After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal - Most Haunted House in England

Episode Date: October 22, 2026

Built in 1862, Borley Rectory became known as England's most haunted house. From ghostly nuns and unexplained disturbances to paranormal investigator Harry Price's controversial investigations, discover the history behind one of Britain's most famous haunting legends.Was Borley Rectory truly haunted, or was its reputation shaped by folklore, sensationalist journalism and questionable evidence? Join After Dark as we separate historical fact from supernatural fiction.This episode was edited by Tim Arstall. Produced by Tomos Delargy and McKenna Fernandez. Edited by Anna Brant. The senior producer was Freddy Chick.After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal is a History Hit podcast.Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe. All music from Epidemic Sounds.History Hit is part of Little Dot Studios, a Certified B Corp™Voting is now open for the Listener's Choice Award at this year's Podcast Awards. Click to place your vote on the Spotify mobile app: https://open.spotify.com/s/xhg6PJa Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello, After Darkers. Now, brace yourselves for a public service announcement. History Hit, the production company behind After Dark, also makes documentaries. And I'm talking beautifully shot, fantastically told, immersive histories on screen. There's hundreds and hundreds available to watch right now online at HistoryHit.com with a new release each week. There's a lot to digest there. But guys, take a deep breath because there is more. Anthony and I have made two new History Hit TV documentaries. I have recently made one about London. most notorious haunting, the cockling ghost based on my new book hoax that is releasing for Halloween.

And I've got one following that about the great Irish famine, which is coming soon. To see what's on offer and to subscribe, visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe to start exploring the past. The year is 1862. Fear and gossip grips the sleepy English village of Borley. Rumour has it that something strange is happening in the old. rectory down the road. Something evil. The sound of scraping feet in empty rooms, furniture moving of its own accord,

and a ghostly apparition silently walking a lonely path. Before long, the anxious whispers of villagers have reached fever pitch, and the national press and paranormal investigators have descended on the parish. Witness statements are taken. Investigators combed the site for clues

and seances are conducted to commune with the dead. Only one question remains. Is Bally Rectory really England's most wanted house? Welcome to After Dark. Hello and welcome to After Dark. Spooky season is upon us. The clouds are coming over the moors and gothicism has descended upon us. And you know, of course, how much we love our ghost stories here in After Dark.

And that's what we're going to be turning our attention to today. We are going to be discussing today, England's Most Haunted House. Is it something you've heard of? No, no, no. I mean, I've heard lots of things claim to be England's most haunted house. Yeah, it's one of those ones like England's oldest pub. Sure, yeah, or where Charles II hit or whatever. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Borley rectory. Where is Borley Maddie Pelling? It is in the county of Essex Everything seems to be in Essex, right? Well, we've just done a Peasant's Revolt episode with Matt Lewis and that's... Witchy stuff is always in Essex?

Yeah, so dodgy county. If you're from Essex, look out. We are in the late Victorian period, well, mid to late. We're starting in 1862 when Borley Retrie is built and this is what's surprising I think about this history is

You know, we think about ghosts occupying buildings that are centuries old. And that is not the case with this one. Yeah, it's built in 1862. It is in, it's the parish rectory for a medieval church, though. So there is, you know, older stuff on the site. And can I ask when is the haunting happening in the historical timeline? Over several decades. In the 19th century?

Yes, going into the 20th. Okay. So we're in a new build essentially, though. Yeah, we are. I mean, how depressing. It's built in a sort of Gothic style, Victorian Gothic revival. And initially it is built to house the Reverend Henry Dawson Ellis Bull and his family, including various sisters, I think, who live there. So it's a sort of family home.

It's connected to the church. It's a functioning rectory. It's a new build, as you say. It should all be fine. There should be no hauntings going on at all here. Of course, this is a Victorian ghost story. We know the Victorians are obsessed with ghosts. How do you feel about the Victorian engagement with the idea of ghosts?

A little, a little creepy kind of, and by that I mean they creep me out a little bit because there is, we know, factually, an incredible amount of hoaxery and fanangling going on with what they interpret me out. Hoaxery and fenangling. That is what I should have called my book. Too late now. So we know that they're duping when it comes to ghosts. We know that they purposefully do that in different ways. We also know that the Victorians change what it is to be a ghost,

the physicality of a ghost. So we move from something that's far more early, modern, and a little bit more spectral. Spectral, yeah. But this is where we get a lot of the tropes that we are familiar. with ghosts in the, even in the 21st century. This is like seances, mediums. It's a lot of like material culture to do with this, right?

You think of the table wobbling, like sort of cards being laid out, various objects, moving, lights flickering. Obviously, you've got early photography in this moment and you've got, you know, sort of the pictures that you get of mediums where there's like sort of ghost plasma coming out of them and it's just like cheese cloth and stuff. That always makes me gag. The texture, I couldn't, I couldn't do that. What's cheese cloth? Like sort of muslin, I guess. Is it used for wringing out cheese, literally wringing out cheese? Yeah, or wrapping cheese or...

Yeah, okay. Don't ask me, I'm not a cheesemaker. You are. Contrary to your claims when I was away. Oh, yeah. There was a cheese-related one in there. Yeah, so we're starting to get a kind of a pseudo-science around ghosts, which kind of gives me the it, because I'm very much interested in early modern ghosts,

and, you know, I've spoken so much on this podcast and elsewhere about the early modern ghost functioning in various ways as a sort of tool to articulate tension in the household, tension in society, frustration, anger, vengeance, all of these things. And suddenly in the Victorian period, people are like, no, they're entirely real, and we're going to measure and capture them and record them. And, you know, it speaks very much to the 19th century's boom in technology and, you know, this new way of understanding the world and recording it around you and not all. of that. But there's just something about it. I just, I find, I find it frustrating and I find it

disingenuous, I think. Yeah. Yeah, no, I totally get it. And then there are some people for whom it is absolutely genuine and it becomes the centre of their lives and the devotion of their, their, their impetus and the reason for being. Conan Doyle comes to mind, of course, it's a very stereotypical example. But he believes it. Do you know what I mean? I don't think he's trying to hoodwink anybody. But, But yeah, same as you though. I more heavily lean towards the icky side of it where I'm a bit like, oh God, it's all a bit weird going on there. Thinking of Arthur Conan Doyle the other day I was flicking through, you know, if you sort of find the back end of BBC Eye Player and it's got, is it called like BBC Collections or something? It's like old bits of footage and programs from the last, I don't know, 60, 70 years or whatever.

And there was a program on there. There was John Betchman, the Poet Laureate, going around like, absolutely. absolutely wild presenter skills. He had literally sort of walks, turns to the camera, says something and forgets what he's saying and sort of walks off. But he was doing a sort of, I don't know, a journey from like edgeware to Stammore or something in North London, like utterly bizarre. And he went into a church, which supposedly Handel played in in the 18th century.

And he was talking to the rector there who was recalling Arthur Conan Doyle coming into church with a gaggle of ladies in the 19th century and going to the, I must have been an organ where Handler played and trying to speak to his ghost and it was so performative. And this man was still alive in what, I don't know, the 60s when this documentary was made. And he was sort of talking about the performative element of Arthur Conan Doyle and this, yeah, this sort of this way of engaging ghosts that I think is just full of tropes and repeated ideas and it just doesn't feel very, it doesn't feel very elemental or human to me. It feels sort of, it's all about performance.

Yeah. And I don't love it. It feels like freak show. Yes. You know, it's bringing in those tropes. But let's get to Borley Rectory specifically. Yes. When do we start to see the supposed ghosts arrive there?

Considering it's built when, 1862. Okay. What's the gap? Yes. So in the late 19th century, we start to get these, the first. the first supernatural goings on, so-called, when the bull family are still living there. So we've got the rector and his family.

There are unusual things that start to happen. So there are reports of things like footsteps being heard in the house, which, you know, is something that people have been reporting at this point for centuries. The ringing of bells, bells that aren't in the house. As well as, I guess, servants' bells would have been in the house as well. doors opening and closing on their own shadowy figures in the garden and the thing about seeing actual people in this

is going to be really important also things like whispers, voices at night things that are waking the family up and disturbing them and we're going to see various inhabitants of this house actually get out of their beds and arm themselves thinking that people are in the house so you know there is

the phenomena that are being reported is significant but the bull family that are there for this part of the 19th century, they're seeing stuff that are nerved by it. They're not recording it with any scientific rigor. They may be mentioning it to people in the local community in Essex. It becomes sort of part of a local folklore. Oh, yeah, baller rectory.

They've had some spooky goings on there. Which is weird, though, because they've only been there for a generation. It's the same family. Who's haunting them? Why would there be any disturbance? Well, okay. So here is the myth version. Am I going to hate this?

Yes, you're going to absolutely hate this. So one of the Bull sisters reports seeing, I think they've been playing tennis or something, the sisters, and they've come back to the house, and they're going through the garden, and one of them reports seeing a nun near the garden. Okay. And she calls her the sisters out,

and this figure of a nun is walking towards them, and it disappears, it evaporates. And they're really freaked out by this. Now, this story emerges. And this is what, I say this as someone who is fascinated by ghost stories. I'm potentially open to the idea of something. I think ghosts exist in the terms of our imagination, in terms of our need to engage with the idea of something after death, with ideas of memory and place, all of this. What I hate is when these stories big, like sort of narratives build up around places.

And it's always like, I'll just tell you what it is. And then you'll, this is such a, I hate this example. Okay, okay, okay, okay. So this is the local folklore that was told in the 19th century. So this is this nun that they keep seeing is a medieval nun who. Medieval? Sorry, I'm already interrupting. Go. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So you've got to flatten the new build and your imagination of the land is historic. And, you know, Essex is a very ancient county. It's lots of medieval and early modern history. This nun falls in love with a monk. Falling in love, eh? Yeah. Doomed lovers can't be together. They try and escape the local nunnery monastery.

They are caught and the monk is executed. Why? Why? The nun is bricked up alive in the convent. None of this, to my knowledge, would happen in this time period. There are versions in which the monk is decapitated, along with the carriage drive. who's helping them escape. Also medieval, medieval monk, carriage driver, yeah.

The ensemble is growing. Jumping his Uber to escape. It's just ridiculous. So there's this idea that there's like, you know, a nun who's been bricked up who's walking the same route between the monastery and the nunnery. And the route that she's seen later gets renamed the nun's walk and all this, you know.

So there's this, you know, Star Cross lovers, brutal murders and the idea is that the nun is buried on the land in which Boreley rectory is built Okay But we also have It's sitting into this idea

So you're saying medieval nun Late 19th century Gothic revivalism We're inventing fairy tales Around actual medieval history Is this the site of a nunnery Or a monkery?

A monkery? There is Is that where monkeys there is no archaeological or historical record of a nunnery or a monkery on this site at all. So this family is full of all. Yeah, absolutely. Oh, but um, yeah, perfect. It's total nonsense.

But this is, you know, how these stories, they attach themselves to places. We repeat them. We're all guilty of it. We've all enjoyed it when you go to a historic house or a castle or whatever it is. And, oh, you know, there was a smuggler on this bit of coast. line and he was in love with a mermaid and then she murdered him and now he walks the cliffs whatever, you know, just made that up.

You're welcome to use that. Yeah. You know, so this, there's, there's, this exists across England and it's, you know, it's part of what we love about specifically, I think English folklore as well is just kind of full of these fabrications that are very place specific. But we're moving now out of the 19th century

where the Bull family, you know, are they the ones who are putting this story forward? Is it just percolating in the local community? We're going to see some more specific phenomena now reported, and it's going to be reported and recorded crucially in a completely different way. So we're moving, as I say out of the 19th century, early 20th century, of course you've got the First World War. And then after the First World War, you've got a huge resurgence in the spiritualism of the Victorian age, obviously huge loss during the First World War. and people feeling a desperate and very understandable need to contact the dead, including and specifically the young men who've been lost on the battlefields of Europe.

And so between 1918 and 1939 and obviously the start of the Second World War, there's a kind of peak of interest again in ghosts and in the supernatural. And the idea of sort of, I suppose, speaking to that world and there being a way to communicate is really important. And this is where we start to see Boreley Rectary again with a new generation of tenants becoming very, very quickly a famous site in the centre of actually national interest.

So we have this national resurgence, as you say, in the early 20th century. That gives us a little bit of context. But what is the, I can't imagine a story of a nun is going to necessarily spark national imagination in, you know, the 1920s. So what is it that sets that off? So we're in the 1920s now and we've got a new reverend moving in,

the Reverend Guy Eric Smith and his wife, who's just called Mrs Smith in my notes. Maybe she had a name. She didn't, I can confirm. Maybe her first name was Mrs. We don't know. So Mrs. one day is cleaning out the house and she finds a skull. And we do know, she really did. find this skull and later it was identified as a skull of a young woman.

And so, of course, I mean, was it just chilling and a cupboard? Slightly intrigued by... Why was there a skull in the house? Especially given, you know, it's not... If it was like a house with like medieval foundations or an early modern house where, you know, you'd find like a cat skeleton in the wall or something like offerings that have been left or whatever, apotheaic things. My guess is that it is part of the Bull family's collection that's been left behind.

maybe, you know, they obviously had some kind of interest in supernatural. Yeah, obviously, yeah, true. Where there was there spiritualism, you know, seances and things like that going on in the house, was it used for that? And often 19th century clergymen are interested in antiquarianism, are collectors of old stuff or anatomy, exactly. So, you know, there's a world in which the skull is already centuries old and it's been discovered nearby on a dig or something.

Yeah, sure. And it's, you know, kind of come to the rector that way. But there doesn't seem to be any kind of concrete information about this other than it is eventually identified to be the skull of a woman. And strange things start to happen to this family as well, the Smith family. They start to report similar things to the bulls, noises, footsteps, a lot of domestic disturbance. Again, in a new way, it's still a relatively new house. I mean, it's 80, 60, 60 years old at this point.

Good maths. But, you know, it's not a centuries-old castle or something. So they are, they are disturbed by this. And it has this local reputation already. But, and this is where it's going to start to annoy you, I think, because it's clear the... Yeah, I'm not annoyed yet. You are going to be. It's clear the sort of the self-interest of a lot of the people who live and pass through baller rectory, I think is quite frustrating.

So the Reverend and Mrs. Smith, Mrs. Smith, decide that. Having found this skull and experienced some of these strange goings on, that they're going to contact a national newspaper. The Daily Mirror, I know. I have to go, sorry. Yeah. So they, their motivation for doing it is that they hope that readers of the paper will be able to give them advice.

The experts on ghosts will be able to write in and say, oh, this is how you get rid of your ghost or whatever, or this is, or, you know, it's subsidence. Surely a Reverend is supposed to be one of the experts on ghosts. Yeah, exactly. If we're buying into it, like, you know. We have here an excerpt from The Daily Mirror's first, and this is important first article covering the hauntings, because the mirror and other papers are going to cover this a lot in the coming years.

Can you please read it for us? I can. This is from the 10th of June 1929, and the headline was Ghost's Visit to a rectory. The first untoward happening was the sound of slow dragging footsteps across the floor of an unoccupied room. Slightly overwritten. Then one night Mr Smith, armed with a hockey stick,

sat in the room and waited for the noise. Once again it came, the sound of feet in some kind of slippers treading on the bare boards. Mr. Smith lashed out with a stick at the spot where the footsteps seemed to be, but the stick whistled through the empty air and the steps continued across the room. Then a servant girl brought from London, London, London suddenly gave notice after two days' work declaring emphatically that she had seen a nun walking in the wood at the back of the house.

The feckin nun is back. She's back again. So the Smiths are, they have spent time in India. They're well-travelled. They've brought their maid from London with them. They pride themselves on being a cosmopolitan household. And this young woman spends literally a couple of days in the househouse. after they've moved in, is like, I'm off back to London.

Maybe it's the Essex countryside she didn't like. Maybe it is the sight of this horrifying spectral nun. It'd do it like if you did see a nun, you'd kind of be off. Don't get me wrong. I would be back to London on the first train. Thank you very much. Okay. Well, for the next installation of what happens at Borley Rectory,

you can join us after this short break. Right, we have had a newspaper article. Yep. a servant girl from London she's high-tailed back after two days we have Mr. and Mrs. Smith living in the rectory now what?

Enter a new character Harry Price have you ever heard of him Yeah I do think I have why have we done an episode on him before? We haven't but we absolutely should so he is the most famous probably paranormal investigator

of the 20th century he's hugely famous He set himself up as an expert, a psychical researcher, someone who would use supposedly scientific methods go to sites where hauntings have been reported, record the phenomena. And he really makes his name with Boreley Rectory. This is it for him. This is the big one. And he is going to make a lot of money off of it. And I want people to bear that in mind here because, you know, that is important.

So he's assigned by the Daily Mirror. They commission him to go and investigate this. They're paying him already. From the get-go, this is a cash cow for him. And for the daily mirror, right? Oh, absolutely. They're going to sell a copy. So he is already, he exists in this world.

You know, he takes things like cameras, measuring tools. He's kind of writing down all these observations. He goes to Essex. And, you know, this already causes a stir. He's already something of a sort of. celebrity ghost hunter at this moment. So people are like, oh God, Harry Price has come. This must be serious.

Have you heard what's happening about Bawley Rectory? It is important to say that even in this time period, though, he was criticised as something of a fraud. See, I love this. Because you know I love the idea of disbelief as well, where it's kind of going. There's always been voices. You should write a book on disbelief. I don't have time.

That's my answer to everything. Yeah. Maybe you should make time because I think that'd be a really good book. Not from me. I'd read it, though. I would read it. You do it. Yeah, see, told you.

It's a good book to read, but I don't want to write it. Can someone out there write the book, on disbelief. Okay, so we're in June 1929 now. Price arrives at the rectory, and straight away, he reports seeing phenomena. Straight away. Yeah, straight away. So he's seeing things like stones being thrown in some of the rooms, glass shattering. There's a sort of glass outbuilding type situation.

and he's standing there with, I think, Mrs. Smith, maybe Mr. Smith, and one of the panels of glass falls off and smashes and just, you know, sort of covers them in glass. And this is something that he writes down. He talks about strange noises that he can't explain. He's interviewing witnesses that have been in the house, people like, you know, cleaners coming in, servants working there, that kind of thing. He is convinced that the rectory phenomena are,

paranormal. That's the stance that he takes. And this is where the moniker of Boreley Rectory comes in as the Most Haunted House in England. This is what the Daily Mirror dubs it, right? It runs, you know, this huge headline, the most haunted house in England. So this, how, how motivated is Price or is the Daily Mirror to actually investigate this and the human element of this, right? Because how much copy are you going to sell if you, if you're, if you're, title is the least haunted house in England, it's all fake, or the most haunted house in England, people are going to pick that up, you know. And again, there's criticism at the time, like the Daily Mirror is criticized for being sensationalist, like this seems to be kind of nonsense. And actually, even

when there's nothing going on, they're still running it in the papers. So I have another article here from the Daily Mirror. This is from the 17th of June 1929. And the headline is, shy ghost of Bally rectory give us this one because it's honestly like this is when you haven't done your homework and you've been asked to like go and research something or like write about what you've done on the weekend and you've done absolutely fuck all

and then need to write it up I will say before I read this what a waste to be writing about this kind of stuff in the middle of June can you not just wait until the for months at the very very least we're still in high summer anyway Boreley's ghost failed to rise to the occasion at a specifically arranged seance in the now-famous rectory.

While apparently willing to demonstrate at informal sitting, it flatly declined to exhibit itself before the two mediums brought down specifically from London. The mediums waited anxiously for some phenomena to occur and sat sometimes in the darkness and sometimes in the lamp-lighted. The rectory continues to receive the unwelcome attention of hundreds of curious people, and at night the headlights of their cars may be seen

from miles around. Right. First of all, as two people who like to preferably live in the middle of nowhere and not interact

with anyone, this would piss me off. Imagine if you were a neighbour just enjoying your nice little Essex countryside and suddenly you descended on

by ghost hunters. No, thank you. Yorkshire Water came to my door at the other Thursday night at 1130pm. No. Knock, knock.

I was probably watching some kind of murder mystery thing on the TV. I looked at Chey and I was like, we're about to be murdered. What's going? I could see him at the glass thing as well.

I'm just here to fix your thing. This is not relevant to this in any way. We have bat people in our street, like a bat survey going on. And we had a letter through the door saying they might be filming people's houses with infrared cameras. And if they need access to your garden,

you're meant to grant it to them. And they came on a knock on a door. When I spent an hour and a half getting the baby to sleep, they knocked on the door. The dog was going mental, woke the baby up. And they're like, can we come in your garden?

I was like, now. I'm a spooky bitch I love a bat I love a bat will go out of my way to protect the bats if you step foot on my property

again and wake my baby up I cannot be responsible for my actions oh my God so if you're a bat person and you'll listen to this don't come around to my house there you go

just don't you've been told oh my god okay so moving away from the bats yeah so basically the newspapers are running stories like

the ghost didn't appear. Like it's just endlessly silly. What year are we? Oh, 1929. Yeah, and Harry Price is really kind of, he's doubling down on this. So he is quoted, though, as saying, you know, even though nothing's happening, the ghost isn't turning up, he calls this, this event, 16 hours of thrills. He says, it's a date we remembered even by an experienced investigator. So he is really leaning into the like, I am here on the ground, I'm seeing stuff. Even if the ghost isn't appearing for other people, my God, I'm having

good time. 1930. Go on. The Smiths are out and we have a new family moving in. October 1930. Oh, here we go. It's spooky season now. This is better than June.

Yeah, perfect. The Reverend Lionel Foister. Something about the name Foister. I'll foisted on you. Foister. Yeah, it's sounds like it's not a very satisfying word to say. And his wife, Marianne, and his daughter Adelaide move into the rectory.

Now, Marianne is the one that you want to focus on here, I think. Wait, that was the wife. That's the wife. We've got Lionel, the dad, Marianne and Adele the daughter. So Lionel suffers from health problems. And aside from being the reverend of the parish, his wife Marianne is actually doing a lot of both the domestic tasks and kind of a lot of his parish responsibilities as well.

So she is sort of more visible in the community, Obviously she's a mother to their child as well, all of this. And I think she might be stretched a bit thin and maybe in need of some attention. You said it, I didn't. Well. Because what she starts feeding into. Now hold on a second. I am noticing a little bit of a pattern.

Am I? Am I? It's the women. Well, the women are the thread through this. It's the bull sisters. Yeah. Who say they see the nun. It's Mrs. Smith.

who finds the skull. Do you know, I hadn't made that connection, actually. That's very interesting. And now we're back. And it doesn't say much about the women themselves. It says something about how these things are being reported, potentially. Yeah, we're not saying women be lying. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

But also maybe in this particular instance, women be lying. So she indulges herself in, apparently she indulges herself in these stories. Well, okay. So the whole family do report witnessing things in the house. And it's very similar things, you know, figures in the garden, maybe seeing the nun, bells ringing at night, footsteps, all of the stuff that has previously been reported. But you've got to remember at this point, you know,

if you move in to Borea rectory, it's already been in the daily mirror, hundreds of people of it, like, you're not going to be unaware of those things. Would you move in? If it wasn't a new build, yeah. Yeah. Do you know what I mean? It wouldn't be the deranged, demented nun. I'm just like, if it like,

Give me the whole, if I'm going to have this, give me the whole thing. Oh, you want it to be like a 17th century. Give it the whole Gothic experience. I think it would have to be a no from me, even though I don't think any of this really happened. I'd be like, just to be on the safe side. I will say this, though. I like a rectory. Yeah.

I would like to live in. Well, you keep trying to buy churches to live in. Well, I know. Well, I don't keep trying, but I am looking, yeah. If you have an empty church to sell, get in touch and aftertargethton. You're going to get so many emails now. Okay, so the whole family. It is not just Marianne, but just focus on her.

And they, what happens next is that their testimony kind of becomes the most famous because it's so detailed and prolific. But also the most controversial. Oh. Okay. So. 1930 now, yes? We're in 1930 and we're going to have three years of paranormal activity.

So they report poltergeist activity, things like. items being thrown around, furniture being moved, bells ringing, as we've already said, ghostly voices, footsteps, messages on the wall, which are often addressed to Marianne. Addressed? Yeah, so one says, Marianne, please help me. Oh, it's written? It's not like tapped out on the wall. No, no, it's written on the wall.

Another says light mass prayers. Is that just a reminder? Is Lionel just trying to remind himself what he's got to do that day? Marianne claims that she is punched, slapped, pushed down the stairs, kicked, pinched, thrown out of her bed. And again, we're seeing the nun not just outside the house this time, but inside the house as well. She's come in. But everything seems to be focused on Marianne. Thoughts, please.

Poor Marianne, I guess, is my thought. Something's going on there. But again, that's just... I mean, if it is supernatural. She's having a really horrible time. She is. It's really violent. Why has the nun ventured in?

I'm just thinking narratively now, right? So I'm like, well, what's brought the nun in? I'm also thinking like how prevalent nuns are in the... They're such a horror truth. Yeah, in the 20th century. That that kind of religious thing starts to become monstrous. And so therefore we... Even this is a rectory, interestingly.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which is kind of fascinating. Yeah, so my thoughts are... she's on well, that Marianne is on well. Mm-hmm. Yeah, potentially. So her involvement in this, her testimony does start to get questioned publicly. Subsequent investigators and historians afterwards have kind of questioned, you know,

how much of the kind of myth already existed had been absorbed by Marianne. You know, is this where she is imagining these things or truly believing that she's experiencing them. And the stories that have been told to her about this place have just sort of seeped into that. Is she looking for attention and actively fabricating this stuff? It's really hard to tell. The Society of Psychical Research, which still exists. I think still exists, says it doubts the legitimacy

of her claims, which is interesting. Sometimes I like these guys because they turn up often in some of the stories, the histories that we look at and they're like, nah. And I love that for them. Yeah, yeah. And I think this is, this is, this is, bally retry kind of becomes this

site, this push and pull between the sort of the so-called science of looking for ghosts and, you know, and bringing scientific approaches and rigor to it, right? Sort of controlled testing and documenting things over a long period of time gathering testimonies from different people.

Like, that is what you would do if you were investigating anything else. So it is a legitimate way of investigation. And Marianne, what she's supporting just seems to be quite extreme. It's very regular. It's mostly, if not entirely,

centered on her. There are definite questions. However, whatever we think of Marianne, whether she just wants attention, whatever it is, by 1935, she and her family have gone from the rectory. So they've been there for five years. They've had enough.

And she's had three years of pretty intense haunting. Yeah. Yeah. And so we're out. They've gone. They don't stay longer than that. Now move to 1937. And Harry Price, the psychical investigator, leases the house for a year. I mean, I'd love to be able to just rent a house for a year because I thought it was haunted and wanted to see a ghost. If anyone wants to pay me to write that book, I'll happily go anywhere and do that. But I think this is kind of interesting, right? This says so much about like this. specific moment in 1937, the interest in these interwar years in ghost hunting in particular, not just ghosts, but this process of ghost hunting investigation, that he can make a living doing this. And he's like, yeah, I'm going to spend a year of my life living in this famous

haunted house and people are going to be interested for the entire year that I'm here. And people are interested. He gets a team of 48 volunteers who come at various times to help him out with things, to try and witness stuff. Is he living there full time? He's living there full time. So he invites other people in. He uses cameras. He's making floor plans. He's got observational logs and notebooks.

He's documenting everything. He's bringing in mediums and spiritualists who are doing regular seances. During one of the seances, there is a claim that one of the mediums makes that the rectory is going to burn down and that the bones of a murdered nun are going to be discovered during that destruction. Okay. And that, like, just keep hold of that because this is an interesting element in the story. I will. I will say that if there is a medieval nun somewhere on these grounds,

the chances of those remains reappearing just because a late 19th century house burns down is unlikely. Unless she's built into the walls. Wait and see. Okay. Okay, so between 19337, when he moves in and 1938 for this year,

as I say, we have these volunteers. some of them are staying overnight. They're keeping their own records. They're contributing to what price is doing. Some, I think it's important to say. Some do report that they're seeing this activity, the same things that have already been mentioned, the ghostly voices, the footsteps,

the ringing of bells, blah, blah, blah, blah. Some say they see the nun. Others say they don't see anything. And, you know, thinking about your skepticism in history and stuff, I think that is important to just hold that in balance. Harry Price says of this year and he's either writing at the time in these quotes or shortly after but referring to this time when he lived there

in 1938 he says the super normal played no part in the wonders that we have witnessed in 1939 he's recorded by contemporaries saying I do not believe in spirits and I do not believe in the bawley rectory legend he says yeah so he's gone from saying this is

you know I spent 16 thrilling out hours in this house. I'm seeing stuff all the time to sing. I don't believe in stuff. There's nothing in it. But it still is cash cow. And that's important to remember. We're going to go to a break. And afterwards, I'm going to tell you how he makes his money. Tell me how he makes his money, Maddie. Well, thank you for asking. Okay. So after Harry has done this investigation, he's lived there for a year. Drumroll, he's got a book deal. What is the title going to be coming out in 1940, the most haunted house in England. He's literally there he doesn't believe it's haunted, kind of.

So it's a huge bestseller in England and internationally. It's massive. And it covers everything from the earliest documentation of the events that have been happening in the house with the Bull family through all of his investigations. And what it does, and of course this is what it does when he thinks he's written it, is it really cements him as, you know, the nation's leading paranormal investigator. He's a huge authority on it. Not only is there such a best-selling book that he makes a lot of money out of it,

but six years later, he publishes another book on Ballerrectory called The End of Ballerrectory. He's choosing that it's the end of Borley Rectory. Because of an event that happened there. Okay, so. More nuns. Let's go back to the 1930s now. So before Harry Price publishes his books. And so he was there 1937 to 38.

In 1939, the rectory is purchased by Captain W.H. Gregson. So it's no longer a rectory. It's just a home to live in. It's not functioning in that way. 27th of February, 1939, the rectory has a fire. There better be witch bones. The very non-bones somewhere in this. So Gregson says that,

The fire, it's not begun by supernatural means. An oil lamp is accidentally knocked over. And the building, interestingly, for a new build in the 1860s, the building is timber framed. So the fire spreads really quickly. That's odd. Because on the outside, it looks brick. So a little bit weird.

And yeah, oil lamp in 1930s. What are you doing, Captain Greg? Yeah, he's got some electric lights in there, pal. He's got his own little thing going on. So some of the locals report, because of course, you know, if you lived there and you knew all the legends of this house, if you then see flames coming out of it, like you are going to watch that, right? Yeah. So a crowd, a crowd kind of gathers as this disaster is happening. And some of the locals report hearing strange noises that come from the house while it's burning.

Yeah, it's probably just the house. Falling in on itself. So the house is damaged and it's eventually just knocked down in its entirety. it's not fixable. In 1943, there are some excavations that take place very close to the foundations of the house and human bones are found. I mean, I can buy that.

It's a bit weird though, right? I can buy it, especially when you say like close to because then it makes me go, well, how close to? Is it in six fields over? I think it's on the same site as the house. It's not six fields. like it's in, it's literally very close to the foundation. And here's the other thing.

This is the rectory or was the rectory. Yeah. Which means it's probably close to or attached to a church, which means it's probably close to or attached to a graveyard. Yeah. So maybe we're not that surprised. So some people obviously jump to the conclusion. It's the nun, of course.

But the archaeologists that did the dig said it's very unlikely to be in. It's actually much likelier to be an earlier burial. Right. much earlier. And you know, that kind of plays into this idea of the graveyard, you know, and often in England certainly you get churchyards that are built on earlier, maybe Anglo-Saxon sites or sometimes even earlier in that Roman burial sites and things. So, you know, I always say this, and at some point I will write a book on this, the fact that the landscape in Britain is just full of bodies from across history that have been forgotten about. I think there would, you know,

the burial of people over centuries, how we discover them, how we think about them, how we attach stories to different burials like burials at crossroads and things like that. I just find that absolutely fascinating. You know, people who've been murdered, people who have died violently, but also people who are put into hedgerows, babies who are buried outside of consecrated ground, all of that. I'm just so interested in that. So I think, you know, I think that this sort of plays into this history, not a supernatural history. In 1944 the building is entirely demolished.

It's all gone. But the story of the rectory, it doesn't die, has this kind of ghostly afterlife. It really endures. It's such a... It captures people's imagination. And I can see why, to a certain extent, particularly in the context of the time

in which the story breaks in the late Victorian period, and then again in the interwar years, this kind of resurgence and, you know, people's desperation at the absolute horror that they've faced during the First World War. And I suppose also in both cases, like you mentioned about the Victorian sort of gothicism and certainly after the war, this idea of harking back to an England that's been lost, that's historic, that's gone. There is something, even if it's threatening or even if, you know,

the ghosts that are coming up out of the ground are frightening, it's a comforting past. I think. So I think all of that is coming into it. Just to give you a sense of how widespread the story is and how far this travels. In 1947, I mean, we're like in the aftermath of the Second World War, like there's other stuff to talk about in the world. An Australian newspaper called The Herald. Titles an article, there's queer goings on at Bawley.

They do say. They do say. Yeah, they do say. And it describes, it's talking about the. the excavation zone. It says three men with spades and a crowbar began digging today at the centuries old village church at Bawley rectory,

often described as the most haunted house in England. So there are still excavations going on in the churchyard around the house. There's still an interest in kind of finding the remains of the nun maybe, all of that. People are so invested in it, even on the other side of the world. Yeah.

In the aftermath of the World War. Good stories are good stories. Good stories. And it's also, I suppose, escapism in the 40s. Harry Price dies in 1948, which prompts another resurgence. Of course, the book becomes a bestseller again because he's just died as often happens. Members of the Society of Psychical Research re-examine all of the documentation that he left behind.

But they're really critical of his method, his conclusions. They state that some of the evidence that was gathered is kind of poorly documented, his exaggerated things. even though he didn't necessarily, you know, go hard on that actually being ghosts there. You know, he changes his toe. And yeah. But, yeah, there's certainly a kind of criticism underlying all of that work. But, yeah, I mean, what do you make of this story? I just find this history so frustrating.

And I love, I love, love, love a ghost story. I love a ghost story as a consumer of ghost stories. I love a ghost story as a visitor to historic places. and buildings. I loved the idea of a haunted landscape. This history frankly pisses me off. We've had a few of those recently. What did I throw paper at you the other week for?

Oh, yeah. I was like, oh, Maddie, I don't want to listen to this anymore. What was that like? I can't remember. Something anyway. So I'm actually, I'm surprised I wasn't more pissed off at it. So that's something. You've been quite zen, actually.

Thanks very much. I get the appeal of a good story above all else. And actually, sometimes I think there's merit and need for that. And you kind of just sums it up there, didn't you? Or you said, like, you know, there's also this talk around does Price give us these tropes of modern ghost hunting and all that kind of thing? And I think, no, he's picking up on what's already been laid down and he might bring some of that more modern technology. I think he is, we can see a sort of DNA through line. right between earlier

seance doers you know I mean we can go all the way back to things like the Cochlein ghost by my book but but also you know this sort of Victorian seance scene obviously like the Conan Doyles all of that and then we've got Harry Price and I think you know

we can even take that to like TV ghost hunting things like that right like there's a kind of there is a through line there of the performance the showmanship of it you know there are a popular podcast today we had Danny Robbins on the show. You know, I think that there is a through line there.

I think it's entertainment. I don't necessarily think there's anything wrong with that. I just, I think what frustrates me about this kind of ghost story is that it's all founded on a historic narrative that is not real. Okay, I mean, there's some strange coincidences in here. The house burned down. were there was a burial found nearby, not surprising given the location. Yeah.

But I really find frustrating, you know, this claim of sightings that, you know, oh, it was a headless horseman, all these kind of tropes. And there is, in fact, in this story, I think the bulls early on as well as the nun, they report seeing like headless driver of a coach and horses that goes through the garden at one point and things like that. It's so, it's kind of high gothic, right? Like it's all, it's ridiculous. It belongs in like a late 18th century Gothic novel.

But I don't like when people just run with those stories and those histories and say, yes, so there was a monastery nearby and this happened and blah, blah, no, there wasn't. It didn't happen. And there's so much about history that is exciting and interesting and concrete and we can say stuff definitively happened that is chilling and haunting and entertaining and all. all of those things. When it's fabricated to this extent, I lose interest in it because I lose patience in... It's a device.

Yeah. And then when it's taking at face value, I think, well, I'm not, I don't want to waste my time with this because it's nonsense. Yeah. So I have wasted my time for this entire. So often you will miss a historian from some of those conversations where actually a real historian and I've seen, I've also seen people be like, I'm a historian. I'm like, are you though?

That's not what a historian is. And it's like, but a real historian could either shed light on this. or draw a line under this right now in some way in terms of some of the story like the monastery thing or whatever like obviously I don't know that area specifically yeah and I think often with ghost stories

you know even if you know there might be offered like you know in the archive we found that someone in this building died at some point so therefore they must be the ghosts that's wanting this 500 year old castle this one specific person we found who died here

and I think often just the historical context is missing and I think it's a, it's a dangerous game because, you know, it is entertainment. We've had a light-hearted conversation about this, but I think often when we're talking about hauntings and particularly bad things that have happened in the past, violent things, horrible things, we need to be a little bit careful to put them into their context and to understand the seriousness of them and to not make them flippant tourism, I think. And it bothers me when that happens, when we take real events.

at sites and turn them into something a little bit sensationalist, a little bit dramatic and and less poignant than they maybe should be. Although in this case, it's all found. Yeah, it's not there anyway. It's literally nothing. Who is your favourite nun? Do you have one? Um, I do have a favourite nun. My great, my Catholic great-grandfather was in a nursing home run by nuns and he died when he was 102. He was born in 1898 and he died in somebody to do that math. Wait, what did you say? Great grandfather. Great grandfather. So he just about lived over three centuries.

Flipping up. Survived the First World War and he was looked after by nuns and there was a really gorgeous, kind Irish nun who was there who every time me and my cousins were going when we were little children to see him, she would always have a selection box and a can of Coke waiting for us. Whether it was Christmas or not. absolutely did not matter. It was not relevant. What was her name? Can you remember? I'm so sad that I can't remember.

I really can't remember. I mean, he died when I was, gosh, I don't know, eight, nine, something like that. I can't really. I can't remember. But she, I remember her being so kind and so calming and reassuring.

Maybe I miss remembering it and she was vile. Awful. He was like, she was awful. Yeah. But yeah, what about you? I have three. Sister Sheila. Can I just say, of course you.

I do. Sister Sheila, Sister Vera and Sister Immaculata. And Sister Sheila taught me biology until I was 15. She was also the first educational figure to talk to me, a nun, not just me, the class, about the birds and the bees. Doesn't that explain an awful lot? Sister Vera was my Irish teacher for the first two years of secondary school. And once she got hit in the head with a basketball, but she was fine.

Sister Amaculata didn't actually teach me, but she did parole the school. corridors of my school. But here's the thing about Sister Maculata. She had also taught my granny. No. Not just my mother,

my granny. So I had intergenerational nuns. And she's still teaching today. She now teaches my nephew. Was she a ghost? Just walking the corridors she never actually taught you

hold on as well. She didn't. She wasn't a ghost and I'll tell you why I know she wasn't because she was literally rotting in front of our eyes. She had growth on her face

that was like no, don't make that she was weird. And she was the only one that wore the full habit The others wore Maybe she was a ghost I'm talking about it The others had kind of As much as nuns in the 20th century did

They still had you know Like school uniform type things And it was very conservative looking But she had the habits still Yeah And that's weird now that I say that But she definitely was alive Because I remember talking to other people about her

So it wasn't just me Okay In the comments Tell us your top three nuns Sally Field. She was a nun. The flying nun or something. I don't know.

I'm ending this before it becomes a problem. No. Sister Michael. Who? What? Oh my. She has to be up there. Oh no.

Hold on. Let's not go just yet. Nuns. What other nuns? All I can think is there's a nun horror film and I can picture the post is really frightening. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Don't use that as a still. Yeah. That's going to be the thumbnail of this video. Oh, Maria von Trapp was a nun. Oh, she was a novice. She didn't quite get to none. Well, the sister, the mother superior who.

Sorry, go ahead. Who literally is like, how do you solve a problem like Maria? She's a massive pain in the ass. She's a queen. Sister Mary Clarence. Sister Act. Oh, never seen it. She's not real, none.

But you've never seen Sister Act. Right. You have never seen Indiana Jones. I haven't. But, oh my. God, Sister Mary Clarence, actually my favorite one, sister, the one that never sat, oh my God, I was so, I was distraught by the fact. This has got off.

The ginger nun doesn't sing. That's not her singing voice. Sister Mary, something or other. Wow. Oh my God, I love them. Please now sing the whole of sister up for us. I could, you know. I joined a gospel choir because, me, I joined a gospel choir because I was so obsessed with sister act.

Okay, right in and tell us your favorite nuns. But also, if you want to hear any more, go through. histories. I want to do some that don't piss me off. Yeah, give us a good ghost history. Yeah, some that genuinely could be real. Send them in. Yeah, that's a good challenge. Yeah, I really, I really am in need of this. Thank you for listening. Leave us a five-star review.

Five-star only please. Comment below. See next time. Love you. Bye!