Borley Rectory

[AJ100]

In 1946 my late father announced to my mother that he had bought Borley Rectory. She was not amused. She didn't want to live in a haunted house, particularly as her daughter was due back from Argentina, where she had been staying with friends during the war and was due back imminently. Plus she had me, as a two year old to consider. She needn't have worried. The Rectory had burned down and most of the rubble cleared away so we were living in the Rectory Cottage, beside the Rectory.
It proved to be more of a nuisance than anything, with people wanting to spend the night in the grounds to 'see the ghost'. Of course they never did.
An RAF pal of my father's came round one evening and, on his departure, covered himself with a sheet and jumped out at a young couple walking down the road, who ran off screaming 'we've seen the ghost!' This increased the number of people wanting to stay overnight, much to my parents' annoyance and the RAF chum was thenceforth in the doghhouse.
Just stories told to me by my parents - you may or may not find them interesting,
Regards
AJ

[Viktoria]

I have had three funny experiences :-
1. A visit to a stately home, in one room as soon as we( OH and I ) entered the temperature dropped really significantly - icy cold on a very hot Summer afternoon ——-
2.In the Church in Pinchbeck Fen where my great grandma was born then ,baptised and married in the church too.
Just my husband and I,as we neared the an altar a very very strong snell of a pipe or cigar.
No one else there but we two, we called and looked in the Vestry etc but no ,no one else in the building .
It was sudden and fresh,not a lingering smell .
Sooo?
3.Working nights in an Elderly People’s ‘home .
First night on duty.
In to the laundry room when an intense feeling of dread and pressure bearing down on me ,I had to,press my back against the wall and could not get out quick enough .
Back downstairs I said to the other person on duty  what a dreadful feeling had  overcome me ——
She said yes everyone felt it ,she had not said anything to me to see what happened .
I hated going in there when a bed needed changing etc
The house had been the local Hospital Pathologist’s .
I got used to it but it truly was unpleasant.
Viktoria.

[AJ100]

That's interesting, Viktoria. Some remarkable experiences. I have never had any but I have a theory- and it is only a theory- about Borley. There is an underground passage, mainly silted up now, that runs from the stables behind the Cottage across the road towards the large house opposite, which is next to the church. It is believed that there is another tunnel from the cellars of this house to the crypt of the church, from the days when catholicism was forbidden. There is no entrance to the crypt inside the church.
In the early 1900's, Edward Bull,owner of the Rectory, discovered a grave outside the altar end of the church and was puzzled that it had no inscription. He excavated it and found steps leading down to an outside entrance of the crypt but never recorded what he found.He installed an iron gate to stop anyone entering and put his name with the date on the frame. A later examination could only look through the keyhole and saw an altar covered with a green cloth and several coffins/sarcophagus.
My theory is - and feel free to tell me I'm talking rubbish - that the Catholics were discovered at prayer and murdered, and their bodies buried in the existing coffins. Bull found this and sealed he crypt. Just a theory.
AJ

[HughC]

Strange coincidence: I was reading about Borley Rectory only yesterday.
"The most haunted house in England"
See the Wikipedia article for the story.

[Nick B]

Some years ago, I'd been enjoying some refreshment with a friend, and when closing time came around we felt that the night was still young, but were at something of a loss as to what to do with it. He'd mentioned a psychic research group he'd recently been to, and as they had been discussing the place suggested we drive to Borley, not too far away. Of course we had to do it, and when we arrived, tiptoed up the path to the church porch, where we were a little surprised to find a dark figure secreted in a corner. As our eyes got used to the darkness and our ears adjusted to the sounds of the night, we realised that the place was crawling - sometimes literally - with people with cameras, making recordings, measuring electrical forces or setting up tripwires. The church was quite possibly busier at the dead of night than at the Sunday morning service. Sadly, we didn't experience any unexplained phenomena.

[jmp]

Sorry I have just spotted this post but I have a distant link to Borley Rectory in that I have a relative who died there. My GGgrandfather Benjamin Howlett was living in Lowestoft with a lady "housekeeper" Louisa Waters who had 3 children. He refused to include his name on their birth certificates but the mother still managed to have them all baptised in his name . When Louisa died aged 33 he packed the two youngest children ( 2 and 6) off to Oulton workhouse and kept the elder boy my Ggrandfather who was 14 and could obviously pay his way at home and also found himself another "housekeeper" . Subsequently one of the two younger children Lydia Waters (my GgAunt)was found a position, presumably by the workhouse, as a Childrens Maid/Domestic Servant at the Rectory where she appears in the Census in 1891. Unfortunately, she died in 1892 at the Rectory of aneamia and Cardiac Syncope age 24. Sad short life. I had never heard of Borley Rectory until I saw a programme on it a couple of years ago.

[ThrelfallYorky]

I've heard and read a lot of references to Borley Rectory - it was rather a "thing" in the 1960s, but when boiled down many of the same stories were circulated and embroidered until they must have been dizzy. Loads still available online.
TY