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Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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Hello and welcome back to The Most Haunted House in England. Last time we opened the doors to Borley Rectory, we heard about how successive inhabitants of the house had been plagued by unearthly noises, poltergeist activity, ghostly carriages travelling up the drive and a phantom nun stalking the gardens. Who are you going to call?
Well, we know back in 1929, it was Harry Price, the preeminent Ghostbuster of his age. His first visit to the house was an unforgettable experience. Remember, he and a journalist came under attack from invisible assailants, seeing the ghost nun as well, and also apparently communicating with the former owner of the house, Harry Bull, who claimed to have been murdered by his wife, Ivy.
It is, as they say, a lot. So hold on tight, because we've got a shed load to investigate already and plenty more to come. Welcome back to Bawley Rectory. I'm Danny Robbins, and this is Uncanny Cold Cases. But still
Hello, I am back with our experts, the high priestess of hauntings, writer and parapsychologist Evelyn Hollow, and the sultan of scepticism, Dr Kieran O'Keefe, forensic psychologist. Kieran, we heard a lot last episode about the Bull family, how they'd built Bawley Rectory. We then saw the new rector, Reverend Eric Smith, and Mabel, his wife, coming into this place. But we finished part one.
with new characters, the Reverend Lionel Foyster and Marianne, taking over this place. They're going to be really significant characters for us this episode.
They're a really interesting couple. Lionel had spent some time as a missionary in Canada and he wanted to return to his home country with his wife, Marianne, and also adopted daughter, Adelaide. And what's interesting, there's a huge age gap between them both, even to the extent where Lionel even baptized his future wife as a baby. Oh, my goodness. Is that even allowed? That sounds pretty dodgy.
It does sound really weird. But Marianne was an incredibly glamorous woman. She was young. She wore lipstick, which was kind of frowned upon at that time, especially married to, you know, a vicar. but also she would beat all of the men at tennis. You know, she was glamorous and yet she was really extrovert and really out there.
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Chapter 2: What haunted experiences did the Foysters encounter at Borley Rectory?
We had that really amazing moment at the end of the episode, Evelyn, where Marianne saw what we think might have been Reverend Harry Bull, that figure in the plum-coloured smoking jacket.
Yeah, it's a really striking moment because this is the first time where we can potentially put a name to one of the figures that are seen haunting the house that we do believe that it is Harry Bull. And they sort of can't escape the shadow of that family, really.
But it begs the question, if you move into a house that has strong paranormal activity and then you pass away, do you become one of the ghosts in the house? Do you return to the house? It is a really interesting idea, isn't it?
That potentially that could happen to generations of people.
Well, true, but also Harry Bull specifically said that he would come back. He said that if he didn't approve of the rector that took it over, he would come back as a poltergeist and he would pelt them with mothballs.
And what happened, Ciarán?
And he did, apparently. Mothballs were thrown, weren't they? Mothballs were thrown, yes. I mean, whether we think it's paranormal or not, it's an incredible coincidence that he said he would do it, and apparently he did.
OK, well, let's embed ourselves back in the rectory with the Reverend Lionel and Marianne. That apparent appearance of the late Harry Bull has been pretty bloody unsettling, but then things become downright dangerous. Late one night, Lionel is in the bathroom when he hears a sudden cry... rushing to the bedroom. He finds Marianne confused and distressed, holding her hand up to her face.
There is a bloody cut under her left eye. She's been seemingly attacked by an invisible assailant. The next morning, she's got a black eye. Events quickly escalate from there. Sharp pins are left on chairs.
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Chapter 3: How did Harry Price's investigations impact the Borley Rectory case?
Large objects appear on the floor, designed, it seems, to trip up any unsuspecting victim. A heavy doorknob flies at Marianne's head, piercing her by inches. The activity does seem to be targeted at Marianne, who, in front of their daughter, jokingly blames it on mischievous goblins. But in reality, she is exhausted and her own health is beginning to suffer.
One night, the family sit down to eat dinner, but are interrupted every few minutes by a stone or kitchen utensil flying across the room at them. They resolutely try to ignore these objects whizzing around their heads and carry on eating until a knife strikes Lionel's head. This has gone too far now. Marianne suggests a DIY exorcism. And she wants to do it in a way that may seem...
rather bizarre, quite frankly, to the rest of us. Using creosote, a chemical mixture derived from tar, often used for preserving wood. But back then, people would sometimes burn it to fumigate a house, using it to smoke out mites. Will it work on the invisible forces in the rectory? Well, let's see. Because Lionel and Marianne pour creosote onto hot coals,
filling their house with an acrid smoke that wafts through every room. Now, goblins, Lionel says, how do you like this? Wow. Exorcism by creosote.
Kieran, is this a new one on you? It is new, but then again, with my research into exorcisms, I know people would just grab anything that they think will work. And also creosote feels like an older version of a contemporary approach, which is using sage to kind of cleanse the house. You know, the idea of using creosote to kind of cleanse the house of mites and other things.
It's a much less environmentally friendly exorcism. It is environmentally unfriendly, I'll give you that much. But like I said, you know, it's the sort of thing where you can imagine anybody grabbing anything that they think might work because they're just desperate to get rid of whatever's there.
Things really do feel like they're kicking off in a big way here. You've got Marianne receiving that injury to her face, having a doorknob thrown at her. It reminds me of those moments in the first part where we had that glass pane smashing and the vase flying past the Daily Mirror journalist. Do we feel that this is a house where people are potentially in danger?
I think you're in danger regardless of whether you think it's paranormal or not, because if it's an outsider doing it, then someone means you harm. They're trying to drive you off the property. If it's inside the house, it's your own partner or your own staff or people that you're friends with, in which case that's horrible and psychologically damaging.
Or the other option is that it's somebody doing it to themselves. I mean, are we talking about Marianne gone-girling herself, bashing herself in the skull with something? That's psychotic.
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Chapter 4: What violent phenomena escalated during the Foysters' time in the rectory?
Or is this really him pushing forward the boundaries of parascience? Because it's an incredible level of scrutiny.
I think it's both. I think by putting the advert in The Times, there's an element of publicity there. He knows that the press will be interested in what he's asking for. So I think that's the publicity part. The other part of it is he doesn't have to say it's for a year. He could say it's for a month or two months.
You know, to have the resident in the house and investigating for an entire year is huge. I always tell ghost hunters, you cannot get a sense of a place by just investigating one night. the phenomena may not turn up that particular night. The longer you are at a location, the greater the chances of you capturing the phenomena. And here we've got the holy grail of ghost investigation.
Put people in that location for an entire year.
Sadly, most of us, we can't afford to rent a haunted house for a year to investigate it. We'd love to do that. These seances that go on with Harry's investigators, do we believe any of the claims being made here? They seem so fantastical.
They are. They're really specific, which is useful because that means we can fact check them against things. You know, they're not really vague. But I think the difficulty is that when people are hosting seances is the two things happening. People really are experiencing what they believe is information, whether that's, you know, psychically isn't what they're seeing in their mind or auditorily.
They believe that they're hearing things. Some people just describe it as a feeling. They feel like someone's talking to them. They feel like something's coming through. And that could just be human error. People are misinterpreting it. They're looking to stitch bits of information together. The other aspect is that people are at it.
And this is the difficulty when you have so many people involved in a case is that everybody wants to be right. Everyone wants to say, I solved Borley Rectory.
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Chapter 5: What unconventional exorcism method did Marianne propose?
To this day, ghost hunters still visit the tiny village of Pauling. Some claim to hear footsteps around the church. Others have heard the sound of those servants' bells ringing. Some even say they've had pebbles thrown at them, just like Harry Price back in 1929. And one of those investigators, too, have combed that site looking for clues.
Yes, it would be pretty strange for a boy that was inspired by Harry Price not to, in some way, follow in his footsteps. Unfortunately, I couldn't go into Borley Rectory, you know, having been burnt down. But I have been to Borley many times. I've investigated the church itself, but also I have sat on the nun's walk.
On the anniversary of her sighting, in the hope that I would see the nun, I never did, but it was one of the most exciting moments of my life, which says something about my life, that I would be sitting on a nun's walk and just thinking, potentially, this is what Harry Price was doing all of those decades ago.
Well, I can say, look, I don't want to tell you the silly, but here she is now. Wouldn't it be an amazing thing, though, to actually have an experience down at Bolly? How did it feel being there?
It was thrilling. It was like a boy visiting Disneyland for me.
Was it the most haunted house in England?
No, but I love it anyway.
Evelyn, will we ever stop being baffled by Borley? Is this case one that will run and run?
Yeah, I think so. And what makes it difficult is that because it's burned down, people are sort of just chasing the stories. Or like Kieran says, they can go to the area, they can go to the nun's walk. But that means that we can't investigate it with modern techniques. We can't fill the house with cameras. We can't take environmental readings with the equipment that we do have now.
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