Harry Price and the Unholy Ghosts, Lies, and Secrets of Borley Rectory

A vanished rectory, a legendary ghost hunter, and a haunting that refuses to die — the true story behind England’s most infamous phantom mystery.

In the quiet countryside of Essex, England, stood a Victorian mansion whose dark reputation echoes through paranormal history to this day. They called it “the most haunted house in England” – the imposing Borley Rectory, a shadow-filled manse whose very foundations seemed to breathe with otherworldly energy.

Built in 1862 atop an ancient monastery’s ruins by Reverend Henry Bull, this Gothic structure would become the centerpiece of England’s most famous haunting. But one cannot tell the tale of Borley without diving into the mysterious life of the man who made it infamous – Harry Price, ghost hunter extraordinaire.

THE MAN BEHIND THE HAUNTINGS

Harry Price remains as much an enigma as the spirits he pursued. A man wrapped in his own carefully constructed mythology, Price claimed Shropshire as his birthplace when London had actually witnessed his arrival in 1881. This tendency toward embellishment would follow him throughout his remarkable career.

An amateur magician with a skeptic’s mind but a believer’s heart, Price carved a unique path through the paranormal landscape of early 20th century England. While he delighted in exposing fraudulent mediums (much to the anger of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and other Spiritualists), Price maintained an openness to genuine supernatural phenomena that distinguished him from hard-line skeptics.

His paranormal investigations read like the source material for countless modern horror films and comics. From the bizarre case of Gef the Talking Mongoose to the “black magic” ritual atop Germany’s Mount Brocken where participants allegedly attempted to transform a goat into a young man, Price’s cases were the stuff of nightmares – or perhaps, more accurately, the inspiration for them.

THE RECTORY’S DARK HISTORY

But it was Borley Rectory that would cement Price’s legacy in the annals of paranormal research.

Local legend whispered of a tragic love affair between a monastery monk and a nun from a nearby convent. Their forbidden romance discovered, the monk reportedly faced execution while his beloved suffered an even more horrific fate – being bricked up alive within the rectory’s cellar walls, left to perish in darkness.

The Bull family, who first inhabited the rectory, reported encounters beginning in 1863 with a spectral nun who glided silently across the grounds. By 1900, four of Reverend Bull’s daughters had witnessed her phantom form, and the haunting phenomena only intensified – including the blood-chilling sight of headless horsemen driving a coach across the property.

A PARADE OF PARANORMAL ACTIVITY

After the Bull family’s era ended, each new resident encountered fresh horrors. When Reverend Eric Smith and his wife moved in during 1928, they experienced ghostly lights, spectral footsteps, and inexplicable bell-ringing. The discovery of a human skull wrapped in brown paper hidden in the kitchen pushed them to contact both the press and the Society for Psychical Research.

This desperate plea brought Harry Price to Borley’s doorstep in 1929, beginning his most famous investigation. Later residents, Reverend Lionel Foyster and his wife Marianne, documented even more dramatic phenomena – mysterious writing appearing on walls, objects moving of their own accord, and Marianne reporting physical attacks by unseen forces.

PRICE TAKES CONTROL

When the rectory stood empty in 1937, Price seized the opportunity to conduct a controlled investigation, renting the property for a full year. He assembled a team of nearly 50 researchers who would document every unexplained occurrence within those cursed walls.

It was during this intensive study that Price pioneered many techniques of modern ghost hunting. His investigative kit included tape measures to check wall thickness, cameras for documentation, portable telephones for communication between researchers, and remote-controlled equipment to record activity from a distance – tools that would become standard for paranormal investigators in the decades to follow.

Through séances conducted in the rectory’s shadowy rooms, Price’s team claimed contact with two entities: a French nun called Marie who begged for help through wall messages, and a more sinister presence named Sunex Amures who delivered a chilling prophecy – that he would burn the rectory on March 27, 1938, revealing the remains of a murder victim.

FLAMES AND FINAL CHAPTERS

True to the spirit’s warning, though not on the exact date predicted, Borley Rectory was consumed by flames in 1939 when a new owner allegedly knocked over an oil lamp. Insurance investigators would later suggest arson. During the inferno, a local woman claimed to see a ghostly nun’s figure in an upstairs window, trapped in eternal repetition of her terrible fate.

Price returned to sift through the smoldering ruins, and in 1943 announced his most dramatic evidence – human bone fragments unearthed from the rectory’s foundations. He declared these the remains of the legendary nun, final proof of Borley’s haunting.

The bones received burial not in Borley parish (where locals dismissed them as mere pig bones) but in a neighboring town, with Price orchestrating the ceremony.

LEGACY OF DOUBT

After Price’s death in 1948, the Society for Psychical Research conducted their own investigation into his claims. Their “Borley Report” cast serious doubt on Price’s findings, suggesting he had fabricated evidence or misinterpreted natural phenomena. Yet others, like psychic researcher John L. Randall, countered that members of the SPR had played “dirty tricks” on Price during his investigation.

Whether Harry Price was a brilliant paranormal researcher or a masterful showman with a talent for manipulation remains debated to this day. What’s undeniable is the impact he had on paranormal investigation – his extensive collection of writings on magic and psychic phenomena now forms the Harry Price Archives at the University of London and the Harry Price Library of Magical Literature at Senate House Library.

The Borley Rectory itself is long gone, reduced to ash and foundation stones. Yet its reputation as “the most haunted house in England” lingers like a persistent specter, refusing to fade into history’s shadows.

(Sources: Orrin Grey http://bit.ly/2Jh81yw, Stephanie Almazan http://bit.ly/2JnWwEg | Cover photo: Wikipedia)