The following notes concern Marianne Foyster and Edwin Whitehouse with respect to an incident that happened on the main staircase. The notes are based on information from page 99 of Harry Price's "The Most Haunted House In England" and Robert Swanson's interviews with Marianne Foyster in 1958. The pictures are from The Locked Book by Sidney Glanville.

Marianne Foyster, Edwin Whitehouse and a maid (Katie) are in the kitchen late in the evening. Marianne is understandably feeling tired around 11 PM and decides to go to bed. Marianne and Edwin leave the kitchen area through the open kitchen door shown in the foreground of the picture. Marianne is holding a lantern as they leave the kitchen. (Note note that the Rectory never had electricity so the only practical way you could navigate the Rectory after it got dark was with some kind of a hand held light.) Marianne and Edwin walk away from the camera as they leave the kitchen and go down the kitchen hall...

In the picture to the left which was taken from inside the dining room you would see them walking towards the camera as they emerge from the other end of the kitchen hall. Keep in mind that although our eyes would be drawn to the point of bright light from Marianne's lantern, we'd also be aware of moving shadows and dimly lit walls which fade into darkness as they continue walking. They will turn to their right instead of entering the dining room so let's go up to the dining room door and "follow" Marianne and Edwin as they start up the main stairs.

(Before we follow Marianne and Edwin up the main stairs I will point out a minor detail. The picture to our right was not taken from outside the dining room door but from a little ways down the entry hall closer to the Rectory's front door. Although this part of the picture is a bit dark, you can see the molding around the dining room door a short way inside the left edge of the picture. The dining room door was actually the first door you would come to if you entered the Rectory through the front door. It was about about a foot or so closer to the front door than the door to the kitchen hall which, as you can see two pictures above, was right across the hall from it.)

Getting back to tired Marianne and Edwin, looking to our left as we approach the dining room door (if we step into the hall we may bump into them and startle them) we see Marianne and Edwin make a U-turn to their right through the arched opening in the foreground. They simply keep moving as they start up the stairs immediately to the right inside this opening. Although, you can see the end of the banister along with the bottom step of the main staircase to the right, such details would have been less noticeable in the lantern's light.

But shortly after they began walking up the stairs Marianne fainted. However, Edwin managed to catch both Marianne and her lantern before they fell to the stairs. The lantern went out, however, leaving them in the dark. Edwin then put the black lamp on the stairs and decided to carry Marianne up the stairs. He necessarily had to feel for each step with his feet in the dark stairwell as he finished carrying Marianne to the top of the stairs.

At the top of the stairs he puts her down on what is arguably the cold spot - of all places - which was known to be next to the wall outside the Blue Room. (The cold spot is indicated in this picture by the distinct oval shape in the shadow in the foreground on the floor.) Note that the right edge of the door of the Blue Room is just barely visible along the left edge of this picture. Given that Marianne's fainting on one of the lower steps was possibly due to poltergeist activity, this stairwell scenario has some interesting ramifications addressed in the Cunningham Report.

Note that in the Swanson interviews(first search for "carried" then search for "99") that Marianne denies that Edwin ever carried her up the stairs. However, the questions in the Swanson interviews were based on information in Harry Price's "Most Haunted House in England" where the accuracy of the details of some incidents have been questioned. Indeed, Marianne seems to have been taken by surprise, if not made upset, by several questions based on Price's information. Indeed, certain questions contained details which supposedly pertained to her but which she had evidently never heard about.

Regarding the details of the stairwell experience, note that both Swanson and Marianne seem to have overlooked that Edwin indicated that a tired Marianne had essentially fainted. If so, this gives us a good clue as to why Marianne' memory of this particular incident was incomplete. With no memory of the last part of the incident, Marianne seemed to try to "clarify" to Swanson that the stairwell often had drafts that made lantern flames flicker.

At this point I will point out that there are certain Borley Rectory events that, although arguably unusual, I would like to disregard as being poltergeist related. Marianne's fainting spell on the main stairwell was one such event. Indeed, why can't we simply accept this incident as a natural mishap? In fact, the last thing a ghost researcher wants is to fall into the trap of reading some sort of ghost activity into every suspicious incident.

But as with many other Borley Rectory incidents, I finally saw how the above incident fits into an errie pattern of poltergeist activity that actual unifies what are otherwise unrelated happenings in Borely Rectory.Indeed, both Edwin Whitehouse's recollection of the incident and comments about the incident from others implies a possible poltergeist assault on Marianne. If so, then this is was not an isolated incident.

Comparable incidents would include when (26/2/1931) she got a black eye from an invisible fist one time when she walked by the cold spot and several months later (8/6/1931) when she was thrown out of a guest bed in room 7, only a short distance away, three times in one day. Note, in fact, that the cold spot was a relatively short distance from these places. Indeed, Marianne seemed have gotten her fair share of bruises when she was near the cold spot. Again, the Cunningham Report addresses a possible relationship concerning these incidents as they might relate to Borley Rectory's ghost nun.

Although this incident has gotten some attention from other Borley Rectory researchers with respect to possible poltergeist activity, I will also note that the main stairs were said to be well polished so Marianne might simply have slipped on an extra slick spot. So, although a poltergeist was possibly involved in Marianne's near miss on the main stairs, she may have just slipped. However, although we shouldn't overlook that we are talking about Borley Rectory, we'll never know for sure what happened.

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Aside, note that the door to room 8, one of the original bedrooms, would be visible through the arched opening if it weren't for the heavy shadow in the hallway. If that door was open we'd be able to see the left side of that room's window in the opposite wall. The light on the floor in front of the shadow is coming through the two windows of room 7 on the Rectory's southeast corner. Room 7 was probably the room known as the haunted room. Turning to the right inside the arched opening would take you into the Rectory's addition which consisted of three rooms connected by a hallway. The end of the hallway opened into the classroom which was larger than the other two rooms. Also note that the bigger "half" of the Rectory is actually behind the camera at this point.