to limit themselves to a few essential rooms that Mabel Smith could manage to keep in order. According to some accounts, it was the footsteps that caused Guy Smith to think that there was somebody prowling about in the house uninvited and it is often told that he fetched a hockey stick, stationed himself in one of the upper corridors where he thought the sounds were coming from, and lay in wait. The footsteps came in to earshot and when the Rector judged them to be level with where he was hiding, he sprang out with his hockey stick, doubtless hoping to whack the would-be intruder, but only to find that he was hitting out at thin air!
Turning now to the maids, it was reportedly Mary Pearson, the Smiths' only regular servant, who came scuttling indoors one morning saying that she had seen an old-fashioned coach tearing silently across the lawn, only to vanish almost in front of her.
Later questioning by Harry Price elicited the information that she had seen the vehicle twice, travelling first down the lawn, and on the second occasion up the lawn. It remained visible just long enough for Mary to notice the colour of the horses, which were brown, though sometimes stories about the coach quote bay as the colour.
It was, it seems, the same vehicle seen speeding across the Rectory corner late one night by Edward Cooper during the First World War, but whereas Cooper noticed one, possibly two, tall figures waring hats, seated upon the driver's box, Mary saw no men at all. The vehicle was apparently under no visible control when she saw it. It is also thought to have been Mary who saw a headless figure, standing beneath the trees, which she chased until it disappeared.
Out in the Rectory garden, Mabel Smith saw a greyish figure leaning rather wistfully on one of the gates, only to vanish when she approached it. At a time when the Smiths had been in the garden, and with nobody else in the Rectory, they returned to find a china vase lying at the foot of the main stairs, smashed to pieces. The Smiths also quite often experienced the servant bell phenomenon; most odd considering that on some of the bells the wiring had been ripped out or cut. A further curious incident was that of a light seen in an empty room. When first seen by Mrs Smith, she was alone, but on the second occasion members of the choir were with her. On unlocking the empty room it was in total darkness.
The Rectory's weird reputation had been a talking point locally for many years, but by this time its reputation had become such that few people wanted to come near the place unless they had to, and Guy Smith, finding that many of his parishioners would not even come to parish meetings there, and tired of the way in which the Rectory and its atmosphere were disturbing the general order of things, sent an appeal to the press for someone to come and sort out the cause of the mysteries.
The place was quite depressing enough with no gas or electricity and the drainage and water system in a poor state. The disturbances and their effect on the house were something that Smith was not prepared for and both he and his wife found them very puzzling. His appeal reached the editor of the Daily Mirror and a reporter, Mr V. C. Wall, was despatched to Borley to investigate.
Poor Guy Smith! One wonders whether he would so readily have told the popular press about the strange events at the Rectory had he had any idea as to the extent of national interest that would follow. At one stage, after the story was printed in the Mirror, groups were even running coach trips from places such as Colchester, 'to see the ghost'. However, it is the visit of Mr Wall that concerns us now.
After a night spent in the grounds of the Rectory, during which time a light was again seen at the window of an unused upstairs room, Wall wrote a sensationalised article in the Mirror, which suddenly and irreversibly catapulted the Rectory and its phenomena into the public eye. It didn't really need Harry Price to achieve that.
Any prominent psychic researcher or a body such as the Society for Psychical Research (of which, in fact, Price was a member) could have been offered the challenge of Borley, but as we now know so well the editor of the Daily Mirror telephoned Harry Price, who accepted the suggestion that he should investigate Borley.
Price and his secretary, Lucy Kaye, later Mrs Meeker, together with Wall, motored down to Borley Rectory on Jun 12 1929 and arrived in time to take lunch with the Rector and his wife, to learn some of the legends about the Rectory, its past history and its current mysteries. For Harry, it was the start of what could well be described as the strangest and most controversial case that he was to undertake in the whole of his career.
With the onset of the evening of that first day at Borley Rectory, Price and Wall were in the garden when Wall, spotting a moving shadow looking like a figure, close to the far side of the garden, called out 'There she is!', thinking that he had sighted the nun. Price turned to look just too late and was never certain that he had spotted the figure. That was the beginning of an extraordinary first experience of the Rectory's phenomena for Price. As the two men went to re-enter the house by the verandah entrance, something dropped through the glass roof with a crash and landed close by, showering the pair with slivers of broken glass. The object was found to be a piece of brick.
Having previously sealed all those rooms that could not readily be watched, the two men hurried into the house and checked, in particular, the upper floor to see whether someone had thrown the brick down from there, but all of Price's seals were untouched and still in place. In one room that they unsealed and re-entered, a pair of red glass candlesticks stood on the mantle piece, and both were still in place when the couple left, locked the room and resealed it. As they descended the stairs, however, one of these candlesticks hurtled over their heads down the stairwell, struck the stove in the hall below and smashed.
Standing with the Rector, surveying the sad remains, the party was then showered with an assortment of pebbles, bits of slate, mothballs and other sundry junk. This prompted another extensive search of the Rectory, with no tangible result to provide an answer to the hail of debris.
The next curious phenomenon was for the library and drawing-room locks to eject their keys on to the floor for no visible reason, though some folk have since tried to suggest air pressure as the cause, ideas that certainly do not sound at all convincing.
Much later that night all assembled in the Blue Room where, under Price's supervision, a séance was conducted. The chief contact reported to have been made during this session was, we are told, with the late Rev. Harry Bull about whom various bits of information came to light, mostly never published as some of the people involved, such as the Bull sisters, were still alive.
Consequently, the recorded details of the results of this séance had, of necessity, to be, at least partly, held in confidence. Because of an obvious responsibility to those still living, there was little, if anything, that Price could do about this at the time and though the details of the séance would probably be harmless now, various papers have been lost over the years and, regrettably, some of the details pertinent to Borley have been lost for good. However, one incident that was recorded during the séance is still on record.
Some feet away from where the party was sitting was a wash-stand with a water jug beneath. During the proceedings, there came a loud 'clunk' from the direction of the wash-stand and upon investigation it was found that a cake of soap had leapt from it and struck the top of the water jug with such force that the soap was deeply dented. Also heard during the séance was a persistent knocking sound which was found to be coming from the back of an old wooden framed mirror.
The séance was wound up at about 4 am, after which, as Price tells us, he retired to bed in the Blue Room, in which nothing further untoward was to occur that night.
Harry Price was to make numerous visits to Borley Rectory over the next few years, but in the meantime the atmosphere and the lack of home comforts were telling on Guy Smith and his wife who had been quite ill for a time. By the summer of 1929, not very long after Price started his own investigation, they had had enough and, although continuing to carry out his duties as Rector, Guy Smith with his wife moved into lodgings in Long Melford.
During this period, with the Rectory once again unoccupied, things continued to occur that were odd to say the least. Local villagers continued to report seeing the light in the locked upstairs room, and on return visits to the Rectory a previously closed and locked window was found wide open.
On paying a further return visit to the Rectory in February 1930, the Smiths were surprised to find that some of their furniture, which they left in store there as a temporary measure, had been hurled about the room; also part of a stone fireplace had been dumped on one of the staircases. Writing to Price later, the Smiths recounted that on approaching the house on or about March 18 1930 they heard 'the most horrible sounds coming from the house'. In April 1930, the Smiths finally left the area altogether, moving to Sheringham.
The building was once again without a tenant and, for a while, it looked as though Borley would have difficulty in finding a new Rector, but finally the surviving members of the Bull family managed to persuade a cousin to return from Canada to take up the post as Rector, and on October 16, 1930, Borley Rectory saw the arrival of the Rev. Lionel Algernon Foyster MA, together with his much younger wife Marianne, and a little adopted baby daughter, Adelaide.
Their arrival signified the start of five of the most stormy years in the whole of the Rectory's history, over which controversy has continued ever since. In the face of the recorded happenings that follow, there have been varying accounts by many people of what did or did not happen between 1930 and 1935, when the Foysters finally packed and left. Marianne's side of the story, as she recounted it in more recent years, far from resolving the controversy, just added to it, providing yet another slant on the efforts of Harry Price and others such as Trevor Hall to prove or disprove the whole episode.
One of the most fascinating aspects of the Foysters' tenancy at Borley was a diary kept by the Rector, telling of some of the most extraordinary phenomena in the house. There have been suggestions made that the diary, though inspired by things that happened in the Rectory, was compiled with a view to it being published and was, as a consequence, somewhat embroidered.
This idea cannot be entirely discounted of course, but one wonders whether such ideas were entirely in keeping with the diary writer's position as a man of the cloth. It is now generally believed, however, that it was the intention of Lionel Foyster to circularise the diary among members of his family, of which there were several, dotted about in various places.
Like their relations, the Bulls, the Foysters were quite a clan, Lionel's side of the family having provided successive rectors for the parish church of All Saints' in Hastings, Sussex, where Lionel himself was born. There were, in all, four versions of this diary, including a hand-written one and a typed manuscript in which Foyster concealed the location of the house, calling it 'Cromley Hall'. He also altered the names of the people involved, though it still ran pretty true to what other people witnessed at the Rectory during those five years, the diary itself dealing with about 18 months of that period.
Regarding the criticisms about the diary, there have been statements to the effect that items that went missing in the Rectory, apparently without any logical explanation, were in fact mislaid by the Rector due to supposed absent-mindedness on his part. Though that is possible, it is an answer to the phenomena that seems to me to be too convenient, and in many instances it is a solution that is not good enough. The characters of Lionel Foyster and his rather curious young wife will be looked at in greater detail in a chapter set aside for their tenure as residents of the Rectory. For the present, though, we are concerned here with the phenomena that are said to have occurred while they were at the Rectory, and so to continue ...
We are told that on their first full day in the house, Marianne was alone in the building at one point and heard curious 'disembodied' voices calling out her name. Referring to the Rector's diary, we learn the following:
The Rector, his wife, Adelaide and a helper heard footsteps. Marianne reported seeing the figure of Harry Bull more than once; clad in a dressing gown that local folk recalled him having worn often when he was alive. In addition to the appearance of Harry Bull, other, more annoying, things happened. Assorted utensils, such as jugs and other crockery would go missing and then reappear elsewhere in the house. On one occasion, the Foysters noticed a strange smell like cologne and lavender mixed, the smell being most pronounced in the Blue Room, which they used as their bedroom.
The familiar bell-ringing incidents continued to take place, sometimes for long periods at a time. One day, Marianne, having taken off her wristwatch to wash her hands, turned to put it back on, only to find that the bracelet strap had vanished. It was never recovered. There then followed the appearance of a lavender bag, not seen before, first on the mantelpiece in the sewing room, then in the Rector's coat pocket a day or so later. In the typed 'concealed location' version of the diary there appears a remark that Marianne supposedly made about the lavender bag, 'Don't throw it away. If you don't want it, I'll put it in with the washing.'
Then there occurred the strange incident of some old books found in the toilet upstairs, next to the chapel. A book was found on the windowsill. When removed, it was found later to have been replaced with another and so on until, on the last occasion, a book was found lying on the floor with its cover torn off. This last episode is reported as having occurred during February 1931.
On the 25th of that month, a number of missing items of crockery, lost some time before, were found piled in the kitchen. At Lionel's suggestion, Marianne asked whoever or whatever was responsible for these capers to return a missing teapot. The teapot reappeared. The lost watchstrap was also asked for, but sadly with no success. Upon waking the following morning, February 26, they found some old books thrown under their bed. Later the same day, a stack of Durham Mission hymn books was found on a shelf over the kitchen range. A popular version of this incident has it that the church was rather short of hymn books at that time.
On the evening of the same day is said to have occurred the nastiest of all incidents during the Foysters' tenancy. Marianne was outside the Blue Room, carrying a candle in her hand, with nobody else near, when she was struck in the face with sufficient force to cause a cut beneath her eye and to blacken the eye itself. The following evening, February 27, 1931, shortly after retiring to bed, the couple were 'buzzed' by a cotton reel and then by a hammerhead on a snapped-off handle, both of which skimmed across their bed, the hammerhead landing on the floor with a clatter and the cotton reel striking the wall before dropping to the floor. When the Rector lit a lamp, the strange antics stopped.
A day later, when Foyster had been in his study writing, and had left the room for a few minutes, he returned to find pins sticking point-upwards in two of the chairs. Following this incident, the Rector tripped over an old oil lamp and a saucepan lying on the floor outside his room, and later he came across a floor polisher handle in one of the passageways. The lamp and saucepan he did not even recognise as belonging to the household.
On the night of March 5, Foyster was hit on the head by his own hairbrush and later Marianne had a doorknob thrown at her from behind while traversing the passage from the bathroom. On the two days following, more things were thrown and articles were dumped on the floor. In one case, pictures from the wall on the stairs were found lying on the floor, books on a shelf in the sewing room were hurled on to the floor, and stones were thrown.
On March 9, workmen arrived at the Rectory to thaw out frozen pipes, which had been installed earlier. While the men were working there, stones were heard and seen tumbling down the back stairs. Foyster was apparently satisfied that when Marianne entered the building, having been outside, she was not responsible for the incident. Later, in walking from the kitchen to the sewing room, Marianne was pursued by a large chunk of iron, which came scudding along the corridor after her and landed inside the sewing room as she tried to shut the door against it. Then Marianne was in the process of making up the fire in the kitchen range, when a stone flew over the room and struck the door just as the Rector passed behind it. On March 10, in the morning, Marianne woke to find small stones behind her pillow.
Following this came further disturbances including the breaking of the window on the stairs by something thrown through it from inside, while all the occupants of the house were downstairs near the hall stove. Not long after this, various odds and ends were found in the house, such as a tin travelling trunk, not seen before, a powder box and, most odd, a wedding ring which had disappeared by the following morning.
An odd sequel to the ring was that a few years later, on the last day of Harry Price's own tenancy of the Rectory, when he and a colleague Mr Geoffrey Motion were checking, prior to locking up for the last time, they found a gold ring, possibly the same ring, on the floor in one of the rooms.
Returning to the Foysters' experiences, the next dubious treat in store was for Marianne to trip over a brick lying by the bathroom door. The following day saw the arrival of two priests who, accompanied by the Rector and Marianne, covered the whole house, reciting prayers and using incense and holy water in an attempt to put an end to the disturbances. Though nothing further happened for a while, their efforts proved ineffective, like all such attempts to clear the Rectory of its phenomena. Later, a small boy passing by outside had a stone thrown at him and when the Rector returned from having been out during the latter part of that day, he had another stone thrown at him. Shortly after, another stone fell near the hall stove, narrowly missing the Rector's head.
The next incident recorded by the Rector occurred on March 12, when some clean linen, which had been put away in a cupboard in the kitchen, was found to have been turned out and strewn all over the floor. The following day, Marianne was again injured, this time by a piece of metal hurled down the back stairs. At supper that evening, a piece of brick dropped by the Rector's plate, but without breaking anything. On a later occasion, Marianne was not so lucky when a potsherd hit her, causing a cut on her forehead.
Two days later, the Rector was sitting at his desk using a typewriter and, for comfort, had taken off his dog collar. This was suddenly thrown at him. Next, his walking stick was flung across the room, shortly followed by a piece of coke. Early the next morning, March 16, Marianne came down to the kitchen to find the contents of one of the cupboards hurled about and the kitchen table lying upside down. During that day, the Foysters had left open their bedroom window. That evening, it was found to have been closed the wrong way round, i.e. top sash at the bottom, bottom sash at the top.
On March 23, the Rector was ill in bed and whilst climbing the stairs with a plate of food for him, and carrying in her other hand an oil lamp, Marianne had part of a flat iron thrown at her from behind, which knocked the glass chimney off the lamp. The following day, various small bits and pieces were thrown at Marianne while she was house cleaning.
During the next few days, she again reported seeing Harry Bull on his usual beat on the stairs and this time he might just have been seen by a tenant of the stable cottage although, as stated in The End of Borley Rectory, the possibility that the ghost of Harry Bull was seen by Marianne alone should not be ignored.
Another more unpleasant experience came when Marianne, whilst near the kitchen, was tapped on the shoulder by what she described as a 'monstrosity that had a touch like iron'. Little baby Adelaide was also alleged to have been struck on the face by a similar apparition when sent to lie down in one of the rooms. This incident seems rather casually reported by the Rector, for surely the three-year-old would have screamed out if struck in his way? However, according to the Rector, when asked how she came to have a bruise on her face, she merely replied, 'A nasty thing by the curtains gave it to me.'
Little has ever been recorded as to how baby Adelaide reacted to the various incidents in the Rectory, though there is the possibility that she constituted no psychic focus worth the name and was thus largely unaffected by the phenomena.
There was, however, just one other occasion when she seemed to be disturbed, when visitors to the Rectory found objects hurtling about, and Adelaide with Francois d'Arles' small son, cowering by the dining room door in obvious discomfort. One of the two tots is reported to have said, 'We don't like so many fings falling about.'
April brought a fresh crop of incidents to the hapless Foysters, with various objects being thrown at them both. One teatime, a full jug of milk had been placed upon the table, but when the Rector went to pour from it, it was empty. He made a sarcastic remark about not wanting to drink from the same jug as ghosts. Foyster recalled in his diary counting about a dozen times that he had objects thrown at him in various parts of the house between six and eleven o'clock at night.
One evening in May, the Foysters had a nasty time in the kitchen for, among other things, Marianne had pepper thrown in her face. The Rector procured some creosote and used it as an incense or fumigant to try to halt the disturbances, which worked for a time but only after he himself was struck by a piece of cement. Coming downstairs with the creosote, he was 'buzzed' by a metal spanner! The following evening, Marianne tried fumigating the place but didn't use enough creosote, it would seem, because there followed bell-ringing, stone throwing and a near miss from a jam jar which struck the kitchen door and smashed, just as Marianne was returning to the kitchen.
At 9 pm one Monday evening, Sir George and Lady Whitehouse, from Arthur Hall, near Sudbury, arrived to see what was happening. Plenty, it would seem, for whilst they were at the Rectory, a smell of burning became very noticeable. A hurried search was made of the upstairs rooms, where, in one room not normally in use, a part of the wainscoting was found to be alight. It was put out, but the would-be fireman was rewarded by being struck by a stone.
Notwithstanding what we now know about Captain W. H. Gregson who later bought the Rectory, and the many allegations surrounding its destruction, the burning skirting board was in a way a precursor of what was eventually to befall the building. Over the next few days, Marianne visited the Rectory on and off, and found among other things pieces of paper floating about with her name written on them in a childish hand.
On June 6, there was another spate of stone throwing and the following evening, while Marianne was in bed, unwell, a chair in the room twice overturned by itself. During that night, there was a bout of the usual bangs and crashes that seemed to have been commonplace during the earlier Bull years.
On Monday, June 8, the Foysters had a morning of chaotic disturbance, including books, dirty linen, a suitcase and a linen basket being hurled down the main stairwell, the linen basket twice hurtling to the ground floor. Following this, Marianne was roused from bed by a great racket coming from the Blue Room. Upon entering the room, she saw that the bed had been moved and other pieces of furniture overturned and flung about, though the noise ceased the moment she entered the room. According to the Rector's diary for that day, as was recorded in Price's book, a doctor who called at the Rectory also saw some throwing of objects.
Lady Whitehouse's nephew Richard, who was later to become Dom Richard Whitehouse OSB, also visited on that day and what he saw and experienced is worth relating in some detail. The following details are drawn from his report as it was later set out in The Most Haunted House in England, over which Harry Price was subsequently to be heavily criticised by Messrs Dingwall, Goldney and Hall. He was, however, later partly exonerated, not only by Robert J. Hastings, but also by Dom Richard's further testimony, in which the only thing he queried as not being correct was Price's reporting of the incident concerning paranormally precipitated bottles, one of which Price described as having appeared in mid-air, changed its shape and then crashed to the floor. Bottles did crash to bits in the kitchen on the occasion in question, but more of that shortly.
Taking a summary from Richard Whitehouse's report, we learn that he observed that the contents of the Blue Room had been hurled down the main stairs; then there dropped at his feet a watchcase and a metal bookrest (both whilst standing talking to the Rector near the stairs), followed by the precipitation of a brass stiletto normally kept in the study, and the ejection from her bed of Mrs Foyster. At the moment that this happened, the second time that morning, Whitehouse was just going downstairs, after speaking to Mrs Foyster who was in bed, unwell yet again, when he heard her cry out in alarm and returned to find her face down on the floor with the mattress and bedding on top of her. Marianne was thrown out of bed once more after Richard had departed.
To Whitehouse she related that she had felt the bed tip, and something punch her and push her out. The results of what Richard saw led him to ask Lady Whitehouse to come to the Foysters' aid by sheltering them away from the Rectory for a time and, in response, the Whitehouses packed them all into a car and took them to Arthur Hall, Sudbury. Marianne in fact stayed away until July and the Rectory was not occupied at night for the rest of that June except when the Rector could find someone to stay with him at the house.
One night when Francois d'Arles was asleep there, hearing a noise that seemed to come from his room, the Rector went to look. D'Arles was asleep but pushed up against the inside of his door was a paint pot. D'Arles said he knew nothing about this paint pot, but the incident does seem rather insignificant when compared with other phenomena.
At one point during August, two investigators came to Borley and held a séance at which, initially, the contact was thought to be the spirit of a certain 'Joe Miles', who supposedly admitted to being the cause of all the trouble at the Rectory. Subsequently, however, this was discarded as being inaccurate.
Early in September, according to a letter in the Harry Price Library, the Rector was called over from the church by Marianne to find his study in a state of confusion with the desk thrown over, chairs overturned, books out of their shelves and a general mess. Pondering briefly on this last incident, it seems that whilst anybody could have easily thrown chairs and books about, only someone fairly brawny could have turned over a traditional heavy desk such as one normally finds in rectories. This would therefore seem to eliminate Marianne, whom one could perhaps initially suspect. The writer has paused to dwell on this point because of statements often made that Marianne perpetrated some of these incidents herself. More will be said about these allegations later.
Returning to the phenomena, we learn that it was also in September that the Foysters were locked out of their bedroom, whilst little Adelaide was locked in hers. A relic of St. John Vianney, aloso known as Curé d'Ars, carried by the Rector, when used in conjunction with a prayer, usually but not always resulted in the locks being released. It is sometimes suggested that occurrences like that, involving religious relics, often revolve around a strong faith in the results, which of course one might expect from a devoted churchman. Whilst some may disagree, the writer feels that this may be one of those grey areas where religious faith, psychic power and 'mind over matter' merge at the edges. It is to be hoped that in due time the scientists will finally be able to enlighten us all on this subject.
Yet another annoying incident experienced by Marianne and the first resident maid to work there since the Foysters arrived involved a saucepan of potatoes. This had been left on the stove in the kitchen, which was left empty for a few minutes. Upon returning to the kitchen, the two women found the saucepan completely empty. Other things went missing in the house, including some typewritten papers that the Rector had been working on.
On October 13, 1931 came the incident that caused the rift between Harry Price and Lionel Foyster. Together with others of his Council for Psychic Research, one of whom was a later critic, Mrs K. M. Goldney, Price visited the Rectory where the party witnessed a flying bottle and other incidents of throwing objects, and another instance of somebody being locked in a bedroom, in this case Mrs Foyster.
During this visit, there also occurred a 'wine into ink' incident, which Price thought for some time to be a trick. The party had brought with them two bottles of wine to contribute to the refreshments supplied by Mrs Foyster. When the bottle of red wine was uncorked and some was poured into a glass, it reportedly turned into ink and a glass of white wine was found to smell of Eau de Cologne. The wine remaining in the bottles was apparently quite normal. Another bell-ringing episode also took place during this visit.
A further incident reportedly manifested itself to the party's driver, Mr James Ballantyne, who not being much interested in ghosts sat downstairs and read a newspaper whilst Price and his colleagues carried out their investigation. As Ballantyne sat there, a hand appeared round the door, moving slowly up and down. He was rather surprised, and a little curious, but didn't attach any real importance to the incident, doubtless having heard in advance of the Rectory's story on the way down from London, and he continued to read his newspaper.
Upon returning to the Bull Hotel, Long Melford, the party discussed what they had seen and experienced, and Harry Price in particular came to the conclusion that embarrassing though it might be, a lot of what had occurred happened while Marianne Foyster was out of sight and, therefore, there seemed to be a strong possibility that she had been responsible for at least some of the phenomena.
Upon returning to Borley Rectory to tell the Rector of their doubts, the party incurred strong protest on the part of Marianne, whose part was also taken up on the spot by one of Price's own party, Mrs Goldney, and the Rector was said to have been furious. Poor Harry Price found himself barred from the Rectory and, to crown it all, as the group made their way back to London, their car developed clutch failure and they arrived home tired, cold and fed up.
This unfortunate state of affairs between Price and the Rector was, fortunately, salvaged after a period of time with the help of Sidney Glanville, when Harry Price began to feel that incidents he previously thought to be fraud were perhaps not so.
Phenomena continued during October 1931, the Rector being awakened early one morning by having a water jug dropped on his head. He put it down on the floor, but it was then dropped on Marianne's head. It was also during that autumn that the incident involving Adelaide and the 'monstrosity' occurred, an incident detailed earlier, and similar to the assault on Marianne outside the Blue Room. Marianne is said to have told a visitor to the Rectory, Mr G. P. L'Estrange, that the assault on her was like a blow from a man's fist.
There was further trouble on November 13 (a Friday just to add to the weirdness of the whole episode). The Rector, having to go up to London on business, asked Richard Whitehouse to come up from Sudbury to visit the folks at the Rectory. He arrived at about teatime, to be greeted by a peal of servant bell-ringing. The two children were put to bed and the rest of the household then withdrew to the kitchen, including young Katie, the maid.
As Marianne sat in a chair in one corner of the kitchen, there came a loud crash from beneath the chair. A bottle, which had appeared from heaven knows where, had exploded and there was glass all over the place. A little later as Richard Whitehouse went to sit down to some supper, the same thing happened again, beneath his chair ... Bang! ... and another mess of broken glass, which a mystified Kate proceeded to sweep up. Yet another bottle dashed itself to pieces on the floor ... Crash! ... more sweeping up for Katie.
Then there followed the sound of footsteps on the back stairs, culminating in another bottle rolling in through the door, this time without breaking. Interestingly, the cellars had once been used for storing bottles of wine, the brick bins remaining in situ to the very end. It was thought that the bottles that showered themselves all over the kitchen might well have come from the cellar.
Then the bells started up again, and this time the yard bell, outside on its bracket high up on the Rectory wall, also began to join in.
Later that evening, with the Rector long overdue from London because of his train being delayed by fog, Mrs Foyster decided to retire to bed. As she and Whitehouse began to climb the main stairs, Marianne collapsed in a heap and Richard was fortunate to grab the lamp she was carrying just in time, though it guttered and went out. Feeling his way up the stairs in the gloom, he carried Marianne up and placed her on the floor by one of the bedrooms. To his relief, the Rector came in at that point and was able to take over. It was with some relief that Dom Richard was able to depart for Sudbury and his own bed. He had had quite enough of that house for one day.
These bouts of collapsing by Marianne were rather curious and will be mentioned in greater detail later.
On December 14, Richard Whitehouse again called at the Rectory prior to going to Sheringham, Norfolk, to talk to Guy and Mabel Smith, the previous inhabitants, who had moved there after spending a short time at Long Melford. Later, the couple moved to Ashford, Kent, when Smith was appointed Rector of Sevington, and they were there in 1939 when their former home went up in flames. On the day of this further visit by Dom Richard, Lionel Foyster was in bed ill, with arthritis, and Marianne was with him in his room. Whilst all were present, a thin glass tumbler dropped at Whitehouse's feet and rolled round to stop intact. Dom Richard later expressed the view that nobody could have thrown the tumbler without breaking it.
Also during this period, the bottle smashing continued at intervals, but on another occasion Lionel Foyster's bottle of pills disappeared. Later the same day Dom Richard, who had visited the Foysters, was on his way back to Sudbury and near Rodbridge level crossing he started to put on his overcoat and must have been mystified to find Lionel's bottle of pills was in one of the pockets.
During January 1932, members of the Marks Tey Spiritualist Circle visited the Rectory and were greeted with pandemonium. A shower of bottles hurled down the back stairs had left a pile of broken glass and then the bell-ringing started again. Following the departure of the Spiritualists, however, Foyster recalled that the place seemed quite different, though minor incidents continued to occur right up until October of 1935, when the Foysters packed and left, chiefly because of the Rector's ill health. In fact, he was in such poor shape that he carried out no further clerical duties from then on.
Whether or not the Marks Tey group thought they had finally cleared the Rectory of its tricks is hard to say, but in the light of subsequent happenings we can see now that they might as well have squirted water at an elephant for the lasting effect it had.
The authors of The Haunting of Borley Rectory viewed the advent of the Marks Tey Circle as significant, and came to the conclusion that the change of atmosphere afterwards was due to Marianne having been rumbled, so to speak, thus leaving her with no worthwhile reason to continue with the supposedly fraudulent phenomena. However, like so much else in that publication, this all sounds like dramatically impressive evidence against Marianne and the Rectory in general, but what about all the accounts of the Rectory's phenomena from Dom Richard and many others.
The author points out, as did Robert J. Hastings, the nonsense in the suggestion that Whitehouse was suffering from the effects of a nervous breakdown while at Borley, which, had it been true, might well have impaired his judgement. He had at one time suffered from a nervous illness, but that was well before his interest in Borley Rectory, and he had completely recovered from it.
Two other visitors to the Rectory during the Foysters' tenancy, Sir John and Lady Braithwaite, thought that there was hysteria on Marianne's part, and more than one person since has described her as neurotic. If she was, we may never be able to prove it. Comments on the possibilities of psychic capabilities vis-à-vis Marianne, a possible answer to her bouts of collapsing, appear further on in this book. As to hysteria, Lionel Foyster argued against it as a total answer to the situation. If Marianne was hysterical at Borley, she might just as well have been so elsewhere. There is no evidence known to the writer that such events occurred elsewhere in her life and, that being the case, it does not seem possible to prove that hysteria was to blame for the Foyster phenomena. Once again, we come back to a central point about almost all the periods of tenancy at Borley Rectory, where psychic phenomena are concerned.
With the exception of the most violent disturbances and wall writings, whatever occurred during one tenancy had already happened to a considerable extent during the previous period and re-occurred during the time of the next occupancy. Certain types of phenomena, particularly the smashing of objects such as glass and china, were commonplace from the Smiths' time on. They, in turn, experienced some of the curious visual effects common during the years of the Bull family's occupancy.
The stone throwing, frequent during the Foysters' tenancy, spilled over into the war years as witness the experiences of the two Polish officers at Borley during 1943. The physical assaults had various parallels in all but the Smith period. A Bull sister had her face slapped, while Marianne was clouted in the face with some violence and a later visitor was pushed into a puddle by unseen hands. The idea that successive sets of tenants at Borley Rectory inherited from one another the supposed idea of continuing to produce fraudulent psychic phenomena becomes ridiculous when one realises just how long a period was involved.
The Rectory was completed in 1863 and its burned-out shell was not completely cleared until early 1945. From when it was first occupied, there were disturbances logged in the place, right up until the time of its final ending, a period of just about 82 years, possibly one of the longest hauntings in British history. The disturbances saw out three families, Harry Price and his team, Gregson, and the war years of dereliction.
For that reason, if for no other, the coming upon the scene of Harry Price made little if any difference to the total picture of phenomena. The result of Price's interest in them was that what had for many years been a fairly common topic of interest in Borley became a talking point throughout the country. In other words, the Rectory's oddities were already there, and all Price did was to tell the world about them.
There were other witnesses to the weird and often annoying phenomena at Borley Rectory, among whom was Mr G. P. J. L'Estrange, who in 1932 was living at Bungay in Suffolk. He visited the Rectory in January 1932, having motored over from Colchester on the day in question. Even as he got out of his car, he noticed a dim figure standing stock-still in the angle of the porch wall. As soon as he tried to approach it, the figure disappeared. L'Estrange went inside and joined the Foysters for a cup of tea, but in the midst of that came a loud crash.
The two men, going out into the corridor to see what caused the noise, found smashed crockery all over the floor. According to the Rector, L'Estrange learned of the blow to the face suffered by another guest (d'Arles, who is said to have reported being struck in the face by a ghostly form in his room when he tried to grab hold of it), an assault similar to that on Marianne.
During his stay, L'Estrange himself was faced with a similar sight in his room, and though he tried to approach the curious shape and talk to it, he felt as though something was pushing him back. He also related having to summon all his concentration to get the unpleasant phantom to disperse. It did, slowly dissolving into nothing. Other disconcerting happenings during his visit included the sound of footsteps passing right behind a settee, on which he was sitting, only to fade through an adjacent wall.
The fuller report of Mr L'Estrange's visit can be found in Price's second book, The End of Borley Rectory. Again, before jumping to the sort of erroneous conclusions about this that many of Price's critics would have us believe, it should be remembered by the reader that all this sort of harassing uproar had occurred before in front of other witnesses.
Among other incidents at this time, a bowl narrowly missed the Rector before smashing on the floor, and items from their best tea set were broken, one of the cups hurtling up the staircase. On another occasion, Mrs Foyster was in bed unwell and claimed to have woken to find the oil lamp in her room lit, though it wasn't when she dozed off, and the rest of the household were out. The Rector upon returning home went upstairs to light his wife's lamp, only to find that it was already alight.
It is worth mentioning in passing that Mrs Foyster seemed to either collapse or be taken unwell on numerous occasions at Borley, an interesting point that will be dealt with more fully later.
We turn now to the wall writings, the one major set of reported occurrences not recorded before the Foysters came, but which continued in partial form after the Foysters left, though later mainly in the form of squiggles and scrawls and not as complete or semi-complete messages.
Readers will recall that many strange incidents in the history of the site have been recorded, amongst which was that of the Rev. Guy Smith who heard a pleading voice calling 'No Carlos, Don't!'; while his wife found a skull in a cupboard. Both of these, if accepted as genuine happenings, could be taken as indicators of something rather untoward in former years - but what?
Leaving aside for the time being the claim often made that they were faked, the wall writings were unique in that they supposedly related to one entity throughout, namely the nun or 'Marie Lairre' as she has always been called since, and of whom there will be much to relate later.
The wall writings were preceded by pathetic little messages on pieces of paper that appeared about the house, all pleading for 'Marianne', supposedly wanting help in some way. One suggestion often made was that these were the work of the nun, who allegedly died a young girl and now sought assistance from another person who was also young and female, Mrs Marianne Foyster.
One of the earliest full messages appeared on the wall of the kitchen passage on the ground floor. It read: 'Marianne Light Mass Prayers'. Nearby were also found scrawled the letters 'Ma'. On the first floor, the name 'Marianne' appeared. Then, outside the bathroom was discovered: 'Marianne, Please Help Get', since thought to have been, not broken English written by a French entity, but more likely an incomplete message in English, vis: 'Please help. Get ...'.
However, possibly the most curious of all, also found by the bathroom was 'Marianne At Get Help-Entant Bottom Me', which was subsequently thought to be perhaps intended as: 'Well Tank Bottom Me', at first sight looking like incoherent nonsense, until one learns of some of the later theories about the nun and the well in the grounds.
Reproduction of a pencilled wall-message that appeared near 'The Blue Room' in Borley Rectory, in the presence of Mrs Foyster and Dom Richard Whitehouse, OSB, on June 16, 1931, and which appears on page 197 of The End of Borley Rectory.
Mrs Foyster, noticing this message, wrote beneath it 'I cannot understand. Please tell me more.' The entity replied but in such tangled form that only the following could be deciphered with any accuracy: 'Light In-Write Prayer and O'.
Another message, again outside the bathroom, simply said: 'Edwin'. Reported by Harry Price as being a friend of the Foysters, 'Edwin' was in fact Richard, later Dom Richard Whitehouse, Edwin being his middle name.
The major message read: 'Get light Mass and Prayers-Here-Tibil', or possibly 'Sibil', 'Mas by Boy'. The message curiously enough also seemed to relate to Dom Richard because the expression 'Boy' was a nickname bestowed upon him by older relatives when he was a small child. There were many interpretations of the wall writings sent to Price after the publication of his first book. For example, one person thought that 'Mas by Boy' might have been intended as 'Mass by Abbey', but if the whole business of the nun was connected with France, then that could just have easily have meant 'Mass by Abbe' or 'Abbot'. Canon Pythian Adams took a fresh look at one previously seemingly unreadable scribble and came up with 'Trompee', which means 'betrayal' or 'to mislead', and the phrase 'Repond Ici'.
During the tenancy of Harry Price, there appeared on a wall in front of watching observers, a set of upward curving lines resembling the Prince of Wales' feathers. One suggestion made was that this was intended to represent the Waldegrave crest; whilst another theory was that it was a Fleur de Lis, which in some people's eyes strengthened aspects of the French nun story.
One of a number of pencilled wall 'Appeals' to Marianne (taken from the illustration opposite page 180 in The End of Borley Rectory).
A good many people have since maintained that Marianne Foyster wrote these wall messages herself, and in fact Peter Underwood, in a letter to the Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, confirmed that when he submitted samples of the messages to a graphologist the opinion was that, except for one word, they all seemed to have originated from Mrs Foyster. The present writer raises this point later and suggests that as these wall markings also appeared in the absence of both Marianne and Harry Price, who is also accused of having written some of the messages, there is no clear proof that Marianne produced them, unless she was being used as a channel for psychic activity by entities with which Borley Rectory was supposedly soaked.
Another curious twist to the claims that Marianne Foyster wrote the wall messages was that in the Owen and Mitchell report in the SPR Journal for 1979 she stated that the wall writings puzzled her and that, furthermore, she was cross when she first discovered them, because the wall on which they first appeared had only just been redecorated and that it took her ages to clean the marks off. It is obvious now that she could not have cleaned all these off because some of them at least were still there when Sidney Glanville photographed the interior of the Rectory during Harry Price's tenancy of 1937/38. We do know that Marianne did in fact write messages on the walls quite deliberately, because she replied to one of the messages that 'appeared' by asking the originator of it to tell her more.
However, so far as the other messages are concerned, as Marianne has so often flatly contradicted her own evidence, we still have no real proof one way or the other.
The wall writings caused another row after Price's death, when his critics tried to claim that he had told Sidney Glanville to pencil the messages in so that they could be photographed, thus supposedly proving that Price was bent on mischief yet again! The truth of this has long since turned out to be rather different. Glanville undertook the photographing of samples of the wall writings as part of his extremely thorough and dedicated work at Borley Rectory and it was he who asked Price whether it might be advisable to carefully bring the writings out more clearly so that they could be photographed.
One should not forget that many of these markings had appeared during the Foyster tenancy, and that they had departed in October 1935. Sidney Glanville did not undertake his investigations until 1937 to 1938, by which time any pencil markings would have been well faded unless in total shadow. The writer would go so far as to defy anyone with an ordinary camera to get satisfactory results from pencil on plaster after such a period of time without having to go over the marks again, especially in a building without any adequate lighting.
The very bright flashbulb outfits, then in use by most photographers, might even tend to 'blind out' such faint marks on plaster. Remember also that at Borley Rectory there was no mains electricity supply that could be used for studio lighting equipment so Glanville would have had to use flash for most of the interior scenes and time exposures for the wall writings.
Whether or not we can totally accept the wall writings at Borley Rectory as evidence of paranormal activity is, and probably always will be, arguable. If they were of psychic origin, possibly through the medium of a living contact in the form of Mrs Foyster, then it is by no means certain that they referred, as has always been supposed, to the nun. If they signified anything at all, it could just as easily be something that occurred during the existence of the Rectory rather than before it was built. Whatever the truth of the matter, the wall writings, like so much else in this strange tale, could fairly be said to be one of the enigmas of Borley Rectory.
On that note, we must leave the Foyster phenomena and pass on to events that occurred over the next four years.