Body & Soul0 min ago
Has anyone heard of........
Hi all,
Just wondered if anyone has heard of a place called Borley(spelling?)Rectory? It was meant to be the most haunted place in Britain, i do know that it had a fire but don't know much else after that,
thanks
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Sorry - this is better - http://www.mysteriousbritain.co.uk/hauntings/borley.html
The only thing you need to read about Borley Rectory is a marvellous book called The Widow of Borley by Robert Wood (Duckworth 1992). The author was born and bred in that part of Suffolk and tells the story from the very beginning, explaining that the early 'hauntings' were bog-standard legends that applied to all large gloomy houses in that area.
The real fun started with the arrival of the Rev Lionel and Mrs Marrianne Foyster, a couple so astonishing that had a novelist invented them he or she would have been drummed out of the Writers' Circle fior exaggeration.
Sorry, I didn't know that there was a limit on words in this system. Anyway, Lionel was a weirdo (obvious) and a paedophile (not proven but likely). She was a nymphomaniac, a liar, a cheat, a thief, a blackmailer and a bigamist (all proved) and possibly a murderer (not proved). They started that frantic poltergeist activity which gave Borley its ghostly reputation purely so that Lionel could write a book (never published) about it. She would bring a lover home and then tell strangers that he was her husband and that her real husband was her father!
They were forced to stop the nonsense in the end (using the face-saver of an 'exorcism')by local opinion which was derisive. They then left, after which Marianne led an even more astonishing life culminating in her going to the USA as a GI bride!
Meanwhile Harry Price, ghost debunker turned ghost-inventor, took over the Rectory, having told a friend that there was more money in inventing ghosts than there was in exposing them. He proved this, having resurrercted the 'hauntings' , by publishing two well-known books called The Most Haunted House in England and The End of Borley Rectory. In the latter he tells of how the Rectory was burnt down but doesn't tell us (as Wood does) that it was arson committed by the then owner, a retired RAF Officer, for the insurance.
The book is fascinating for its insight into the most extraordinary people involved in the fraud, rather than the 'hauntings' which were plainly nonsense.
Read it. If you can't get a copy, I'll lend you mine.
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