Enigma of Borley Rectory

by Harry Ludlum

  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 hav
e 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.

  CHAPTER 7

  The Final Pre-war Years 1936 to 1939

  With the departure of the Foysters in 1935, the use of Borley Rectory for its intended purpose was finished for good and when the next incumbent, the Rev. Alfred Clifford Henning, arrived in the district in 1936, he took up residence at the rectory at Liston, the two parishes by now having been combined.

  The Rector was instructed to make arrangements for the old Rectory to be sold, but for a time it was available for renting by a layperson. It was under these conditions that Harry Price became its tenant for a year in 1937. His preparations for extensive investigation have been recorded in a separate chapter, so we will concentrate here on some of the events that took place during the period that Price's observer team were carrying out their work.

  The first to carry out a tour of duty at the Rectory was Sidney Glanville, with his son Roger, on June 19, 1937, and they stayed until the following morning. It was during this visit that Glanville took the measurements from which floor plans were later prepared. He also installed a corundum (crystallised alumina) powder-tracing device, which if moved, normally or paranormally, would leave a clear trail, but it was apparently not touched or moved. Sidney Glanville commented, as have many others, upon the coldness and the stillness of the Rectory. During their first visit, late in the evening of that day, they heard a sharp click and later two soft taps, the origin of which they could not locate.

  On August 14, 1937, Glanville again visited the Rectory with Captain H. G. Harrison, his brother-in-law, and during a period in which they were taking photographs of some of the wall markings they discovered fresh marks on one section of a wall that they had left only shortly before. The only noises that were heard on this occasion were a sharp crack and some scrabbling noises, but much more curious on this occasion was the discovery that somebody had turned over part of the cats' cemetery, but for what reason heaven only knows!

  On Saturday, August 28, 1937, Sidney and Roger Glanville, with Captain Harrison and Squadron Leader Horniman visited the Rectory and stayed overnight. They reported hearing bumps and thuds, which they could not locate. Also during this visit, 'light tripping footsteps' were reported to have been heard, and this was later to cause trouble when the Borley Rectory story came under the scrutiny of Messrs Dingwall, Goldney and Hall.

  When the Glanvilles, father and son, went down to Borley on September 18, 1937, they heard two taps that seemed to come from the dining room wall.

  A curious occurrence befell a friend of Sq. Ldr Horniman during a visit to the Rectory at this time, in that when he passed across the first floor landing outside the Blue Room he became bitterly cold. Mark Kerr-Pearse, who was on duty at the Rectory at the same time, felt the man's hands and confirmed that they were abnormally cold. It was this spot on the landing at which Guy Smith had heard whispering voices and it was also here that Marianne had been struck in the face.

  Realising the significance of this spot, Glanville drew a small pencilled cross on the floor. He, with his son and Doctor H. F. Bellamy, then left the building, but before doing so they placed a tobacco tin on one of the downstairs mantelpieces as a control object. When they returned, the tin was found right on top of Glanville's little pencilled cross on the floor of the upstairs landing, yet there had been nobody in the Rectory in the interim period.

  On October 28, 1937, the Glanvilles and Mr Alan Cuthbert stayed overnight in the Rectory, and during that time, whilst Cuthbert was asleep in the library, the Glanvilles and Mark Kerr-Pearse, who was again on duty, all heard some heavy muffled footsteps crossing the hall. It was not Alan Cuthbert, because he was still fast asleep in the library.

  Another incident to cause a row in later years occurred on November 20, 1937, in the presence of Messrs Glanville and son, Harrison and Dr H. F. Bellamy. At about 8.25 pm that evening, whilst in the library, used as a base room, all noticed that the window blind was moving at the sides, as though a draught was moving it. Both doors on to the verandah and the hall doors were shut. To try to find out what was moving the blind, they resorted to puffing cigarette smoke into the narrow gap between the blind and the window, to see if it would disperse in any draught that might be present. The smoke did not disperse, indicating that, firstly there wasn't a draught, and that secondly the blind had apparently moved inexplicably.

 
About this time, the exterior of the Rectory was repainted and among the men engaged on this work was a foreman painter, Mr Hardy. He had often carried out work at the Rectory and on one occasion was puzzled to see rising from the lawn a coil of smoke for which there appeared to be no sensible cause.

  Some doubting Thomases have since scornfully dismissed the occurrence as the sighting of a cloud of gnats, but the idea that a country-born man like Hardy (who lived in Borley all his life) couldn't tell the difference between gnats and smoke is untenable. Hardy had a son, aged about 19 at the time of the Glanville visits to the Rectory, and he reported that on passing the church one evening after work he heard chanting coming from within, at a time when the church was locked up for the night. He did not feel inclined to stop and take a look.

  On March 12, 1938, occurrences were limited to the discovery of an odd, sticky sort of substance on the floor of the chapel in between rounds of inspection, and a sound like that of a chair being dragged across the floor.

  Having given some specific examples, with times, of what was experienced by various observers; we will now take a look at a resumé of the happenings during the period of Price's tenancy, with the exception of the séances, which will be looked at separately.