A debate over the alleged haunting at Borley has been raging since the first article on the subject appeared in 1929. The dialogue roars and then wanes, but it never goes away. The camps are divided with some still calling it the most haunted house in England, while detractors call it so much hallucinating. No amount of discussion will dissuade either side, but the old chestnut continues to crackle in the hearth.
Personally, I lean toward the side of a valid haunting. If there are any such things as ghosts, then there was paranormal activity at Borley. At the same time, I do not believe everything I read, and there are things associated with this particular haunting that make one wonder. However, there just seems too much evidence at Borley to dismiss it all. Something happened there. As Sarah Hapgood wrote in The World's Great Ghost and Poltergeist Stories, "At the core I believe the haunting was genuine, but it has grown so many layers that no one wants to take it seriously." About the church she added, "Like most extensive hauntings, some of it is substantial, and some is just wishful thinking."
Ghost historian Peter Underwood said in his autobiography, No Common Task, "Ninety eight percent of reported hauntings have a natural and mundane explanation, but it is the other two percent that have interested me." If only two percent of the thousands of reported phenomena at Borley are true, we have a very interesting case indeed.
There is one aspect of the Borley haunting about which I feel certain - there has never been a concentrated effort at mass deception. I have found one or two isolated cases of pranks being pulled, but have been unable to unearth evidence of any sustained movement to trick the general public.
In 1995, Louis Mayerling offered a series of articles in Psychic News declaring the haunting of Borley Rectory a hoax. He said he was a lodger there and could account for every event declared paranormal. The strange lights were attributed to distant trains and tractors. The wall writings were the result of "invisible writing" pens he gave to the children living there. His "evidence" was long and inclusive. He claimed to know everyone involved, from Henry Bull to Harry Price.
In the years since 1995, I have not run across one writer or researcher who has supported the Mayerling claims. No one seems to be able to verify his connection to the site. His name appears in none of the hundreds of volumes inspired by that famous case, including the first two books on the subject by Harry Price (The Most Haunted House in England and The End of Borley Rectory.)
While not wishing to declare everything Mayerling has written to be false, neither can I accept his premise that the entire Borley haunting is a hoax. I use the present tense because even though the reports of paranormal activity started with P. Shaw Jeffreys in 1885, visitors to the church still report unusual happenings to this very day.
By definition, a hoax is a deliberate attempt to "trick or dupe" someone. By extension, Shaw Jeffreys would have had to conspire with the Bull sisters on July 28, 1900 to create their claim of seeing the nun. The sisters would then have had to be in cahoots with their brother Harry, and they would all have had to extend the conspiracy to the Reverend Smith and his wife, who involved the Foysters, who took in the Reverend Henning and his wife, who connived with the 40 observers on the team of Harry Price, and so on down the line. Eventually those accused of being in on the hoax would extend down to such people as Geoffrey Croom-Hollingsworth, and Denny Densham. Croom-Hollingsworth swears he saw the nun in the 1960s. Densham recorded some fascinating noises including thumps and a horrifying groan in 1974. The tapes were used as the basis for a BBC television program. Many who have listened to the tapes, including myself, have experienced chills and awe.
Declaring firmly his side of the hoax theory, Croom-Hollingsworth affirmed, "I don't give a damn if Price invented things or not. The basic question is - is the place haunted? And you can take it from me it is. I have invented nothing."
It has been suggested to me that the Borley haunting is not only a hoax, but a "great hoax." This would place it on a level with Piltdown Man and Anastasia - cases where the deliberate intent was made to deceive. This would suggest that all connected with Borley have not only been mistaken, but have purposefully lied. This is clearly not the case.
To some, the haunting of Borley might appear as a huge wheel with hundreds of spokes supporting it. I will be the first to admit not all of the spokes are as strong as the others. Some have left me doubting, and I am sure not all are veridical. However, if one subtracts the spokes that don't hold up to intense scrutiny, there are still scores of spokes remaining. For example, Price quoted far too many first hand witnesses and published reports from too many serious investigators for all his spokes to be removed. Surely, no one who has read his books can claim that everyone quoted in his books were involved in any sort of a deliberate hoax.
Seven years after Price died, Eric J. Dingwall, Kathleen M. Goldney (both of them Price's friends and fellow researchers), and Trevor M. Hall, published The Haunting of Borley: A Critical Survey of the Evidence. This was an attempt to expose Borley and accuse Harry Price of being the ghost who threw stones and who deliberately distorted the account of the Borley haunting.
Nandor Fodor was outraged at the work of this trio: "No greater scandal has ever erupted in psychical research than over this preposterous exposure. The haunting of Borley Rectory stretches way back in time, beyond the initial appearance of Harry Price on the scene in 1929. Only in 1937 did Harry Price begin a systematic investigation. He rented the Rectory for a year and advertised in the . . . . Times for observers." Fodor reviewed the history of Borley close to the time Price was investigating. "In 14 months, 2,000 paranormal phenomena were reported: voices, footsteps, the ringing of bells, the locking and unlocking of doors, messages on the walls, wine turning into ink, vanishing and sailing of objects through the air, crashes, breaking of window panes, starting of fires, knocks, bumps and thumps, lights in the window, whispering and the sense of invisible presences."
Fodor went on to say, "The attack on Borley was published after Price died, so he had no chance for rebuttal - or a libel suit. Why did they hate him with such ferocious intensity? The phenomenon [of their attack] is pathological and worthy of investigation. . .The authors themselves feel entitled to tear to pieces all positive testimonies and seem to imply that the negative is far more important that the positive."
A very respectable rebuttal to the trio's attack was written by Robert Hastings in 1969. His Examination of the "Borley Report" restored practically every spoke deleted by Hall and his cohorts. Of course, it is always the first attack that remains fresh in our minds. Rebuttals seldom gain equal prominence, and the Hastings effort is no exception.
In all fairness, Price cannot be acquitted on all counts, as he did leave some negative evidence out of his books. However, to say that his almost 20 year effort was a deliberate hoax - along with the testimony of his 200 witnesses - is also not fair.
Peter Underwood has written the foreword to one of my yet-unpublished books on Borley (Fifteen Months in the Most Haunted House in England by Lionel and Marianne Foyster edited by Vincent O'Neil). In that preamble he reiterates what he has said before, and I quote portions here:
Price calculated about 200 witnesses had experienced something unexplained at Borley. In the intervening years, probably another 100 witnesses have come forth. Some of these witnesses have been casual observers while others have been part of a concentrated effort to make a scientific study of Borley. Surely not all of these people have combined for more than 100 years to create a "great" hoax?
One of the often criticized spokes on the wheel of the Borley haunting is Marianne Foyster. Over the years, she gave conflicting testimony regarding her stay at Borley. Many have taken to heart her statements that it was "all in fun" or that it could all be accounted for by natural events. On the other hand, I have read her private letters and statements about Borley, and am convinced not everything could be explained away. She was defiantly not involved in any hoax.
At one point, Marianne wrote in a private letter, "Kids used to ring bells to help things along, you know how kids will do things. But there were a great many things which [Lionel] and I went through which no one can explain away as mischief. Things happened when I was in London and when I was out of the house altogether. It was not me. . .If you mean did I haunt the place, the answer is ‘No.' And there is nothing going to make me say I did, not all the pressure because of life can make me."
Although not happy about it, Marianne joined in two seances at Borley. She later reported, "On both occasions, there were manifestations that couldn't be explained." She then added, "There were phenomena [at Borley] that were not easy to explain away, and which I haven't tried to explain away."
For example, the day the Foysters moved in, "we heard strange footsteps." That same day, a voice was heard calling, "Marianne, dear," and Lionel denied it was he. "There used to be a light mysteriously appear there and it was quite clear - you could see it from, well, the length of the kitchen passage or either in the courtyard or even if you were down either in the courtyard or in the meadow. That was one of the phenomena that was very difficult to explain, and which I don't attempt to." As with a later tenant - Captain Gregson - Marianne observed, "We could never get a cat or dog to stay at Borley."
Marianne told a private detective, "When Edwin [Whitehouse] was there I did see bottles fall, but I don't know where they came from." She added, "You see the mystery about the bottles - there were no bottles around Borley at all. There was no storage of bottles, and the mystery always to us was where the bottles came from because they were old bottles, and there was no storage or place around Borley because I looked, and we never did discover where the bottles came from."
In further testimony Marianne said, "I think the whole situation at Borley started many years ago during the time of the Bulls. I don't know - but there is something there - and during Mrs. Smith's, Reverend and Mrs. Smith's - there were happenings there. Long before ever we went there. When we went to Borley, Mrs. Payne spoke about the happenings there during the Smith's time, which, of course, Mrs. Smith later denied."
Marianne disavowed she had any hand in "haunting the place," and pointed out that she could have made money from such an endeavor, but she chose not to do so. "As to arranging phenomena, I don't think it would have been very difficult to have manufactured them for payment, if I had gotten in a few unscrupulous persons, which I could have easily done, and got a great deal of money in so doing."
How to account for her conflicting testimony? Like Mrs. Smith became confused by the unwanted attention generated by the world's most famous haunting, so too, did Marianne wish to escape the bright spotlight focused on Borley. She wanted investigators and detectives to leave her alone. If she convinced them the place wasn't haunted, perhaps they would all go away.
That she believed in her heart something unusual was going on at Borley is reflected in the unpublished notes she left behind. By the way, Marianne did not like Harry Price and he didn't trust her, so it is extremely doubtful they conspired with each other.
Ghost hunter and author Pat Cody has pointed out to me, "No paranormal investigation to date can prove scientifically and without question that previously living beings exist as ghosts. Neither can this be disproved." She then encouraged me to "Look at the nature of the proof of fraud, the attitude or apparent motivation of those gathering data to prove fraud." Such writings should bear as much scrutiny as the events they attempt to dismiss.
Canadian author John Robert Colombo reminded me, "As a matter of social and historical record Borley had a long tradition of hauntings well before the arrival of the Foysters and Price. Borley is, like life itself, a mix of elements, some explicable, some inexplicable. Among the explicable ones are instances of effect-mongering. Among the inexplicable ones are occasions that are genuinely supernatural (or perhaps more paranormal).
By writing this article, I am sure many readers will be tempted to attack the author and the people who have given solemn testimony to what they have experienced at Borley. I encourage these readers to concentrate on the evidence - the spokes of the wheel - and to refrain from personal attacks. To question the verity of the evidence is one thing, to declare all connected with Borley as hoaxers, is something completely different. To call the haunting at Borley a great deception, one has to be willing to look each of those 300 witnesses in the eye and declare, "You are a liar." Of course, not all the witness are still alive, but the accuser must be willing to be this bold. Such a position must accept that over 100 years there has been a continuous, deliberate attempt to deceive. I for one, am not willing to take that step.
I have been asked a couple of questions about the haunting of Borley which I will now attempt to answer.
The first question posed was, "Do you really accept eyewitnesses as EVIDENCE?" My answer is yes, just as courts throughout the world rely on eyewitness testimony. The testimony of two or more witnesses has been accepted in jurisprudence for centuries, and has probably sent more than one man to the gallows.
Most hauntings don't produce physical evidence, and the testimony of witnesses has had to suffice. Borley is an exception, however. Over the years, it has produced several wall writings, countless stones, numerous other thrown objects, bottles, footprints in the snow, a "gluey-like substance," and "plasma rain," among other items. The wall writings were seen by many people and they were photographed. Some marks appeared spontaneously and others were observed only moments after watchers noted a bare wall. Many of these writings were witnessed without the presence of either Harry Price or Marianne Foyster. Then of course, we have the audio tapes from the church.
If the testimony of witnesses is not to be accepted as evidence, then I ask in return, "What hard evidence has been collected to prove a hoax?" Are their letters admitting a conspiracy? Has someone come forth with ropes, pulleys, mirrors, and nuns clothing they admit were used to deliberately deceive? Is there a confession? Such evidence should be shared with investigators.
So far, we only have the speculations of Louis Mayerling on which to rely. These are the suggestions of one man, without collaboration, which make guesses at to what may have happened.
Rigid demands of proof work both ways. As Norwegian author Tore Sørensen told me, "It is a requisite that when an alleged hoax has occurred there must be someone to investigate and expose it or the perpetrator must confess. If that is not the case, one can only surmise."
The second question posed to me was, "Do you really believe that there never was any hoaxing involved at all?" No, I do not. It seems entirely logical that over the course of 100 years some individual - or even a small group of people - decided to help the legend along. I do have one fun piece of evidence supporting some isolated trickery. In a 1983 letter to the journal Unexplained, M. D. Baker described prankish visits by members of a boy's summer camp nearby. "On several occasions some of we helpers caused mild 'happenings' of our own such as fake poltergeist activity or trance-like possession - just enough for the boys to enjoy a good scare. I distinctly remember one such occasion when, wearing a white monk's habit, I stationed myself with a colleague in a cornfield on the outskirts of the village. . . Three years later one of [the boys] recounted in graphic detail the story of how he had seen the phantom figure of a monk at Borley!" This single admission, however, cannot be considered as proof of a sustained, "great" hoax.
My adoptive mother was the former Marianne Foyster who lived at Borley for five years. I have dedicated my life to researching every facet of the Borley Legend, and welcome any new information or viewpoint.