Borley Rectory

Date: Early 20^th century   Location: Nr. Sudbury-Essex, Suffolk-Essex border

Borley Rectory has the reputation of being the most haunted house in England. That may or may not be true; paranormal events being what they are, it may be farer to say that Borley Rectory is the most investigated haunted house in England and perhaps even fairer to say the investigated, publicised haunted house in England.

It was built in 1863 by Rev. Henry Dawson Ellis Bull who himself expanded the original building to accommodate a family that grew to include fourteen children.

The first reported paranormal incident occurred in the afternoon of 28^th July 1900 when Ethel Bull, one of the Reverend’s daughters, first saw a ghostly ‘nun’ when she was in the company of her sisters. Whether or not the apparition at Borley Rectory actually is a nun is uncertain; it seems to arise from the description of the apparition as a female dressed in dark clothes like a nun. In his book, England’s Ghostly Heritage, Terence Whitaker offers as legend rather than certain fact that Borley Rectory was built on the site of a thirteenth-century monastery. It was also suggested that the rectory was linked with a nearby convent at Bures. The rumour which linked these buildings was that a monk and a nun had fallen in love but had been killed before they had been able to elope. Their ghosts are said to have been reported frequently during the nineteenth century. While of dubious authenticity, this tale does at least tie in with the discovery of part of the walls of former building dating from around that time.

Ethel Bull was in the company of two of her sisters; they were returning from a party. All three entered the rectory garden and all saw the figure gliding near a stream that runs through the grounds. The figure was some way from them and no detailed features could be made out. The girls were frightened by the shape and general motion of the apparition but a fourth sister, called to the scene, apparently did not perceive the figure as strange and went to intercept it when it stopped; the figure then suddenly disappeared.

Various sisters saw the same apparition several times and on one occasion in November 1900 Ethel and the family cook witnessed the figure leaning over a gate.

Of apparitions inside the rectory, Ethel once woke to find a tall dark man wearing a tall hat near her bed who disappeared when she reacted to him; and on two other occasions she felt the presence of someone nearby though she could see nothing.

Ethel had a long life, dying at the age of 93 in 1961, almost 100 years after the building of the rectory, and to the end she maintained her story. As she herself said: ‘what would be the use of an old lady like me, waiting to meet her Maker, telling a lot of old fairy stories?’

The Rev. Canon W.J. Phythian-Adams, the Canon of Carlisle, read Harry Price’s book and was fascinated by the case. He believed that the nun was not English but a French nun named Marie Larre who had eloped with her lover to England, been betrayed and murdered by him and buried in the cellar of a house that had formerly stood on the Borley site. This Story has been connected to the finding of a female skull and jawbone there.

Between 1916 and 1920 a Mr and Mrs Cooper resided at the rectory, Mr Cooper being groom and gardener to the Bull family. They experienced considerable poltergeist activity including what sounded like the pattering of the feet of a large dog. They had seen an apparition of a dwarf like figure in their bedroom which then disappeared, and on another occasion heard what sounded like the smashing of all the crockery in the kitchen although on inspection found none had even been disturbed. Cooper also saw out of his bedroom window the apparition of a black horse-drawn