Enigma of Borley Rectory

by Harry Ludlum

  For my part I feel fairly certain that odd things went on in Borley Rectory; that neither Price nor his detractors gave a wholly truthful account of the case; and that the true facts will never be known.

  I am perhaps slightly biased against Price, having often discussed him with the late Dr Dingwall, who knew him well. There can be no doubt that Price was (a) a brilliant writer, whose talent I envy, and (b) far more interested in self-promotion than in serious psychical research. As a member of the SPR, I feel that Price let the side down.

  On the other hand, I also feel sympathy with him. It has all happened to me. When Maurice Grosse and I spent more than a year in 1977-8 on the Enfield poltergeist case, we felt we were making history by being the first psychic researchers to get in on the start of a case of this kind and stick with it until the finish, as we did.

  We did not expect Nobel Prizes, but we thought at least that our work would be received with rather more enthusiasm than it was, to put it politely. We both learned that the sure way to become very unpopular in psychic circles is to present uncompromisingly positive evidence for the subject we are supposed to be researching.

  Borley was, I think, haunted. I only wish I could be sure.'

  In a way, Mr Playfair is asking the same question as has already been asked so many times before: Did Price fake at Borley, and if so, how much did he invent, and how much was true?

  On the strength of the Hastings' Report alone, there really is no proof that Price did commit fraud over the matter of Borley Rectory.

  Another interesting point raised by Mr Playfair is Price's thirst for publicity. It was this aspect of Price's long and controversial career that earned him so many brickbats, but as the writer pondered in a letter to Mr Playfair, how much of this was really self-centred on Price's part, and how much of it was allied to Price's aim of trying to attract general public interest in psychic research as a principle?

  There is much evidence to suggest that Price became infuriated with the obstinacy of the psychic research 'establishment' of the day, and judging from the experience of Mr Playfair and his colleague, little has changed since Price's time, so far as 'establishment' attitudes are concerned.

  In replying to Mr Playfair, I made the following observation: 'That when a man like Price comes along with a case like Borley, or Helen Duncan or Rudi Schneider, there is a great deal of sour grapes on the part of those who profess to be criticising such cases on their merits, when what they are really trying to say is that they wish they could have got there first!'

  Price has been posthumously hounded over Borley Rectory for some 30 years, if we take the 1956 attack as a starting point, and the record of the rest of the psychic research establishment where Borley is concerned is, with some exceptions, not particularly credible.

  During my researches I have come across one item in particular, concerning the 1956 allegations against Price, which tells very much in Price's favour. Just before the 1956 report was due to be published, a gentleman obviously aware of the line the report was going to take, wrote in a psychic periodical, Tomorrow Magazine, concerning the then forthcoming attack on Price.

  The article was by Nandor Fodor, and in it he denounced the idea that Price's involvement in the Borley episode was fraudulent, on the basis of his own personal knowledge of Price's work and methods. The telling point was that far from being a close friend of Price, and therefore trying to back him up out of a sense of loyalty, Fodor stated quite bluntly that he couldn't stand Price 'as a person'.

  In my opinion much of the criticism against Price from various quarters was made because these critics didn't like him. Therefore Fodor's contribution to the row seems to have demonstrated the principle that a defence of the work of a person one disliked was of rather more value than an attack on the work of a person one disliked!

  Considering the results of the Hastings' Report of 1969, which largely cleared Price of most of the allegations against him, Nandor Fodor's defence of Price's handling of Borley Rectory proved to be prophetic.

  We pass now to an excellent appraisal of the Borley case and Price's role in it, supplied by Dr Vernon Harrison, a member of the SPR. In my opinion Dr Harrison encapsulates the very essence of Price at Borley simply and even-handedly. He writes as follows:

  'I cannot say that I knew Price. He was 31 years my senior and at the time of the Borley investigations I was still a student. However, I did meet him, speak to him and hear him speak on a number of occasions at pre-war meetings of the Ghost Club from the beginning of 1937 until the 'Blitz' put an end to further meetings.

  Price was not a good speaker, but he was an enthusiastic chairman who did not attempt to dominate the discussion. He engaged good and often well-known speakers, and the meetings over which he presided were not only socially enjoyable, they were also highly informative. From them I learned a great deal.

  Price was not a trained scientist. He was a businessman, journalist and publicist by inclination, and an entrepreneur. He loved a good story; and in the narration of such stories, scientific exactitude could suffer. He could be tetchy and vindictive. He could jump to false conclusions. However, these defects do not, in my experience, make him unique among successful businessmen.

  On the credit side, his knowledge of psychical research, magic and sleight of hand was formidable, he had collected one of the finest libraries on these subjects to be found anywhere, and he brought to his studies unbounded energy and enthusiasm.

  He was one of the few doing experimental work on physical mediums with the most up-to-date techniques available, at a time when most psychical researchers were content to sit back and criticise.

  I do not think that Price invented the Borley phenomena for the purpose of publicity. The records show that there were disturbances at Borley long before Price became interested in the case, and they continued after his death. Nor do I find very credible the claim that Price produced some of the phenomena himself.

  At pre-war meetings of the Ghost Club I had an opportunity of speaking to a few of the observers who had been present at the Borley vigils and they told me from their experience that it was a 'strange place'. Therefore I am of the opinion that Price presented the Borley case in good faith, though his accounts may not be wholly accurate.

  Price had Borley under observation for about a year, and looking back now one can point to lost opportunities and questions left unanswered. However, it is important to bear in mind first that Price did more than most of his contemporaries and that without his efforts, it is unlikely that anyone would have heard of Borley, and secondly there are limits to what can be asked of voluntary, unpaid investigators working at their own expense. Criticism is cheap and easy. Investigation is not.'

  It is interesting to note Dr Harrison's remark that Price had Borley under observation for about a year, which is of course quite correct in itself. At the same time, it reminds one that the key to so much of the criticism of Price over the matter of Borley Rectory lies in the fact that so many of his critics forget that the observer team period was only one part of an overall investigation by Harry Price that lasted some 17 years or so. Therefore, to judge Price solely by that one year from 1937 to 1938 is to do him a disservice, whatever one thinks of the Borley case as a whole.

  From Dr Vernon Harrison, we pass on now to the view of another member of the SPR, Andrew MacKenzie. Mr MacKenzie generally takes the opposing view of Price at Borley, and he writes as follows:

  'In my opinion, after carrying out the investigation of literally hundreds of spontaneous cases, including many of hauntings, Borley Rectory provides an example of how an investigation should not be carried out.

  Mr Price issued an invitation to investigators to come to the Rectory and report their findings to him. I have in front of me as I write a copy of his Instructions for Observers with, under the phrase, "Possible phenomena which may be experienced", a list of such phenomena as bell-ringing, movement of objects, footsteps, forms or apparitions, raps or knocks, perfumes, ligh
ts, apports, disappearances, and thermal variations.

  Such a list could have the effect of suggesting to the visitor that happenings of the kind listed could be expected and, as a result of suggestion, they might well be reported by anyone of a nervous disposition.

  It would have been far better, in my opinion, to have asked the investigator to report anything of an unusual nature, without specifying what form it might take. Critics of spontaneous cases are inclined to dismiss accounts of hauntings on the grounds that the sights and sounds experienced are the results of suggestion.

  As Dr (now Professor) D. J. West pointed out in Psychical Research Today (London, 1954) "Once a place has achieved a really good reputation for haunting, more and more susceptible persons will see things there, and odd events and coincidences that would in the normal way pass unnoticed and will be attributed to ghosts!" Incidentally, Dr West, a former experimental research officer to The Society for Psychical Research, said in the book from which I have just quoted that Mr Price's books on Borley Rectory were "highly misleading" (page 123).

  For some 40 years Professor F. J. M. Stratton, a noted astronomer who was President of the SPR from 1953 to 1955, was keenly interested in stories of alleged happenings at Abbey House, Abbey Road, Cambridge.

  After his death in 1961, his file on Abbey House was passed to the Society, with a few small additions by Professor C. D. Broad. Stratton believed that publication of the stories about Abbey House might contaminate the testimony of possible future witnesses and the first reliable report of the haunting, by Dr Alan Gauld, did not appear until 1972. It is a great pity that Harry Price did not observe Professor Stratton's reticence while the haunting of Borley Rectory, if such it was, was in progress.'

  Once again, Price is being criticised on the basis of only one period in his overall Borley career, whereas he should be judged on the whole case, beginning with his first period of involvement that began in June 1929. The matter of the book of instructions for his team of observers is, and probably always will be, open to question, as I explained in an earlier chapter.

  Mr MacKenzie's point about pre-suggestion is fair enough, and yet if one asked a team of investigators to simply report 'anything of an unusual nature', one can easily foresee the investigators' response, 'What exactly are we supposed to be looking for?'

  I would suggest that failure to give the investigators any specific information as to what was to be watched or listened for could hamper the effectiveness of the investigation just as much as to give too much information.

  In addition, it does seem that in the case of the rota of observers assigned to Borley Rectory, to give them no specific prior information would be, to some extent, a misjudgement of their potential objectivity. Those who worked at Borley on Price's behalf were not of a particularly gullible or unquestioning disposition, far from it; one needs only to look at the work of such men such as Sidney Glanville to see that!

  Price's team were by no means unanimous in a belief in the Rectory's validity as a haunted house. The writer feels he must echo Dr Harrison's point that Price, whatever one might think of the way in which he administered the investigations, was actually getting on with the job, while so many others just sat back and criticised!

  In the last analysis, surely it must come down to a matter of individual judgement on the part of an organising investigator. It is very easy to be wise after the event!

  Another point made by Mr MacKenzie is also open to debate, and that is the contention that Harry Price's Borley books were very misleading. From a purely academic point of view, one can criticise some aspects of the way Price presented the Borley case in his books, but some may feel in the light of Robert Hastings' assessment of the case that to call them highly misleading is slightly unjust.

  I must reiterate one very important point made by Hastings, namely that the case for the hauntings at Borley Rectory derived not from Price's books but his files! Those files depended very largely on others for their content, and in that respect Price was a collector of data, not the producer of it. What he did produce was his assessment of what that data revealed.

  We turn now to an assessment of the Borley Rectory story from the man who has become, in my opinion, Harry Price's natural successor in the long history of Borley investigations. Peter Underwood has held a continual interest in the case since the 1940s. Mr Underwood has contributed some notes extracted from two of his own publications, The Ghost Hunters and Hauntings.

  'In 1929 Harry Price paid his first visit to Borley Rectory - already famous as "The most haunted house in England". The Borley case has fascinated many people, it fascinated Price and he never ceased to be interested in the case for the rest of his life.

  At one period he organised a rota of investigators, "responsible, critical and unbiased"; he took reams of notes, wrote hundreds of letters, collected scores of letters, plans and miscellanea connected with the haunted rectory and its five successive incumbents and their families, all of whom asserted that they heard, saw and felt things they could not explain.

  Eight years after his death, Price's published findings on the case were attacked by three members of the SPR; subsequently the Society approved a grant to another member who produced a report that completely vindicated Price, but such is the nature of psychical researchers that the wrangling goes on to this day.

  The ghosts of Borley seem to either fascinate or repel most of those who study the case and for every person who seeks to dismiss the ghosts for one reason or another, there are a thousand who avidly read the books, study the evidence, discuss the pros and cons and, as likely as not, visit the site with notebook and camera, seeking to rebuild in their minds the gloomy, redbrick house on the hill that seems to have been the scene of much human misery and some human happiness and to have housed so many strange people that no one could find peace there.

  More than 40 years have passed since I first visited Borley, spending a night on the site where the great cellars still gaped at the wide skies and the outline of the vanished rectory was still easily discernible.

  Since then I have lost count of my visits - to carry out research and investigation, to visit successive owners of the site who had become friends, to call on the various incumbents or local people I had come to know, to make a film or take part in a television or radio programme, to lead a party of Ghost Club members, or simply to enjoy the peace of this pleasant corner of Essex with its delightful church - and always there are the inevitable memories of the past, the intrigue and the ghosts.

  Over the years since 1945 I have been fortunate enough to have personally contacted practically every person who has been connected with the Borley hauntings including the surviving Bulls and Foysters, the Hennings, the Turners, Edwin Whitehouse, the Glanvilles, Mollie Goldney, Eric John Dingwall, Robert Hastings, Trevor Hall, John Pythian Adams, Constance Price, the Paynes, Mrs Mabel Smith, Marianne Foyster (her last letter to me is dated September 15, 1986) and many more.

  My extensive files on this strange case (including much confidential material) and the hundreds of photographs in my possession must be unique and thought provoking for the greatest sceptic.

  What is the answer to the mysteries of Borley? Some of the hundreds of reports of curious happenings can certainly be dismissed, perhaps some of the recorded noises have perfectly normal explanations; perhaps some of the alleged sightings of the ghost nun are the result of inaccurate observation, imagination or wishful thinking.

  But it does seem to me that of all the celebrated cases of haunting that are available for study this remarkable and lengthy story has so many unanswerable problems, innumerable puzzles and strange incidents reported by responsible, independent, unbiased, sane and sensible witnesses that it stands alone in the annals of psychical research as a continuing problem for the materialist and an exciting challenge for the psychical researcher.'

  Peter Underwood's view of the Borley case echoes many people's thoughts on the subject, and it also confirms Mr A. H. Wesen
craft's contention that the story cannot just be written off as a journalistic stunt.

  Moreover, the reader should note that this view of Borley and its extraordinary rectory is put forward by a man who has stated that in his view 98 per cent of supposedly paranormal phenomena have a mundane origin, and that he has spent much of his life examining the two per cent that do not!

  Borley Rectory, in spite of all the abuse heaped on its history by the critics, is in my view, very much part of that undismissable two per cent!

  Now, to conclude this chapter of contemporaries and their views, we turn finally to Mr Richard Lee van den Daele, of Yorkshire, who is to be thanked for his valuable contributions to the unearthing of the probable truth concerning Captain Gregson and the fire.

  He has been researching the writings of Harry Price for some time, from a librarian's side of the fence, and like almost all of us who become involved with research into the Borley story, he has become fascinated by the episode and its many ramifications. He writes as follows:

  'In my opinion, Harry Price's years of painstaking work on the haunting of Borley Rectory was undone in a frenzied and shameful free-for-all following his untimely death in 1948.

  Critics, too unsure of their facts to tackle Price while he was still in a position to sue them, crept out of the woodwork en masse to malign and attempt to discredit his decade of diligent work. From literary rivals to scurrilous journalists, all had their knives out for him and especially for the jewel in his crown - the Haunting of Borley Rectory.

  But perhaps Price's most ardent supporter over the years has turned out to be Borley itself. It doesn’t seem to matter how much invective critics pour on the story - it gets right back up and regains its rightful place amongst Britain's truly fascinating hauntings.