The Flying Bricks of Borley

by Michael Coleman

"Both [Robert] Hastings and [Ivan] Banks suggest that Price could have been genuinely mistaken in attributing this flying brick to the activity of a poltergeist; and Hastings enters into a great deal of speculation [Proceedings SPR 1969]. Banks claims there was only one workman on the site that day, and that he was in no position to have thrown the brick.
"I wrote to [David Scherman] myself. In his letter of March 15th, 1956, he writes -
To be quite frank, I saw the workman throwing stones out of the window of the Rectory as it was being wrecked and myself decided it would be fun if we put the camera in such a way as to not see him, but only the stones he threw. Let me hasten to say that in so doing no attempt was being made to hoodwink our readers - as I recall the caption was jokingly written to imply that this was the sort of thing poltergeists were supposed to do, if poltergeists existed. When we later discovered that Mr. Price, who was in on the joke, had the effrontery to pass off the episode as gospel proof of poltergeists we were delighted at his adventurous spirit.
Mr. Scherman was kind enough to send me 10 in x 8 in enlargements of three of his photographs taken on that occasion. One was the flying brick photograph which shows one of the workmen present, at the opposite side of the Rectory. The second shows this same workman loading rubble onto a lorry. The third shows a second workman, older, wearing a cap and smoking a pipe, who was the one responsible for throwing the flying brick. In this photograph he is bending down to pick up the bricks he had previously thrown out of the kitchen passage, through the courtyard window.
In the face of this evidence, there appears to be no justification for regarding the flying brick photograph as anything but the little joke to which David Scherman refers."

Journal of the Society for Psychical Research. Vol. 61, No. 847, April 1997, page 390 (excerpts)

"David Scherman specifically prohibited the further circulation of the photographic prints which he sent me. So I am sorry, but I am unable to help you in this direction.
"I think it unlikely that I shall have anything further to say on the subject of Borley."

Letter to Vincent O'Neil, January 12, 1998 (excerpt)