Borley Rectory

Borley Rectory-Henry Price's Investigations

Price was given the opportunity to study the haunting further when no one could be found to live in the rectory. He leased the rectory for a year, and advertised in The Times for "responsible persons of leisure and intelligence, intrepid, critical and unbiased", to form a team of investigators who would spend several nights in the abandoned building. The lease began in June of 1937 and little, if any, poltergeist activity was witnessed during this year-long study. The most common occurrence was the movement of objects out of their documented locations, and the sounds of footsteps.

A mysterious coat appeared, but no sightings of the nun were observed. Some witnesses felt a sudden chill outside the Blue Room, and certain parts of the house were consistently colder than others.

After Price's study group left the rectory, the house was eventually purchased by Captain William Gregson and his family who were the last people to live in the rectory. The rectory burnt down on the 27th February 1939 when Gregson overturned an oil lamp whilst stocking some bookcases (See Image 4). Witnesses who watched the blaze spotted ghosts in the windows. The site was demolished in 1944.

During 1944 LIFE magazine researched an article on Borley Rectory. Whilst photographing the final demolition of the rectory, the photographer took pictures showing a brick rise from the rubble in the doorway (See Image 5). Sceptics say that it was merely a brick that had been thrown by a nearby workman and accidentally captured by the photographer.

Image 6 is a famous photo taken in the 1920's near the graveyard at Borley Rectory. What appears to be the ghost of a monk is seen walking at the back right of the photo.