S2E17: The Borely Rectory | The Most Haunted House In England

[00:00:00] Welcome to Mystery Date. This show was created first and foremost for entertainment purposes. While we do our best to research our topics, nothing discussed on this show should be taken as absolute fact. Opinions, theories, and interpretations are just that. Listener judgment is encouraged.

[00:00:15] Deep in the Essex countryside stood a Victorian manor so saturated with shadows it earned a chilling title. The Most Haunted House In England. From phantom nuns and flying stones to a web of secret affairs and staged phenomena, Borely Rectory wasn't just a home. It was a battlefield where the paranormal met the deeply personal.

[00:00:44] Tonight, we stepped through the ruins to decide for ourselves. Was this a genuine gateway to the afterlife? Or history's most elaborate haunting of the mind? I'm Christian. I'm Kate. Welcome to Mystery Date.

[00:01:15] It's date night meaning we get to talk about all things mysterious and weird. This season is called a haunting and it involves all ghostly and paranormal mysteries in our world. Tonight's mystery involves the Borely Rectory. Get comfy, grab your favorite drink, and let's start the show. Yummy grape juice. I'm sure all the audio listeners love that. You're welcome. Yeah, you should pay for that. That's going to be on our Patreon.

[00:01:44] Just mouth noises. Yeah. Just yummy juice. Let us know if you want that. So, getting into it. Do you know anything about the Borely Rectory? Have you ever heard about this? Nope. Never heard of it. I'm sure you might have guessed in the hook. This is considered the most haunted house in England. Yeah, I feel like we've heard that about the other England hauntings or haunting that we talked about too.

[00:02:14] No, the Enfield Poltergeist is considered to be one of the most documented, which this one also goes up for that claim. So, I guess these both kind of battle it out for the title. But this one is a lot earlier than the Enfield, I'll tell you that. Okay. Getting into the story. The Chilling Chronicle of Borely Rectory is often cited as the most haunted story in English history. It begins in the quiet, fog-laden village of Borely Essex in 1862.

[00:02:40] The rectory was commissioned by Reverend Henry Dawson Elias Bull, a man who likely had no idea he was laying the foundations for a century of terror when he moved in just a year later. Now, if you're like me, rectory isn't exactly a word in your daily vocabulary. In simple terms, a rectory is the official residence provided to a rector or a high-ranking cleric in a Christian church.

[00:03:06] This explains why Henry moved his life and family into the structure immediately upon his completion, seeing as how he was a reverend. The manor was actually a replacement for an early rectory that had been ravaged by a fire in 1841. What rose from the ashes was a massive, four-floor, Gothic-style monolith. It was an imposing structure boasting 32 rooms, 11 of which were bedrooms, and sprawling across 11 acres of secluded land.

[00:03:36] That was all just for the reverend. Yeah, I wish I could say I was surprised, but special treatment for high titles in the church sounds about right. Yeah, I mean, 11 acres of land, dude. That's crazy. That's so much. That's a lot. What is the reverend doing on this land? With its pointed arches and looming silhouette, the house looked every bit the part of a haunted home.

[00:04:03] The house didn't wait long to start talking either. Within a year of its completion in 1863, locals began whispering about strange occurrences. People passing the grounds reported the sound of hollow, unexplained footsteps echoing from within the walls, even when the house was supposedly empty. In 1892, Henry Bull passed away, leaving the keys to the kingdom to his son, Reverend Harry Bull.

[00:04:29] The hauntings escalated from sounds to sights on July 28, 1900. Four of Harry's daughters claimed to see a dark, somber figure of a nun about 40 yards away from the house. In broad daylight. That fact creeps me out a little bit more, because you always hear, oh, it's at night. It's when the moon was shining. But the fact that it was just during the day and they see this figure, all four of these kids. Yeah, and everybody knows nuns are creepy. Of course.

[00:04:58] I mean, there's a whole conjuring series. It's like a small child on their own with a music box. That's creepy. If they've seen that next, they need to get the fuck out. Or even creepier, twin children. Singing a nursery rhyme. Ooh. Yikes. Thinking the nun was a living person, the girls attempted to speak to her.

[00:05:25] But as they drew closer, the figure simply vanished into thin air, never to be seen again. What makes this sighting truly bone-chilling is the local folklore around this. According to legend, a monastery had been built nearby in 1362. A monk from that monastery allegedly fell into a forbidden romance with a nun from a local convent. When the affair was discovered, their punishment was medieval and merciless.

[00:05:51] The monk was executed, but the nun's fate was a living nightmare. It is said that she was bricked up alive within the walls of her convent, left to suffocate in total darkness. Yeah, see that's, now I feel like that doesn't track. That's not what would have happened. If anything, she would have been executed too, but it would have just been like a hanging or whatever. Like it wouldn't. I mean, you would be surprised. Usually woman got the harsher punishment.

[00:06:19] So if the man was going to be executed, which the common way would be hanging. And you also don't want to publicly execute a nun. So how do you do this quietly? I mean, they publicly executed a monk. Well, I feel like was the reason not told why? Like the monk, probably not. I mean, again, a lot of people are willing to just see a dude up there and not really bad. Not you see a woman getting hanged. Something's going on.

[00:06:42] And then if you see she's a nun and then any whisperings get out that it was an affair and the church at this time was corrupt. The church is corrupt. Why not just bury her in the convent while it's being built? But like then just kill her and bury her. Like, well, I don't know. I feel like you have to torture her. You have to show her what she did wrong. God has to punish her. But like, don't they leave that shit up to God? Not back then they did it. Are you kidding me? The you had the whole inquisitions. That's true.

[00:07:15] I forgot the times again. I always forget the times we're dealing with. Especially like during that time. That was 1362, so. Oh, yeah. Whole crusades. Like, yeah. Was the woman who was bricked up alive the same woman that the Bull children saw wandering the ground centuries later? The sightings became a staple of life at Borley.

[00:07:37] Ernest Ambrose, a local organist, noted that the Bull family was very convinced that they had seen an apparition on several occasions. But the Bulls weren't alone. Dozens of reports from visitors and locals described phantom specters and shadow figures stalking the property for the next 40 years. After Harry Bull's death, the house sat empty and brooding for a year until Reverend Guy Eric Smith and his wife, Mabel, moved in on October 2nd, 1928.

[00:08:07] This is where the legend shifts from creepy to downright malevolent. The Smiths weren't immediately bombarded by classic textbook haunting activity, but they did encounter phantom bells, which were disconnected servant bells that would ring violently in the middle of the night. Even when, again, they're the only ones that would be doing that. There were spectral lights, unexplained glows that appeared in the windows of empty rooms.

[00:08:32] And there were heavy footsteps, the sounds of boots marching through the hallways when no one was there. However, the most disturbing event occurred when Mabel Smith found a brown paper package tucked away in the house when they were moving it. Upon opening it, she was horrified to find the skull of a young woman. Ooh.

[00:08:53] You're moving into a house that has been owned by two reverends before you, and you find a brown parchment bag with a young woman's skull. How does she know it's a young woman? Doctors examined it at the time. Now, this is early, so, you know, give or take what medical was. But she had it examined. But it was looked at. That was mostly, like, what I meant. A little bit of a spoiler. There are multiple sets of bones that get found in this house that are looked at by some of these doctors.

[00:09:19] Yeah, again, like special treatment and corruption in the church. I was like, don't discredit this so soon. None of that really sounds that shocking, unfortunately, if you look at the rest of history. Yeah. Yeah. This is a really cool story, because when you look at it on the surface, it's kind of like, again, okay, a haunted house, blah, blah, blah, blah.

[00:09:43] But when you piece together everything that happens over these 40 years, a story is being told of what is haunting this house if you pay attention. And it's like, okay, well, maybe I don't believe every claim. But in the grand scheme of it, at the end, you're like, this, I understand what happened. Like, it's kind of crazy. Reverend Smith, in what can only be described as a masterpiece of British understatement, called the skull a morbid surprise.

[00:10:09] He eventually buried the remains in his churchyard after being looked at by a local doctor. And despite many best efforts to find more, forensics, police reports, or historical records don't have any information on who this woman was. The trail just simply goes cold. For the Smiths, this discovery was the point of no return. Convinced they were living in a nest of supernatural energy, they contacted the Daily Mirror to seek help from the Society of Psychical Research, or SPR,

[00:10:39] beginning one of the most famous paranormal investigations in history. On June 10, 1929, the Daily Mirror dispatched reporter V.C. Wall to investigate a series of unsettling claims emerging from the Borley Rectory. These reports, initially raised by the resident Reverend Guy Eric Smith and his wife, hinted at something unnatural lurking within the Victorian estate. Accompanyed by a staff photographer, Wall spent a long, silent night crouched in the dark woods behind the building.

[00:11:09] Which is just so funny to picture. Sure. You have 11 acres of land. You have this man with a photographer, which again, this is in the fucking like 20s or where I can't even remember where we're at right now. Yeah, 29. You have a photographer with a big ass camera behind him and it's like midnight and they're just... See anything? That's this guy's job. He was hired to do this. Yeah, meanwhile, it's dark. He's probably like, no. No, I don't see anything.

[00:11:38] And even if I take a picture right now, that flash, it's going to blind us for the next two minutes. So we're not going to see anything. V.C. Wall and the photographer had their eyes fixed on the silhouette of the home, waiting for the specters that were rumored to roam the grounds. While they didn't capture a ghostly figure on film that night, they witnessed something equally inexplicable. A persistent light glowing from within the rectory.

[00:12:05] When they moved to investigate, they found the interior plunged in darkness. Yet, upon returning to their post, the light remained visible to them both. This eerie anomaly prompted Wall to pen the first of many articles detailing the haunting. The public's fascination was immediate, sparking enough momentum for Wall to return shortly after. This time, he was accompanied by the most famous paranormal researcher of the era, Harry Price.

[00:12:33] Harry Price is a figure who truly deserves an entire episode of his own, so we won't dive too deeply into his complex history here. However, it is essential to understand his reputation. Price wasn't necessarily famous for proving the existence of ghosts. Rather, he was the master of debunking. He made his name exposing fraudulent mediums and charlatans who preyed upon the vulnerable and the grieving. In that sense, unlike contemporary figures like the Warrens,

[00:13:03] the research suggests a higher level of professional skepticism that makes his involvement pretty intriguing here. Yet, when Price arrived at Borley, the atmosphere of the haunting underwent a radical and violent shift. The harmless spirits that previously wandered the grounds were replaced by aggressive activity. Objects were suddenly hurled through the air and cryptic spirit messages began to appear on the walls.

[00:13:31] The haunting transformed from a neutral curiosity into a hostile environment while Price was around. Intriguingly, according to Mrs. Smith, these violent occurrences ceased the moment Price left the premises. In later reports, she would go so far to say that Price himself had been falsifying the phenomena to bolster the story while he was present. So, you do got to take some of that. Or the ghosts really hated the fact that he was in there saying they're not real.

[00:14:01] That's kind of how I took that. Like, normally I'm like on the side of the people, but I'm like, but you guys experience stuff too. So, like, you're... Yeah, you experience stuff. Are you just angry that he's getting, like, kind of the publicity from it more than you guys are? Because he's going to be the one to write about the story? Yeah, maybe. He's just explaining what you guys are just a little more escalated, I guess. And like you said, maybe the spirits are angry. Yeah, maybe the spirits know what he's doing and they're like, fuck out of here, dude. We're real. Debunk us. Yeah, motherfucker.

[00:14:30] I'll show you. Close a chair. Regardless of the skepticism or the scares, the Smiths had seen enough. They abandoned the home on July 14th, 1929. The local parish struggled for some time to find a replacement willing to inhabit the most haunted house in England. But on October 16th, 1930, the Reverend Lionel Algaron Foyster, a first cousin to the original builders, moved in with his wife, Marianne, and their adopted daughter, Adelaide.

[00:15:00] The Foysters would remain at Borley Rectory for five years, but peace was a foreign concept. Lionel kept a meticulous, detailed diary of the events that plagued their lives. Records that were, to put it mildly, pretty wild. Throughout this period, Lionel remained in consistent contact with Harry Price, detailing a descent into domestic chaos that bordered the unbelievable. The phenomena reported during the Foysters' residence were as shocking as they were relentless.

[00:15:31] Bells rang in empty rooms. Windows apparently shattered without cause. And stones and bottles were thrown by unseen hands. On several occasions, young Adelaide was reportedly locked in a room with no key to be found. And the family even claimed that she was once attacked by something horrible. A vague but chilling description. I was gonna say, well, what does that mean? She was attacked by something horrible. And this something was? I looked into it as much as I can.

[00:16:01] And again, this guy, his detailed journals, when I said they were wild, I meant like, they're not wild. And like, the claims are crazy. You gotta hear. I mean, they're wild. He wasn't really making sense. Yeah. And like, he would send Harry Price this stuff. And even Harry Price, while he wanted to believe it and did investigate the house a little bit more, even he was like, bro, you need, like, you might need help. Like, you are descending. And he was too. I'll explain it in a second. Getting sicker. Okay. The one. The reverend?

[00:16:30] Yeah, the reverend guy. The Lionel. Thank you. I was like, no, I know his name. Lionel. He was getting sick at this time and just like kind of on a downward spiral. But again, was that the angry spirits? He keeps trying to record this stuff and bring Harry Price back here that these guys just convinced to leave. Yeah, and he's now like the third family to be experiencing things. And the bells. The bells always get me. The ringing of the servant bells.

[00:16:58] Because from what I read, yes, the house did have like servants and there were workers there. But again, this house was built with that first bull family when the reports started. So it's like, what is that coming from? That like, for something in me is telling me like, that's not a ghost. That is something like demonic. Or it is some residual thing from that monk and nun story of the past from the monastery that used to be there. Yeah. Because church bells.

[00:17:28] Yeah. If they would, they would probably ring out at a public execution. But they say it sounds like the servant. Like, you know, like the ting. Oh, yeah. I don't know. That's why I'm like, it almost seems like something is fucking with them. And a ghost that died around that time before it was built probably wouldn't really know about that. Because again, there's a monastery here before, not a mansion that was catered to by servants. So it's like, something is doing that to fuck with people here intentionally because they know that they would be on the lookout for servant bells.

[00:17:58] But if no one's around to do it, it's like, what the fuck? That's why. And it's been seen by every family and all these reporters that are coming into here. Same with the lights. These weird spectral lights in this building have been seen by several different reporters now at this point. And different families. Mary Ann reported a range of terrifying experiences to her husband, including being physically thrown from her bed multiple times.

[00:18:26] The situation grew so dire that Lionel attempted to conduct an exorcism on the home on two separate occasions. His efforts were to no avail. During the first ritual, he claimed he was struck squarely in the shoulder by a stone the size of a fist. Jeez. Yeah. I don't know from where. Somewhere. I don't know where that's coming from. Somebody's throwing stuff. Yeah. I mean, they did say that the ghosts were throwing stones and bottles. Yeah. So they got real pissed when he tried to exorcise them.

[00:18:56] I probably would, too. Yeah. This is my home, too. Bitch, you can't evict me. I was here first. Before it was even built. Yeah. As the Daily Mirror's coverage continued to fuel the fire, Borley Rectory became a magnet for paranormal researchers from across the nation. However, as more eyes turned towards the home, the narrative began to fray.

[00:19:18] Many investigators suspected that the phenomena were being caused either consciously or unconsciously by Marianne Foyster herself. To say the foisters were messy would be an understatement. The family engaged in heated back and forths with researchers, and at one point, Marianne even turned the tables and accused her own husband, Lionel, of faking events to impress the investigators.

[00:19:42] The true nature of the haunting became even more blurred when Marianne eventually admitted to having a longstanding affair with a lodger nearby named Frank Perlis. She later confessed that she had frequently used the cover of Paranormal Activity to mask her secret meetings with Frank and to explain away suspicious noises or absences. Yeah, it was like every time the husband came home too early and she'd be like, oh no, my husband's home. You've got to sneak out the window or hide in the closet.

[00:20:12] And the husband's like, what's that? I hear floorboards creaking or something. That door back there just shut. She's like, oh my God, it's those ghosts again. I'm picturing it even funnier. You just hear like moaning. And the husband's downstairs reading a newspaper like, the fuck is that? Ten minutes later goes up, honey, what was all that? I don't know. It must have been a ghost. Yeah. Why are the blankets such a mess? She's on the floor. They threw me out of bed.

[00:20:43] A stone flies in from the window and you hear a man go, she's mine now, buddy. Man, these ghosts really hate you, Lionel. It's like, what a wild fucking thing to do. What? Yeah, I mean, I've heard of people using a lot of ridiculous things to try to cover up lies or affairs in their relationships.

[00:21:10] But a haunting is a pretty wild cover story. What I'm picturing happened is she's sitting around with her girlfriends, right? They're having their afternoon tea or whatever, gossiping all about the neighborhood stuff. And she spills the beans that she had this affair. Everyone's like, oh, honey, you have to come up with some sort of backup just in case. If he finds out, you're done for. And they're like, didn't you hear this house was haunted? And then she just ran with it.

[00:21:41] Perfect. I got it. There's ghosts. He'll never suspect Frank. The craziest part is that he didn't. Yeah, no. He was like, yeah, ghosts sounds reasonable enough to me. This did. Obviously, her admitting this did lead to a fallout where they did divorce. And in her later age, she would claim to say that she took back some of her stuff after she already took it back.

[00:22:09] She was like, no, some of it was actually paranormal. Yeah, that's where I got the idea to use it as my covers because it was happening to a point. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Of course. Yeah. Only that one part was a hoax. That was when I was getting fucked. The saga of the Foysters at Borley Rectory finally came to a close in October 1935.

[00:22:32] It wasn't the ghosts that drove them out in the end, but rather Lionel's declining health, leaving behind a legacy of shattered glass, secret affairs and a puzzling mystery. Following the Foysters departure, Borley Rectory stood vacant. A hollow shell of its former self, but it wouldn't stay that way for long.

[00:22:51] In May 1937, Harry Price himself decided to take matters into his own hands, securing a year-long rental agreement with Queen Anne's Bounty, the organization that owned the property. That's not anything super fun. When I heard that, I was like, oh, what's that? I'm looking at that. It's just like a holding company. It's just some apartments, LLC. Basically. Price approached the investigation with the precision of a military operation.

[00:23:19] Through an advertisement placed in the Times on May 25th, 1937, and then followed by a rigorous personal interviews, he recruited a team of 48 official observers, as he called them. These volunteers, primarily students, were tasked with spending their weekends within the cold walls of the rectory under strict instructions to document and report any phenomena they witnessed. You know they were just getting fucked up in that house and using him for a party house.

[00:23:48] Yeah, that turned into a college frat real quick. Hey, Harry Price said we could stay here. Rudy, let's get fun. Yeah, as long as we all have a full notebook of random notes by the end of the weekend, we good. We pass. Saw the door open. Yeah, we're good for the week, guys. Yeah. What did you say your dream was about last night after we blacked out drunk? Yeah, that sounds like some good ghostly stuff. Let me jot that down. I mean, yeah, they don't have like 24-7 security cameras at this time. This is the 30s. Trusting all these students.

[00:24:17] Judgment. In March 27, 1938, the investigation took a turn towards the occult. Price contacted Helen Glanville, a medium located in Stratham, London, to conduct a planchette seance, which is essentially just using a spirit board or a Ouija board. The objective was to make direct contact with the spirits bound to the rectory grounds. And according to Price's records, the seance was successful, manifesting two distinct entities.

[00:24:47] The first was Marie Lurie. I love that name. The spirit of a young French nun. Her tragic tale claimed she had fled her religious order to travel to England and marry a member of the Waldergrave family. Instead of a wedding, she met a grim end where she was allegedly murdered in an older building on the site. Her body was discarded in the cellar or a disused well.

[00:25:11] Price suggested that the mysterious wall writings that had appeared over the years, including one that pleaded, Mary Ann, please help me get out, were desperate cries for help from beyond the grave. A second more ominous spirit named Sonex Amared delivered a chilling prophecy as well. He claimed he would set fire to the Borley Rectory that very night at 9pm. Furthermore, he predicted that the blaze would finally reveal the bones of a murdered victim.

[00:25:41] So they're doing a seance. They contact this Sonex guy, Sonex, and he's all of a sudden like, yeah, I'm going to burn the rectory down tonight. Also, I'm a ghost. Also, when I do that, you're going to find the bones of a young girl. Yeah, it's pretty specific stuff. I feel like usually seances are more like, is there someone here? Yes. Will you tell us your name? No answer. But again, the nun story.

[00:26:09] And this is coming from a guy who spends his life and is known for debunking, not for being like, yes, this stuff is real. Like he is famous for going around the globe, proving that these seances are essentially fake. While Price and his team made an overwhelming number of claims during this period, far too many to detail here, it is worth noting that the official observers consistently reported experiences that mirrored the chaos of the Foister era.

[00:26:38] Though the Spirit's Prophecies Deadline passed without a spark in 1938, the prophecy of fire was only delayed, not denied. On February 27th, 1939, the rectory's new owner, Captain H. Gregson, was unpacking boxes when he accidentally knocked over an oil lamp into the hallway. The rectory had never been modernized. It lacked both gas and electricity, and the only water source was a well in the courtyard.

[00:27:05] These conditions allowed for the fire to spread with a terrifying speed, gutting the legendary home quickly. However, the tragedy came with a twist of suspicion. After a thorough investigation, the insurance company concluded that the fire appeared to have been started deliberately. During the height of the inferno, a new legend was also born. Miss Williams from a nearby lodge claimed she saw the figure of a ghostly nun

[00:27:33] standing calmly in an upstairs window as the flames roared around her. It should be noted, however, that she charged Harry Price a fee for this story. So it's best to take her account with a grain of salt. But also, I mean, I'd want to get paid. Yeah. I was going to say, I'm like, eh, that one could go either way, where it's like, hang on, you're not going to tell him the truth unless he pays for it.

[00:27:56] But, I mean, people who submit video footage to the news and stuff get paid if they use that video footage. So. Yeah, I mean, if it's my story, I want to get paid for it, especially if you know who Harry Price is. Like, most people did if they were into this field or around the rectory. Yeah, it's kind of like, I've got leverage. I've got something that I know you want, and you've got money that you know I need. So. The story of Borley Rectory concludes not with fire, but with earth.

[00:28:26] In August 1943, Price returned to the charred ruins to conduct a brief excavation in the cellars. Deep in the dirt, he discovered two bones believed to belong to a young woman. A local doctor suggested they might be animal remains, but a later forensic analysis by Dr. F.B. Parsons suggested that they could be a young woman's, though the evidence was scanty.

[00:28:51] Seeking to put the spirit of Marie Lurie to rest, Price arranged for a Christian burial. However, the local parish of Borley was far from convinced. They barred the ceremony from their grounds, citing the prevailing local opinion that the remains actually belonged to a pig. Forced elsewhere, the bones were buried outside of Borley, leaving the true identity of the rectory nun and the validity of Harry Price's findings to be debated by skeptics and believers to this very day.

[00:29:21] So, I mean, they did end up finding a body. That is pretty creepy that they say, like, you know, one group of people says, okay, there's going to be a fire, and we're going to find bones after the fire, because the seance said so. Well, no, that was the ghost. And then, I know, that's what I mean. Like, these people are like, the seance ghost said, this is what's going to happen. And then it doesn't happen, but then a new family or a new guy moves in, and it does happen.

[00:29:51] That's kind of crazy. And again, it said you're going to find bones of a person. Yeah. And they did. Of a young woman confirmed by a doctor. Maybe confirmed. Possibly confirmed. I mean, at the time, I'd say confirmed. For as much knowledge as they could probably have. But I just think that's, that is insane. With the story of the nun, all of these people seeing the nun in the window this whole time. Eventually, it leading to the burning down of the building,

[00:30:21] which had already happened once before. Before this rectory was built, there was a building here that originally burned in a fire. And Marie was running from a religious order. Yes. It's like all these things tell you exactly what this haunting is. Yeah. It's kind of crazy. And again, this happened over 40 years. It's not like the story was unfolding in, you know, over the course of a few months or a year.

[00:30:50] And all these different people, like that's what's crazy. Isn't the dots keep connecting every time. And the only through line is Harry Price. And he only. And he's called in every time, basically. Yeah. He's never the one that just shows up like the Warrens and is like, hey, let me look. He leaves. And then the new families are like, bro, we need you to come back. We're dealing with the same shit. Following the death of Harry Price in 1948, the Society of Psychical Research commissioned an exhaustive and independent review of the Borley Rectory.

[00:31:19] Led by researchers Eric Dingwall, Kathleen Goldney, and Trevor Hall, the investigation culminated in the 1956 publication, The Haunting of Borley Rectory, a critical survey. This report remains one of the most significant takedowns in paranormal history, systematically dismantling Price's evidence. The SPR investigators argued that many of the inexplicable phenomena were easily attributed to natural causes,

[00:31:48] such as the house's physical subsidence or the movement of rats. And more damningly, they presented evidence that Price had likely fraudulently manufactured several hauntings himself to maintain public interest. The SPR's investigation further eroded the Rectory's supernatural reputation by highlighting the testimony of Marianne Foyster, who eventually admitted that she had orchestrated many of the poltergeist events to distract her husband from her affairs.

[00:32:17] The report also scrutinized the 1929 Phantom Light and ghostly nuns sightings, suggesting they were the result of optical illusions or unreliable witnesses who had been influenced by Price's suggestions. By the time the survey was released, the SPR had effectively reclassified the most haunted house in England as a case study in human deception and psychological suggestion, concluding that while some events remained curious,

[00:32:44] the vast majority were the result of a deliberate trickery. So, that's pretty much the main wrap-up of the Borley Rectory. I mean, it burned down, so it's gone. So now we're going to talk about some theories surrounding the haunting and what might have been going on here. The theories surrounding Borley Rectory range from classical Gothic hauntings to cold clinical debunking. Over the decades, the site has served as a Rorschach test for paranormal investigators, with theories shifting as new evidence

[00:33:14] and new scandals emerged. The most enduring theory, popularized by Harry Price, suggested that the haunting was rooted in a 14th century tragedy. According to local folklore, a nun from a nearby convent attempted to elope with a monk from a Benedictine monastery, allegedly located on the Rectory's site. They were caught, and the monk was reportedly hanged, and the nun was bricked up alive within the convent walls.

[00:33:43] Proponents of this theory believe that the phantom nun seen on the grounds was the spirit of Marie Lurie, and that she is the one who has been haunting the Borley Rectory this entire time. Which, based on all the fucking facts, I could see there being some sort of nun residual haunting there. Oh yeah, and I mean, if you believe it's haunted, then it's definitely this story, where it's her, and this is the reason. It's like, I believe that at least, that if it's haunted,

[00:34:12] this is the haunting. Yeah, Marie Lurie. Yeah. Following the Society of Psychical Research investigation, a dominant theory emerged that the haunting was a combination of deliberate hoaxes and psychological projection. This theory suggests that once the idea of a haunting was planted by the Daily Mirror, every subsequent resident and visitor fell victim to the expectancy effect, misinterpreting natural house noises as supernatural events.

[00:34:41] Which I can see that one, too. I mean, that one's the kind of... The power of suggestion kind of thing. Yeah, exactly. And the more scientific answer if you want to take ghosts out of it. Modern skeptics and environmental researchers have proposed that the poltergeist activity had mundane and physical origins. Borley Rectory was built on unstable ground, and the subsidence, the gradual sinking of the house, likely caused bells to ring via the old mechanical wire systems

[00:35:09] and stones to dislodge from the walls as the house sunk. Additionally, the house was known to have a severe rat infestation within the hollow, lathe, and plaster walls, which could account for the scratching, thumping, and movement of small objects. Yeah. Possibly some diseases that make people a little bit more suggestible or confused as well. Yeah, that's the kind of natural causes theory there.

[00:35:39] Oh, also, they forgot to mention, but the entire place was really infested with rats. Like, oh my god. You're worried about a haunting? Yeah, you gotta get like an exterminator or something over there. Maybe those rats own the house. Some parapsychologists suggest that the activity wasn't caused by ghosts at all, but a reoccurring spontaneous psychokinesis, or RSPK. In this view,

[00:36:08] the agent was Marianne Foyster herself. Not that she was faking it, but that her internal emotional stress and repressed frustrations were manifesting physically as external energy, causing objects to move and bells to ring. Which, that one's pretty interesting. We've talked about a little bit before. Almost like a psychic energy. Caused by like emotional distress. Like high emotion can turn into

[00:36:38] physical manipulation. Mm-hmm. So, I mean, I could see that one too, but I don't know. I'd say that's one of those scientific theories that is still a theory where like there's not really any concrete evidence that people do have that psychic ability. We know for sure we don't have it consciously. Like, we can't look at something and be like, I'm gonna make that move with my mind. No matter how emotional you feel in the moment.

[00:37:08] But it is still up for debate on any degree of that can happen subconsciously or not. Oh, yeah. That is still highly debated. The story of Borley Rectory is a sprawling epic of British high gothic horror beginning with a single unexplained light in 1929 and ending in a heap of charred timber and debated bone fragments. From the initial investigations of V.C. Wall to the media circus surrounding Harry Price, the most haunted house in England

[00:37:38] captured the global imagination like no other. It survived skeptical reverends, aggressive poltergeists, and even an attempted exorcism, only to succumb to a tipped oil lamp and a suspicious insurance claim in 1939. By the time the ruins were finally demolished in 1944, the site had transitioned from a local curiosity into a permanent fixture of paranormal history. Today, Borley Rectory only exists as a phantom

[00:38:08] of the Victorian era. The physical structure is long gone, replaced by a quiet row of bungalows, but the haunting has simply migrated from the floorboards to the library shelves and the internet. The modern consensus remains split. To skeptics, Borley is the ultimate cautionary tale of media sensationalism and the expectancy effect, proving how a charismatic researcher like Harry Price could turn a drafty house

[00:38:36] into a supernatural powerhouse. While the house is gone, the Borley Church across from the street still stands, often serving as a pilgrimage site for many modern ghost hunters. Visitors still report feelings of unease or sightings of a shadowy nun in the churchyard, keeping the core of the myth alive. Regardless of whether the ghosts were real or manufactured by Marianne Foyster's clever trickery, Borley set the template for the modern poltergeist investigation.

[00:39:07] It remains the gold standard for haunting narratives. A messy, complicated, deeply human drama masked by the scent of brimstone and old secret. Ultimately, the true haunting of Borley Rectory wasn't just about spirits. It was about the stories we tell to explain the darkness. Whether it was a French nun seeking rest or a bored wife seeking an escape, the legend of Borley proves that a good story is far harder to kill

[00:39:36] than a ghost. Do you think Borley Rectory was really haunted? I don't know, honestly. I feel like I want to say no because of the amount of actual research that has gone into debunking this and all of the things that could explain it away. It feels like no, it's not. But the fact that generation after generation, different family after different family kept experiencing the same things that would connect these dots time and time again

[00:40:06] is a little bit too coincidental for my liking. So it makes me question I don't know. Yeah, I feel like a lot of the haunting stories we tell, usually when the initial family that reports the haunting moves out, that's it. You hear it just stop. It doesn't continue and it's like, okay, well then, problem solved. Yeah. But with this, you have three reoccurring families and these are all religious people. That's something to keep in mind too. The first few were reverends. Yeah.

[00:40:36] So it's like, why would they lie about paranormal stuff when that actually goes against their religion a lot of the time? Yeah. And like, I don't know. I just don't know because it could probably be explained away how they all knew those same stories, like how they kept attributing it to the same ghost or the same story. Maybe they had just heard about this rumor or this tale from neighbors or from the previous owners themselves. It was already in their head so then when anything happened that,

[00:41:07] of course, was their explanation too just like the family before. But if we don't know for sure that that's what happened then I'm like, what if they weren't connected at all and they're still having the same experience? So just that little bit of gray area, I'm not sure. I definitely don't think Marianne was as haunted as she claims. I don't think she might have been haunted at all. I think she was just cheating on her husband and grasping at straws. What about

[00:41:36] Mabel Smith though? Finding the skull? But yeah, that's creepy. And all that. What the fuck? And again, with them, the one group claiming that they did a seance and the ghost warned them of this fire and bones and then months later a different owner has a fire and find bones. You know, they might have been an insurance fraud there, but it is still spooky. Yeah. Maybe the ghost made it look like it was insurance fraud because the ghost said he was going to do it. Yeah. So what do you think?

[00:42:06] I don't know. You don't know? You don't know? I really don't. All right. I think that this one might be haunted. I think that the Borley Rectory at least has some residual hauntings from stories of the past because I will say a little bit of a kind of pulling the rug out underneath you. There are no documents of a monastery being built in the area, but you also have to think they said that was back in 62.

[00:42:35] So there are probably a lot of buildings that came and went and are not well documented in the area. We only have so many documents that go back that far period as a human species, let alone about that specific of a thing. Yeah. Yeah. You're not even the oldest house in America is 200 years old. We're talking 1362. So, you know, you got to take some of it with a

[00:43:04] grain of salt, but I just, I feel like the whole underlying story that's being told over these years and yeah, sure. Harry Price might have profited from it or was able to sell more of his brand with it, but from his past and what he is known to do with debunking actual paranormal and not actual paranormal investigators, but, you know, con artists and charlatans that pretend they are. Why would he lie about it then? His whole reputation's on the line. Well, yeah, that's why I don't know. I'm like,

[00:43:34] there's enough proof and skepticism pointing against it that I, I don't know if I fully believe it's haunted or not, but there's enough about it that I'm like, I don't know if I can fully say it's not haunted though. That's the mystery. That's it for the night. Now we're going to move on to our date night debrief, which tonight's question is pretty simple. What's your favorite flower? Favorite flower? Oh, you should know this. It's a sunflower. I mean, I do know it,

[00:44:04] but they don't know that. Well, it's a sunflower. That's the purpose of mystery date. We know everything about each other. Not true. Most things. We know almost everything about each other. I think the only thing I could tell you would be something that would be jogged in my memory that I had forgotten about. That is actually usually true. When I find out something new about you, it's from like your mom or your older sister and it's something that you're like, what? Nuh-uh. That's not how I remember it. And they have to

[00:44:33] tell you as well and we find out together. Exactly. So yours is a sunflower? Yeah. What about you? Do you even have a favorite flower? What's those yellow ones outside right now? Daffodils or tulips. I'm not sure which ones we have. I don't know, but I like those ones. Those ones are pretty. I was going to say they're either daffodils or tulips. We had some of both. Well, one of those two because they're pretty in our yard. Yeah. Yeah, I like sunflowers and then roses and I like them

[00:45:03] together. I mean, yeah, that was our wedding. Yeah. Yeah, instead of a theme or a color scheme, we just had sunflowers and roses for everything. So then the dresses, it was like, well, pick one of those colors. Go with the dresses will match the roses. How about that? All right. The centerpieces, just put sunflowers and roses there. Boom. Centerpiece. It was everything about the wedding. There you have it.

[00:45:33] You got like tulips or daffodils. It's to be determined and Kate like sunflowers and roses. Do you have any free talk or updates you want to give? I don't think so. Not a lot new happening. Yeah. I mean, we're doing some batch recordings. So, I mean, we're just filling in as we can with this section right here. But I will say, do keep an eye out on all of our social medias for a little giveaway we're going to be doing soon. Once we had a certain amount of

[00:46:02] subscribers on YouTube, I want to just signify that and give away some of our merch, whether it be a t-shirt, a hoodie, or just something fun for you to take home that says mystery date. And that'll go to the people that follow us on Facebook, Instagram, any of those. Just make sure you hit that button. Other than that, for free talk, I have been getting back into playing D&D or Dagger Heart, which is just a different tabletop role-playing system for the first time in a while. And that's been great and fun. Yeah, it has been fun to get back into D&D.

[00:46:31] It's been a long time since we played. We used to play a lot. Oh, yeah, I used to play like three times a week. And then it's been like a few months. Honestly, or honestly, like two years. I think I was going to say for me, it's been many years because I was too busy to join most of your campaigns there for a while. But we used to play a lot. Yeah, you used to do like three or four campaigns and meet once a week with each of them. I got paid to DM once at a bar for several times.

[00:47:01] And at the library, you taught kids how to do D&D so that they could run campaigns. I really enjoy D&D. So if you need any tips, let me know. I think that's about all. So thank you guys so much for joining us and be sure to come back every week for a brand new episode and a brand new mystery. We hope you all enjoyed today's story and mystery. And don't forget, you can reach out to us with love letters, answer our date night debrief questions, give us your opinions on the theories of the story, or even give us

[00:47:31] episode ideas and mysteries of your own. Our email is mysterydatepodcast at gmail.com. Find us on social media at mysterydatepodcast or head over to our website mysterydatepodcast.com where you can leave a voice message or you can even call us at the mystery hotline 216-770-4881. And your story might just make it on the show. Also, be sure to share this podcast with your friends or even your enemies. We're not going to judge and every little

[00:48:00] view helps us so much. And if you like the show, please be sure to support us and give us a like, share, subscribe, follow us on social media, spread the word, let your grandma know how great of a show we are so she can start listening. Every little bit helps us so much and we appreciate it and it makes us do a little happy dance back here in the mothership. So thank you so much. And with that, have a great rest of your day or night. And remember, every good mystery deserves a date. Bye.