Seance held in haunted house.
Mysterious rappings in the rectory of Borley.
‘Former Rector’.
How questions were asked and answered.
From our special correspondent.
Long Melford, Friday.
An informal seance at the “haunted” Borley rectory as a preliminary to an orthodox one with a medium produced astonishing results. This took place in the presence of the rector and his wife, Mr Harry Price, and Miss Lucy Kaye, director and secretary of the National Laboratory of Psychical Research, repectively, and myself. Mysterious replies to our questions were given by means of one, two or three raps on the back of a mirror in the room. Light in the room made no difference. The replies came clearly and distinctly. At times we lit the lamp and sat around the mirror with everybody in the room in full sight, but there was no hesitation about the answers.
The only satisfactory feature was our inability to get a compete message by spelling out the alphabet; the “spirit” was either a bad scholar or was speaking in Hindustani. Our first attempts were naturally to ascertain the identity of the rapper. We asked if it were the nun in the old legend or oneof th egrooms, and a single rap denoting “no” was the reply. Then I suggested to Mr Price that he should ask whether it were the Rev. H. Bull, the late rector. I had hardly finished the name when three hurried taps came on the mirror, which meant an emphatic “yes”.
The following dialogue then took place, sometimes with the lamp lit, sometimes in the darkness: “Is it your footsteps one heard in this house?” – “Yes.” Do you wish to worry or annoy anybody here? – No. Do you object to anybody now living in th ehouse? – No. Do you merely wish to attract attention? – Yes. Are you worrying about something that you should have done when you were alive? – No. If we had a medium here, do you think you could tell us what is the matter? – Yes.
Here followed a series of questions dealing with the late Mr Bull’s private affairs, to which no answer at all was received. The whole proceeding was entirely informal, and we even smoked and chatted as if we were in the rectory drawing-room instead of the room that is supposed to be haunted.
The worst part about these “manifestations,” from the rector’s point of view, is that Borley is fast becoming a show place for the whole of Suffolk and Essex. Crowds of visitors arrive on foot and by motor-car to see the alleged haunted house.
Daily Mirror, 15th June 1929.
Weird Rappings and Other Mysterious Manifestations.
By Claud Golding.
Strange psychic manifestations are being reported from all parts of the country. The poltergeists, having had a nice rest, are getting busy again. Of course, there are one or two old-timers who never seem to leave the spook business. One in Suffolk has been scaring parsons for 50 years. Generally speaking, however, they have their day and cease to be; or they have a rest where spooks rest, and come back again to operate in another sphere.
Lately, as if by mutual arrangement, they have been making a concerted assault. Mr Harry Price, honorary secretary of the University of London Council for Psychical Investigations, thinks things are looking up. “I have never had such a time,” he told me. “I am getting letters from all over the British Isles asking me to investigate strange occurrences. My most important ones at the moment are two in Scotland, one in the Midlands, and one in the Lake District. He forgot to mention the ghost which is driving out lodgers in Golders Green and producing organ effects on the piano. There is still another at Blackpool, where the police had to be called in last week. Despite its age – it is now over 50 years old – the spook haunting a Suffolk rectory is extraordinarily virile; in fact, it has all the tricks and is learning more.
The rectory was built in 1865 on the foundations of a 13th century monastery. Nothing could be better for a poltergeist. In the course of 50 years it has seen a number of parsons out with their furniture. There is a legend that in monasterial days a monk forgot his vows and eloped with a nun. Leaving the neighbourhood in a black coach, the couple were chased and caught. The monk was hanged and the nun walled up alive in the nunnery to encourage the others.
It was about 20 years before this poltergeist found such a favourable place to pitch its tent. He began in a modest way, or maybe he sent an inexperienced assistant, for the outset the manifestations were elementary – merely the miasmic figure of a nun who appeared and disappeared, causing nothing but frights to the occupants of the house.
In 1929 a new rector spent £200 and put the property in order. Stayed only a few weeks. The nun appeared. There were strange lights in the garden. A tile crashed through the verandah roof, just missing the investigators. The house bells rang, stones were flung at the windows. In a former rector’s time, horse’s hoofs rattled on the empty roadway and the famous black coach passed across the lawn.
In 1930 another rector arrived. He stuck it for five years. Footsteps were heard in the house. There were certain smells, one “wonderfully delicate,” an odour of cooking at midnight. Books flew about, disconnected bells rang, and one night the rector’s wife was struck under the eye. One night the head of a hammer picked itself up and flew about.
The rector tried to exorcise the ghost. In the midst of the ceremony a large stone struck his wife on the shoulder. There was a mysterious fire in the skirting board of a disused bedroom and one day while the rector’s wife was ill in bed she was thrown to the floor with the mattress on top of her.
Once the rector got pepper in his eyes, on another occasion his wife was struck on the forehead with a hair brush. This poltergeist has done enough to deserve a book all to himself. It will contain a record of the researches at the rectory.
Senseless are the manifestations of the poltergeist. They break out suddenly and unexpectedly. They often stop just as suddenly. A young person is generally the epicentre, as it were, so that the boy or girl is suspected of the racket. But juvenile mischievousness cannot be the explanation in all cases.
[…]
Yorkshire Evening Post, 22nd August 1938.