Borley Rectory

For its owner. This has been connected with descriptions of the nun as ‘miserable’ or ‘pale and drawn’. A ghost with a toothache?

Because it was to big for them, the Rev. Henning had to put the rectory up for sale, with the permission of the bishop, more or less the from the day he moved in, preferring to live at the smaller Liston rectory nearby. They had some trouble selling it but it was eventually purchased by James Turner, a writer who assisted Henning in typing up a manuscript of his account of the happenings, Haunted Borley. While Mr Turner was typing the manuscript for Henning a small lamp near him suddenly was apparently swept off the table as if by an invisible force.

The main rectory building was gutted by fire in 1944, in August 1949 Dr Margaret Abernethy was driving towards the church to visit a patient at Borley Green when she saw a nun stooping in the weeds near the gateway to the rectory site. The nun smiled, looking directly at the doctor, and she was able to estimate her age as around 40 years old. Having driven a little past the figure, she turned around to offer her a lift - as the nearest convent was some three miles away - but she was surprised to discover that the nun had vanished. She searched all around including the rectory garden but could see no one. Predicting the reaction of her colleagues, she said that they would dismiss the incident as a figment of her imagination. She was, however, certain that she saw what she claimed. Two weeks after the sighting a rosary was found in the area in which the nun had apparently been searching (which would surely strengthen the likelihood of its having been a real nun on this occasion as it seems most unlikely that a ghost of nun would have been searching for the past 49 years for a rosary that happened to be found so easily at the time).

In 1951 James Turner sold the rectory cottage and the site to Mr and Mrs Robert Bacon who moved in together with their son and daughter and Mrs Bacon’s parents, Mr and Mrs Williams. On one occasion, not long after they had moved in, Mr Williams was working behind the cottage when he heard footsteps following him. Believing it to be Mr Bacon he began to speak and, when he got no response, turned around. No one was there but he was quite certain he had heard loud and distinct footsteps. In August 1953 Mr Williams also saw, moving past the window, the head and shoulders of a black-clad figure wearing a cowl-like headdress which would seem to be at least an echo of the ‘nun’ sightings. He could find no one when he searched the area outside. Mr Bacon’s son, Terry, reported seeing a nun three times, noting that she was some three or four feet of the ground (was this the strange aspect of the figure which puzzled Ethel Bull and her sisters?). this seemed to be an indication that perhaps the nun was a ‘recording-type’ ghost, ‘playing back’ events that had occurred many years before when perhaps the ground level was higher.

Mrs Bacon had several paranormal experiences, reporting household articles disappearing and re-appearing. Once Mrs Williams heard what seemed to be the panting of a dog behind her but could see nothing.

In the summer of 1954 Phillip Paul, a prominent psychic investigator and former committee member of the ghost club, under took a long-term excavation of the site which actually revealed very little but resulted in Borley obtaining massive media coverage. One important discovery made was of the remains of a wall suggesting that there had been an older building on the site. When fully researched this may reveal some details of the reasons for the haunting at the rectory.

The Borley rectory haunting has certainly created controversy, mainly centred on the ‘Harry Price years’. Price himself published The Most Haunted House in England and followed it up with The End of Borley Rectory. However, Eric Dingwall, Kathleen Goldney and Trevor Hall wrote The Haunting of Borley Rectory which basically