One could simply dismiss this, considering it an idle fiction. However, the house in Borley (Essex, England) earned the fame of the record holder for the number of ghosts by no means thanks to rumors - the persons of the clergy, officials and scientists, whose opinion is quite reliable, testified to inexplicable phenomena. They have no need to fantasize, it would be desirable, on the contrary, to keep silent about what is happening in the priest's house.
Immured love
The village of Borley, a hundred kilometers from London in the XIV century, was famous for its nunnery. It was within its walls that a tragedy was played out, the story of which was passed down from generation to generation.
One of the nuns accidentally met a monk passing through Borli from a nearby monastery. Young people began to meet, violating church prohibitions. After some time, the nun became pregnant, and then the lovers had an escape plan, which at the last moment failed. The mischief-makers faced severe punishment: the monk was killed in prison, and the nun, for the edification of all the other sisters, was walled up alive in the wall of the monastery.
Since then, the people of Borly have seen the ghost of the nun on several occasions. It did not disappear even after the monastery was plundered and destroyed during the War of the Scarlet and White Rose in the 16th century. Only the adjacent church, built in the XII century, remained.
The parishioners told about the tragic love story and ghosts in 1861 to the new priest Henry Bull. He considered all this superstition and a year later built a house on the site of the former monastery, partially using the surviving foundation.
Alas, the pastor soon became convinced that the stories of the residents of Borly were well grounded. In the new house, extraneous sounds were heard every now and then, there was a crackling, sometimes dishes fell from the shelves and furniture moved by itself. In addition, Henry's father and members of his family periodically saw the ghost of the same nun.
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In particular, the eldest daughter, 22-year-old Ethel, told how she saw a nun with her sisters Frida and Mabel while walking along the garden alley.
Moreover, the girl even approached her and asked if she could help her with something. But the ghost disappeared without answering. With the light hand of the girls, the alley was called the Nuns Alley.
True, the priest's family, nevertheless, got along quite peacefully with the ghost. And when, 30 years later, the house was inherited by his son - Harry Bull, also a parish priest, anomalous phenomena boiled down to the same petty "pranks": falling things, breaking dishes …
Harry died in 1927. The coffin with the body was placed in the same room where the coffin with the body of Henry Bull once stood. For some unknown reason, the temperature there was always six degrees lower than in the rest of the rooms. No one could explain this paradox, including the stove-makers.
The family finally decided to move out of this house when the ghost of Harry Bull began to walk around it …
Restless nights
In 1930, a new priest, Harry Bull's cousin Lionel Foister, and his wife Marianne became the owners of the house. The latter had heard a lot about the strangeness of the mansion and in every possible way opposed the move, but her husband insisted.
Apparently, it was the overly impressionable and noisy Marianne who did not like the ghostly inhabitants of the house in Borley. Now at night, someone invisible began to persistently ring the door, in the room where the coffins with the bodies of the previous owners of the house once stood, footsteps and groans were heard, water suddenly began to drip onto the Foyster couple's bed in the middle of the night.
Not only the owners of the house, but also their guests became witnesses of anomalous phenomena. So, in the winter of 1932, Justice of the Peace Guy L'Estrange came to the Foysters.
One could simply dismiss this, considering it an idle fiction. However, the house in Borley (Essex, England) earned the fame of the record holder for the number of ghosts by no means thanks to rumors - the persons of the clergy, officials and scientists, whose opinion is quite reliable, testified to inexplicable phenomena. They have no need to fantasize, it would be desirable, on the contrary, to keep silent about what is happening in the priest's house.
As soon as he was approaching the house, he noticed a female figure in a black robe, which loomed in front of the entrance, and then moved into the garden. However, there were no tracks left on the snow cover.
Further - more, this is how the guest describes what happened at dinner.
“I was frightened by the rumble that suddenly came from the hall.
- They're here again! - the pastor sighed heavily.
I hurried to the door and saw that the floor of the hall was strewn with shards of broken dishes. The pastor looked sadly at the shards:
“These are plates from the cupboard in the kitchen. You understand that no one could leave them here, and then instantly disappear.
And yet I thought it was some kind of prank.
After the order in the lobby was restored, we returned to the table, but there was another crash from the lobby. It was impossible to ignore this, and we rushed into the hall. What we saw there made me doubt the reality of what was happening. Bottles were flying in all directions in the lobby, and there was no one to see who could throw them. Suddenly appearing, they whistled through the air, and then crashed against the walls …"
In the evening, falling asleep in the room prepared for him, L'Estrange suddenly felt cold. Strange - a stove was heated here at night. L'Estrange got up to check that the window was well locked. But then I noticed a light in the corner - as if a small candle had been lit there.
The space illuminated by her began to increase, and he was able to distinguish that very female figure in a black robe. Her face was hidden under a hood. L'Estrange, a rather brave and determined man, called out to the guest, but she slowly disappeared.
In the morning, the guest did not tell the hosts about the night incident - they already had enough excitement. Memories of the magistrate about this visit appeared in the press only five years later, when the Foysters moved out of a bad house.
Bad "heredity"
In 1938, the house was owned by retired captain William Gregson, who was skeptical about all this "devilry". If he sometimes dreamed of something, then he considered it a consequence of going over whiskey at night. Once again, the well-known paranormal researcher Harry Price, who once again visited the mansion, conducted a seance and predicted to Gregson that he was expecting a severe fire.
He just grinned, but 11 months later, on February 27, 1939, he accidentally dropped a kerosene lamp in the library, and the fire instantly engulfed the house. By morning, only the walls were left of the mansion …
Harry Price in August 1943 with assistants dismantled the building, including the foundation. It was in it that he discovered the remains of a woman. The researcher concluded that this is the skeleton of a nun killed in the XIV century.
Scientists became interested in the find. A specially created commission headed by Professor of Cambridge University Arthur Robertson examined the ruins of the mansion for almost a year. Among others, such an experiment was carried out: for one or several nights, they left commission members and volunteers in the place where the house once stood.
So out of almost 60 people, two-thirds described phenomena whose origin could not be explained: extraneous sounds, an unexpected cooling, the appearance of ghosts. After the completion of the experiment, the ruins were demolished and taken out - a few years later a typical English lawn was already green on this place.
Scientists have agreed on the version of a certain geopathogenic zone, which was burdened by the "heredity" of the house - the murder of an unknown woman committed here.
Meetings at Nuns Alley
When the story of the house had already begun to be forgotten, local residents and visitors began to come to the Nun's alley. The trees grew, gave a good shade, the path seemed to beckon to take a walk.
The famous photo of the ghost outside Borley's house
In the summer of 1951, two friends walked along the alley - one local, and the other from a neighboring village - and arguing about something. Suddenly one of them stopped rooted to the spot and, unable to move his hand, only nodded to the side.
The friend looked and also froze. Literally fifteen meters away, they saw the ghost of a woman in a white cloak with a hood. The silhouette was quite clear, although it shone through - through it you could see trees and bushes. The woman turned into the thickets of the garden, and the friends clearly heard the crackling of branches and the rustle of grass …
People later became witnesses of anomalous phenomena both in Borly itself and in its vicinity. So, on a Sunday evening in August 1977, a husband and wife were returning by car from London and in front of the village they saw an unusual procession: four in monastic clothes were carrying an expensive old coffin decorated with silver.
Instead of faces, all four have skulls. A woman who knew how to draw well, immediately made sketches. When the couple made inquiries with historians in London, they confirmed their assumptions: such coffins were made in the XIV century.
Despite the fact that the house was burned down for 76 years, Borly still attracts tourists who are fond of mysticism. Fortunately, the church was preserved, next to which was the pastor's house. The same alley along which the nun walked has survived. Of course, many of Borly's guests would like to see her, but locals advise in this case to stay with them for three or four days - supposedly then for sure.
Either this is really so, or the desire to lure tourists here affects. And some of the visiting thrill-seekers, who were awake for several nights in a row, assured that they had indeed seen the ghost of the nun, and some daredevils even filmed it with a video camera. However, later, when trying to view it, it turned out that the shooting had failed - there was only interference on the screen.
Peter NIKOLAEV