Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the Short Stuff, the very special
Speaker 1: Halloween edition of Short Stuff. Chuck, what about the Borily Rectory?
Speaker 1: And I have to say this one's good, but I
Speaker 1: think it still doesn't hold the candle to the one
Speaker 1: you put together that kicked off our Halloween content. But
Speaker 1: which is the most sterile way of putting it? Um,
Speaker 1: the two parter of jack O Lanard's and Sleepy Haller.
Speaker 1: It was like we even got a message from Dave
Speaker 1: the producer saying like this is the greatest thing I've
Speaker 1: ever heard in my life. I'm paraphrasing, but that was
Speaker 1: basically it. Well, thank you, Dave. Yeah, so this is
Speaker 1: I like this one too though, because this is about um,
Speaker 1: the most haunted house in England. Yeah, which, uh, A
Speaker 1: lot of people automatically know what we're talking about just
Speaker 1: hearing that phrase Boriley Rectory, which a rectory, by the way,
Speaker 1: is a place where a pastor lives. Leave for the
Speaker 1: Anglican Church, maybe for just Protestantism in general, but you know,
Speaker 1: pastors are allowed to marry and they have a family,
Speaker 1: so you gotta put them somewhere. You can't just make
Speaker 1: them sleep under the pews in the church. So they
Speaker 1: get their own house, and that's called the rectory. And
Speaker 1: it just so happened that the one in Boordly, which
Speaker 1: is this little village an hour and a half northeast
Speaker 1: of London that no one would have ever heard about
Speaker 1: had it not been for the rectory, there was a
Speaker 1: very very haunted place, that's right. And by the way,
Speaker 1: do you know what we call those in the Baptist
Speaker 1: church at my church? What the preacher's house the sinbox? No,
Speaker 1: we called it that crappy little house next to the church. No,
Speaker 1: that's what they get dedicating themselves. So the rectory was
Speaker 1: built in the eighteen eighties. Uh. It burned down in
Speaker 1: the nineteen thirties. But that property itself has a long
Speaker 1: history of haunting, supposedly going way way back to the
Speaker 1: thirteen sixties when there was a monastery there and allegedly
Speaker 1: a headless monk would roam the fields and a nun
Speaker 1: i would haunt the place who had been walled up
Speaker 1: alive inside the monastery walls. Yeah, there was another nune
Speaker 1: too that would have come later. Who was I guess
Speaker 1: who ran away from the nunnery and tried to join
Speaker 1: the Waldgrave family who owned this property and instead was
Speaker 1: like strangled and buried in a cellar there. So you've
Speaker 1: got at least three good ghosts wandering around the site
Speaker 1: that the Reverend Bull, the first Reverend Bull and his
Speaker 1: family come along in the eighteen sixties and say this
Speaker 1: will be a fine place to build our rectory. And
Speaker 1: of course the townspeople were like, this is a really
Speaker 1: bad idea, but we're just gonna sit back and not
Speaker 1: say a word, because you know, we really could use
Speaker 1: them the addition to our tax base here at the town.
Speaker 1: And then they thought it through a little further and like, darn,
Speaker 1: it is that true in England too. I don't know.
Speaker 1: It's a great American joke though. Uh. They would hear
Speaker 1: certain things in the night, like servants, bells, ringing, keys
Speaker 1: flying out of the locks. Uh, always a little tinkling
Speaker 1: of the keyboard with no hands nearby. Yeah, phantoms. There
Speaker 1: was a phantom stage coach that supposedly used to arrive.
Speaker 1: And the townspeople were like, of course this is a
Speaker 1: really haunted site. It makes sense that this house would
Speaker 1: be haunted too. Um. And so the rectory itself is
Speaker 1: built in eighteen sixty two, and within a year there
Speaker 1: were reported sightings. Um, but it wasn't until the nineteen
Speaker 1: thirties and over time like between it. It wasn't like
Speaker 1: this just started in eighteen sixty two and then stopped
Speaker 1: in the nineteen thirties. Like every family that lived there
Speaker 1: reported something, some more than others. In some cases the
Speaker 1: family there was just clearly afflicted by a terrible poultry
Speaker 1: geist or horrible ghost activity, just constant stuff. Others were
Speaker 1: not quite as bad. But um, it was every family
Speaker 1: that lived there reported something, and so the house itself
Speaker 1: got a reputation even before it was known as the
Speaker 1: most haunted house in England. That's right, And you know
Speaker 1: why all this stuff is happening. The old German phrase
Speaker 1: geist is kind of geist pretty great, you know. So
Speaker 1: Poulter means loud. Isn't that what Poulter guist means loud?
Speaker 1: I don't know. Is that what it was. I'm pretty
Speaker 1: sure I should know that with my vast German knowledge base,
Speaker 1: but I don't remember. But I think another another translation
Speaker 1: is Toby Hooper didn't actually direct this, it's the other translation.
Speaker 1: Do you think it was Spielberg gut pulling the strings? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, yeah, don't get me started. Uh so, yeah,
Speaker 1: the nineteen thirties, I believe. In nineteen nine, the Daily
Speaker 1: Mail sent Harry price who was sort of the foremost
Speaker 1: paranormal investigator of the day. He worked with a Society
Speaker 1: for Um Psychical Research, and he was like Houdini and
Speaker 1: that he was a debunker of mediums of fraudulent meat ums.
Speaker 1: But he was also sort of a probably a bit
Speaker 1: of a self promoter and below hard. And the people
Speaker 1: at the spr were like, I don't like you so much,
Speaker 1: and he went, well, I don't like you either. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna go find my own jam and he founded the
Speaker 1: National Laboratory of I said physical before Josh corrected me,
Speaker 1: psychical research. Yeah, it'll trip you up for sure. I
Speaker 1: was raised on this stuff, Like I used to want
Speaker 1: to go to Duke and study parapsychology when I was
Speaker 1: a kid. Do that in retirement one day, my friend,
Speaker 1: maybe I will one day. I don't think they have
Speaker 1: that that research anymore. But anyway, um, like Mr Clark,
Speaker 1: we discontinued that program, Well could you just start it
Speaker 1: up again? So Harry pricey was because he was such
Speaker 1: a good self promoter. He wrote a lot of books
Speaker 1: and he wrote his books to be easily consumed by
Speaker 1: the public, like they were very readable. I saw um.
Speaker 1: And so he became a very very well known debunker
Speaker 1: of mediums and and well known skeptic. So when he
Speaker 1: went to inspect Borley Rectory himself at the behest of
Speaker 1: the Daily Mail, and he came out of there and said, yeah,
Speaker 1: this actually checks out. This place is a haunted house.
Speaker 1: People definitely took notice, like he lent his credibility to it,
Speaker 1: and not because he was a fraud or sham necessarily,
Speaker 1: Like he seemed to have really been convinced, at least
Speaker 1: at first maybe always all right, I think it's a
Speaker 1: good spot for a break, and uh, we'll talk a
Speaker 1: little bit more about this rectory right after this. So
Speaker 1: one entry thing thing that happened at the Boorly Rectory
Speaker 1: was it burned down. Uh this is a nineteen thirty
Speaker 1: nine and you know, if you believe the story, then
Speaker 1: it seems very suspicious. But the owner at the time,
Speaker 1: Mr William Gregson, said that he saw with his own
Speaker 1: eyeballs a stack of books that were sitting there on
Speaker 1: a shelf flew off on their own and ended up
Speaker 1: knocking over a lamp a paraffin wick lamp and that
Speaker 1: ended up burning the house down. Yes, and fortunately that
Speaker 1: happened after Harry Price had spent the previous year there,
Speaker 1: so he leased the place in nine Yeah, he went
Speaker 1: and lived there for a year with forty eight assistants
Speaker 1: that he hired, um, so that they could all work
Speaker 1: basically around the clock studying and recording all the ghostly
Speaker 1: phenomenon that was there. And he made his career like
Speaker 1: even further. This cemented Harry Price and the Annals of
Speaker 1: paras Psychology where his studies on Borly Rectory, and he
Speaker 1: published two books, um, the most Haunted House in England,
Speaker 1: which coined that phrase I believe, I don't think he
Speaker 1: used it before then um, and cemented in everyone's mind like, yeah,
Speaker 1: Borily Rectory is proof positive there haunted houses. And then
Speaker 1: after the fire I believe he wrote a second book
Speaker 1: of follow up book called The End of Borrey Rectory.
Speaker 1: And so for years until Price's death in a few
Speaker 1: years beyond, Uh, anybody who believed in the world basically
Speaker 1: in ghosts had probably heard of Borily Rectory and considered
Speaker 1: it as like I was saying, proof that haunted houses
Speaker 1: can exist because of the work of Harry Price, but
Speaker 1: then his work was kind of undone later on, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: so his old I don't know about enemies, but it's
Speaker 1: at least his rivals. Yeah. Friend of me is at
Speaker 1: the Society for uh Psychical Research, said, you know what,
Speaker 1: this guy is dead. Uh he was a bit of
Speaker 1: a jerk to us, and so let's go undo the
Speaker 1: work that he did. Let's debunk the debunker. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: they like they explained, they gave alternative explanations rather than
Speaker 1: ghosts for some of this stuff. But the thing that
Speaker 1: really kind of like pull the pull the wool down
Speaker 1: or the curtain down on the whole thing was apparently
Speaker 1: these guys found in Harry Price's unpublished notes UM he
Speaker 1: implicated a woman named Mary Ann Foyster who was the
Speaker 1: Reverend Foyster's wife who lived there for several years, and
Speaker 1: she apparently was at the center of carrying out a
Speaker 1: lot of these ghost hoaxes. And Harry Price knew it too,
Speaker 1: So that was a really he definitely buried it. And
Speaker 1: also the SPR researchers suggested, I don't know where they
Speaker 1: found this out, but they suggested that Harry Price was
Speaker 1: also not um not shy to do things like throw
Speaker 1: pebbles in a dark and seance room to just scare
Speaker 1: people and make noise and just kind of add to
Speaker 1: the whole thing. So the book really kind of cut
Speaker 1: the legs out from under the idea that Harry Price
Speaker 1: had discovered a real haunted house. Not entirely. There's plenty
Speaker 1: of people who still believed, but it definitely put a
Speaker 1: dent in the whole thing. Then there was another book.
Speaker 1: This one came out in two thousand and this was
Speaker 1: a memoir by a man named I don't know if
Speaker 1: it's Louis or Louis Marling, who said, you know what,
Speaker 1: I lived at that home a couple of times. I
Speaker 1: lived with the family of Reverend Henry Bull in the
Speaker 1: nineteen tens and nineteen twenties, and then uh and with
Speaker 1: Bull in the tens and twenties, then the Foisters that
Speaker 1: Foister Mrs Foister in the nineteen thirties. And he said,
Speaker 1: I worked with both of these families, and we did
Speaker 1: a bunch of these hoaxes. We would tickle the piano
Speaker 1: strings behind a hole in the wall and stuff like that,
Speaker 1: and it was kind of really all us. But here's
Speaker 1: a twist of that story, A twist he said he
Speaker 1: could explain everything save one that in Easter Nive, he
Speaker 1: and the aforementioned Marianne Foister and some other folks attended
Speaker 1: a seance there and it went to an underground seller
Speaker 1: about midnight. Sat there in the dark, in the quiet,
Speaker 1: and someone gave a little nervous cough, as if they
Speaker 1: were about to speak, and all of a sudden, all
Speaker 1: those kitchen bells start clinging together at once, which is
Speaker 1: supposedly impossible to ring all those things at once, and
Speaker 1: supposedly no one else was there. Yeah, so Mrs Foyster
Speaker 1: was there at the time too, And um, Louis Maryland
Speaker 1: suggests like they looked at each other, like, what's really
Speaker 1: going on? These hoaxters were suddenly or overcome with ghostly phenomenon. Right,
Speaker 1: But then, chuck, there's another twist. That's right. It turns
Speaker 1: out that the Louis Maryland, who wrote this book in
Speaker 1: two thousand um was researched themselves and found that there
Speaker 1: was nobody by the name of Lewis Maryland who has
Speaker 1: ever recorded living at Borley Rectory, let alone twice. Wow. Yeah,
Speaker 1: which I mean technically could just mean that that book
Speaker 1: is a work of fiction or whatever. But still it's
Speaker 1: a great extra twist, don't you think. Sure you thought
Speaker 1: the ghost twist was it? And then bam, bam bam,
Speaker 1: there's like the anonymous book twist. And then m night
Speaker 1: Chamelain delivers flowers to the front doors, and that's very nice.
Speaker 1: You got anything else? I got nothing else? Well, everyone,
Speaker 1: thank you for joining us on the scariest short stuff
Speaker 1: of the year, the short Stuff on Borderley Rectory, which
Speaker 1: is now out. Stuff you Should Know is a production
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