Well, there were weird noises that were heard in the house, but there
again, in most houses if you lie awake at night there are all kinds of
happenings.
There were occasions when we frightened each other, if you know what I mean. We talked about things and we would get ourselves nervous and excited, and then even if the house creaked you imagined things were coming.
Marianne Foyster, the second Swanson interview, quoted in Chapter 5 of The Ghosts that Will Not Die by Vince O'Neil
I've lived in large old houses around Essex for around fifty years, and have lived just thee miles from Borley for around eighteen. This experience makes me extremely cautious about attributing phenomena and occurences to the paranormal. In this part of the world, if one lives in a big old house, you have to accept that occasionally things go bump, creak, tap, crash and groan in the night.
Harry Price was well aware of this. In the book of instructions that he gave out to his investigators he wrote
~...It is very important that the greatest effort should be made to ascertain whether such manifestations are due to normal causes such as rats, small boys, the villagers, the wind, wood shrinking, the Death Watch Beetle, farm animals nosing the doors etc., trees brushing against the windows, birds in the chimney stack or between double walls etc.
There are two incidents in the Lionel Foyster's book that recount phenomena that turned out to be caused naturally. In one case, a cat was unfortunately caught by the leg in a rat-trap (she recovered), and on another occasion some mice discovered a pile of walnuts and ate them noisily.
To understand the sort of natural noises and other occurences that one might expect, one has to appreciate the the way that the occupants lived at the time
We know, from the extracts of Caroline Bull's diaries, that the Bulls lived an active and very outgoing life, typical of the affluent rural middle classes of the time. Life in the countryside in agricultural Essex, even for the affluent Bulls, was remarkably different to our cosseted existence today. . They were a hardy breed, with a lifestyle that was remarkably unchanging from the restoration until the second world war. I'm just old enough to have experienced some of the facets of country living in the UK which are now remote memories; with bell pulls, servants, hot water brought to the bedrooms in a jug, blazing coal fires, icy-cold mornings, dark lamp-lit corridors, meat safes, oil lamps and candles, larders, ice-houses and the like. However, even this was luxury compared to life at Borley rectory in the first part of the century, when there was no longer the affluence or servants to support the lifestyle, and the place became damp, dark and desolate.
The Bulls lived in a house with no central heating or plumbing. The sanitation was primitive. Like many houses built at the time, it was cold and draughty. Country houses, in the winter, were heated only in the living rooms, studies and bedrooms. Even so, this was only sporadic ; during the day, one kept warm by taking exercise (The Bulls, for example, walked for miles, played ball - games, hunted, rowed and gardened) until the fire was lit in the late afternoon. If one dressed properly, then there was no inconvenience. A good tweed suit, and woollen underwear renders the wearer almost impervious to the weather. Travelling by coach or horse-drawn cab could be a problem, as they could not be heated and one had to keep still. I still have some of the devices that my own ancestors had at the time to keep their hands and feet warm in such circumstances. Fur stoles, mittens, ingenious little hand-held devices that burned lighter-fuel, and hot-water bottles. Even with these luxuries, one always preferred a horse to a coach in the worst of the winter as one kept moving in the saddle and thereby kept warmer.
Windows tended to leak draughts. Floors did not have wall-to-wall carpeting and therefore were much more porous. Staircases were designed to be imposing and lacked simple precautions to reduce draughts. Architects were induced by their clients to design more for show than comfort. All this meant that inside of the houses suffered much the same environment as the outside. East Anglia is prone to sudden changes in the weather. Anyone who has lived here will tell you that the weather is 'bracing'. We're a long way from the balmy west coast here and the weather can be more extreme than elsewhere in Britain. When the wind blows from the west, it brings mild moist weather from the Gulf Stream, and an east wind brings the cold dry air from the Scandinavia. A wind from the north can make temperatures drop suddenly. The inside of a house can suffer sudden changes in temperature and humidity. We even suffer occasional small tornados and sudden gusts that can blow an outhouse high into the air.
The architect of Borley Rectory made a particular mistake in the north-facing window of the dining-room. As well as forgetting that the window overlooked the public road and the driveway, the window had the full blast of the chill north-east wind of early spring as it swept down the Stour Valley. Although north-facing windows were common in town houses which had some shelter, they were much rarer in the countryside. It was soon bricked-up.
I've seen effects caused by changes in humidity that would have been instantly ascribed to the spirit of Harry Bull at Borley rectory. Wood increases its width as humidity rises. Rapid changes in humidity can have spectacular effects; If one walks down a stair so that the boards jam, they will release with a sound like a footstep. If a layer of dryer air rises, the footsteps go up the stair as the wood shrinks and springs back into shape. If boards have been too tightly laid, the skirting boards can creak as if someone is creeping around the edge of the room. Victorian houses tended to creak more than older ones, as the joiners worked to tighter tolerances, with less allowance for movement of timber. Victorian house owners didn't like cracks. Taps on a door, or in a piece of furniture, can happen as the panels move against the frames. As a change of air moves along a lengthy corridor, as when someone leaves an outside door open, the shifting in the woodwork can sound for all the world like someone in slippers moving along.
Where there was iron in the house, such as truss rods and brackets, they would expand and contract with temperature much more than wood, which hardly moves at all in length. This can cause all sorts of stresses that are translated into strange noises as joints move, and parts of the house shift. Where brick is used, and the builder has made no allowance for movement, things start to go creak in the night, as the temperature drops.
Before double-glazing, it was surprising how much movement of air there could be in a house. A slammed door at one end can be felt at the other even if it was not heard. Changes in air pressure could have odd effects, such as doors being rattled, windows shaking, and so on. A window or door opened on the windward side of a house could have effects out of all proportion, especially if someone else opened a window on the other side. (such as keys being blown out of locks , which I have not personally witnessed, but have heard of from others ) If you lived in a house that was taken from a pattern book intended for an urban setting, as Henry Bull did, you would know about draughts and their effects. Moans and groans are common. Henry Bull compounded the problem by building wings onto the back of the house that concentrated the prevailing westerlies like a great funnel so that it must have been most uncomfortable to live in. Because of the siting of walls, you can get strange effects like dust-devils, miniature whirlwinds, that look to those of a nervous disposition, just like a ghost.
Houses move up and down too. In East Anglia, the majority of houses are built on clay, which expands considerably when wet. Before the nineteenth Century, the East-Anglian towns were built on the exposed gravel seams within the valleys. You will not find an old town on the great clay plains that dominate the landscape. However, as the population rose, more houses had to be built on the clay.. A small house built on clay will bob like a cork, but larger ones may be less lucky and different parts will rise and fall at different rates. Before the Victorians came with their hard cement, the canny old country builders made brick walls with a lime mortar. This was a soft flexible jointing that allowed for movement in the walls. The nineteenth century houses seemed more rigid, but they stored up their stresses until they cracked and subsided, with a sound that has to be witnessed to be believed. It sounds as if the house is falling down around you. One resident of the Rectory Cottage must have heard this, and he rushed downstairs thinking that the kitchen had been turned upside-down only to find everything in place. He should have looked for new cracks in the walls.
Just to make matters worse for the rectory, it was built over the site of an earlier, smaller, house, which made the foundation work even more suspect. From the description of the sounds in the house, it must have been suffering quite a bit of gradual subsidence.
Borley rectory was troubled by rats and mice. In those days, everybody had them. At the rectory, the house was next to an old barn. This was bound to make matters worse. The Bulls tried to deal with the problem with various poisons, including phosphorus compounds, which glowed in the dark to the consternation of passers-by. A well-fed adult rat is a fearsome beast, almost the size of a small cat. I've heard them racing along in the roof space above a passageway sounding like the ghost of a whole choir of nuns. With a cat in enthusiastic pursuit, the cacophony would be startling. I once had a peculiar experience where I had the impression of being followed down a dark attic corridor. I could hear a strange whispery scratching, like the ghastly rattle of a soul in torment. I was baffled by the presence, which followed me wherever I went. It was only when I heard a familiar mewing that I realised it was my pet neutered Tom cat in the roof space above the corridor who had been diverted from his pursuit of nourishing mice to pay me his respects. A friend of mine had an alarming experience whilst billeted in an old East Anglian country house just after the war. He woke up in the night in his huge antique bed to feel something pressing on his chest, like some ghastly hand. He put out his arm, thinking it was a cat, only to touch a gigantic rat! We used to have the most glorious bats in the house. The previous owner of the house used to be a 'weekender' from London who did not appreciate sharing the house with wildlife. The bats lived in the roofspace above the kitchen and bothered nobody. Unfortunately they prospered to the point where one got caught in the flue of the Aga cooking stove and fell dead down the flue onto the hotplate just when the 'townie' wife was preparing to cook stew. Sadly, their nesting holes were blocked off.
It is not only mammals that can make their presence felt. We have an old tiled roof, which starlings use to nest in. They burrow in between the tiles and the lath-and-plaster work to build their nest, and the scrabbling sounds are weird, particularly when listened to at night after a deep sleep. Screech Owls are beautiful creatures, and we are proud to play host to them, but we have to warn our more nervous guests who come from London for a restful weekend in the country, because their sound in the dead of night is quite scary, particularly if they give voice just outside the house. Even the hedgehogs can give voice in remarkable ways and are evidently noisy during their mating process.
Insects can make spooky noises, particularly the death-watch beetle, which drills into wood with a sepulchral tapping. They love rotten wood. Rotting wood can cause its own phenomena, especially if it is dry rot. The wood loses all its strength and the resulting slow collapse of the structure can produce unpleasant creaking sounds. I am told by the plumber that used to maintain Borley Rectory's pump that dry-rot was rife behind a window in the courtyard. However, it is so rare in East Anglia's dry climate that I feel sure it was Wet Rot.