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Chapter 1: What is the history behind Borley Rectory?
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Hello, how are you? Thanks for all of your recent messages on our cold cases. In just a couple of weeks time we're going to be doing a huge case update episode, going through all of your theories and answering all your questions as we look back at every single story that we've covered. But right now we are going to climax this series in style with a two-part investigation that's got everything.
Ghostly nuns, violent poltergeist activity, headless horsemen riding a spectral carriage and a stakeout by the greatest ghost hunter of his age. It has been called the most haunted house in England. It is, of course... Borley Rectory. But can we separate the reality of Borley from the legend that has grown up around it?
Is this really the greatest haunted house or one of the most extensive paranormal hoaxes ever concocted? We're going to be torn in both directions. Buckle up as we dive into one of the most notorious hauntings in world history. I'm Danny Robbins and this... is uncanny cold cases.
What has passed comes again In the cold where we lay Secret still remains Secret still remains
Welcome to the final investigation of this series. It is a two-parter because it doesn't get any bigger than this one. The story of Borley Rectory, much like many of its apparent inhabitants, refuses to die. But over the years, this case has stirred up as much controversy as it has paranormal intrigue. To try and make sense of it now, I am joined by two of the greatest ghost hunters of our age.
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Chapter 2: Who was Harry Price and what was his role in the Borley Rectory investigation?
For Team Skeptic, forensic psychologist Dr Kieran O'Keefe, and for Team Believer, writer and parapsychologist Evelyn Hollow. Evelyn, what a case we have here. It's hard to overstate the impact of this, isn't it? It's the stadium-filling legacy act of the paranormal.
It is. I think if you were to stop anybody on the streets of Britain and say, what is the definitive haunted house story, they would say Boreley Rectory. And it was investigated by Harry Price, who is arguably the most famous ghost hunter of all time. He's an incredibly weird and interesting character. He wrote several books about Boreley Rectory. They were the Da Vinci Code of their time.
Totally. And Harry Price is going to loom large in this case, isn't he, Kieran? I know he's a real inspiration for you. For people less familiar with him, just contextualise him for us. His impact, his status within the paranormal world.
Yeah, definitely. He used a scientific method for ghost hunting and that impacts on what we do today. But although he was an inspiration for me, he was also hugely impactful in populising the paranormal. And I'm sorry, Danny, but if Harry Price were alive today, he would be sitting where you would be sitting right now, because ultimately he was the uncanny of the day.
OK, well, let's get this paranormal party started. We're going to travel back to the 12th of June, 1929, as Harry Price and his secretary, Lucy Kay, set off by road for his first visit to Borley. A blink and you'll miss it village on the Essex-Suffolk border in the east of England.
Lucy, 27, blonde and stylish, contrasts with 48-year-old Harry, bald, hollow-eyed and constantly puffing away on his pipe. It's a 60-mile drive from London and they've packed everything they will need for their investigation. Cameras, a thermometer, notebooks, torches and a bottle of brandy for emergencies. They have heard stories about the goings-on in Borley that suggest they may need it.
But right now, they're slightly lost, so they stop to ask a local for directions to the rectory. Oh, he says, looking these foolhardy strangers up and down, you mean the most haunted house in England? Because rumours have been flying around about Borley Rectory for decades by this point. It was built in 1863 by the Reverend Henry Bull, a clergyman from an impressively wealthy family.
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Chapter 3: What paranormal activities were reported at Borley Rectory?
But a young carpenter working on the build drowned during a lunchtime swim nearby, and the rectory was said to be cursed even before it was finished. Over the years, further extensions have made the house Warren-like, full of creaking floorboards and shadowy passageways. Henry Bull had 14 children and a large retinue of servants, but none of them ever felt comfortable there.
Stories circulate of odd things seen and heard, until in 1892, Henry Bull dies, aged just 59, and is succeeded at the parish by his eldest son, Harry Bull, a sporty man fond of amateur boxing. He lives there with his sisters and on a sunny afternoon in July 1900, three of those Ball sisters are returning from a tennis party. Entering the garden, one of them stops and points.
Look, there's a nun walking there. But there's something that feels both sinister and unreal about this dark figure who drifts down the pathway towards them, and the sisters flee to the house in fear. They're met by a braver sister, Dodie, who goes out to confront the visitor, but as she does so, the nun disappears in front of her.
Holy Mother Superior, and it isn't long before others see this seemingly phantom bride of Christ. A housemaid sees her dematerialise at the garden gate and is so terrified she faints. The church organist sees her standing at the front door of the rectory waiting to enter. The Balsisters spot her peering out of her bedroom window.
As the stories start to spread, the pathway where the nun appears becomes known as Nun's Walk. And it's not the only odd activity going on. Inside the house, servant spells ring by themselves from empty rooms, and Reverend Harry Bull claims to see a ghostly horse and carriage ride by the house at night, driven by two headless men. The legend of Borley Rectory has very much begun.
Kieran, we have only just dipped our toes in and already we've got phantom nuns, headless horsemen. Look at these things with our 21st century eyes. They feel almost like cliches, don't they, in a ghost story. But is that because Borley got so famous? This is like the original tune that all ghost stories since have been cover versions or remixes of.
Yeah, I think it is. These are real tropes within ghost stories. But not only that, there are elements here that are really interesting. The phantom carriage, for example, is a precursor to kind of road ghosts. And that, of course, is a feature, and we've talked about that.
That's a really interesting way of looking at it. The idea of a haunted vehicle is a fascinating one.
It is.
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Chapter 4: How did the Bull family experience life at Borley Rectory?
It really is. But also the nun. I love the idea of a nun. We see that as a trope that pops up all the time.
Absolutely. And Hollywood horror films. I mean, terrifyingly so that they filmed the nun from The Conjuring.
Exactly. And here we have what I feel like is kind of the origin of that, you know, an amazing story that features through a number of different accounts and has had such an impact that we see it so often now.
Totally. And I guess, you know, Evelyn, we think of a Victorian house as being an old place, but this is a new build back then, isn't it? So from a team believer point of view, if it's a new house, where is the haunting coming from?
That's the big question. So this structure was built in 1862. There was a previous structure on the grounds that had burnt down during a fire. Now, we know that there's no convent on the ground, so why is there a nun? But it is, after all, a rectory. It is connected to a church, so who's to say that, you know, a nun or nuns, plural, haven't visited?
And then the next question is, why the carriage being pulled by headless horsemen? That's the sort of thing we would expect to see in old Irish mythology. You have the Dullahan, who is the headless horseman. When we think of things like Sleepy Hollow, the Johnny Depp film, with the headless horseman, that's where that comes from.
It's not something we would expect to see in this era in this part of England.
Sleepy Hollow, obviously the second most famous hollow now after Evelyn as well.
After me, after me.
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Chapter 5: What evidence exists regarding the haunting claims at Borley Rectory?
You know, we know that, for example, there would have been potentially kind of toxic elements to this house. And by toxic, I mean we potentially have arsenic in the wallpaper. We have lead paint.
So you should not lick those walls.
No. Definitely don't lick the walls. We're dealing with toxins here that, you know, repeated exposure to them, or like you say, ingesting of them, could have a real influence. They're neurotoxins. They can affect our brain. But also we've got to think about the way that this building has been built, where it's placed. It's exposed. It's on a slope going into a valley.
And they've made sure there are no gaps at all in the building. And because of that, there is no flexibility whatsoever. And therefore, you're going to get groans, you're going to get creaking, you're going to get really anomalous sounds that you can't place. But actually, they're coming from the building because the changes in temperature that happen can affect it.
Wow, I feel like I'm on paranormal grand designs here.
This is a level of detail I hadn't expected. Evelyn, is the environment an important factor here?
Always. But there are lots of incidents in this case that can't be explained simply by groaning noises or the structure of the house. We've got that a visiting friend claimed to have seen a phantom carriage sweep down the adjoining lane.
OK, so that's the carriage again then?
One of Henry's daughters saw a man standing by her bed and she was so scared that she insisted in sharing a bed with her sister every single night from then on. We've also got that every night afterwards, between 9 and 10 o'clock at night, the girls would always hear three raps on their bedroom door and when they opened it... nobody would be there.
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Chapter 6: What theories explain the supernatural occurrences at Borley Rectory?
The alleged paranormal activity becomes their norm. The nun and the phantom carriage, odd fixtures that they tolerate. But then, in 1911, at the age of nearly 50, Harry shocks everyone by announcing that he is getting married. His new bride, Ivy, moves into the rectory and boots out Harry's unmarried sisters who reluctantly move to the nearby village.
But Harry and Ivy's marriage is not a happy one, and they constantly quarrel, right up to the moment when, in 1927, Harry dies in his sleep, aged 64. The official cause of death is heart disease and bronchitis. But Harry's sisters, who, as you can imagine, are not big fans of Ivy, suspect that she had a hand in it. Poison Ivy, indeed.
Once the funeral is over, Ivy moves to London and the rectory sits empty. It has now acquired such a reputation, thanks to the supposedly spectral apparitions and the untimely deaths of both Henry and Harry Bull, that the church cannot easily find enough a vicar to take it over. And it sits empty for a long time, until the Reverend Eric Smith walks into the picture.
Eric has just moved to England from India, and he's desperate for his own parish. He's surprised that people aren't competing to take up the post at Borley. But soon... He will discover why. He and his wife Mabel arrive at the rectory along with a maid that they bring with them from London. On only their third day in Borley, the maid decides to head off for a bike ride around the village.
But minutes later, she is back, hysterical and covered in mud. She says that she has seen a nun by the front gate and that she could see right through her. The smiths try and reassure the maid. She must have imagined it. But the girl is so terrified, she hands in her notice that day and returns to London. Eric and Mabel are disappointed in her. They're well-travelled, well-educated people.
They dismiss her fears as common superstition. There is no such thing as ghosts, right? But they've got a problem now. No maid. And in the time since Harry's death and Ivy moving out, the rectory has fallen into a terrible state. It's dirty, disgusting, infested with rats and death beetles.
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Chapter 7: How did the media influence the perception of Borley Rectory?
So Mabel rolls her sleeves up and gets tidying. Whilst cleaning out a cupboard in the rectory's library, she discovers a pile of rubbish. And amongst it... A human skull, later identified as a young woman. And then, in the cellar, amidst some empty wine bottles, she finds a small bottle labelled poison. It's not a great start, but things soon get worse.
At night, she and Eric hear heavy, muffled footsteps outside their bedroom. One afternoon, whilst alone, Eric hears whispering above him as he walks from the master bedroom onto the landing. The whispers seem to follow him. Suspecting a prank played by some locals who've broken in, he waits on the landing, armed with a hockey stick.
The whispering begins again, but when he rushes out swinging, no one is there. One evening, alone in the house, Mabel hears the gate open. She looks out and sees what appears to be two headlamps and the outline of a carriage in the drive, though it makes no sound on the gravel. And this is not the only thing that sounds horribly reminiscent of what the Bull family experienced.
Because those old servants' bells start ringing constantly throughout the house. In frustration, Eric cuts many of the wires, yet the bells continue to sound. After just six months at Bally Rectory, worn down, Eric and Mabel no longer think that their maid was crazy for running away. In fact, that is what they try to do now.
asking the church authorities if they can move parish, but their request is denied. Desperate, they get in touch with the Daily Mirror newspaper to ask for help. The paper's editor phones the offices of the National Laboratory of Psychical Research, Harry Price's organisation, famed for exposing fake mediums and investigating alleged tauntings. It is time for Harry Price to get involved.
The plot thickens. Evelyn, 20 years Harry Bull and his sisters live in this house, experiencing phenomena all that time. That's a long time to be haunted.
It absolutely is. I think the thing is that the Bulls are sort of accepting of it. I think Harry in particular, he's used to the nun. He's interested in the supernatural. If anything, he probably has some sort of enjoyment in it.
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Chapter 8: What conclusions can be drawn from the investigation of Borley Rectory?
Harry did, however, joke to a pupil that if after his death... He didn't approve of the rector who succeeded him. He would come back as a poltergeist and he would pelt them with mothballs, which is a very specific detail.
Yeah, really interesting detail. It's so specific. It is. It really does feel like we are developing the Agatha Christie territory here, doesn't it? We've got Harry actually dying and people suspecting that it might be at the hands of his wife, Ivy.
But we also have sightings of the nun again, and this time not from a member of the Bull family, but from a maid who's come with the Smiths from London. So we're totally unconnected to this. Does that make it more convincing?
So it's interesting in that there shouldn't be a priming effect there. We have to assume that she arrived not knowing much about the house. But there's some local legends, aren't there? There are. So the local legend states that there was a monastery once on the same site and that a man from the monastery fell in love with a sister from a local Catholic convent.
They wanted to elope in secret, so they had a friend pull up a carriage to the place. With headless horsemen or? Well, about to be because they were caught. What? And apparently the person, the man driving the carriage and the man himself from the monastery were both decapitated. Oh my goodness. And then the nun was walled up alive inside the walls of what would now be the rectory.
I'm having none of it.
Wow, is that true? No. No! So the story is amazing and it fits all of the details, but when you look into the history of it, there was no monastery on that site that we can find. There's no evidence of anyone being decapitated. We don't currently have a nun's body walled up in the house.
It's so interesting, isn't it, how we interpret these things, Ciarán? And, of course, the people interpreting it for us now are the Reverend Eric Smith and his wife, Mabel. What do we know about them?
Well, they're an interesting couple in the sense that they come into this kind of typical English village. Eric Smith is Anglo-Indian, but also dark-skinned and Anglo-Catholic. This is kind of this high, very traditional kind of church. And so there is a number of elements at this particular point.
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