April 29, 2026 • 62 mins
Tucked away in Suffolk, more than 60 miles from London, the tiny village of Borley is a 'blink-and-you'll-miss-it' spot on the map of the UK countryside. Yet despite its size, this little community was infamous for being home to one of England's most haunted places: the Borley Rectory. In tonight's episode, Ben, Matt and Noel discover the murky origins of the Rectory... and how one controversial man may have created the legend out of whole cloth.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my
name is Noah.
Speaker 3 (00:30):
They call me Bed. We're joined as always with our
super producer Dylan the Tennessee pal Fagan. Most importantly, you
are you. You are here. That makes this the stuff
they don't want you to know. And what better way
to get into this than a classic piece of what
I would call internet folklore at this time. Do you
(00:51):
guys remember Riker from Star Trek the Next Generation?
Speaker 4 (00:55):
Which one did he amber?
Speaker 1 (00:58):
See?
Speaker 4 (00:58):
The one with the bearded man?
Speaker 3 (00:59):
He was the sometimes he had a beard. Yeah he
looked Jonathan Fracas, yess yeah. Yeah. So there's this great clip.
While you're tuning in with us on Netflix or your
podcast platform of choice, get yourself over to YouTube. There
is this fascinating, hilarious compilation of Riker of Freaks from
(01:22):
various intros to an unexplained paranormal phenomenon show he did
and the funny one. The pro tip is some genius
on YouTube slowed down his speed of recording. So the
compilation of him introducing everything with a question sounds like
(01:43):
a drunk guy at a bar. So he's walking around like, Hey,
what's the tallest man you've ever seen?
Speaker 4 (01:51):
Very stoned? Right, Yeah. Another version of that is the
Neil de grass Tyson comes off that way if you
slow him down significantly and unrelated to fracas, but there's
another great YouTube compilation of Star Trek clips where they're
like supposed to be being thrown around by space you know, collisions,
(02:12):
but someone has like taken after effects and image stabilized
all the footage, so it just looks like actors just
flinging themselves around.
Speaker 3 (02:19):
Phenomenal, phenomenal, And I like that because that's excellent foreshadowing.
Speaker 4 (02:23):
Noel.
Speaker 3 (02:24):
One of the questions that a drunk or stoned riker
or de grass Tyson might ask you is have you
ever visited a haunted house? So let's start there. Have
you guys ever been to a house that you felt
was haunted or there was something off about it?
Speaker 2 (02:42):
Yes, for sure, But before we go into there, I sorry,
I just had something to say before we moved on there.
These like History Channel shows that exist out there. They
are all of the ones that are unsolved mysteries, like
the one we're talking about that features a number two
from Star Trek. There's they all do that thing where
it's like they set you up with a question right
before they go into the part that's not voiceover, that's
(03:04):
not a stand up shot with whoever the stand in
host is William Shatner. I watched one yesterday literally with
Lawrence Fishburne, and you think, oh, man, Morpheus doing one
of these Unsolve Mysteries things, This is gonna be awesome.
But it's just him on a green screen just saying
some words like this, and then all of a sudden
he asks a question and then it cuts to a
(03:24):
bunch of clips. It's just so annoying. How all the
same they.
Speaker 4 (03:28):
Are formula formula shows there, I mean, what is it
all probably taking pages out of the book of Unsolved
Mysteries or in search of right.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
Yes, they're all trying to be the same thing. It's
just at it's time I'm putting it out there. It's
all you third party production companies that end up for
Science Channel or History Channel or any of these shows,
any of these cable networks, any of them just let's
do something new please.
Speaker 3 (03:53):
Yeah, we got real close to being involved with several
shows like that and not naming name, but we put
a we put a fair amount of work in a
while ago, many moons ago, and I think we were
all surprised to find pretty much the same ideas that
(04:13):
we had pitched or created on a show hosted by
a celebrity.
Speaker 2 (04:18):
All no, John Noble, we'll call you out. It was you,
but also your fault.
Speaker 4 (04:24):
Man, I'm not mad, so hugely hugely fan, huge fans
of French. But I think then you'll also remember, and
it's worth pointing out that part of the reason that
our thing didn't fly as we were pitching it was
because it maybe wasn't formulaic enough and they kept trying
to shoehorn it into that formula, the Royal, Theay. But yeah,
it's pretty pretty funny.
Speaker 3 (04:43):
So let's get back to it. Have let's do the
formula a little bit. Have you guys, as I asked earlier,
have you guys ever visited what you would consider to
be a haunted house or a house that had a
very strange, inexplicable vibe.
Speaker 4 (04:59):
That was a yes from you, Maddie, what you got.
Speaker 2 (05:01):
Well, it's the same old thing. I've talked about it
before in the show, visiting a mental health institution that
was in disrepair and had been shut down long long ago, and.
Speaker 4 (05:11):
Then haunted sanitarium, the classic content sanitary.
Speaker 2 (05:14):
Yes, of course, it's the closest thing I've been to
a haunted house.
Speaker 4 (05:17):
You know.
Speaker 2 (05:18):
It's not a place where I would live, not a
place that I would rent out even, but it was
a place that people did live in at one point,
and it was most certainly haunted by a feel if
that makes sense.
Speaker 3 (05:31):
Yeah, yeah, I think you know. I'm still wrestling with
the idea that certain strong intangible things like emotions or
great trauma might impact somehow of physical location, and a
lot of people that's one of the big things experienced
that for some reason or another.
Speaker 2 (05:50):
That concept is one of the oldest thoughts about what
what a haunting could be. If if the somehow the
human interaction that occurs there again, the emotional toll that's
maybe taken on someone, or that energy that gets released
through violence, it's thought that that might be the thing
that goes through time.
Speaker 4 (06:10):
Well, and it's like one of these things too where
I've been asked it's come up a couple of times
in the last few days, just since I've been on
the road a little bit. I was directly asked at
a restaurant that I ate at last night. It was
a really incredible tie restaurant called bang Bang Bangkok, which
I highly recommend anybody in New York checkout. It's like
a bus that you sit in and they have projections
on all sides of this bus that make it feel
(06:30):
like you're driving through the markets of Bangkok and all
of these different parts of the city, and it's wonderful.
But our guide on this experience asked everybody who was
seated with us whether or not we believed in ghosts,
and pointed out that if you ask tai people that
nearly one hundred percent of them are going to say yes,
oh yes. And the graveyards there in general are not
(06:54):
the kind of prim and proper, you know, manicured, cleaned
up state park type situation that we maybe see here.
That they are much more ramshackled and spooky and the
kind of place you maybe wouldn't hang out after dark.
But it just made me think of what I usually
respond when asked that question, is I don't believe in
sentient you know, disembodied spirits that possess all of the
(07:15):
memories and thoughts, and you know, can communicate like a
human would. But to Matt's point, I feel things like
energy signatures or residual let's call it electricity. I mean,
to me, the soul or the spirit is this idea
of energy not being able to be created or destroyed,
and little bits of it that can remain and stack
(07:35):
up over time, especially in places where historical legacies of
trauma or bad things exist.
Speaker 3 (07:43):
One hundred percent. I think we're on the same page.
That's exactly what I'm saying. And you said it so well,
like you don't need a sentient entity. It could just
be energy that we don't understand. Again, something intangible encoded
in a physical location, and it's nuts. I was looking
at this gallop pole from last year. So we're recorded
(08:04):
on April twenty, twenty twenty six, and according to this poll,
about thirty nine percent of Americans do believe in ghosts.
Weirdly enough, more people believe in psychic or spiritual healing.
That's a story for another evening. We've looked into allegations
of ghostly activity often in the past we also found
(08:26):
some surprising scientific explanations for at least some of the encounters.
In tonight's episode, we're returning to the old school paranormal
stuff they don't want you to know, by exploring the
curious case of wait for it, not Benjamin Button, but
Borly Rectory, which is often called the most haunted house
(08:47):
in England, or was for a time.
Speaker 4 (08:51):
We'll be right back.
Speaker 3 (08:57):
Borly what Borley? Not bar b O R L E.
Y guys. I don't know about you all, but I
had not heard too much about this place outside of
this case, and before we did research, I swear I
saw it pop up on a couple BBC documentaries.
Speaker 4 (09:18):
It does ring a bell in that sense, been and
I believe it's located near Essex, which I'm also a
little bit familiar with, around two miles northwest of Sudbury, Suffolk,
in a little less than sixty nine miles from London Town.
Because you know, most Americans, myself included, don't realize just
how many varying little communities and villages and townships and
(09:43):
whatever you want to call it exist there in the
UK and in the London kind of greater metro area.
It's incredibly sprawling place, and there are regional differences and
dialects and accents and you know, culture and history that
can vary just from town to town. But most people's
frame of reference is, of course London.
Speaker 2 (10:01):
Just the point of not recognizing Borley Rectory. I was
on that same page with you, Ben as I was
starting to do research for this. But what I realized
is that we have talked about and I did recognize
Harry Price, one of the guys we're gonna talk about,
because and it's weird that I that I would remember
him but not Borley Rectory, because he's so closely tied
(10:23):
to the place. The location and his work there is
why he is known for what he's known for. We'll
get into him. A spiritualist, perhaps you would say, a
paranormal researcher of sorts. We'll talk about Harry Price. But
it is weird that that dude, for some reason, at
least for me and many perhaps for other people, he
(10:44):
sticks around. But the actual location maybe because of the name.
I want to say, the name is a little bit boring.
Borly Rectory, I don't know, doesn't ring in the ears,
maybe in the same way Harry Price does.
Speaker 3 (10:56):
Yeah, and Borley is a tiny, tiny place. It's kind
of a blink and you'll miss it community. It's a
population of just about one hundred and eleven people as
of twenty twenty one, and we call it a village,
but it's essentially it's like a cluster of three different buildings.
So you could be driving by and totally miss this place.
(11:20):
But we have to remember it's swinging above its weight
class in terms of history. Despite its small size, Worley
is home to a ton of historic sites. The most
famous is the Rectory, and a rectory is just a
fancy name for parsonage.
Speaker 4 (11:37):
Which is where the clergy live who are sort of
they're on site dwelling, you know, for the church that
they operate in. Right.
Speaker 3 (11:45):
Yeah, and this is going to bring up a lot
of Stephen king esque vibes, a lot of like for
if you're a fan of the Poultrygeist film franchise, this
is for you. The Moorley Rectory before it was called
the most haunted house in all of England. It was
the one they're talking about. Was built in eighteen sixty
(12:08):
two by a guy named Reverend Henry Dawson Ellis Bull.
That's his whole name. He had a lot of middle names.
Speaker 4 (12:15):
Reverend Henry Dawson Ellis Bull, according to the Suffolk Free Press,
moved into this parsonage around a year before he became
the rector of the parish, which I believe is just
another word for like the pastor. Right, Yeah, with more
admin work, little more admin work, so he is overseeing
the property and doing all the things as well as
(12:36):
being the spiritual advisor. So, like you said, Ben, a
priest who does a little bit more of the legwork
of maintaining a property and an organization like.
Speaker 3 (12:46):
That and a community. And just like the Poltergeist franchise,
this rectory is built on land where the soil is sour.
Now put in pet cemetery. Yeah, because there was an
earth earlier building on the property that had burned to
the ground in eighteen forty one. So this is not
really brand new construction. It might seem like bad luck
(13:10):
in a lot of cultures, right to build on land
that had something bad occur earlier, But we have to
remember that the United Kingdom is incredibly old, especially to Americans,
and also it's got a limited amount of real estate,
so it is far from uncommon for successive generations to
build a top earlier structures. The history here in this
(13:34):
culture is literally a palump sest. One of my favorite
stories about how deep history goes in the United Kingdom
comes from twenty seventeen when archaeologists literally found the grave
of King Richard the Third under a parking lot.
Speaker 4 (13:51):
Ben I had to google it myself. I know it's
a word you're fond of, and I always forget. Palm
sest is literally a piece of pay a page of
like a manuscript or something that is reused and you know,
erased and then written on top of again, an erased
and written on top of again. So within that page
it contains all of these kind of ghostly remnants of
(14:12):
what came before.
Speaker 3 (14:13):
Yeah, it's a beautiful, weirdly specific word, right. So okay,
So Reverend Bull builds this new rectory on the side
of the old one, and he expands it over time,
mainly to house his cartoonishly large family. You guys, he
had fourteen children. But he had fourteen children, poor day.
Speaker 4 (14:36):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (14:37):
Wait, so okay, it's a rector, so it's it's a
member of the clergy, but it's not the priest, so
perhaps they don't have that same celeb Yeah, can't be
sleeping with even their spouse and don't have a spouse.
Don't do that. Don't do this. So fourteen kids, it's
very interesting just how frequently the rector was getting on
(15:00):
leave men or yeah exactly.
Speaker 4 (15:02):
Yeah, So.
Speaker 3 (15:05):
This denomination does allow for the clergy to marry.
Speaker 4 (15:09):
So it's more to do with the denomination than the
position of a rector, because a rector is basically still
the priest mat of the of he just of this parish. Yeah,
he is the spiritual leader, but also the guy that's
like the landlord. It's like taking care of all the things,
hiring the workers that maybe helped maintain the property. If
anyone's seen the most recent knives Out movie, dead Man,
(15:33):
that is very much the kind of place we're talking
about here, that exists kind of in a rural area
and the what's the word. The congregation is small. Everyone
knows each other and they all live in this very
small village together and have the church is kind of
a center point meeting place of the community.
Speaker 3 (15:47):
And also I want to take an opportunity to shout
out Midnight Mass also on Netflix. Oh man, what.
Speaker 4 (15:55):
I loved it very Stephen Kidd without actually having anything
to do with a direct Stein and King story. I
loved that series a lot.
Speaker 2 (16:03):
You know what's true. One of the primary goals in
many a religion is to go forth and multiply, and
the rector is making that happen.
Speaker 3 (16:12):
Yes, he was an erector for sures of buildings and
dreapes and himself. So it might sound odd right for
a newly constructed house to be considered automatically haunted, but
again built on ancient ground where bad things statistically probably
(16:34):
happened right in the past. The most popular legend about
this place before the current rectory is constructed, concerns a
Benedictine monastery that was supposedly built somewhere nearby around thirteen
sixty two, and according to this story, is like, let
me change my life to make it more campfire. According
(16:57):
to this story, there's a monk from a monastery and
he gets romantically involved with a nut from a condo
in the area.
Speaker 2 (17:08):
It doesn't right after the why do I love that?
Speaker 3 (17:14):
And after their affair is discovered, the monk is executed.
They kill them, you know, Chinese pirate style, and the
just excommunicated and the nun is bricked up, alive in
the convent walls, left to starve to death, so arguably
a worse way to die.
Speaker 4 (17:34):
Very poesh.
Speaker 2 (17:36):
So this is definitely what happened or a fable or
where are we at with this?
Speaker 3 (17:41):
This is definitely not what happened.
Speaker 4 (17:43):
Okay, So the dramatic sigh story that's all the nuns.
Speaker 3 (17:49):
Yeah, it's a famous tale in the area, but it's
just that it's a story. It gets debunked in nineteen
thirty eight historians confirm there's no his historical basis to this,
and then further they argue it could have been fabricated
by some of again those fourteen children who were trying
(18:10):
to impress their friends and make the rectory look cool,
and so the whole buried a live trope and the
whole like forbidden love trope.
Speaker 4 (18:20):
Both of these things are just like red meat for
this type of cautionary tale, right, like we've seen it again,
like Nnedgar Allan Poe. Was it the cask of the
mantiado where the whe the spoiler alert, someone's you know,
bricked into the walls. I just I could see how
this would be the kind of thing that would be
repeated and styled on a little bit and that whole
(18:40):
game of telephone. Before you know it, you got yourself
a full blown, you know, tale of depravity.
Speaker 3 (18:48):
And it adds on itself, right, because everybody wants to
have a story in that kind of conversation.
Speaker 2 (18:53):
Yes, but before we are, you know, too happy with
ourselves thinking that this can never happen. Send yourself over
to CNN and look up a story from twenty thirteen
where a woman's body was found twenty eight years later
behind a false wall in a house year later.
Speaker 4 (19:10):
Great movie does.
Speaker 2 (19:12):
But just we do know that this grizzly act has
occurred in the past, and likely occurred more often, you know,
before modern construction techniques that are let's say, pretty flimsy often.
Speaker 4 (19:25):
Well, certainly that's what led to it being fictionalized in
the first place, you know, Like I'm sure Graham Poe
heard tell of something along those lines happening throughout history,
and then he just really eviled it up even further, right.
Speaker 3 (19:37):
Yeah, and some and actually there was a genre of
religious official that would willingly be walled up. The anchors
check that out. It's very very strange career. Yeah, we
do know what happened. And I love that point about
Poe because we know during Poe's time, he was pulling
(19:58):
from a lot of real life ideas, including things like
being accidentally buried alive. Right, that was a whole grulish
industry of little pipes up to the surface with bells
that you could ring.
Speaker 4 (20:11):
Oh right, wait a minute now that oh you know
what that is. There's the movie The Nune which involves
this kind of Laura as well. It does feature that
exact thing, the bells sticking up out of the grave,
and there's a jump scare moment that happens in it
where the bell starts to.
Speaker 3 (20:27):
Start strit gosh. I can't wait to watch that. Fan's
pretty good franchise.
Speaker 4 (20:33):
It's a franchise. I think there's maybe at least two,
but it is a offshoot of the Conjuring series.
Speaker 3 (20:38):
Now I've heard of it. Yeah, is it the same
nun all the time?
Speaker 4 (20:41):
It is the same spooky nun who also the actor
who plays the nun was the creepy goblin behind the
dumpster and mulholland dry.
Speaker 3 (20:51):
Oh yeah, oh wow. Okay, all right, we're fascinating with
paranormal events, so we're the kind of fox boulders who
want to learn more about this stuff. And it is
curious from what we know about other haunted houses that
this place would be considered haunted from the jump from
the year was built. Locals would be interviewed later and
(21:14):
they would say, oh, yeah, eighteen sixty three, I remember
hearing unexplained footsteps when I was walking around in there.
The locals, importantly, were never fully identified, and they only
made these claims when they were asked by investigators decades
after the fact. So it could have been people mis remembering,
(21:34):
or it could have been people just down at the
pub or down the pub spinning yarns. Or they may
have genuinely experienced something they couldn't explain and they just
kept mum about it because they didn't want to look
looney tunes right until someone forced them to talk about it.
It's weird, but we know that Reverend Bull, his spouse,
(21:57):
and his small army of children did seem to believe
that their house was haunted. They seemed to genuinely believe
something was afoot and they told their neighbors, they told
their friends about this. They said they'd seemed bizarre apparitions,
they had heard unexplained knocks. Let's do another fun knock. Yeah,
(22:21):
so they had heard stuff like that. They had seen
maybe messages scrolled windows or mirrors or walls.
Speaker 2 (22:29):
Weird messages too, Messages that were unintelligible and looked like, oh,
I don't know, maybe one of fourteen children wrote them.
Speaker 4 (22:37):
Yeah, yeah, spookier than the scrawl of a child inexplicably
appearing on a wall.
Speaker 2 (22:43):
Right, But just you can see the ones we're talking
about there are actually it's not these specific ones, I
don't think with the Reverend Bull. Yes, that's earlier.
Speaker 3 (22:53):
Yeah, and I think, yeah.
Speaker 2 (22:55):
Yeah, but you can see examples of the scrolling, just
not the exact ones that we're mentioning here.
Speaker 3 (23:01):
Right, Yeah, And we can also see a pattern of
the kind of paranormal activity that they're reporting. And you know,
no't use one of our favorite phrases, the game of telephone.
This is a game of ghostly telephone that begins because
other people in Boorly, in even smaller place back in
(23:22):
this time period, they start saying, yeah, I always knew
there was something creepy about that area. I've got paranormal
experiences and they're all somehow linked to this rectory.
Speaker 2 (23:35):
Let's just take a moment here, guys to describe what
this building looks like. We've got some images, like historical
images from over time. I've seen some interior images from
like eighteen ninety, which is you know, well after it's built,
you know, almost thirty years after it's built. But there's
(23:56):
some external images you can see that show this thing.
It looks like two stories. Guys. Can you tell if
it's a third story up there or is that just
the attic?
Speaker 4 (24:05):
I can't tell it. Yeah, the Belfrey, the lofts.
Speaker 3 (24:08):
Yes, it's it comes like it's two main stories with
an attic and with sellers.
Speaker 4 (24:13):
Got it. You probably lots of a lot of freaking chimneys.
Speaker 3 (24:18):
Well, yeah, yeah, it's before central heating.
Speaker 4 (24:22):
Of course.
Speaker 3 (24:23):
It's a nice it's it's it is a nice house.
It's obviously no Buckingham Palace, but it's one of the
better houses in the area during its time.
Speaker 2 (24:34):
Oh yeah, but there is something if you had no
idea that ghost had anything to do with this story
and you were just looking at this these photographs, I
think in modern times you look at these photographs you think, oh,
that's kind of spooky, just because it's in black and white,
and it looks degraded or it's in the CPA tone
color on some of the websites. But there is something
maybe the way the shadows of the trees that are
(24:56):
around it, and maybe I can't tell if that's that
are going up one side of it. There's some you know,
it just has this there's something about it that seems
pretty freaky.
Speaker 3 (25:07):
Yeah, it even in its heyday, all the photos we
have of it, it looks like a bando. That's what
we call it in Atlanta.
Speaker 2 (25:15):
What does that mean?
Speaker 4 (25:16):
Like a decaying urban property that's abandoned. Yes, yes, yes, yeah, yeah,
think of like the Goat Farm. Is this incredible re
used industrial kind of compound here in Atlanta that is
similarly bricked up and sort of decaying looking, but then
it's been turned into this amazing arts community. But you
(25:36):
didn't know that and you were just walking around it.
It definitely has that quality.
Speaker 3 (25:40):
Yeah, and it does eventually become real life haunted for
at least a second, because Reverend Bull himself becomes a ghost,
by which I mean he dies in eighteen ninety two.
Speaker 2 (25:54):
But ooh, do we know if he died in the house.
Speaker 3 (25:57):
We don't have that clear, the odds are high, but
the paranormal experiences continue after Bull passes away, one of
the most notable being July twenty eighth, nineteen hundred, when
four of his daughters at once together see what they
think is a nun. In twilight, right, so the sun's
(26:22):
going down. They see a shadowy silhouette, say, forty ish
yards from the house, and they try to walk up
to this figure and talk to it, and they call
out and the nun is not responding, and as they
get closer, it vanishes. So to these four daughters of
(26:43):
Reverend Bull, this is smoking gun proof of a ghost.
Speaker 4 (26:48):
Again.
Speaker 3 (26:48):
Their whole family says they believe that there are spirits
haunting the grounds.
Speaker 2 (26:55):
Yeah, with this nun right and out of place. None
eight years after their father's passing. There are a lot
of siblings. I wonder how many sons are around, and
if any of those sons are maybe hanging out with
a nun be a boughty hmmm.
Speaker 3 (27:11):
Who doesn't love a random nun? Who does you know?
Loose bag of diamonds, random nune? You got a heck
of a Saturday.
Speaker 4 (27:17):
You know?
Speaker 2 (27:18):
Now? Now the home at this time, it's only being
used for as a family home. It's is no longer
being used as a rectory in any way.
Speaker 3 (27:27):
It's still used as a rectory at this point because
of the uh, because of the new owner, which is
one of Reverend Bull's sons, Reverend Henry Foister Bull takes over,
so it's still active as a rectory there. I don't
think they have lodgers at this time, but they do
(27:48):
have servants, and they have those servant bells and stuff.
Speaker 2 (27:50):
So our buddies say it didn't they wouldn't seem that
weird to have a nun on the grounds at this
But in my mind you would be like, oh ghost,
you would go, oh, there's a nun. I was an
doing out there.
Speaker 3 (28:01):
I mean, you guys know, there's this monastery I hang
out with. I hang out with in Conyer's, Georgia. Oh yeah, Rocks, Yeah,
our Lady of the Holy Spirit. Check it out if
you get a chance. I got sick Bonds Eye Garden.
But even when I'm hanging out there, because it's a
very chill, nice place to hang out, I still get
a little weirded out when I turn a corner and
(28:21):
all of a sudden, there's definitely a monk there. You know,
I'm just not here.
Speaker 4 (28:26):
So they're so quiet you never hear them coming.
Speaker 3 (28:30):
You never hear them coming. This okay, So Foyster Bull
takes over. He's the reverend now and he dies on
June ninth, nineteen twenty seven. At that point, the rectory
stands vacant for the better part of a year. It's
not until October, or actually longer than a year. It's
(28:51):
not until October of nineteen twenty eight that the home
gets new occupants or depending on your perspective, folks, new victims.
It's another reverend, so this is still a rectory. It's
a guy named Eric Smith and his spouse and they
move in. Oh they have an adopted daughter as well.
So they move in and Smith's wife is cleaning out
(29:14):
a cupboard. Reportedly, according to the press at the time,
she comes across a brown paper package that has a
skull inside, a human skull of a young woman and
finding this. We don't know the internal politics of the family,
but we know they got spooked out enough that they
(29:36):
were on alert. They were not having good time in
their home. They said they were hearing the ding ding
ding of the servant bell despite being disconnected, so those
bells have been cut off. They weren't supposed to be operating.
They would see strange lights in their windows at night.
And keep in mind, this is before the widespread rollout
(29:58):
of the automobile right the world, and they would hear
unexplained little tippy taps in the night. That's the weirdest
thing about old houses, man, especially ones with hardwood floors,
you know, everything that happens in the house, right, you know,
when people have their late night peas well.
Speaker 2 (30:18):
You know, I think it's just something that houses experience
a lot of times. If you've got wooden floorboards, or
if you just live in a house that maybe has
more than one story and there's a lot of wind
in your area. I've definitely personally experienced the sound of
somebody coming down the stairs and it's just that wood
creaking because of movement on the exterior.
Speaker 4 (30:36):
Oh well, I mean, you know, shout out to our
recent episode about the voices of the Appalachian Trail and
the way sound moves and is distorted, and not to
mention the way our minds perceive it and associate it
with all kinds of you know, weird traumas and biases
from our past. Sound is wild.
Speaker 3 (30:56):
Yeah, You're in an old haunted house late in the
night and you hear a whisper that says, get one
Markey's idea. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Maybe it's the floor, Maybe
it's parent.
Speaker 4 (31:08):
You have different voices than me, brother.
Speaker 3 (31:11):
I've got sponsored voices. So the Smith Family live Moss lists.
The Smith family is the reason we are here tonight.
In nineteen twenty nine, apparently because they got so freaked out,
they reach out to a UK tabloid called The Daily Mirror.
I had no idea was that old. They asked the
(31:32):
good folks at the Mirror to help them contact an
outfit called the Society for Psychical Research or the sp R.
Newspapers said yes, they did them one better. They sent
a reporter out to Borley to investigate the site, and
then they also sent another person along. This is the
(31:54):
star of tonight's show. This one guy, folks, is the
reason Rectory becomes the most haunted house in England. We're
going to take a pause for a word from our
sponsors and will introduce you to a very complicated guy.
(32:17):
Here's where it gets crazy. Seriously, Warley Rectory is considered
the most haunted house in England because of one guy.
The entirety of its infamy is resting on the shoulders
of a self styled paranormal investigator named Harry Price.
Speaker 4 (32:34):
I do think the concept of like the most the
hauntedest housed in all of the UK. It's sort of
like world's best cup of coffee, Like, what are you
basing this on? Exactly? What are our metrics here? And
it would arguably be hype and the ability for an
individual to get press and promote it and talk a
lot about it.
Speaker 3 (32:52):
And as we've established in previous episodes, over low of
these many years, we are more likely to visit a
tour trap that's a bit more humble. You know, don't
show me the world's biggest frying pan. You're getting me
off the interstate. When I see a sign that says
the world's third biggest frime pan.
Speaker 4 (33:10):
I want to sit in the world's most sensible at
arondeck chair. There we go.
Speaker 3 (33:15):
I like that sensible. That's nice. Okay Price, Let's meet
Harry Price. It's eighteen eighty one. He is born. For
most of his life, since he's eight years old, he
is obsessed with allegations of the supernatural spirits and psychic phenomena.
If you are active in the skeptic community, you may
have heard legends like James Randy himself talk about Harry Price.
(33:39):
Harry Price, prolific writer, prolific author. He traces his inspiration
and his obsession back to a chance meeting he had
with get this guys, an allegedly native American circus magician.
And he's eight years old, and this magician cures Harry
(34:02):
Price of a toothache through the arcane arts.
Speaker 4 (34:05):
I mean nothing I'll make you believe more than having
your pain taken away. And because a toothache ain't no joke,
he became convinced of the existence of magic, of the
secret world of supernatural things, just through his being removed
of this affliction of a sore tooth. To your point,
Ben in the outline, this sort of thrum of energy
(34:27):
just beneath the surface, like that pain that radiates from
a a rotten tooth.
Speaker 3 (34:33):
And here without being anything other than fair, I think
it's important for us to ask, did the nerve and
his tooth just die? Is that what truly dispelled the pain?
We don't know, But by the time he was fifteen,
our buddy young. Harry Price is already writing. He wrote
(34:55):
writes this play about his early self reported experiences with
a poltergeist. I believe the play is called The Skeptic.
He's a dynamic storyteller. He's a prolific author. He is
a very divisive figure. Some people say he's a quack.
Some people say he's a credible investigator. His champions are
always quick to point out that Price does not hesitate
(35:19):
to expose frauds or conclude when something is malarkey. And
that's where we run into a related conspiracy that hearkens
back to our episode on books they don't want you
to read? Have you ever heard of a little tone
called Revelations of a spirit Medium?
Speaker 2 (35:37):
Amazing?
Speaker 4 (35:37):
No, I have heard of the Book of the Bible, though, no,
I think it's just revelation. People haven't miscall it. No,
I don't know that one. Ben.
Speaker 3 (35:45):
Yeah, I don't think any of us knew about it
until we were researching the spiritualist movement or the spiritualism movement.
Don't feel bad if you haven't heard of it either, folks.
There are a lot of books out there, but this
book is the subject of a conspiracy. It is anonymously
written by a former medium, and this made me think
(36:08):
of you. No, it breaks the fundamental law of the
magician's code. The author explains the tricks that fake psychics
used to grift people.
Speaker 2 (36:18):
Well, yeah, let's give a shout out really quickly, just
to the spirit, hey, which drove mister Price here. It
is the same spirit that led you to this Netflix
channel or to this podcast. Feed the curiosity, right, it's
the same reason why we make this show that sparked
that little thing that mister Price got from the tooth,
(36:40):
maybe from somebody who purportedly was using special magic powers,
spiritual powers. The curiosity about the potential that existed there
is what sent him down the pathway to this book's
And again, I can't reiterate this enough. It's the reason
you clicked on this episode. If you can hear this
right now, that curiosity is the thing we can't throw
(37:03):
away completely. But it is amazing that there is a
skeptic nature at least in some way that mister Price
is coming at some of these things.
Speaker 4 (37:14):
Well, and for many of us too. I mean we
talk about this often, how there's just so little mystery
left in the world, Like I don't know that I
always want all of the answers, and when you kind
of spoil how the magic trick is done, it sort
of takes some of the wonder out of it literally
kills the magic. And so this is the kind of
thing that really upsets people who are in that trade,
(37:36):
whether it be magicians, you know, blacklisting other magicians who
have you know, spilled the beans about how how the
tricks work. In this case, we are talking to people
that maybe are not the most trustworthy of individuals who
are upset because now they're no longer able to use
these tricks to bilk people out of their money by
making them believe that they're actually communicating with their dead
(37:57):
loved ones.
Speaker 2 (37:58):
Do we know when it came out of this book
Revelations of a Spirit Medium. When did it come out?
Because in our explorations of the spiritualism movement, we do
know that attempting to builk people out of money was
one of the primary things that was occurring during that movement.
People who kind of glombed on to that movement and
then decide, Hey, I'm going to make a buck using
(38:19):
these kinds of parlor tricks. Right, we were aware of this.
Speaker 3 (38:22):
Yeah, yeah, and this is not just endangering magician ideology, right,
this is endangering people's livelihoods. So boy howdy, the spiritualist
movement and mediums in general, genuine and grifter alike, they
are pissed so much so that they conspire to buy
(38:44):
up all the existing copies of this book and purposely
destroy it. Because there's no Internet, right, there's no WikiLeaks.
So if they can get rid of this hidden knowledge,
then they can continue on their jolly wave fake and
taps and making ectoplasm in very gross fashions. Check out
ridiculous history. So all right, but yeah, you're right. Price
(39:07):
comes through for the public. I believe it is nineteen
twenty two. That's when they obtain a copy of the book,
and they are he along with his fellow psychic researcher,
a guy named Eric Dingwall, which is just, of all
(39:27):
due respect a cartoonishly British name. So Price and Dingwall
republished this behind the scenes expose, and the publication of
this book, like the fact that it doesn't get destroyed,
totally plays a pivotal role in the downfall of the
spiritualist movement overall. So get complicated, guys. One I think
(39:50):
we can all sympathize with I hope so because he
like Fox Mulder, like you, fellow conspiracy realist, and like us,
he wants to believe, but on several occasions he also
feels compelled by a moral or ethical imperative to let
people know when something is bs.
Speaker 4 (40:08):
Well.
Speaker 2 (40:08):
Yeah, it would suck if a bunch more people did
actually believe, but they believed in something that was fake, Right.
I feel like somebody who is a true believer or
someone who that's a weird way to say it, but
somebody who really believes that something is out there that
is moving differently than we understand. If you've got jokers
(40:28):
out here doing the thing that they were doing, that's
that's like the worst thing you can do, right, giving
some kind of false hope or false evidence in that way.
Speaker 3 (40:40):
Yeah, muddying the waters.
Speaker 4 (40:42):
Right.
Speaker 3 (40:42):
This is still a subject of debate amongst paranormal investigators,
from the skeptic side all the way to the credulous.
Our guy Price is a big part of this, because
again it's huge in the zeitgeist of the time in
the Anglo sphere. He joined something called the Society for
Psychical Research in nineteen twenty, so a little bit before
(41:04):
they republish the book, and he's how.
Speaker 2 (41:06):
Cool is that? Can we just say that's amazing psychical research?
Nineteen twenty something?
Speaker 4 (41:10):
Come on?
Speaker 3 (41:12):
He also later, we won't go two in the weeds here,
but later he beefs up with them and he starts
his own rival situation. But yeah, that's a cool extracurricular
for sure. And he's doing what he sees as responsible investigation.
So he's saying to himself, I am always going to
(41:32):
expose mediums if I know they are cod artists, but
I am always going to also endorse mediums if I
feel they are the real McCoy, Like, if I can't
scientifically explain it, I'm okay with saying I think this
person can talk to ghosts. So he's trying to be fair.
Speaker 2 (41:51):
Do you think were they around like all the way
into the nineteen thirties, because I do wonder if they
saw Black Tuesday coming.
Speaker 3 (42:03):
Yeah, yeah, that's a great question. We know that by
June twelfth of nineteen twenty nine, Price is in the
summer of nineteen twenty nine, he is forty eight years old.
He heads to the case that is gonna leave him
forever in the history books and now on Netflix thanks
(42:24):
to The Daily Mirror. Harry Price heads to Boorly to
investigate the Rectory. So he has, I think it's fair
to say, some sort of reputation for busting frauds, some
sort of street cred for confirming when things are not
supernatural in this case, pretty much as soon as he
(42:44):
gets there, he becomes convinced the rectory is super DUP's haunted.
He writes about it a lot for the rest of
his life. He says that the paranormal events are above
and beyond what his friends at the Mirror told him
to expect. There was some unidentified force just throwing stuff.
I'm gonna throw something there just for the vibe. And
(43:08):
there was like rocks and vases and small knickknacks. And
he said, oh, spirits are talking to me. They're sending
me messages via tapping sounds on the frame of this
particular mirror. And we have to note that communication through
taps was a common accepted mode of interaction with spirits
per mediums of the day.
Speaker 2 (43:29):
Isn't it crazy because that's one of the most easily recreated,
like falsified things with some little string attached to one
other little thing or somebody in the corner just doing
a little I don't know if you can see my
finger down here, Netflix, but if that's under the table,
you can do some crazy taps.
Speaker 4 (43:47):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (43:47):
Oh man, you should hear Jonathan Strickland talk about this.
He is bizarrely fascinated with the spiritualist movement and knows
knows how to fake a seance. I'll give credit where
it's due. If we need someone to fake a seance,
it's going to be baby j oh dude.
Speaker 2 (44:02):
Yeah, well, I think we've at this point, we've all
got some tricks off our sleeves or under the tables
or maybe even the ceiling.
Speaker 4 (44:10):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (44:11):
It is very interesting just to know that this these
are the things that are reported to be in Borlely
Rectory during this investigation that prove that it's haunted in
some way.
Speaker 3 (44:21):
Yeah, right, and this is absolute career boost for Price.
Make no mistake. We could think of him like the
Heraldo Rivera of his day. Wasn't that the American journalist
who opened the safe?
Speaker 4 (44:34):
Yeah, and there was just like a candy bar wrapper
something in there. Was like the biggest televised letdown of
all time.
Speaker 2 (44:42):
Shaggy Roaldo Rivera some of those early early Heraldo clips
of him being like an on site journalist who's just
out there doing some correspondence work. It is like peak
US news television, I think.
Speaker 3 (44:56):
One hundred percent. Talk about editainment Rights called.
Speaker 4 (44:59):
Him he was like the Madonna of my dad well,
and he was.
Speaker 3 (45:03):
Always cursed to be the lesser co host to his mustache,
which was the star of every investigation.
Speaker 4 (45:10):
A real bushy boy. Ah, A great one.
Speaker 2 (45:12):
I'm here.
Speaker 3 (45:14):
So that's Harry Price right at this time, Harry Pricet
is the Heraldo Rivera for ghost in the United Kingdom
in the early nineteen hundreds. Very specific comparison, but hopefully
it lands. We're saying that the public trusted him. They
wanted to see what he thought about these ghostly allegations
(45:37):
that the Daily Mirror was reporting on. So if he
could come up with something solid, either a big debunking
or a genuine case of ghostly activity, he would be
a legend. He would be set for life. But the
problem is because of that, a lot of people began
to think Harry Price was pursuing profit over the para
(46:00):
normal right, He's selling a story, not investigating the truth.
That's where things start to go south for him. Let's
say we pause for a word from our sponsors and
then maybe talk about some of the issues. This episode
is brought you in part by Illumination Global Unlimited.
Speaker 4 (46:20):
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Speaker 2 (47:04):
So wait, so guys, we're going to people's houses now.
Speaker 3 (47:07):
Aught your house is not legally liable for actual ghosts,
poltergeist vibes good or bad, hates leftover Celsius cans, case
of derrelated remnants, Boogie's Bogies, boogers, ectoplasm, ecoplasm, dark Knights
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your house is a division of illumination Global Unlimited.
Speaker 2 (47:24):
Turn on the light.
Speaker 3 (47:28):
And we have returned, all right, we said. Borley Rectory
is a long running obsession for Price during his first
contact in nineteen twenty nine. The Smith family we mentioned
earlier is still living there. Reverend Smith's family is not
like Reverend Bull's families, right, those two guys. Their family
is not totally on board with what Price is doing
(47:49):
and what he concludes, because they noticed pretty logically that
the alleged escalation of these incidents only started when he arrived,
and once he left, those strange events also ceased. So too, Yeah,
you know what I mean, Like, this problem only shows
up when you're here.
Speaker 2 (48:08):
Weird. You know what that means?
Speaker 3 (48:11):
Right? Yeah. Reverend Smith's spouse is convinced that Price is
using his deep encyclopediac knowledge of medium drifting and stage
magic to commit fraud. But you print all this crazy
stuff on the front page, save the retractions for the
back of the paper. The public it gobbles this up
soon a new family moves in. The Smiths leave Boorly
(48:34):
on July fourteenth, nineteen twenty nine, and the parish, Yeah,
the parish is having a tough time finding a replacement
family or replacement rector.
Speaker 2 (48:45):
So he was only there for a month and he
drove the entire family out.
Speaker 3 (48:50):
Or the ghosted hang on stuff to throw, Okay, yeah,
like that. They were like somebody's throwing things every time
this price guy hangs out, and so yeah, they do
end up leaving shortly after. And part of the reason
they're having a hard time finding a rector is because
it's a small community, but it's probably at least partially
(49:11):
due to the growing reputation as a haunted house. So
it takes until October of nineteen thirty a new reverend
moves in. This is Reverend Lionel Algernon Foister. He's a
first cousin of the Bull family. Oh and he's a
true believer.
Speaker 4 (49:27):
Yeah, he definitely believed that these allegations were in fact genuine.
He wrote an in depth account of some of the
strange events that took place on the property from nineteen
twenty nine to nineteen thirty five, and he sent it
to Price.
Speaker 3 (49:40):
Yeah, and this matches up with This is exactly what
Price wants to hear, by the way it matches up
with his own allegations. Ringing bells, moving objects, violent poltergeist activity, windows, shattering,
messages written on walls. And this is where another key
player comes in, Foister's spouse, Mary Atte. She gives some
(50:01):
of the juiciest stories that are shared with Price because
she says that she has experienced multiple instances crazy poltergeist activity,
including being thrown from her bed several times at odd hours. Foyster,
being a religious man, tries to conduct an exorcism, not once,
but twice, with no success. He writes the Price saying
(50:24):
that the first time he gave it a go, the
spirits walloped him on the shoulder with a stone the
size of a human fist. What, Yeah, he got salts,
Yeah he got ghost salted.
Speaker 4 (50:35):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (50:36):
Where was he doing the exorcism? Where is there is
this sized stone that could hit him? Is he like outside?
Speaker 4 (50:42):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (50:43):
I was thinking about that too, Like during the second exorcism,
did he at least police the area a little bit
but do a little icon you know, Yeah, surveil a
little bit, watch out rocks.
Speaker 2 (50:54):
I don't mean, what if he really did that and
a spirit of some sort really throw a dang rock
at this guy. Maybe maybe he can't prove that it
didn't happen, but it sure seems like maybe it didn't
happen like that.
Speaker 3 (51:10):
Yeah, yeah, it seems like there's a definite spin on
what happened. You know, there are no photographs of this
guy with his shoulder all jacked up.
Speaker 2 (51:18):
You know, he's got his Bible and he's doing the
exorcism and then just.
Speaker 3 (51:22):
One Yeah, it also is one rock. So if it
were a spirit, they were just mildly annoyed, you know.
They weren't in it for the head. They were like
a keep it moving. So, I don't know. We don't
know how Price felt when he read this correspondence. We
don't know if he genuinely believed Foyster and the Smiths
(51:42):
had confirmed ghostly activity. Was he more interested in selling
and profiting from a story. We don't know outside of
what he wrote to the public, but we do know
this became a matter of national attention. So once the
tabloid The Daily Mirror put the t to the press,
other independent investigators, skeptics and true believers alike. They flocked
(52:05):
to Boorly Rectory. It's a phenomenal time to own a
pub or an inn. It's kind of like how Mothman
saves Point Pleasant, West, Virginia.
Speaker 2 (52:13):
I've been I'm gonna go ahead and tell you how
how Price reacted when he read that letter. I'm assuming
it was like this, Yeah, I mean yeah, I bet
you're right.
Speaker 3 (52:27):
Yeah, he wrote. His next thing was to contact his
publisher and uh yeah, and then right to the fanciest
restaurant and tell them that to expect him at seven pm.
First stake for one the reservation for one use. He
was that kind of guy. Look, all of the later
(52:47):
investigators who come along, they unanimously conclude that all this
ghostly activity is somehow caused by mary Anne Foister. Some
of them don't say she's grifting. They are concerned that
she is being singled out and victimized by the spirits.
But later there's another conspiracy. Mary Anne will confess that
(53:08):
she is responsible for at least some of these ghostly
incidents because get this, guys, she was sleeping around with
a tenant at the rectory, a guy named Frank Peerless.
And so it's a stroke of either boldness or desperation,
probably both that causes her to explain away her dalliances
(53:30):
with ghostly phenomena a husband. Well, I'm naked on the
floor right now. The place is halted.
Speaker 2 (53:39):
I was thrown to the ground so violently that my
clothes are in the corner over there.
Speaker 4 (53:45):
No trifling.
Speaker 3 (53:48):
So she then becomes, at least for time, heavily incentivized
to go along with the ghost story. Right, so everything
that Price is saying or pitching or proposing, or the
her husband is saying, she's like, oh, yeah, oh totally,
a ghost stole my underwear earlier.
Speaker 2 (54:06):
That's really sad and messed up.
Speaker 3 (54:08):
Yeah, you gotta feel bad for the family. Price does return.
He is spurred on by public interest and great readership numbers.
He doesn't come back to the rectory alone. We don't
mean he brought ghost with him. Instead, he got a
small army of what he called official observers. So for
(54:29):
forty eight people, most of them think of them like
college students or interns. They were tasked with spending weekends
at the house and reporting anything strange that occurred to them.
Price lived there for a full year. He rented out
the place from May of nineteen thirty seven to May
of nineteen thirty eight, and they thought they figured out
(54:50):
the mystery thanks to the daughter of one of Price's followers,
a lady named Helen Glanville. In nineteen thirty eight, she
did a say and she met two spirits. The big
one is the one who reveals the mystery.
Speaker 4 (55:07):
So the big one was Marie, a French nine who
left her convent and traveled to England in order to
get married. Per Helen's account, Marie had a very unfortunate
end as well, murdered in an older building upon which
the rectory now stood and either buried in a forgotten
(55:28):
seller or thrown down a well. This all may start
to be ringing a bell for y'all out there.
Speaker 3 (55:34):
Yeah, sounds familiar. It should, because it's essentially a gritty
reboot of the story Reverend Bulls Kids made up for
fun decades earlier. Price does get what he wants.
Speaker 2 (55:45):
It does make you wonder, how does that message come
to this person? Ray it is someone performing a seance,
And then usually isn't it someone is like channels a
spirit when there's something like that, whether it's spirit writing,
just you know, the thought is you put your hand
with a pen on a piece of paper and it
(56:06):
just goes when you're in a trance state, and then
there's a message on there or someone is with words
just saying out loud what quote spirit is saying to them,
which is you know.
Speaker 4 (56:21):
Come on.
Speaker 2 (56:22):
Maybe, But if it is going to be a story
that's being told, this one it is eerily similar. Right, Yes,
maybe you've heard the story.
Speaker 3 (56:32):
Before, especially because this is a seance format using a
plan chet, which is a little pointer thingy you're going
to see on your wigiboard. So you have to be
very careful about how questions are asked. Right. There are
a lot of spell your name things. There are a
lot of only yes or no answers, so it's very
easy to get what you want from that kind of communication.
(56:55):
Bryce definitely gets what he wants. He publishes a book
in nineteen forty about the collected experiences, the title the
Most Haunted House in England and the name Stuck. Goes
on to publish more and more works about Borly Rectory.
He is constantly fascinated by it and it's a huge
source of income to him until he passes way from
a heart attack in nineteen forty eight. We have, at
(57:18):
the time of recording, tried ringing him up on the
wija board, but we have yet to hear back. We
promised to update if he reaches out.
Speaker 4 (57:28):
Yes, the same.
Speaker 3 (57:28):
I feel like that's fair. It's fair for us.
Speaker 2 (57:30):
I think it's fair, super fair, gentlemen. Just really quickly.
I'm thinking about a lot of times movies get made,
books get written, like the one that are our friend
Price here wrote. I did quick check on IMDb and
just searched Borley Rectory. Holy Macro guy, the.
Speaker 4 (57:51):
Nun is largely based on these tales or these accounts.
I found that out after the fat What else did
you find, Matt.
Speaker 2 (57:59):
Oh, there's so many matches on IMDb. Several of them
are standalones, such as twenty seventeen's Borley Rectory or twenty
twenty five's Borley Rectory, The Awakening, the Ghosts of Borley Rectory,
The Haunting of Borley Rectory.
Speaker 3 (58:18):
Yeah, they've been very good to the BBC, you know
what I mean.
Speaker 2 (58:22):
It seems it seems like maybe this is the most
haunted house in all of England.
Speaker 3 (58:25):
Hey, there's a book about it, I hear and so
at this point it's probably also fair to ask your
hopefully favorite podcasters why we have not already visited the
rectory in person. We'll make a deal with you. Yeah,
please tell our accounting department we would love to go.
We're always down for a road trip. Our accounting department
(58:47):
is probably going to tell you we cannot go. It's
not a budget issue. I mean, it kind of is,
but it's not really a budget issue. It's the fact
that the rectory no longer exists. It burns to the
ground on February twenty seventh, nineteen thirty nine.
Speaker 4 (59:02):
Apparently, whoa, yeah, yeah, it was sour right.
Speaker 2 (59:07):
It burns out for the book, but like right before
the book publishes.
Speaker 3 (59:12):
I mean, you know, sometimes timing works out.
Speaker 2 (59:15):
God is it? Because now nobody can go back and
fact check. Nobody can go back and reseance, at least
in the same rooms that are going to.
Speaker 4 (59:23):
Be talked about.
Speaker 3 (59:24):
Yeah, yeah, captain, Yeah, we're both doing You sure about that?
You sure about? That's why Captain W. H. Gregson is
the dude who moves in.
Speaker 4 (59:36):
Uh yeah.
Speaker 3 (59:37):
On the day he moves in, he's unpacking boxes, or
on the evening moves in he's unpacking boxes. He says
he accidentally starts a fire by goofing with an oil lamp.
He botches the oil lamp, he knocks it over with
his elbow. The rectory burns beyond recovery like the building
before it. And here's another conspiracy. Insurance investigators are convinced
(59:59):
he's started the fire on purpose, properly our fraud good
marketing too.
Speaker 4 (01:00:04):
I mean, that's a point.
Speaker 2 (01:00:08):
We're talking about a captain here. He can't figure out
an oil lamp.
Speaker 3 (01:00:12):
Not his first time, right, not his first oil lamp
or rodeo.
Speaker 2 (01:00:16):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (01:00:16):
But you know, Price does return to the site. Those
are addendum. As we're wrapping up, Price returned to the
site and he does a brief dig and he is
in his team tell the authorities at Borley that they
have discovered two bones of a young woman in a
disused cellar and where they say, we're going to give
these bones a proper Christian burial here in the village
(01:00:38):
of Borley. The parish says no. They look at the
bones and they say, we don't know if you're a
grifter or if you're just not familiar with bones, but sir,
these belong to a pig, not a human. Woman, so
get out of town.
Speaker 2 (01:00:55):
I've heard some rumors. I've seen it written online somewhere
ben where one is definitely a pig bone, one is
like maybe a human bone. But I think it's just
there's so much rumor upon rumor wrapped up in this onion.
Rumor onion.
Speaker 3 (01:01:10):
It's a rumor onion. Yeah, a rumor onion. We're gonna
do something with that. That's gonna come back. Everybody write
that down. So here we have it. Borley is considered
the most haunted house in England, but the reputation is
largely manufactured. We don't know how much Price actually believed,
but we do know he was heavily incentivized to claim
at least some of these incidents were genuine. As for
(01:01:33):
the rest, Critics including us, will tell you that's the
stuff Harry Price doesn't want you to know, but we
want to know. If you've ever been to a haunted house.
We'd love to hear your thoughts. Thank you for tuning in.
Find us online, call us on the phone. You can
always send us an email.
Speaker 4 (01:01:48):
Yeah, get at us online at the handles. Conspiracy Stuff
or Conspiracy Stuff Show, depending on your social media platform
of choice and Matty, there's another way.
Speaker 2 (01:01:57):
Oh there's another way. Call one eight three st d
w y t K. It's a voicemail system. You'll hear
Ben's voice and some familiar music. Give yourself a cool
nickname and let us know if we can use your
name and message on the air. If you want to
email us, you can do that too.
Speaker 3 (01:02:13):
We are the entits, the read each piece of correspondence
we receive. Be well aware, yet unafraid. Sometimes the void
writes back, Oh, that's actually my other cat. I'm gonna
throw one more thing. We'll see you out here in
the dark. Conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 2 (01:02:47):
Stuff they don't want you to know is a production
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my
name is Noah.
Speaker 3 (00:30):
They call me Bed. We're joined as always with our
super producer Dylan the Tennessee pal Fagan. Most importantly, you
are you. You are here. That makes this the stuff
they don't want you to know. And what better way
to get into this than a classic piece of what
I would call internet folklore at this time. Do you
(00:51):
guys remember Riker from Star Trek the Next Generation?
Speaker 4 (00:55):
Which one did he amber?
Speaker 1 (00:58):
See?
Speaker 4 (00:58):
The one with the bearded man?
Speaker 3 (00:59):
He was the sometimes he had a beard. Yeah he
looked Jonathan Fracas, yess yeah. Yeah. So there's this great clip.
While you're tuning in with us on Netflix or your
podcast platform of choice, get yourself over to YouTube. There
is this fascinating, hilarious compilation of Riker of Freaks from
(01:22):
various intros to an unexplained paranormal phenomenon show he did
and the funny one. The pro tip is some genius
on YouTube slowed down his speed of recording. So the
compilation of him introducing everything with a question sounds like
(01:43):
a drunk guy at a bar. So he's walking around like, Hey,
what's the tallest man you've ever seen?
Speaker 4 (01:51):
Very stoned? Right, Yeah. Another version of that is the
Neil de grass Tyson comes off that way if you
slow him down significantly and unrelated to fracas, but there's
another great YouTube compilation of Star Trek clips where they're
like supposed to be being thrown around by space you know, collisions,
(02:12):
but someone has like taken after effects and image stabilized
all the footage, so it just looks like actors just
flinging themselves around.
Speaker 3 (02:19):
Phenomenal, phenomenal, And I like that because that's excellent foreshadowing.
Speaker 4 (02:23):
Noel.
Speaker 3 (02:24):
One of the questions that a drunk or stoned riker
or de grass Tyson might ask you is have you
ever visited a haunted house? So let's start there. Have
you guys ever been to a house that you felt
was haunted or there was something off about it?
Speaker 2 (02:42):
Yes, for sure, But before we go into there, I sorry,
I just had something to say before we moved on there.
These like History Channel shows that exist out there. They
are all of the ones that are unsolved mysteries, like
the one we're talking about that features a number two
from Star Trek. There's they all do that thing where
it's like they set you up with a question right
before they go into the part that's not voiceover, that's
(03:04):
not a stand up shot with whoever the stand in
host is William Shatner. I watched one yesterday literally with
Lawrence Fishburne, and you think, oh, man, Morpheus doing one
of these Unsolve Mysteries things, This is gonna be awesome.
But it's just him on a green screen just saying
some words like this, and then all of a sudden
he asks a question and then it cuts to a
(03:24):
bunch of clips. It's just so annoying. How all the
same they.
Speaker 4 (03:28):
Are formula formula shows there, I mean, what is it
all probably taking pages out of the book of Unsolved
Mysteries or in search of right.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
Yes, they're all trying to be the same thing. It's
just at it's time I'm putting it out there. It's
all you third party production companies that end up for
Science Channel or History Channel or any of these shows,
any of these cable networks, any of them just let's
do something new please.
Speaker 3 (03:53):
Yeah, we got real close to being involved with several
shows like that and not naming name, but we put
a we put a fair amount of work in a
while ago, many moons ago, and I think we were
all surprised to find pretty much the same ideas that
(04:13):
we had pitched or created on a show hosted by
a celebrity.
Speaker 2 (04:18):
All no, John Noble, we'll call you out. It was you,
but also your fault.
Speaker 4 (04:24):
Man, I'm not mad, so hugely hugely fan, huge fans
of French. But I think then you'll also remember, and
it's worth pointing out that part of the reason that
our thing didn't fly as we were pitching it was
because it maybe wasn't formulaic enough and they kept trying
to shoehorn it into that formula, the Royal, Theay. But yeah,
it's pretty pretty funny.
Speaker 3 (04:43):
So let's get back to it. Have let's do the
formula a little bit. Have you guys, as I asked earlier,
have you guys ever visited what you would consider to
be a haunted house or a house that had a
very strange, inexplicable vibe.
Speaker 4 (04:59):
That was a yes from you, Maddie, what you got.
Speaker 2 (05:01):
Well, it's the same old thing. I've talked about it
before in the show, visiting a mental health institution that
was in disrepair and had been shut down long long ago, and.
Speaker 4 (05:11):
Then haunted sanitarium, the classic content sanitary.
Speaker 2 (05:14):
Yes, of course, it's the closest thing I've been to
a haunted house.
Speaker 4 (05:17):
You know.
Speaker 2 (05:18):
It's not a place where I would live, not a
place that I would rent out even, but it was
a place that people did live in at one point,
and it was most certainly haunted by a feel if
that makes sense.
Speaker 3 (05:31):
Yeah, yeah, I think you know. I'm still wrestling with
the idea that certain strong intangible things like emotions or
great trauma might impact somehow of physical location, and a
lot of people that's one of the big things experienced
that for some reason or another.
Speaker 2 (05:50):
That concept is one of the oldest thoughts about what
what a haunting could be. If if the somehow the
human interaction that occurs there again, the emotional toll that's
maybe taken on someone, or that energy that gets released
through violence, it's thought that that might be the thing
that goes through time.
Speaker 4 (06:10):
Well, and it's like one of these things too where
I've been asked it's come up a couple of times
in the last few days, just since I've been on
the road a little bit. I was directly asked at
a restaurant that I ate at last night. It was
a really incredible tie restaurant called bang Bang Bangkok, which
I highly recommend anybody in New York checkout. It's like
a bus that you sit in and they have projections
on all sides of this bus that make it feel
(06:30):
like you're driving through the markets of Bangkok and all
of these different parts of the city, and it's wonderful.
But our guide on this experience asked everybody who was
seated with us whether or not we believed in ghosts,
and pointed out that if you ask tai people that
nearly one hundred percent of them are going to say yes,
oh yes. And the graveyards there in general are not
(06:54):
the kind of prim and proper, you know, manicured, cleaned
up state park type situation that we maybe see here.
That they are much more ramshackled and spooky and the
kind of place you maybe wouldn't hang out after dark.
But it just made me think of what I usually
respond when asked that question, is I don't believe in
sentient you know, disembodied spirits that possess all of the
(07:15):
memories and thoughts, and you know, can communicate like a
human would. But to Matt's point, I feel things like
energy signatures or residual let's call it electricity. I mean,
to me, the soul or the spirit is this idea
of energy not being able to be created or destroyed,
and little bits of it that can remain and stack
(07:35):
up over time, especially in places where historical legacies of
trauma or bad things exist.
Speaker 3 (07:43):
One hundred percent. I think we're on the same page.
That's exactly what I'm saying. And you said it so well,
like you don't need a sentient entity. It could just
be energy that we don't understand. Again, something intangible encoded
in a physical location, and it's nuts. I was looking
at this gallop pole from last year. So we're recorded
(08:04):
on April twenty, twenty twenty six, and according to this poll,
about thirty nine percent of Americans do believe in ghosts.
Weirdly enough, more people believe in psychic or spiritual healing.
That's a story for another evening. We've looked into allegations
of ghostly activity often in the past we also found
(08:26):
some surprising scientific explanations for at least some of the encounters.
In tonight's episode, we're returning to the old school paranormal
stuff they don't want you to know, by exploring the
curious case of wait for it, not Benjamin Button, but
Borly Rectory, which is often called the most haunted house
(08:47):
in England, or was for a time.
Speaker 4 (08:51):
We'll be right back.
Speaker 3 (08:57):
Borly what Borley? Not bar b O R L E.
Y guys. I don't know about you all, but I
had not heard too much about this place outside of
this case, and before we did research, I swear I
saw it pop up on a couple BBC documentaries.
Speaker 4 (09:18):
It does ring a bell in that sense, been and
I believe it's located near Essex, which I'm also a
little bit familiar with, around two miles northwest of Sudbury, Suffolk,
in a little less than sixty nine miles from London Town.
Because you know, most Americans, myself included, don't realize just
how many varying little communities and villages and townships and
(09:43):
whatever you want to call it exist there in the
UK and in the London kind of greater metro area.
It's incredibly sprawling place, and there are regional differences and
dialects and accents and you know, culture and history that
can vary just from town to town. But most people's
frame of reference is, of course London.
Speaker 2 (10:01):
Just the point of not recognizing Borley Rectory. I was
on that same page with you, Ben as I was
starting to do research for this. But what I realized
is that we have talked about and I did recognize
Harry Price, one of the guys we're gonna talk about,
because and it's weird that I that I would remember
him but not Borley Rectory, because he's so closely tied
(10:23):
to the place. The location and his work there is
why he is known for what he's known for. We'll
get into him. A spiritualist, perhaps you would say, a
paranormal researcher of sorts. We'll talk about Harry Price. But
it is weird that that dude, for some reason, at
least for me and many perhaps for other people, he
(10:44):
sticks around. But the actual location maybe because of the name.
I want to say, the name is a little bit boring.
Borly Rectory, I don't know, doesn't ring in the ears,
maybe in the same way Harry Price does.
Speaker 3 (10:56):
Yeah, and Borley is a tiny, tiny place. It's kind
of a blink and you'll miss it community. It's a
population of just about one hundred and eleven people as
of twenty twenty one, and we call it a village,
but it's essentially it's like a cluster of three different buildings.
So you could be driving by and totally miss this place.
(11:20):
But we have to remember it's swinging above its weight
class in terms of history. Despite its small size, Worley
is home to a ton of historic sites. The most
famous is the Rectory, and a rectory is just a
fancy name for parsonage.
Speaker 4 (11:37):
Which is where the clergy live who are sort of
they're on site dwelling, you know, for the church that
they operate in. Right.
Speaker 3 (11:45):
Yeah, and this is going to bring up a lot
of Stephen king esque vibes, a lot of like for
if you're a fan of the Poultrygeist film franchise, this
is for you. The Moorley Rectory before it was called
the most haunted house in all of England. It was
the one they're talking about. Was built in eighteen sixty
(12:08):
two by a guy named Reverend Henry Dawson Ellis Bull.
That's his whole name. He had a lot of middle names.
Speaker 4 (12:15):
Reverend Henry Dawson Ellis Bull, according to the Suffolk Free Press,
moved into this parsonage around a year before he became
the rector of the parish, which I believe is just
another word for like the pastor. Right, Yeah, with more
admin work, little more admin work, so he is overseeing
the property and doing all the things as well as
(12:36):
being the spiritual advisor. So, like you said, Ben, a
priest who does a little bit more of the legwork
of maintaining a property and an organization like.
Speaker 3 (12:46):
That and a community. And just like the Poltergeist franchise,
this rectory is built on land where the soil is sour.
Now put in pet cemetery. Yeah, because there was an
earth earlier building on the property that had burned to
the ground in eighteen forty one. So this is not
really brand new construction. It might seem like bad luck
(13:10):
in a lot of cultures, right to build on land
that had something bad occur earlier, But we have to
remember that the United Kingdom is incredibly old, especially to Americans,
and also it's got a limited amount of real estate,
so it is far from uncommon for successive generations to
build a top earlier structures. The history here in this
(13:34):
culture is literally a palump sest. One of my favorite
stories about how deep history goes in the United Kingdom
comes from twenty seventeen when archaeologists literally found the grave
of King Richard the Third under a parking lot.
Speaker 4 (13:51):
Ben I had to google it myself. I know it's
a word you're fond of, and I always forget. Palm
sest is literally a piece of pay a page of
like a manuscript or something that is reused and you know,
erased and then written on top of again, an erased
and written on top of again. So within that page
it contains all of these kind of ghostly remnants of
(14:12):
what came before.
Speaker 3 (14:13):
Yeah, it's a beautiful, weirdly specific word, right. So okay,
So Reverend Bull builds this new rectory on the side
of the old one, and he expands it over time,
mainly to house his cartoonishly large family. You guys, he
had fourteen children. But he had fourteen children, poor day.
Speaker 4 (14:36):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (14:37):
Wait, so okay, it's a rector, so it's it's a
member of the clergy, but it's not the priest, so
perhaps they don't have that same celeb Yeah, can't be
sleeping with even their spouse and don't have a spouse.
Don't do that. Don't do this. So fourteen kids, it's
very interesting just how frequently the rector was getting on
(15:00):
leave men or yeah exactly.
Speaker 4 (15:02):
Yeah, So.
Speaker 3 (15:05):
This denomination does allow for the clergy to marry.
Speaker 4 (15:09):
So it's more to do with the denomination than the
position of a rector, because a rector is basically still
the priest mat of the of he just of this parish. Yeah,
he is the spiritual leader, but also the guy that's
like the landlord. It's like taking care of all the things,
hiring the workers that maybe helped maintain the property. If
anyone's seen the most recent knives Out movie, dead Man,
(15:33):
that is very much the kind of place we're talking
about here, that exists kind of in a rural area
and the what's the word. The congregation is small. Everyone
knows each other and they all live in this very
small village together and have the church is kind of
a center point meeting place of the community.
Speaker 3 (15:47):
And also I want to take an opportunity to shout
out Midnight Mass also on Netflix. Oh man, what.
Speaker 4 (15:55):
I loved it very Stephen Kidd without actually having anything
to do with a direct Stein and King story. I
loved that series a lot.
Speaker 2 (16:03):
You know what's true. One of the primary goals in
many a religion is to go forth and multiply, and
the rector is making that happen.
Speaker 3 (16:12):
Yes, he was an erector for sures of buildings and
dreapes and himself. So it might sound odd right for
a newly constructed house to be considered automatically haunted, but
again built on ancient ground where bad things statistically probably
(16:34):
happened right in the past. The most popular legend about
this place before the current rectory is constructed, concerns a
Benedictine monastery that was supposedly built somewhere nearby around thirteen
sixty two, and according to this story, is like, let
me change my life to make it more campfire. According
(16:57):
to this story, there's a monk from a monastery and
he gets romantically involved with a nut from a condo
in the area.
Speaker 2 (17:08):
It doesn't right after the why do I love that?
Speaker 3 (17:14):
And after their affair is discovered, the monk is executed.
They kill them, you know, Chinese pirate style, and the
just excommunicated and the nun is bricked up, alive in
the convent walls, left to starve to death, so arguably
a worse way to die.
Speaker 4 (17:34):
Very poesh.
Speaker 2 (17:36):
So this is definitely what happened or a fable or
where are we at with this?
Speaker 3 (17:41):
This is definitely not what happened.
Speaker 4 (17:43):
Okay, So the dramatic sigh story that's all the nuns.
Speaker 3 (17:49):
Yeah, it's a famous tale in the area, but it's
just that it's a story. It gets debunked in nineteen
thirty eight historians confirm there's no his historical basis to this,
and then further they argue it could have been fabricated
by some of again those fourteen children who were trying
(18:10):
to impress their friends and make the rectory look cool,
and so the whole buried a live trope and the
whole like forbidden love trope.
Speaker 4 (18:20):
Both of these things are just like red meat for
this type of cautionary tale, right, like we've seen it again,
like Nnedgar Allan Poe. Was it the cask of the
mantiado where the whe the spoiler alert, someone's you know,
bricked into the walls. I just I could see how
this would be the kind of thing that would be
repeated and styled on a little bit and that whole
(18:40):
game of telephone. Before you know it, you got yourself
a full blown, you know, tale of depravity.
Speaker 3 (18:48):
And it adds on itself, right, because everybody wants to
have a story in that kind of conversation.
Speaker 2 (18:53):
Yes, but before we are, you know, too happy with
ourselves thinking that this can never happen. Send yourself over
to CNN and look up a story from twenty thirteen
where a woman's body was found twenty eight years later
behind a false wall in a house year later.
Speaker 4 (19:10):
Great movie does.
Speaker 2 (19:12):
But just we do know that this grizzly act has
occurred in the past, and likely occurred more often, you know,
before modern construction techniques that are let's say, pretty flimsy often.
Speaker 4 (19:25):
Well, certainly that's what led to it being fictionalized in
the first place, you know, Like I'm sure Graham Poe
heard tell of something along those lines happening throughout history,
and then he just really eviled it up even further, right.
Speaker 3 (19:37):
Yeah, and some and actually there was a genre of
religious official that would willingly be walled up. The anchors
check that out. It's very very strange career. Yeah, we
do know what happened. And I love that point about
Poe because we know during Poe's time, he was pulling
(19:58):
from a lot of real life ideas, including things like
being accidentally buried alive. Right, that was a whole grulish
industry of little pipes up to the surface with bells
that you could ring.
Speaker 4 (20:11):
Oh right, wait a minute now that oh you know
what that is. There's the movie The Nune which involves
this kind of Laura as well. It does feature that
exact thing, the bells sticking up out of the grave,
and there's a jump scare moment that happens in it
where the bell starts to.
Speaker 3 (20:27):
Start strit gosh. I can't wait to watch that. Fan's
pretty good franchise.
Speaker 4 (20:33):
It's a franchise. I think there's maybe at least two,
but it is a offshoot of the Conjuring series.
Speaker 3 (20:38):
Now I've heard of it. Yeah, is it the same
nun all the time?
Speaker 4 (20:41):
It is the same spooky nun who also the actor
who plays the nun was the creepy goblin behind the
dumpster and mulholland dry.
Speaker 3 (20:51):
Oh yeah, oh wow. Okay, all right, we're fascinating with
paranormal events, so we're the kind of fox boulders who
want to learn more about this stuff. And it is
curious from what we know about other haunted houses that
this place would be considered haunted from the jump from
the year was built. Locals would be interviewed later and
(21:14):
they would say, oh, yeah, eighteen sixty three, I remember
hearing unexplained footsteps when I was walking around in there.
The locals, importantly, were never fully identified, and they only
made these claims when they were asked by investigators decades
after the fact. So it could have been people mis remembering,
(21:34):
or it could have been people just down at the
pub or down the pub spinning yarns. Or they may
have genuinely experienced something they couldn't explain and they just
kept mum about it because they didn't want to look
looney tunes right until someone forced them to talk about it.
It's weird, but we know that Reverend Bull, his spouse,
(21:57):
and his small army of children did seem to believe
that their house was haunted. They seemed to genuinely believe
something was afoot and they told their neighbors, they told
their friends about this. They said they'd seemed bizarre apparitions,
they had heard unexplained knocks. Let's do another fun knock. Yeah,
(22:21):
so they had heard stuff like that. They had seen
maybe messages scrolled windows or mirrors or walls.
Speaker 2 (22:29):
Weird messages too, Messages that were unintelligible and looked like, oh,
I don't know, maybe one of fourteen children wrote them.
Speaker 4 (22:37):
Yeah, yeah, spookier than the scrawl of a child inexplicably
appearing on a wall.
Speaker 2 (22:43):
Right, But just you can see the ones we're talking
about there are actually it's not these specific ones, I
don't think with the Reverend Bull. Yes, that's earlier.
Speaker 3 (22:53):
Yeah, and I think, yeah.
Speaker 2 (22:55):
Yeah, but you can see examples of the scrolling, just
not the exact ones that we're mentioning here.
Speaker 3 (23:01):
Right, Yeah, And we can also see a pattern of
the kind of paranormal activity that they're reporting. And you know,
no't use one of our favorite phrases, the game of telephone.
This is a game of ghostly telephone that begins because
other people in Boorly, in even smaller place back in
(23:22):
this time period, they start saying, yeah, I always knew
there was something creepy about that area. I've got paranormal
experiences and they're all somehow linked to this rectory.
Speaker 2 (23:35):
Let's just take a moment here, guys to describe what
this building looks like. We've got some images, like historical
images from over time. I've seen some interior images from
like eighteen ninety, which is you know, well after it's built,
you know, almost thirty years after it's built. But there's
(23:56):
some external images you can see that show this thing.
It looks like two stories. Guys. Can you tell if
it's a third story up there or is that just
the attic?
Speaker 4 (24:05):
I can't tell it. Yeah, the Belfrey, the lofts.
Speaker 3 (24:08):
Yes, it's it comes like it's two main stories with
an attic and with sellers.
Speaker 4 (24:13):
Got it. You probably lots of a lot of freaking chimneys.
Speaker 3 (24:18):
Well, yeah, yeah, it's before central heating.
Speaker 4 (24:22):
Of course.
Speaker 3 (24:23):
It's a nice it's it's it is a nice house.
It's obviously no Buckingham Palace, but it's one of the
better houses in the area during its time.
Speaker 2 (24:34):
Oh yeah, but there is something if you had no
idea that ghost had anything to do with this story
and you were just looking at this these photographs, I
think in modern times you look at these photographs you think, oh,
that's kind of spooky, just because it's in black and white,
and it looks degraded or it's in the CPA tone
color on some of the websites. But there is something
maybe the way the shadows of the trees that are
(24:56):
around it, and maybe I can't tell if that's that
are going up one side of it. There's some you know,
it just has this there's something about it that seems
pretty freaky.
Speaker 3 (25:07):
Yeah, it even in its heyday, all the photos we
have of it, it looks like a bando. That's what
we call it in Atlanta.
Speaker 2 (25:15):
What does that mean?
Speaker 4 (25:16):
Like a decaying urban property that's abandoned. Yes, yes, yes, yeah, yeah,
think of like the Goat Farm. Is this incredible re
used industrial kind of compound here in Atlanta that is
similarly bricked up and sort of decaying looking, but then
it's been turned into this amazing arts community. But you
(25:36):
didn't know that and you were just walking around it.
It definitely has that quality.
Speaker 3 (25:40):
Yeah, and it does eventually become real life haunted for
at least a second, because Reverend Bull himself becomes a ghost,
by which I mean he dies in eighteen ninety two.
Speaker 2 (25:54):
But ooh, do we know if he died in the house.
Speaker 3 (25:57):
We don't have that clear, the odds are high, but
the paranormal experiences continue after Bull passes away, one of
the most notable being July twenty eighth, nineteen hundred, when
four of his daughters at once together see what they
think is a nun. In twilight, right, so the sun's
(26:22):
going down. They see a shadowy silhouette, say, forty ish
yards from the house, and they try to walk up
to this figure and talk to it, and they call
out and the nun is not responding, and as they
get closer, it vanishes. So to these four daughters of
(26:43):
Reverend Bull, this is smoking gun proof of a ghost.
Speaker 4 (26:48):
Again.
Speaker 3 (26:48):
Their whole family says they believe that there are spirits
haunting the grounds.
Speaker 2 (26:55):
Yeah, with this nun right and out of place. None
eight years after their father's passing. There are a lot
of siblings. I wonder how many sons are around, and
if any of those sons are maybe hanging out with
a nun be a boughty hmmm.
Speaker 3 (27:11):
Who doesn't love a random nun? Who does you know?
Loose bag of diamonds, random nune? You got a heck
of a Saturday.
Speaker 4 (27:17):
You know?
Speaker 2 (27:18):
Now? Now the home at this time, it's only being
used for as a family home. It's is no longer
being used as a rectory in any way.
Speaker 3 (27:27):
It's still used as a rectory at this point because
of the uh, because of the new owner, which is
one of Reverend Bull's sons, Reverend Henry Foister Bull takes over,
so it's still active as a rectory there. I don't
think they have lodgers at this time, but they do
(27:48):
have servants, and they have those servant bells and stuff.
Speaker 2 (27:50):
So our buddies say it didn't they wouldn't seem that
weird to have a nun on the grounds at this
But in my mind you would be like, oh ghost,
you would go, oh, there's a nun. I was an
doing out there.
Speaker 3 (28:01):
I mean, you guys know, there's this monastery I hang
out with. I hang out with in Conyer's, Georgia. Oh yeah, Rocks, Yeah,
our Lady of the Holy Spirit. Check it out if
you get a chance. I got sick Bonds Eye Garden.
But even when I'm hanging out there, because it's a
very chill, nice place to hang out, I still get
a little weirded out when I turn a corner and
(28:21):
all of a sudden, there's definitely a monk there. You know,
I'm just not here.
Speaker 4 (28:26):
So they're so quiet you never hear them coming.
Speaker 3 (28:30):
You never hear them coming. This okay, So Foyster Bull
takes over. He's the reverend now and he dies on
June ninth, nineteen twenty seven. At that point, the rectory
stands vacant for the better part of a year. It's
not until October, or actually longer than a year. It's
(28:51):
not until October of nineteen twenty eight that the home
gets new occupants or depending on your perspective, folks, new victims.
It's another reverend, so this is still a rectory. It's
a guy named Eric Smith and his spouse and they
move in. Oh they have an adopted daughter as well.
So they move in and Smith's wife is cleaning out
(29:14):
a cupboard. Reportedly, according to the press at the time,
she comes across a brown paper package that has a
skull inside, a human skull of a young woman and
finding this. We don't know the internal politics of the family,
but we know they got spooked out enough that they
(29:36):
were on alert. They were not having good time in
their home. They said they were hearing the ding ding
ding of the servant bell despite being disconnected, so those
bells have been cut off. They weren't supposed to be operating.
They would see strange lights in their windows at night.
And keep in mind, this is before the widespread rollout
(29:58):
of the automobile right the world, and they would hear
unexplained little tippy taps in the night. That's the weirdest
thing about old houses, man, especially ones with hardwood floors,
you know, everything that happens in the house, right, you know,
when people have their late night peas well.
Speaker 2 (30:18):
You know, I think it's just something that houses experience
a lot of times. If you've got wooden floorboards, or
if you just live in a house that maybe has
more than one story and there's a lot of wind
in your area. I've definitely personally experienced the sound of
somebody coming down the stairs and it's just that wood
creaking because of movement on the exterior.
Speaker 4 (30:36):
Oh well, I mean, you know, shout out to our
recent episode about the voices of the Appalachian Trail and
the way sound moves and is distorted, and not to
mention the way our minds perceive it and associate it
with all kinds of you know, weird traumas and biases
from our past. Sound is wild.
Speaker 3 (30:56):
Yeah, You're in an old haunted house late in the
night and you hear a whisper that says, get one
Markey's idea. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Maybe it's the floor, Maybe
it's parent.
Speaker 4 (31:08):
You have different voices than me, brother.
Speaker 3 (31:11):
I've got sponsored voices. So the Smith Family live Moss lists.
The Smith family is the reason we are here tonight.
In nineteen twenty nine, apparently because they got so freaked out,
they reach out to a UK tabloid called The Daily Mirror.
I had no idea was that old. They asked the
(31:32):
good folks at the Mirror to help them contact an
outfit called the Society for Psychical Research or the sp R.
Newspapers said yes, they did them one better. They sent
a reporter out to Borley to investigate the site, and
then they also sent another person along. This is the
(31:54):
star of tonight's show. This one guy, folks, is the
reason Rectory becomes the most haunted house in England. We're
going to take a pause for a word from our
sponsors and will introduce you to a very complicated guy.
(32:17):
Here's where it gets crazy. Seriously, Warley Rectory is considered
the most haunted house in England because of one guy.
The entirety of its infamy is resting on the shoulders
of a self styled paranormal investigator named Harry Price.
Speaker 4 (32:34):
I do think the concept of like the most the
hauntedest housed in all of the UK. It's sort of
like world's best cup of coffee, Like, what are you
basing this on? Exactly? What are our metrics here? And
it would arguably be hype and the ability for an
individual to get press and promote it and talk a
lot about it.
Speaker 3 (32:52):
And as we've established in previous episodes, over low of
these many years, we are more likely to visit a
tour trap that's a bit more humble. You know, don't
show me the world's biggest frying pan. You're getting me
off the interstate. When I see a sign that says
the world's third biggest frime pan.
Speaker 4 (33:10):
I want to sit in the world's most sensible at
arondeck chair. There we go.
Speaker 3 (33:15):
I like that sensible. That's nice. Okay Price, Let's meet
Harry Price. It's eighteen eighty one. He is born. For
most of his life, since he's eight years old, he
is obsessed with allegations of the supernatural spirits and psychic phenomena.
If you are active in the skeptic community, you may
have heard legends like James Randy himself talk about Harry Price.
(33:39):
Harry Price, prolific writer, prolific author. He traces his inspiration
and his obsession back to a chance meeting he had
with get this guys, an allegedly native American circus magician.
And he's eight years old, and this magician cures Harry
(34:02):
Price of a toothache through the arcane arts.
Speaker 4 (34:05):
I mean nothing I'll make you believe more than having
your pain taken away. And because a toothache ain't no joke,
he became convinced of the existence of magic, of the
secret world of supernatural things, just through his being removed
of this affliction of a sore tooth. To your point,
Ben in the outline, this sort of thrum of energy
(34:27):
just beneath the surface, like that pain that radiates from
a a rotten tooth.
Speaker 3 (34:33):
And here without being anything other than fair, I think
it's important for us to ask, did the nerve and
his tooth just die? Is that what truly dispelled the pain?
We don't know, But by the time he was fifteen,
our buddy young. Harry Price is already writing. He wrote
(34:55):
writes this play about his early self reported experiences with
a poltergeist. I believe the play is called The Skeptic.
He's a dynamic storyteller. He's a prolific author. He is
a very divisive figure. Some people say he's a quack.
Some people say he's a credible investigator. His champions are
always quick to point out that Price does not hesitate
(35:19):
to expose frauds or conclude when something is malarkey. And
that's where we run into a related conspiracy that hearkens
back to our episode on books they don't want you
to read? Have you ever heard of a little tone
called Revelations of a spirit Medium?
Speaker 2 (35:37):
Amazing?
Speaker 4 (35:37):
No, I have heard of the Book of the Bible, though, no,
I think it's just revelation. People haven't miscall it. No,
I don't know that one. Ben.
Speaker 3 (35:45):
Yeah, I don't think any of us knew about it
until we were researching the spiritualist movement or the spiritualism movement.
Don't feel bad if you haven't heard of it either, folks.
There are a lot of books out there, but this
book is the subject of a conspiracy. It is anonymously
written by a former medium, and this made me think
(36:08):
of you. No, it breaks the fundamental law of the
magician's code. The author explains the tricks that fake psychics
used to grift people.
Speaker 2 (36:18):
Well, yeah, let's give a shout out really quickly, just
to the spirit, hey, which drove mister Price here. It
is the same spirit that led you to this Netflix
channel or to this podcast. Feed the curiosity, right, it's
the same reason why we make this show that sparked
that little thing that mister Price got from the tooth,
(36:40):
maybe from somebody who purportedly was using special magic powers,
spiritual powers. The curiosity about the potential that existed there
is what sent him down the pathway to this book's
And again, I can't reiterate this enough. It's the reason
you clicked on this episode. If you can hear this
right now, that curiosity is the thing we can't throw
(37:03):
away completely. But it is amazing that there is a
skeptic nature at least in some way that mister Price
is coming at some of these things.
Speaker 4 (37:14):
Well, and for many of us too. I mean we
talk about this often, how there's just so little mystery
left in the world, Like I don't know that I
always want all of the answers, and when you kind
of spoil how the magic trick is done, it sort
of takes some of the wonder out of it literally
kills the magic. And so this is the kind of
thing that really upsets people who are in that trade,
(37:36):
whether it be magicians, you know, blacklisting other magicians who
have you know, spilled the beans about how how the
tricks work. In this case, we are talking to people
that maybe are not the most trustworthy of individuals who
are upset because now they're no longer able to use
these tricks to bilk people out of their money by
making them believe that they're actually communicating with their dead
(37:57):
loved ones.
Speaker 2 (37:58):
Do we know when it came out of this book
Revelations of a Spirit Medium. When did it come out?
Because in our explorations of the spiritualism movement, we do
know that attempting to builk people out of money was
one of the primary things that was occurring during that movement.
People who kind of glombed on to that movement and
then decide, Hey, I'm going to make a buck using
(38:19):
these kinds of parlor tricks. Right, we were aware of this.
Speaker 3 (38:22):
Yeah, yeah, and this is not just endangering magician ideology, right,
this is endangering people's livelihoods. So boy howdy, the spiritualist
movement and mediums in general, genuine and grifter alike, they
are pissed so much so that they conspire to buy
(38:44):
up all the existing copies of this book and purposely
destroy it. Because there's no Internet, right, there's no WikiLeaks.
So if they can get rid of this hidden knowledge,
then they can continue on their jolly wave fake and
taps and making ectoplasm in very gross fashions. Check out
ridiculous history. So all right, but yeah, you're right. Price
(39:07):
comes through for the public. I believe it is nineteen
twenty two. That's when they obtain a copy of the book,
and they are he along with his fellow psychic researcher,
a guy named Eric Dingwall, which is just, of all
(39:27):
due respect a cartoonishly British name. So Price and Dingwall
republished this behind the scenes expose, and the publication of
this book, like the fact that it doesn't get destroyed,
totally plays a pivotal role in the downfall of the
spiritualist movement overall. So get complicated, guys. One I think
(39:50):
we can all sympathize with I hope so because he
like Fox Mulder, like you, fellow conspiracy realist, and like us,
he wants to believe, but on several occasions he also
feels compelled by a moral or ethical imperative to let
people know when something is bs.
Speaker 4 (40:08):
Well.
Speaker 2 (40:08):
Yeah, it would suck if a bunch more people did
actually believe, but they believed in something that was fake, Right.
I feel like somebody who is a true believer or
someone who that's a weird way to say it, but
somebody who really believes that something is out there that
is moving differently than we understand. If you've got jokers
(40:28):
out here doing the thing that they were doing, that's
that's like the worst thing you can do, right, giving
some kind of false hope or false evidence in that way.
Speaker 3 (40:40):
Yeah, muddying the waters.
Speaker 4 (40:42):
Right.
Speaker 3 (40:42):
This is still a subject of debate amongst paranormal investigators,
from the skeptic side all the way to the credulous.
Our guy Price is a big part of this, because
again it's huge in the zeitgeist of the time in
the Anglo sphere. He joined something called the Society for
Psychical Research in nineteen twenty, so a little bit before
(41:04):
they republish the book, and he's how.
Speaker 2 (41:06):
Cool is that? Can we just say that's amazing psychical research?
Nineteen twenty something?
Speaker 4 (41:10):
Come on?
Speaker 3 (41:12):
He also later, we won't go two in the weeds here,
but later he beefs up with them and he starts
his own rival situation. But yeah, that's a cool extracurricular
for sure. And he's doing what he sees as responsible investigation.
So he's saying to himself, I am always going to
(41:32):
expose mediums if I know they are cod artists, but
I am always going to also endorse mediums if I
feel they are the real McCoy, Like, if I can't
scientifically explain it, I'm okay with saying I think this
person can talk to ghosts. So he's trying to be fair.
Speaker 2 (41:51):
Do you think were they around like all the way
into the nineteen thirties, because I do wonder if they
saw Black Tuesday coming.
Speaker 3 (42:03):
Yeah, yeah, that's a great question. We know that by
June twelfth of nineteen twenty nine, Price is in the
summer of nineteen twenty nine, he is forty eight years old.
He heads to the case that is gonna leave him
forever in the history books and now on Netflix thanks
(42:24):
to The Daily Mirror. Harry Price heads to Boorly to
investigate the Rectory. So he has, I think it's fair
to say, some sort of reputation for busting frauds, some
sort of street cred for confirming when things are not
supernatural in this case, pretty much as soon as he
(42:44):
gets there, he becomes convinced the rectory is super DUP's haunted.
He writes about it a lot for the rest of
his life. He says that the paranormal events are above
and beyond what his friends at the Mirror told him
to expect. There was some unidentified force just throwing stuff.
I'm gonna throw something there just for the vibe. And
(43:08):
there was like rocks and vases and small knickknacks. And
he said, oh, spirits are talking to me. They're sending
me messages via tapping sounds on the frame of this
particular mirror. And we have to note that communication through
taps was a common accepted mode of interaction with spirits
per mediums of the day.
Speaker 2 (43:29):
Isn't it crazy because that's one of the most easily recreated,
like falsified things with some little string attached to one
other little thing or somebody in the corner just doing
a little I don't know if you can see my
finger down here, Netflix, but if that's under the table,
you can do some crazy taps.
Speaker 4 (43:47):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (43:47):
Oh man, you should hear Jonathan Strickland talk about this.
He is bizarrely fascinated with the spiritualist movement and knows
knows how to fake a seance. I'll give credit where
it's due. If we need someone to fake a seance,
it's going to be baby j oh dude.
Speaker 2 (44:02):
Yeah, well, I think we've at this point, we've all
got some tricks off our sleeves or under the tables
or maybe even the ceiling.
Speaker 4 (44:10):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (44:11):
It is very interesting just to know that this these
are the things that are reported to be in Borlely
Rectory during this investigation that prove that it's haunted in
some way.
Speaker 3 (44:21):
Yeah, right, and this is absolute career boost for Price.
Make no mistake. We could think of him like the
Heraldo Rivera of his day. Wasn't that the American journalist
who opened the safe?
Speaker 4 (44:34):
Yeah, and there was just like a candy bar wrapper
something in there. Was like the biggest televised letdown of
all time.
Speaker 2 (44:42):
Shaggy Roaldo Rivera some of those early early Heraldo clips
of him being like an on site journalist who's just
out there doing some correspondence work. It is like peak
US news television, I think.
Speaker 3 (44:56):
One hundred percent. Talk about editainment Rights called.
Speaker 4 (44:59):
Him he was like the Madonna of my dad well,
and he was.
Speaker 3 (45:03):
Always cursed to be the lesser co host to his mustache,
which was the star of every investigation.
Speaker 4 (45:10):
A real bushy boy. Ah, A great one.
Speaker 2 (45:12):
I'm here.
Speaker 3 (45:14):
So that's Harry Price right at this time, Harry Pricet
is the Heraldo Rivera for ghost in the United Kingdom
in the early nineteen hundreds. Very specific comparison, but hopefully
it lands. We're saying that the public trusted him. They
wanted to see what he thought about these ghostly allegations
(45:37):
that the Daily Mirror was reporting on. So if he
could come up with something solid, either a big debunking
or a genuine case of ghostly activity, he would be
a legend. He would be set for life. But the
problem is because of that, a lot of people began
to think Harry Price was pursuing profit over the para
(46:00):
normal right, He's selling a story, not investigating the truth.
That's where things start to go south for him. Let's
say we pause for a word from our sponsors and
then maybe talk about some of the issues. This episode
is brought you in part by Illumination Global Unlimited.
Speaker 4 (46:20):
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Speaker 2 (47:04):
So wait, so guys, we're going to people's houses now.
Speaker 3 (47:07):
Aught your house is not legally liable for actual ghosts,
poltergeist vibes good or bad, hates leftover Celsius cans, case
of derrelated remnants, Boogie's Bogies, boogers, ectoplasm, ecoplasm, dark Knights
of the Soul, or non approved psychic con artists. Thought
your house is a division of illumination Global Unlimited.
Speaker 2 (47:24):
Turn on the light.
Speaker 3 (47:28):
And we have returned, all right, we said. Borley Rectory
is a long running obsession for Price during his first
contact in nineteen twenty nine. The Smith family we mentioned
earlier is still living there. Reverend Smith's family is not
like Reverend Bull's families, right, those two guys. Their family
is not totally on board with what Price is doing
(47:49):
and what he concludes, because they noticed pretty logically that
the alleged escalation of these incidents only started when he arrived,
and once he left, those strange events also ceased. So too, Yeah,
you know what I mean, Like, this problem only shows
up when you're here.
Speaker 2 (48:08):
Weird. You know what that means?
Speaker 3 (48:11):
Right? Yeah. Reverend Smith's spouse is convinced that Price is
using his deep encyclopediac knowledge of medium drifting and stage
magic to commit fraud. But you print all this crazy
stuff on the front page, save the retractions for the
back of the paper. The public it gobbles this up
soon a new family moves in. The Smiths leave Boorly
(48:34):
on July fourteenth, nineteen twenty nine, and the parish, Yeah,
the parish is having a tough time finding a replacement
family or replacement rector.
Speaker 2 (48:45):
So he was only there for a month and he
drove the entire family out.
Speaker 3 (48:50):
Or the ghosted hang on stuff to throw, Okay, yeah,
like that. They were like somebody's throwing things every time
this price guy hangs out, and so yeah, they do
end up leaving shortly after. And part of the reason
they're having a hard time finding a rector is because
it's a small community, but it's probably at least partially
(49:11):
due to the growing reputation as a haunted house. So
it takes until October of nineteen thirty a new reverend
moves in. This is Reverend Lionel Algernon Foister. He's a
first cousin of the Bull family. Oh and he's a
true believer.
Speaker 4 (49:27):
Yeah, he definitely believed that these allegations were in fact genuine.
He wrote an in depth account of some of the
strange events that took place on the property from nineteen
twenty nine to nineteen thirty five, and he sent it
to Price.
Speaker 3 (49:40):
Yeah, and this matches up with This is exactly what
Price wants to hear, by the way it matches up
with his own allegations. Ringing bells, moving objects, violent poltergeist activity, windows, shattering,
messages written on walls. And this is where another key
player comes in, Foister's spouse, Mary Atte. She gives some
(50:01):
of the juiciest stories that are shared with Price because
she says that she has experienced multiple instances crazy poltergeist activity,
including being thrown from her bed several times at odd hours. Foyster,
being a religious man, tries to conduct an exorcism, not once,
but twice, with no success. He writes the Price saying
(50:24):
that the first time he gave it a go, the
spirits walloped him on the shoulder with a stone the
size of a human fist. What, Yeah, he got salts,
Yeah he got ghost salted.
Speaker 4 (50:35):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (50:36):
Where was he doing the exorcism? Where is there is
this sized stone that could hit him? Is he like outside?
Speaker 4 (50:42):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (50:43):
I was thinking about that too, Like during the second exorcism,
did he at least police the area a little bit
but do a little icon you know, Yeah, surveil a
little bit, watch out rocks.
Speaker 2 (50:54):
I don't mean, what if he really did that and
a spirit of some sort really throw a dang rock
at this guy. Maybe maybe he can't prove that it
didn't happen, but it sure seems like maybe it didn't
happen like that.
Speaker 3 (51:10):
Yeah, yeah, it seems like there's a definite spin on
what happened. You know, there are no photographs of this
guy with his shoulder all jacked up.
Speaker 2 (51:18):
You know, he's got his Bible and he's doing the
exorcism and then just.
Speaker 3 (51:22):
One Yeah, it also is one rock. So if it
were a spirit, they were just mildly annoyed, you know.
They weren't in it for the head. They were like
a keep it moving. So, I don't know. We don't
know how Price felt when he read this correspondence. We
don't know if he genuinely believed Foyster and the Smiths
(51:42):
had confirmed ghostly activity. Was he more interested in selling
and profiting from a story. We don't know outside of
what he wrote to the public, but we do know
this became a matter of national attention. So once the
tabloid The Daily Mirror put the t to the press,
other independent investigators, skeptics and true believers alike. They flocked
(52:05):
to Boorly Rectory. It's a phenomenal time to own a
pub or an inn. It's kind of like how Mothman
saves Point Pleasant, West, Virginia.
Speaker 2 (52:13):
I've been I'm gonna go ahead and tell you how
how Price reacted when he read that letter. I'm assuming
it was like this, Yeah, I mean yeah, I bet
you're right.
Speaker 3 (52:27):
Yeah, he wrote. His next thing was to contact his
publisher and uh yeah, and then right to the fanciest
restaurant and tell them that to expect him at seven pm.
First stake for one the reservation for one use. He
was that kind of guy. Look, all of the later
(52:47):
investigators who come along, they unanimously conclude that all this
ghostly activity is somehow caused by mary Anne Foister. Some
of them don't say she's grifting. They are concerned that
she is being singled out and victimized by the spirits.
But later there's another conspiracy. Mary Anne will confess that
(53:08):
she is responsible for at least some of these ghostly
incidents because get this, guys, she was sleeping around with
a tenant at the rectory, a guy named Frank Peerless.
And so it's a stroke of either boldness or desperation,
probably both that causes her to explain away her dalliances
(53:30):
with ghostly phenomena a husband. Well, I'm naked on the
floor right now. The place is halted.
Speaker 2 (53:39):
I was thrown to the ground so violently that my
clothes are in the corner over there.
Speaker 4 (53:45):
No trifling.
Speaker 3 (53:48):
So she then becomes, at least for time, heavily incentivized
to go along with the ghost story. Right, so everything
that Price is saying or pitching or proposing, or the
her husband is saying, she's like, oh, yeah, oh totally,
a ghost stole my underwear earlier.
Speaker 2 (54:06):
That's really sad and messed up.
Speaker 3 (54:08):
Yeah, you gotta feel bad for the family. Price does return.
He is spurred on by public interest and great readership numbers.
He doesn't come back to the rectory alone. We don't
mean he brought ghost with him. Instead, he got a
small army of what he called official observers. So for
(54:29):
forty eight people, most of them think of them like
college students or interns. They were tasked with spending weekends
at the house and reporting anything strange that occurred to them.
Price lived there for a full year. He rented out
the place from May of nineteen thirty seven to May
of nineteen thirty eight, and they thought they figured out
(54:50):
the mystery thanks to the daughter of one of Price's followers,
a lady named Helen Glanville. In nineteen thirty eight, she
did a say and she met two spirits. The big
one is the one who reveals the mystery.
Speaker 4 (55:07):
So the big one was Marie, a French nine who
left her convent and traveled to England in order to
get married. Per Helen's account, Marie had a very unfortunate
end as well, murdered in an older building upon which
the rectory now stood and either buried in a forgotten
(55:28):
seller or thrown down a well. This all may start
to be ringing a bell for y'all out there.
Speaker 3 (55:34):
Yeah, sounds familiar. It should, because it's essentially a gritty
reboot of the story Reverend Bulls Kids made up for
fun decades earlier. Price does get what he wants.
Speaker 2 (55:45):
It does make you wonder, how does that message come
to this person? Ray it is someone performing a seance,
And then usually isn't it someone is like channels a
spirit when there's something like that, whether it's spirit writing,
just you know, the thought is you put your hand
with a pen on a piece of paper and it
(56:06):
just goes when you're in a trance state, and then
there's a message on there or someone is with words
just saying out loud what quote spirit is saying to them,
which is you know.
Speaker 4 (56:21):
Come on.
Speaker 2 (56:22):
Maybe, But if it is going to be a story
that's being told, this one it is eerily similar. Right, Yes,
maybe you've heard the story.
Speaker 3 (56:32):
Before, especially because this is a seance format using a
plan chet, which is a little pointer thingy you're going
to see on your wigiboard. So you have to be
very careful about how questions are asked. Right. There are
a lot of spell your name things. There are a
lot of only yes or no answers, so it's very
easy to get what you want from that kind of communication.
(56:55):
Bryce definitely gets what he wants. He publishes a book
in nineteen forty about the collected experiences, the title the
Most Haunted House in England and the name Stuck. Goes
on to publish more and more works about Borly Rectory.
He is constantly fascinated by it and it's a huge
source of income to him until he passes way from
a heart attack in nineteen forty eight. We have, at
(57:18):
the time of recording, tried ringing him up on the
wija board, but we have yet to hear back. We
promised to update if he reaches out.
Speaker 4 (57:28):
Yes, the same.
Speaker 3 (57:28):
I feel like that's fair. It's fair for us.
Speaker 2 (57:30):
I think it's fair, super fair, gentlemen. Just really quickly.
I'm thinking about a lot of times movies get made,
books get written, like the one that are our friend
Price here wrote. I did quick check on IMDb and
just searched Borley Rectory. Holy Macro guy, the.
Speaker 4 (57:51):
Nun is largely based on these tales or these accounts.
I found that out after the fat What else did
you find, Matt.
Speaker 2 (57:59):
Oh, there's so many matches on IMDb. Several of them
are standalones, such as twenty seventeen's Borley Rectory or twenty
twenty five's Borley Rectory, The Awakening, the Ghosts of Borley Rectory,
The Haunting of Borley Rectory.
Speaker 3 (58:18):
Yeah, they've been very good to the BBC, you know
what I mean.
Speaker 2 (58:22):
It seems it seems like maybe this is the most
haunted house in all of England.
Speaker 3 (58:25):
Hey, there's a book about it, I hear and so
at this point it's probably also fair to ask your
hopefully favorite podcasters why we have not already visited the
rectory in person. We'll make a deal with you. Yeah,
please tell our accounting department we would love to go.
We're always down for a road trip. Our accounting department
(58:47):
is probably going to tell you we cannot go. It's
not a budget issue. I mean, it kind of is,
but it's not really a budget issue. It's the fact
that the rectory no longer exists. It burns to the
ground on February twenty seventh, nineteen thirty nine.
Speaker 4 (59:02):
Apparently, whoa, yeah, yeah, it was sour right.
Speaker 2 (59:07):
It burns out for the book, but like right before
the book publishes.
Speaker 3 (59:12):
I mean, you know, sometimes timing works out.
Speaker 2 (59:15):
God is it? Because now nobody can go back and
fact check. Nobody can go back and reseance, at least
in the same rooms that are going to.
Speaker 4 (59:23):
Be talked about.
Speaker 3 (59:24):
Yeah, yeah, captain, Yeah, we're both doing You sure about that?
You sure about? That's why Captain W. H. Gregson is
the dude who moves in.
Speaker 4 (59:36):
Uh yeah.
Speaker 3 (59:37):
On the day he moves in, he's unpacking boxes, or
on the evening moves in he's unpacking boxes. He says
he accidentally starts a fire by goofing with an oil lamp.
He botches the oil lamp, he knocks it over with
his elbow. The rectory burns beyond recovery like the building
before it. And here's another conspiracy. Insurance investigators are convinced
(59:59):
he's started the fire on purpose, properly our fraud good
marketing too.
Speaker 4 (01:00:04):
I mean, that's a point.
Speaker 2 (01:00:08):
We're talking about a captain here. He can't figure out
an oil lamp.
Speaker 3 (01:00:12):
Not his first time, right, not his first oil lamp
or rodeo.
Speaker 2 (01:00:16):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (01:00:16):
But you know, Price does return to the site. Those
are addendum. As we're wrapping up, Price returned to the
site and he does a brief dig and he is
in his team tell the authorities at Borley that they
have discovered two bones of a young woman in a
disused cellar and where they say, we're going to give
these bones a proper Christian burial here in the village
(01:00:38):
of Borley. The parish says no. They look at the
bones and they say, we don't know if you're a
grifter or if you're just not familiar with bones, but sir,
these belong to a pig, not a human. Woman, so
get out of town.
Speaker 2 (01:00:55):
I've heard some rumors. I've seen it written online somewhere
ben where one is definitely a pig bone, one is
like maybe a human bone. But I think it's just
there's so much rumor upon rumor wrapped up in this onion.
Rumor onion.
Speaker 3 (01:01:10):
It's a rumor onion. Yeah, a rumor onion. We're gonna
do something with that. That's gonna come back. Everybody write
that down. So here we have it. Borley is considered
the most haunted house in England, but the reputation is
largely manufactured. We don't know how much Price actually believed,
but we do know he was heavily incentivized to claim
at least some of these incidents were genuine. As for
(01:01:33):
the rest, Critics including us, will tell you that's the
stuff Harry Price doesn't want you to know, but we
want to know. If you've ever been to a haunted house.
We'd love to hear your thoughts. Thank you for tuning in.
Find us online, call us on the phone. You can
always send us an email.
Speaker 4 (01:01:48):
Yeah, get at us online at the handles. Conspiracy Stuff
or Conspiracy Stuff Show, depending on your social media platform
of choice and Matty, there's another way.
Speaker 2 (01:01:57):
Oh there's another way. Call one eight three st d
w y t K. It's a voicemail system. You'll hear
Ben's voice and some familiar music. Give yourself a cool
nickname and let us know if we can use your
name and message on the air. If you want to
email us, you can do that too.
Speaker 3 (01:02:13):
We are the entits, the read each piece of correspondence
we receive. Be well aware, yet unafraid. Sometimes the void
writes back, Oh, that's actually my other cat. I'm gonna
throw one more thing. We'll see you out here in
the dark. Conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 2 (01:02:47):
Stuff they don't want you to know is a production
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Stuff They Don't Want You To Know News
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Matt Frederick
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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