The Borley rectory was a large house built in 1862 by the Reverend H D E Bull. It had 25 rooms, with no main water or electricity.
The early years of the house seemed to be peaceful and had no reports of paranormal activity. It was 28 years later, that reports of paranormal activity began. At first, there were mainly reports of the sounds of footsteps. It wasn’t until the 28th of July 1900 that three of the rector’s daughters Ethel, Freda and Mabel Bull reported the apparition of a nun dressed in black with clasped hands as if praying. The three of them witnessed it after returning to the rectory from a garden party that they attended. Ethel Bull reported seeing the ghostly figure again months later.
It was not just the sisters that had witnessed the ghostly nun, the servants of the Bull family Mr Edward Cooper and his wife had numerous encounters for 20 years.
It was not just the nun that the Coopers encountered during their stay at the cottage near the rectory. From 1916 to 1919, they had almost nightly occurrences of activity, ranging from hearing a dog walking about the cottage and seeing a dark shadow figure person. Edward also said he saw a coach outside from his bedroom window, effortlessly and silently driving through the farmyard, going through buildings and hedges as if they weren’t there.
Until June 1929, the general public were not aware of the happenings at Borley Rectory, but that was soon to change, as an article in a national newspaper was released about it. The very next day, a man by the name of Harry Price, a well-known ghost hunter of that time arrived at the property. He did not spend much time there but remained interested in the property for many years.
In 1937, the Rectory was put up for let and Harry jumped at the chance to do more investigations at the property, so decided to lease it. Harry was passionate about the paranormal and approached it with a scientific and logical mind, exposing many fake mediums and spiritualists over the years. He now had the chance to conduct controlled observations in a more scientific manner. He promptly put an advert in the Times Newspaper requesting for people to help with the research. The advert said “Responsible persons of leisure and intelligence, intrepid, critical and unbiased to join a rota of observers in a year’s night and day investigation of alleged haunted house in home countries”.
From June 1937 to May 1938, he had 48 observers that took up the task. Within the group they had people from all kinds of professions, including: an Army colonel, a doctor, an engineer and an official from the Bank of England. They were given the task of staying at the property and sleeping in the blue room at night. It was the blue room that reportedly had the most activity.
It is not at all surprising that the people staying at the house had many reports to give to Harry Price. There were many cases of poltergeist activity observed, from moving objects and books, to unexplained pencil marks that unexplainably appeared on the walls. Noises such as footsteps and dragging were also documented.
One of the participants of the experiments was S G Welles, who was an Oxford Rhodes Scholar said in one of his documented cases “a luminous patch which appeared in the Blue Room for about a minute between 8.15 and 8.20pm on February the 16th. Mr Welles, with three of his friends (who did not witness the strange phenomenon) tried to recreate the light that he had seen but could not. After all the encounters and incidents, it seems none of the observers witnessed the nun.
At the end of the experiment, Harry Price parted ways with the Rectory and was taken over by another occupant. Sadly, on the 27th of February 1939, there was an accident where an oil lamp was knocked over in the main hall. It was ablaze with in minutes and the damage was extensive, to the point the roof collapsed before the fire brigade could get there. Even during the blaze, eyewitnesses of the event reported seen figures moving around near the blue room. One of the locals reported seeing two people in cloaks leaving the fire, one a girl and the other a formless figure.
Even years later, there have been multiple reports of paranormal activity in the area. As the title of the book written by Harry Price about the Borley Rectory ‘The Most Haunted House in England’ (1940), it seems that around that time it probably was.