I was examining some of the more challenging wall writings when I caught onto this charade. I was wondering if the location of the mysterious wall writings was significant. One of the wall writings, one of the "light mass and prayer" writings, designated #7 on the Sidney H. Glanville floor plan had been written in the relatively narrow space of the inside of the arched opening connecting the main stairwell landing to the bathroom hall. Fortunately, the activity of Marianne Foyster and Edwin Whitehouse in the area around this wall writing just before the writing was discovered gave me a sense of deja vu. Then it dawned on me the possibility that the ghost nun had seized the opportunity to use live actors to once again tell the message of her tragedy! Please allow me to detail the steps of this remarkable charade.

If you have already taken the tour from the road to upstairs in the Rectory then you can click here to "materialize" at the main stairwell landing. (When you're at Borley Rectory, do as the ghosts do.)

We're going to go inside the Rectory in a short while to see both the chapel and room 7, the "haunted room". But before we do so I have a few things for you to consider. Note that ghosts were sighted outside the Rectory as well as inside and some of you might have some reservations about getting too close to places where a ghost was spotted. And while I'm getting better at remembering where ghosts were seen at, if I forget to warn you about a particular spot that you're alreading standing at, well...sorry.

As a matter of fact, I don't believe there is any "neutral" way to approach the Rectory. Indeed, in a moment we're going to go through the gate which appears to the left of the bottom of the big tree in the middle of the picture. This was the Rectory's east gate. Note that the ghost nun was occasionally seen near one of the gate posts, seemingly leaning on it as if withdrawn and sad. I don't remember which post, if any, was mentioned. Although logic would dictate that we simply pass directly between the posts to avoid bumping into air, you should also know that Reverend Smith and his wife reported a phantom coach that came up the road and stopped right between the posts. But we'll deal with this. For right now let's talk about today's project.

As I have already mentioned, we're going to be heading for the chapel and room 7, known as the "haunted room". The chapel was actually a tiny room in the entry "tower" that was designated as a chapel by Foysters. Behind and to the right of the big tree in the middle of the above picture you can see what I call the entry tower. Not the tall, narrow window with the rounded top on the upstairs floor of the tower. This was the chapel's window and we'll see the other side of that window in a short while.

From where we're standing on the road we also see one of the two windows of room 7 in the above photograph. It is the leftmost window visible on the1st floor (the second level). room 7 must have been one of the nicer bedrooms in the Rectory as it was in the wing where the Bull Family actually lived. It was also second in size in this wing only to the master bedroom next to it. I believe that Room 7 belonged to Harry Bull, Rev. Henry Bull's oldest child and son.

Let's proceed through the gate and follow the drive to the Rectory's front door. Also, regardless that this little walk is going to take us uphill a bit let's proceed quickly through the gate and up the drive. We'll stop just before we reach the corner of the Rectory so that we can catch our breath.

We're almost there! But let's stop and catch our breath. You can see the arched front door that we're going to walk through in the lower part of the tower-like structure. But before we go on, notice the bricked up dining room window to the left of the front door. We're not going to discuss this mysterious window here but I'd like to point out something interesting.

Every time I look at this window I think that if the bricks that block up the window weren't there that I'd be able to step over the window sill and enter the building. But just how tall is this building?

That's Capt. Gregson posing in front of the bricked up window. He was the first private owner of the Rectory after Rev. Harry Bull had died. But he never moved into the Rectory because of the fire.

Note that Capt. Gregson's buttocks come up only as far as the window sill. The top of his head isn't even half the height of this window. And I was going to step over this window sill to enter the Rectory! The building was much taller than it looked.

(Also note that the caption indicates that the dining room was called the haunted room. This is incorrect. We are going to the haunted room which is room 7 upstairs.)

Let's now go to the front door and enter the Rectory. Note that a choir member went to the Rectory to meet with Rev. Harry Bull one time but saw that a "guest," a robed figure (perhaps the ghost nun), "entering" this door and so decided to meet with the Reverend at a later time. When this choir member later mentioned this guest to the Reverend, the Reverend said that he hadn't had a guest. Interestingly, the Reverend also mentioned that the ghost nun had been active that night.

Otherwise, note that there were never any mysterious knockings reported with respect to this door that I am aware of. In other words, the front door was never opened because a bell rang or a knock was heard on it but nobody was there when the door was opened.

(To my knowledge, no picture was ever taken specifically of the front door. Also note that most of these pictures of the inside of the Rectory seem to have been taken without flash, the photographer seemingly standing next to a window to take advantage of the natural light.)

We find another door immediatly past the front door. This second door distinguises the tower-like structure that contains the front door from the rest of the Rectory. However, the tower was really never anything special although Marianne Foyster made the upper floor part of the tower into a tiny chapel when she and her husband lived in the Rectory.

As we start down this long hall I'm sorry if you find it a bit cool in here. Harry Price had noted that the Rectory was always rather cool inside. And regardless of its many fireplaces, Price had also noted the futility in trying to warm the place up.

Also, listen to your footsteps echo as you walk down this corridore. Can you imagine anybody entering or leaving the Rectory through the front door and not being noticed? And we don't find any doors until we get to the end of the hall, the door to the left , the door to the dining room, being the first door we come up to. (You can just barely see the moulding around the dining room door in the left part of the picture.)

As we near the other end of the entry hall please remember that want to go upstairs. So don't spend too much time with the next two pictures. Since we're passing first by the dining room door to our left and then the kitchen hallway door to the right, I wanted you to be able to "glance" through these doors. However, the only pictures that I know about that would be applicable for these views may be more confusing then they are informative. This is because they show more of the inside features of the Rectory than I've indicated in the captions.

This picture was actually taken from the kitchen. It looks down the kitchen hall and through the open dining room doorway where we're at. You can see a window straight across from this doorway (approximately in the middle of the picture). This window was a part of the bay window that overlooked the tennis court and the garden. If you really look hard out the window you can see the Stour River in the valley below and Sudbury on the other side of the river (just kidding).

This picture was actually taken from inside the dining room. It looks across the entry hall where we're at, down the kitchen hall and into both the kitchen and the "dairy" (aka pantry) beyond the kitchen. The pantry is actually to the right of the stairwell that you can just barely see in the distance (center of the picture). Note that the Rectory's mysterious servant bells (alleged to be self-ringing on occasion) would probably be visible in this shot of the kitchen hall if it weren't for the heavy shadows near the ceiling of the hall.

(I've copied the entry hall picture here so that we can easily remember where we were at.)

Note that as we enter the main stairwell area we are entering what is probably the Rectory's most notorious "hard hat" area. (This is one place where you would definitiely mount a web cam, one having a microphone. It also wouldn't be a bad idea to secure the cam with some sandbags - I'm not kidding.) The floorboards that you are now walking on are one clue as to why this area is so "sensitive". The cellar is below these floorboards. In fact, notice the door to the left of the arched opening you see in the distance, the door that opens into the now empty drawing room. I believe that the abandoned well that the nun fell down was located in the cellar below the floor boards in front of this drawing room door. In fact, directly above this door upstairs is where a very active cold spot was. In fact, it's where we're going now as the door to room 7 is only a few steps away from the cold spot. (This should give you a clue as to why room 7 was such a troublemaker.)

Let's now go up the stairs since there's at least nothing visible on the stairs at this time. Also, please watch your step on the stairs because the Foysters polished the wood when they moved into the Rectory so the steps are slick.

Note the coal stove near the base of the stairs. As I have already indicated, the Rectory was always though to be a bit cool. This stove probably helped to warm people wanting to get away from any commotion in the drawing room.

Many of the details that I've included about this particular charade need to be double-checked.

I believe that Sir Whitehouse and his wife had invited the Foysters to temporarily move in with them after Sir Whitehouse's wife had been a witness to one of the most intense displays of paranormal activity recorded about the Rectory. During the couple of weeks that the Foysters were staying with the Whitehouses Edwin Whitehouse and Marianne Foyster would occasionally check up on the Rectory to make sure nothing unusual was happening - unusual for Borley Rectory anyway. I believe that Edwin was preoccupied with finding ghosts at the Rectory and spent much of his time at the Rectory looking for signs of paranormal activity. Little did Edwin know...

On one of these visits Edwin invited Marianne to participate with him in the last rosary of a novena he had been doing. They prayed this rosary in the Rectory's tiny chapel. (This chapel had been set up on the first floor (above the ground floor) by Marianne for her husband.) During the rosary both Mariane and Edwin reportedly experienced a presence in the chapel area. (Interestingly, the presence was never described in terms of something they saw either saw or heard.) It seems that Marianne intuitively associated the presence with room 7, "the haunted room". So after they finished the rosary she went to room 7 to investigate. At this same time Edwin went to the bathroom hall stairwell to inspect what I presume were the mysterious wall writings. The walls of this particular stairwell had only recently been defaced with these writings. They met back in the chapel area a short while later where thuy discovered what they thought to be a new wall writing, one of the infamous "light mass prayers" messages.

I had been wondering if the location of the "light mass and prayers" message that had been written inside the left side of the arched opening shown in the first picture below possibly had any significance. Then it occurred to me that the poltereist had possibly seized an opportunity to stage Marianne and Edwin in a charade where they unknowingly acted out the general story behind Borley Rectory's famous ghost nun. The poltergeist seems to have taken advantage of architectural features of the Rectory and also parts of the Rectory where other symbolic happenings had previously taken place to get its message across. Let's examine how this may have worked.

This is the view to the left as you step onto the upstairs landing of the main stairwell.

Through the arched opening at the end of the balcony we can see the "stained glass" patterned plastic over the window of the bathroom cum chapel. Marianne and Edwin would be kneeling a little distance just outside this little chapel, their backs to us. Let's see how the poltergeist nun may have taken advantage of their position with respect to the chapel to tell her story.

Note that Marianne, an Angelican, was with a man who was not only not her husband but not an Angelican either. Also consider that Marianne later described her and Edwin as being close to the chapel but not in it (search for chapel in Swanson interview). The poltergeist possibly took advantange of their personal profiles in conjunction with their position with respect to the chapel to reflect the social situation that the nun and her lover(?), the man who would eventually betray her, were in. In other words, the ghost nun was using Marianne and the cotext of Marianne's environment to tell us, "I was just like Marianne".

Before they finish the rosary, let's look at the area outside the chapel from another point. Lets go through the arched opening and proceed to the right into room 5. Then we'll look back down the bathroom hall to see where Edwin is about to go.

This picture of the bathroom hallway and beyond was taken from room 5. (Note the 5 affixed to the door.) Consider that if this door had been made to open into the hallway instead of into the room that it would completely block the arched opening we just went through if it was opened far enough. Indeed, the doorknob would wind up near where the words "light mass and prayers" are shortly going to be discovered inside the arched opening. This mysterious words would probably have been distinctly visible on the left side of the hallway if the photographer had stood a little further to the right when this picture was taken. But getting back to Marianne and Edwin...

As Marianne and Edwin leave the chapel area ofter finishing the last rosary of the novena they would come into view from the right side of the hall. Again, did Marianne and Edwin just create an opportunity for the ghost to have them unknowingly act out a charade inspired by their having been "near, but not quite inside" in the chapel?

Edwin and Marianne separate as they leave the area, Edwin walking away from us to inspect the stairwell area which is down the hall to the right. Again, Edwin seems to have been preoccupied with the strange wall writings that had been showing up in the stairwell area.

Let's step into the hall and follow Marianne back through the arched opening that we just walked through. As we do so consider the symbolic significance of Edwin walking away from the arched opening that we are now following Marianne through. Indeed, was it the ghost's plan that Edwin was to symbolize the nun's murder who just either dropped or pushed the nun down the well.

The well? What well?...

This "well,," the main stairwell landing outside room 6. The presence they had experienced in the chapel had possibly psychically directed Marianne's attention to room 7 which was just beyond this other arched opening and to the left. (We just walked back through the matching arched opening that we first saw the chapel's stained window through.) The ghost directed Marianne to room 7 possibly because the ghost knew that Marianne would have to "fall down the well" in order to investigate room 7.

With the well in mind, consider the white spot on the floor. This spot indicates the cold spot. The Rectory's cold spot was actually a column that went down two floors from this landing into the cellar. Harry Price had noted that in the cellar two floors below this point the ground was slowly sinking. I now believe it was sinking because there had been a well there long before the Rectory was built. I suspect that this was the well that the nun had been thrown down. (Indeed, evidence of an abandoned well was later discovered when the area was excavated.) The ghost nun was seemingly concentrating her charades in the parts of the Rectory above and around the well.

Getting back to Marianne, how appropriate for the nun's ghost to have Marianne walk over the abandoned well two floors down to symbolize the nun falling into the well.

Let's get ahead of Marriane to see her enter room 7.

We now watch Marianne as she enters room 7. In addition to the cold spot on the landing being over the depression in the cellar, other strange happenings concerning the cold spot and room 7 also arguably suggest a woman falling into a well.

1. A few weeks earlier Marianne and Edwin were possibly unknowing participants in another charade that had taken place in this room, the charade that had prompted Edwin's aunt to invite the Foysters to stay with them temporarily. Again that charade arguably suggested a woman falling down a well and a man in the vicinity.

2. Also within a month(?) Marianne and Edwin had started up the main stairs late at night as Marianne wanted to retire. Marianne passed out as they started climbing the stairs. Edwin catches Marianne before she falls, carries her up the stairs, and places her on the cold spot on the landing! In other words, the nun is dropped into the well.

3. This is also possibly the room where P. Shaw Jeffrey stayed decades earlier as a fellow college student guest of Harry Bull. Mr. Jeffrey reported that certain objects in his room had been mysteriously moved. If this was the same room, then Mr. Jeffrey's experience in this room can also arguably be construed as the paranormally choreographed charade of a woman falling into a well and a man in the vicinity.

4. A bag of coal on the ground floor under the landing is mysteriously moved. Consider that the material of the bag itself arguably hints of a nun's habit. My reservation about the bag being moved is that it was not noted which direction it moved. More specifically, had the bag been moved towards the cold spot or away from it. Indeed, I later discovered that the bag had been schematically indicated on the floorplan of the ground floor and that, perhaps coincidentally, it was indicated that the bag had moved in the direction of the cold spot. (Note that other floorplan details like which side some of the doors opened on are incorrect in some cases. So the suggested direction that the bag is shown to have moved may have been a matter of convenience.)

Again, did the ghost nun seize an opportunity when Marianne and Edwin positioned themselves "near, but not quite inside" in the chapel just a short while earlier? Is it possible that Edwin unknowingly charaded the role of the nun's lover cum murderer when he left the "well head," symbolically represented by the arched opening nearest the chapel? And did Marianne simultaneously play the part of the nun falling down the well simply by walking away from the chapel in another direction, a direction which led her right over an abandoned well in the cellar?

Then, to top things off, our clever ghost nun seems to have unified the symbolism that had just taken place on both sides of the arched opening by drawing attention to the opening with the newly noticed "light mass and prayers" writing. Indeed, it seems the ghost nun had Marianne and Edwin do a curtain call!

This episode seems to have the broadest set of symbolism of any of the Rectory's paranormal happenings as the symbolism actually ranges chronologically from the strained social situation the nun was in to her fall into a well and subsequent death.