BORLEY RECTORY: most haunted house in England

[TomTomKent]

There are a few considerations to bare in mind when talking Borley:
1) Price was found "helping" ghosts by throwing stones at least once.
2) IIRC the monk and lady absconded in a coach a few hundred years before they were in common use according to legend.
3) word of mouth corrupts the story too often. Automatic writing on a roll of paper, becomesrolled wallpaper, becomes writing on walls, etc.
4) the grey lady was almost certainly a very common "ghost" a column of midges following underground water across the garden.

[m_w_r]

don't you just love 'Gef the talking mongoose' story too?

Hi Stewart,

I'm still rather hoping that you're going to write the definitive Gef the Talking Mongoose book one of these days. It's impossible to find a copy of The Haunting of Cashen's Gap nowadays.

Regards,

Mark

[Stewart P Evans]

Cashen's Gap

Hi Stewart,
I'm still rather hoping that you're going to write the definitive Gef the Talking Mongoose book one of these days. It's impossible to find a copy of The Haunting of Cashen's Gap nowadays.
Regards,
Mark

Hi Mark, I'm not sure that I shall be writing again. There's a great 'Gef' site on facebook, complete with photo's of all the sites as they look now, including the remains of the Irvings' cottage at Cashen's Gap. I have a nice copy of the The Haunting of Cashen's Gap complete with cuttings and a holograph letter from Irving all about the 'haunting'.

[Steve S]

There are a few considerations to bare in mind when talking Borley:
1) Price was found "helping" ghosts by throwing stones at least once.
2) IIRC the monk and lady absconded in a coach a few hundred years before they were in common use according to legend.
3) word of mouth corrupts the story too often. Automatic writing on a roll of paper, becomesrolled wallpaper, becomes writing on walls, etc.
4) the grey lady was almost certainly a very common "ghost" a column of midges following underground water across the garden.

In response,(and I'm not especially pro-Price)
1) Not proven...one Reporter
2)Very true...but that's against the traditional story,not any reported incidents.
3)The wall writing was photographed
4)Theory..no more
I believe the 1956 SPR report is as flawed as Price's own work............Now I don't pretend to know the truth of what happened at Borley...But I've seen no more to suggest everything was faked than I have to suggest everything was true.The most irritating thing to me about Price is his sheer bloody snobbery when it comes to witnesses!...give someone a title or initials after their name and they must be telling the truth....Still.I guess that's the style of the time..Peter Underwood strikes me much the same.......

Steve

[TomTomKent]

In response,(and I'm not especially pro-Price)
1) Not proven...one Reporter
2)Very true...but that's against the traditional story,not any reported incidents.
3)The wall writing was photographed
4)Theory..no more
I believe the 1956 SPR report is as flawed as Price's own work............Now I don't pretend to know the truth of what happened at Borley...But I've seen no more to suggest everything was faked than I have to suggest everything was true.

Well, I hate to sound like the heavy handed sceptic, but the null hypothesis is that had events happened are natural events explained by mindane means. I have yet to see any evidence for ghosts being supernatural (in the few occassions I experienced what you might want to call the symptooms of a haunting).

If a man known to have the skills of a stage magician is caught using an old trick of stage magicians and "fake" mediums (by which I mean those who know they have no power and use deliberate means to fool people as opposed to those who I think probably believe in their own powers even if they are not supernatural in their true nature) even by one reporter that should be something to bare in mind.

I admit I was working from memory so the wall writing comment could have been in error. However taking a more general view I am fairly sure that Houdini, Brian Dunning, James Randi et al have offered other explanations of how this could be hoaxed.

In the same vein the midges may well be a theory, but they are also a theory I know from experience can fool people in Kent, and have no reason to suspect it may fail to work in Essex. I know midges exist, I have no evidence the spirit of the undead or "psychic resonance recordings", etc, exist.

By no means do I even begin to suggest that the majority of events at the rectory were hoaxes or deliberate attempts to decieve. But the symptoms of a haunting can be formed from very dull, very boring things like low level sound, creaking floorboards and moving air. Most the evidence we have is annectdotal and I think many people on this board will be all too aware of the tricks that our minds can play on us. We emphasise some aspects of our memory, forget others, subtly tweak what we thought we remembered as we try to make sense of the memory or filter it through things we learn later. Even the way you are asked a question can ever so slightly fudge our perceptions.

I have encountered exactly two ghosts. I have no idea how my experiences were formed, but I can no more assume they were the wandering dead than I could suggest that they were aliens. I am fairly sure now that some of the detail of a figure in a dress ascending stairs was a shadow that my mind filled in the blanks to turn into a ghost. I something vaguely woman shaped moving and because I expected it to be The Ghost when I tried to think back that is what I saw. The blurred, fudged details were brought into sharp focus by me fooling myself.

A better example is Ghostwatch. I was a kid when it aired, and although now days we can hop online and double check exactly how many times Mr Pipes appears in the play (I miss Screen One, I was too young to appreciate it) my mates at school compared notes the following monday and convinced each other, and themselves, that there were far more glimpses of Pipes on the screen. One asks if they saw Pipes for half a second when Craig Charles had the monkey mask on, and others think maybe they did.

Of course if there were mundane and boring explanations for what people thought they saw or thought they felt or thought they heard, that does not make the events any less curious or interesting. Neither for that matter would it be any less worthy of discusion if some parties were exploiting events through deliberate deception for their own ends.

Also please do not think I am telling anybody why they should NOT believe in ghosts. I'm not. I'm explaining why I am sceptical and yet to be convinced that such things exist, and specifically that they exist as the spirits of the dead. It's just me. A UFO is something in the sky that the observer could not identify until such a time that an Alien Space Vessel can be shown to me. Ghosts are the product of mundane events until exceptional evidence can be supplied for an exceptional claim.

[Steve S]

And we're not really disagreeing!.....With no real reason at all,I suspect that any real psychic activity at Borley was to be found in the creaks and footsteps rather than Nuns and Monks..(good theme for a party). Really cannot make up my mind about Price...........I've had one weird experience I can't explain,so accept others do...But that doesn't mean it automatically leads to accepting life after death as a given...to paraphrase "weird s**t happens".............

Steve

[TomTomKent]

To be fair it was reading about Borely in the old Usborn illustrated guides to the supernatural that would eventually prod me in the direction of Richard Wiseman, Randi, and from there to brilliant books like Vanishing the Elephant. I think we need a little mystery to get us interested enough to learn about science, or human nature, or history, etc.

[Steve S]

I think I found Price's books in the library when I was about 12.........Then,(like other topics) went through "revisionist" and "post-revisionist" phrases.....Now,I don't know..just a fascinating story with fascinating characters.........

Steve

[Beowulf]

What are midges?

[Beowulf]

Beowulf,


That entire area is dotted with beautiful picture-postcard villages.

Graham

You're killing me

[Phil H]

Midges are tiny biting insects that come in swarms - Wkipedia doesn't help much.

I've had one weird experience I can't explain,so accept others do...But that doesn't mean it automatically leads to accepting life after death as a given...to paraphrase "weird s**t happens".............

I have a lot of time for the speculations of the late Tom Lethbrige - he really rates his own thread on here. His experience led him to believe that one doesn't have to believe in life after death to explain "ghosts" and spectres or whatever. Tom reckoned on two types of phenomena:

a) ghosts and

b) ghouls.

For Lethbridge, a ghoul was a bad sensation that clung to an area. More on that if you want. But to TL, a ghost could be explained as a sort of physical recording akin to a tape recorder, which relies on magnetic fields.

He thought that ghostly phenomena are often related to running water - even if underground or hidden, such as aquifers, water pipes and underground streams. He concluded that if an event took place with enough emotional force, it could imprint itself on that spot and replay itself under certain circumstances. the reason so many "ghosts" are GREY is that the recording wears out over time.

Take it as you may, it is one explanation.

Phil H

[Beowulf]

Midges are tiny biting insects that come in swarms - Wkipedia doesn't help much.

Phil H

Oh, I know what midges are, but as for what TomTomKent said, "In the same vein the midges may well be a theory, but they are also a theory I know from experience can fool people in Kent, and have no reason to suspect it may fail to work in Essex. I know midges exist, I have no evidence the spirit of the undead or "psychic resonance recordings", etc, exist."...

It's been a while since I read Most haunted house in England, I don't remember any midges at Borley. What is the significance at Borley and midges to the paranormal is what I meant.

[Phil H]

I answered your question - nothing more:

What are midges?

That seemed clear to me.

I think the point is that a swarm of midges, seen from a distance, in a particular light, might be perceived as a grey shrouded form.

Phil

[Beowulf]

I answered your question - nothing more:

What are midges?

That seemed clear to me.

I think the point is that a swarm of midges, seen from a distance, in a particular light, might be perceived as a grey shrouded form.

Phil

Never would I think of that.

[TomTomKent]

Never would I think of that.

Midges can swarm in a column and they are not all that uncommon to look like an almost solid, ethereal form. I have seen something simaler in the Blean and in the railway cuttings where I work. There are a few places out on the Weald near Tonbridge where on the right days what appear to be a person can be spotted lurking over the streams, pools and drainage runs that pass by the track.

It is this kind of effect I was talking about, I remember the same heory being mentioned in the Borley audio casset in a series that we used to use in school that I recently rediscovered on itunes (search Borely in the audiobooks, its only a couple of quid).