Firstly, may I congratulate you on the superb quality of the website? I've been interested
in the Borley Rectory hauntings for very many years and have scoured libraries and second-hand
bookshops for any information I could find, but only in the last month have I installed the Internet
on my PC. I must admit that I quite expected to find a handful of stories and references to Borley
as I typed my first word into the AOL search box. Imagine my delight at finding the Borley
Ghost Society! So much more information, so many previously unseen photos.
Obviously I have a lot of reading to do to catch up on all the previous newsletters and I am
looking forward immensely to that. I've read a lot of the member profiles and am proud to be in
such esteemed company.
The accounts of Borley visits are of particular interest, as I was lucky enough to have the
opportunity to pay a visit in October '99.I'd suggested to my wife that perhaps we'd go away for a
weekend to celebrate our wedding anniversary (with the ever so slight intention of visiting
Borley). We stayed at the Bell hotel at Thetford, with the added bonus that we were given the
original haunted room ( room 12 I think). The receptionist told us upon our departure that our
room was the one apparently haunted by the ghost of a woman who'd previously owned the place
but that lately the ghostly activity had switched next door. I have to say that the only thing
relatively eerie about our time there was creaking floorboards in the corridor outside in the small
hours but anyone who's stayed in the old part of the hotel will know that a decent sized spider
crawling along those corridors would make the floors creak. (Just a quick note - anyone thinking
of a ghost hunting jaunt to the Bell hotel should certainly ask to be accommodated in the old part
of the hotel as there is a new annex that would I feel would be a disappointment for anyone
wishing to try their luck).
Anyway, we FINALLY arrived at Borley just after lunchtime on Saturday. I say
"FINALLY" as I'm sure anybody paying their first visit to Borley will testify, it's a bitch of a place
to find, no signposts of any sort. So by a mixture of a process of elimination and rough map
co-ordinates we somewhat belatedly arrived at our destination.
We were luckier than most I gather to find that the chain across the church car park was
down, so we pulled in there. I must admit it was my intention to subject my poor wife to three or
four hours of roaming about the village, taking a good long look in and around the church,
perhaps some tea somewhere and head back to Thetford in time to freshen-up before dinner.
WRONG!!! In the event we left after about an hour with a feeling that we'd come pretty close to
outstaying our welcome. I can't say why I had that feeling as we hadn't seen, let alone spoken to
any villagers. Come to that we hadn't seen another living thing, not even a bird. The place was
deathly quiet.
I think what disappointed me most was finding the church locked. I hadn't been prepared
for that, but my disappointment was tinged with understanding why they want to keep the masses
out of their peaceful village. So we strolled across the road to the site of the former Rectory and
there we did experience something slightly strange. A small twig, about the size of a chopstick
was "thrown" at us, hitting my wife. There was no-one to be seen, we were in a wide open space,
there was little or no wind and yet this twig had seemed to fly up from in front of us hit my wife
just above waist height at fall on the ground in front of us. I'm very glad that (a) there were two of
us there to witness it and (b) the other person with me had no interest in the subject whatsoever.
She was basically only there in order to humour me and she'd come away having experienced
something that could not be easily explained.
After this happened we took a short walk in the direction of Borley Green and
then returned to the car and made our way back to Thetford. I had completely mixed emotions
about our visit. On the one hand very pleased to have finally made the pilgrimage I'd been
promising myself for years, on the other disappointed that we were going so soon and that the
church was inaccessible, but then happy again that I'd resisted the temptation to disturb the locals
by trying to seek out the verger and ask that the church be unlocked and finally shocked that we'd
had an incident, albeit very minor to remember our visit by.
Personally speaking I don't need to have any form of experience to dictate what I believe
about Borley, my thoughts would have remained exactly the same had we not enjoyed the twig
incident.
I do sometimes wonder what the locals really think or believe. I guess that they need to
maintain their code of silence at all times. Can you imagine the throngs of sightseers by day and
ghost hunters by night that would flock to the village should word ever get out that "something"
had happened?
So thanks again for the site, and I look forward to a very long and interesting association.
Kind Regards,
Pete Hodkinson.